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　　THE SONG OF ROLAND.

　　The Song of Roland is one of the many mediaeval romances that celebrate the deeds of Charlemagne.

　　The oldest text now in existence was written about 1096, but the poem was current in other forms long before this.

　　The author was a Norman, for the poem is written in the Norman dialect; but it is uncertain whether the Turoldus or Théroulde named in the last line of the poem, "Thus endeth here the geste Turoldus sang," was the author, a copyist, or a jongleur.

　　It is said that Taillefer, the minstrel of Normandy, sang the Song of Roland at the battle of Hastings. "Taillefer, who right well sang, mounted on his rapid steed, went before them singing of Charlemagne, and of Roland, and Olivier, and of the vassals who died in Roncesvalles."

　　The only text of the poem now in existence is one of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford.

　　On the fifteenth of August, 778, in the valley of Roncesvalles, in the Pyrenees, Charlemagne's rear guard, left under the command of Roland, Prefect of the Marches of Brittany, was attacked and slaughtered by a large army of Gascons.

　　This incident forms the historical basis of the poem; but the imagination of the poet has made of Charlemagne, then a young man, the old emperor, with "beard all blossom white," and transformed his Gascon foes to Saracens.

　　The Song of Roland is written in the heroic pentameter; it is divided into "laisses," or stanzas, of irregular length, and contains about three thousand seven hundred and eight lines. It is written in the assonant, or vowel rhyme, that was universal among European nations in the early stage of their civilization.

　　Each stanza ends with the word "aoi," for which no satisfactory translation has yet been offered, although "away" and "it is done" have been suggested.

　　The author of the Song of Roland undertook, like Homer, to sing of one great event about which all the interest of the poem centres; but unlike Homer, his poem is out of all proportion, the long-drawn out revenge being in the nature of an anti-climax. The Song of Roland is a fair exponent of the people among whom it originated. It contains no ornament; it is a straightforward relation of facts; it lacks passion, and while it describes fearful slaughter, it never appeals to the emotions. Though the French army shed many tears, and fell swooning to the ground at the sight of the fearful slaughter at Roncesvalles, we are rather moved to smile at the violence of their emotion than to weep over the dead, so little power has the poet to touch the springs of feeling. However, there are passages in which the poem rises to sublimity, and which have been pronounced Homeric by its admirers. National Epics