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      THE SONG OF ROLAND

      TRANSLATED BY JOHN O'HAGAN

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2667-5

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59625-560-9

      This edition copyright © 2012

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      Introduction

      In the year 778 A.D., Charles the Great, King of the Franks, returned from a military expedition into Spain, whither he had been led by opportunities offered through dissensions among the Saracens who then dominated that country. On the 15th of August, while his army was marching through the passes of the Pyrenees, his rear—guard was attacked and annihilated by the Basque inhabitants of the mountains, in the valley of Roncesvaux. About this disaster many popular songs, it is supposed, soon sprang up; and the chief hero whom they celebrated was Hrodland, Count of the Marches of Brittany.

      There are indications that the earliest of these songs arose among the Breton followers of Hrodland or Roland; but they spread to Maine, to Anjou, to Normandy, until the theme became national. By the latter part of the eleventh century, when the form of the "Song of Roland" which we possess was probably composed, the historical germ of the story had almost disappeared under the mass of legendary accretion. Charlemagne, who was a man of thirty—six at the time of the actual Roncesvaux incident, has become in the poem an old man with a flowing white beard, credited with endless conquests; the Basques have disappeared, and the Saracens have taken their place; the defeat is accounted for by the invention of the treachery of Ganelon; the expedition of 777-778 has become a campaign of seven years; Roland is made the nephew of Charlemagne, leader of the twelve peers, and is provided with a faithful friend Oliver, and betrothed, Alda.

      The poem is the first of the great French heroic poems known as "chansons de geste." It is written in stanzas of various length, bound together by the vowel—rhyme known as assonance. It is not possible to reproduce effectively this device in English, and the author of the present translation has adopted what is perhaps the nearest equivalent—the romantic measure of Coleridge and Scott.

      Simple almost of bareness in style, without subtlety or high imagination, the Song of Roland is yet not without grandeur; and its patriotic ardor gives it a place as the earliest of the truly national poems of the modern world.

      Part I

      Section I

      The Treason Of Ganelon

      Saragossa. The Council of King Marsil

      I

      The king our Emperor Carlemaine,

      Hath been for seven full years in Spain.

      From highland to sea hath he won the land;

      City was none might his arm withstand;

      Keep and castle alike went down

      Save Saragossa, the mountain town.

      The King Marsilius holds the place,

      Who loveth not God, nor seeks His grace:

      He prays to Apollin, and serves Mahound;

      But he saved him not from the fate he found.

      II

      In Saragossa King Marsil made

      His council—seat in the orchard shade,

      On a stair of marble of azure hue.

      There his courtiers round him drew;

      While there stood, the king before,

      Twenty thousand men and more.

      Thus to his dukes and his counts he said,

      "Hear ye, my lords, we are sore bested.

      The Emperor Karl of gentle France

      Hither hath come for our dire mischance.

      Nor host to meet him in battle line,

      Nor power to shatter his power, is mine.

      Speak, my sages; your counsel lend:

      My doom of shame and death forefend."

      But of all the heathens none spake word

      Save Blancandrin, Val Fonde's lord.

      III

      Blancandrin was a heathen wise,

      Knightly and valiant of enterprise,

      Sage in counsel his lord to aid;

      And he said to the king, "Be not dismayed:

      Proffer to Karl, the haughty and high,

      Lowly friendship and fealty;

      Ample largess lay at his feet,

      Bear and lion and greyhound fleet.

      Seven hundred camels his tribute be,

      A thousand hawks that have moulted free.

      Let full four hundred mules be told,

      Laden with silver enow and gold

      For fifty waggons to bear away;

      So shall his soldiers receive their pay.

      Say, too long hath he warred in Spain,

      Let him turn to France—to his Aix—again.

      At Saint Michael's feast you will thither speed,

      Bend your heart to the Christian creed,

      And his liegeman be in duty and deed.

      Hostages he may demand

      Ten or twenty at your hand.

      We will send him the sons whom our wives have nursed;

      Were death to follow, mine own the first.

      Better by far that they there should die

      Than be driven all from our land to fly,

      Flung to dishonor and beggary.

      IV

      "Yea," said Blancandrin, "by this right hand,

      And my floating beard by the free wind fanned,

      Ye shall see the host of the Franks disband

      And hie them back into France their land;

      Each to his home as beseemeth well, And

      Karl unto Aix—to his own Chapelle.

      He will hold high feast on Saint Michael's day

      And the time of your tryst shall pass away.

      Tale nor tidings of us shall be;

      Fiery and sudden, I know, is he:

      He will smite off the heads of our hostages all:

      Better, I say, that their heads should fall

      Than we the fair land of Spain forego,

      And our lives be laden with shame and woe."

      "Yea," said the heathens, "it may be so."

      V

      King Marsil's council is over that day,

      And he called to him Clarin of Balaguet,

      Estramarin, and Eudropin his peer,

      Bade Garlon and Priamon both draw near,

      Machiner and his uncle Maheu—with these

      Joïmer and Malbien from

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