CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I

The Heroic Age

	PAGE
Epic and Romance: the two great orders of medieval narrative	3
Epic, of the "heroic age," preceding Romance of the "age of chivalry"	4
The heroic age represented in three kinds of literature—Teutonic Epic, French Epic, and the Icelandic Sagas	6
Conditions of Life in an "heroic age"	7
Homer and the Northern poets	9
Homeric passages in Beowulf and in the Song of Maldon	10 11
Progress of poetry in the heroic age	13
Growth of Epic, distinct in character, but generally incomplete, among the Teutonic nations	14

II

Epic and Romance

The complex nature of Epic	16
No kind or aspect of life that may not be included	16
This freedom due to the dramatic quality of true (e.g. Homeric) Epic as explained by Aristotle	17 17
Epic does not require a magnificent ideal subject such as those of the artificial epic (Aeneid, Gerusalemme Liberata, Paradise Lost)	18 18
The Iliad unlike these poems in its treatment of "ideal" motives (patriotism, etc.)	19
True Epic begins with a dramatic plot and characters	20
The Epic of the Northern heroic age is sound in its dramatic conception and does not depend on impersonal ideals (with exceptions, in the Chansons de geste)	20 21
The German heroes in history and epic (Ermanaric, Attila, Theodoric)	21
Relations of Epic to historical fact	22
The epic poet is free in the conduct of his story but his story and personages must belong to his own people	23 26
Nature of Epic brought out by contrast with secondary narrative poems, where the subject is not national	27
This secondary kind of poem may be excellent, but is always different in character from native Epic	28
Disputes of academic critics about the "Epic Poem"	30
Tasso's defence of Romance. Pedantic attempts to restrict the compass of Epic	30
Bossu on Phaeacia	31
Epic, as the most comprehensive kind of poetry, includes Romance as one of its elements but needs a strong dramatic imagination to keep Romance under control	32 33

III

Romantic Mythology

Mythology not required in the greatest scenes in Homer	35
Myths and popular fancies may be a hindrance to the epic poet, but he is compelled to make some use of them	36
He criticises and selects, and allows the characters of the gods to be modified in relation to the human characters	37
Early humanism and reflexion on myth—two processes: (1) rejection of the grosser myths; (2) refinement of myth through poetry	40
Two ways of refining myth in poetry—(1) by turning it into mere fancy, and the more ludicrous things into comedy; (2) by finding an imaginative or an ethical meaning in it	40
Instances in Icelandic literature—Lokasenna	41
Snorri Sturluson, his ironical method in the Edda	42
The old gods rescued from clerical persecution	43
Imaginative treatment of the graver myths—the death of Balder; the Doom of the Gods	43
Difficulties in the attainment of poetical self-command	44
Medieval confusion and distraction	45
Premature "culture"	46
Depreciation of native work in comparison with ancient literature and with theology	47
An Icelandic gentleman's library	47
The whalebone casket	48
Epic not wholly stifled by "useful knowledge"	49

IV

The Three Schools—Teutonic Epic—French Epic—The Icelandic Histories

Early failure of Epic among the Continental Germans	50
Old English Epic invaded by Romance (Lives of Saints, etc.)	50
Old Northern (Icelandic) poetry full of romantic mythology	51
French Epic and Romance contrasted	51
Feudalism in the old French Epic (Chansons de Geste) not unlike the prefeudal "heroic age"	52
But the Chansons de Geste are in many ways "romantic"	53
Comparison of the English Song of Byrhtnoth (Maldon, a.d. 991) with the Chanson de Roland	54
Severity and restraint of Byrhtnoth	55
Mystery and pathos of Roland	56
Iceland and the German heroic age	57
The Icelandic paradox—old-fashioned politics together with clear understanding	58
Icelandic prose literature—its subject, the anarchy of the heroic age; its methods, clear and positive	59
The Icelandic histories, in prose, complete the development of the early Teutonic Epic poetry	60

CHAPTER II

THE TEUTONIC EPIC

I

The Tragic Conception

Early German poetry	65
One of the first things certain about it is that it knew the meaning of tragic situations	66
The Death of Ermanaric in Jordanes	66
The story of Alboin in Paulus Diaconus	66
Tragic plots in the extant poems	69
The Death of Ermanaric in the "Poetic Edda" (HamÐismÁl)	70
Some of the Northern poems show the tragic conception modified by romantic motives, yet without loss of the tragic purport—Helgi and Sigrun	72
Similar harmony of motives in the Waking of Angantyr	73
Whatever may be wanting, the heroic poetry had no want of tragic plots—the "fables" are sound	74
Value of the abstract plot (Aristotle)	74

