. Frithjof, the viking of Norway : and Roland, the paladin of France. in the castle where, in hismonotonous singsong, to the accompani-ment of his funny little violin, he enter-tained the baron and his household (livebook that he was !) on a long winter even-ing, in the great hall, with this or that in-cident of the great tragedy of Roncevaux :now the treason of Ganelon, then the mas-sacre, or the Archbishops last blessingâRolands dying blast on the Olifantâthe moving death of fair Audeâthe greatavenging battle of SaragossaâGanelonstrial by the ordeal of single combat andhis punishment, etc. S
. Frithjof, the viking of Norway : and Roland, the paladin of France. in the castle where, in hismonotonous singsong, to the accompani-ment of his funny little violin, he enter-tained the baron and his household (livebook that he was !) on a long winter even-ing, in the great hall, with this or that in-cident of the great tragedy of Roncevaux :now the treason of Ganelon, then the mas-sacre, or the Archbishops last blessingâRolands dying blast on the Olifantâthe moving death of fair Audeâthe greatavenging battle of SaragossaâGanelonstrial by the ordeal of single combat andhis punishment, etc. Several of thesedisjointed ballads {cantiltnes), if recitedsuccessively, arranged themselves into amore or less consecutive story. Thenclerks took a hand at them and workedthem into one of those semi-poetical,rudely metrical narratives known as theCha7iso7is de Geste (epic lays), until therecame one, more learned, equipped withliterary training and gifted with a truepoets soul, who, out of the scattered material, made an epic poem â our Chanson de JUGGLER (JONGLEUR).iFrom a MS. in the National Library in Paris, Xltk Century^ THE NFW Y(;RK PUBLIC lid:^arY TiLbEN K . Chanson de Roland 291 Eminent men were more humble-minded in those days, a humility which,moreover, was fostered by the teachingsand life of the Christian cloister, theonly literary workshop for ages. So theycared more for leaving a fine piece of workthan for attaching their name to it. Onthe other hand, the general public caredfor the work and not at all for the we have the worksâthe Nibe-lungenlied, the * Beowulf, the * Chan-son de Rolandâbut know nothing ofany authors. Neither are the dates of these and sim-ilar works given, but have to be approxi-mated from internal evidence. In thecase of our Chanson the difficulty is lessgreat, owing to two very reliable clews :first, the armours described are those of theeleventh century; and second, Jerusalemis mentioned as being in the
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