II

Scale of the Poems

List of extant poems and fragments in one or other of the older Teutonic languages (German, English, and Northern) in unrhymed alliterative verse	76
Small amount of the extant poetry	78
Supplemented in various ways	79
1. The Western Group (German and English)	79
Amount of story contained in the several poems, and scale of treatment	79
Hildebrand, a short story	80
Finnesburh, (1) the Lambeth fragment (Hickes); and (2) the abstract of the story in Beowulf	81
Finnesburh, a story of (1) wrong and (2) vengeance, like the story of the death of Attila, or of the betrayal of Roland	82
Uncertainty as to the compass of the Finnesburh poem (Lambeth) in its original complete form	84
Waldere, two fragments: the story of Walter of Aquitaine preserved in the Latin Waltharius	84
Plot of Waltharius	84
Place of the Waldere fragments in the story, and probable compass of the whole poem	86
Scale of Maldon and of Beowulf	88 89
General resemblance in the themes of these poems—unity of action	89
Development of style, and not neglect of unity nor multiplication of contents, accounts for the difference of length between earlier and later poems	91
Progress of Epic in England—unlike the history of Icelandic poetry	92
2. The Northern Group	93
The contents of the so-called "Elder Edda" (i.e. Codex Regius 2365, 4to Havn.) to what extent Epic	93 93
Notes on the contents of the poems, to show their scale; the Lay of Weland	94
Different plan in the Lays of Thor, ÞrymskviÐa and HymiskviÐa	95
The Helgi Poems—complications of the text	95
Three separate stories—Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun	95
Helgi Hiorvardsson and Swava	98
Helgi and Kara (lost)	99
The story of the Volsungs—the long Lay of Brynhild contains the whole story in abstract giving the chief place to the character of Brynhild	100 100 101
The Hell-ride of Brynhild	102
The fragmentary Lay of Brynhild (Brot af SigurÐarkviÐu)	103
Poems on the death of Attila—the Lay of Attila (AtlakviÐa), and the Greenland Poem of Attila (AtlamÁl)	105
Proportions of the story	105
A third version of the story in the Lament of Oddrun (OddrÚnargrÁtr)	107
The Death of Ermanaric (HamÐismÁl)	109
The Northern idylls of the heroines (Oddrun, Gudrun)—the Old Lay of Gudrun, or Gudrun's story to Theodoric	109
The Lay of Gudrun (GuÐrÚnarkviÐa)—Gudrun's sorrow for Sigurd	111
The refrain	111
Gudrun's Chain of Woe (Tregrof GuÐrÚnar)	111
The Ordeal of Gudrun, an episodic lay	111
Poems in dialogue, without narrative— (1) Dialogues in the common epic measure—Balder's Doom, Dialogues of Sigurd, Angantyr—explanations in prose, between the dialogues (2) Dialogues in the gnomic or elegiac measure: (a) vituperative debates—Lokasenna, HarbarzliÓÐ (in irregular verse), Atli and Rimgerd (b) Dialogues implying action—The Wooing of Frey (SkÍrnismÁl)	112 112 114
Svipdag and Menglad (GrÓgaldr, FiÖlsvinnsmÁl)	114
The Volsung dialogues	115
The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect to their scale	116
The old English poems (Beowulf, Waldere), in scale, midway between the Northern poems and Homer	117
Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the "short lays" of the agglutinative epic theory; but this is illusion	117
Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic—(1) episodic, i.e. representing a single action (Hildebrand, etc.); (2) summary, i.e. giving the whole of a long story in abstract, with details of one part of it (Weland, etc.)	118
The second class is unfit for agglutination	119
Also the first, when it is looked into	121
The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently fused into larger masses of narrative	122

III

Epic and Ballad Poetry

Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads	123
Their style is different	124
As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects	125
The Danish ballads of Ungen Sveidal (Svipdag and Menglad) and of Sivard (Sigurd and Brynhild)	126 127
The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress	129

IV

The Style of the Poems

Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse	133
English and Norse	134
Different besetting temptations in England and the North	136
English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry)	137
Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms	137
Lyrical element in Norse narrative	138
VolospÁ, the greatest of all the Northern poems	139
False heroics; KrÁkumÁl (Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok)	140
A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances	141

V

The Progress of Epic

Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter	144
The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared—AtlakviÐa, AtlamÁl, OddrÚnargrÁtr	147
Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory of Kriemhild's revenge	149
The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in AtlakviÐa, apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two poems	150
But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story	152
AtlamÁl, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school	153 155
The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and not of casual popular variants	156

VI

Beowulf

Beowulf claims to be a single complete work	158
Want of unity: a story and a sequel	159
More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first 2200 lines form a complete story, not ill composed	160
Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf and Waldere	162 163
Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf—tragic significance in some of the allusions	165
The characters in Beowulf abstract types	165
The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in the fight with the dragon	168
Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy	169
Grendel's mother more romantic	172
Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of romantic adventures	173

CHAPTER III

THE ICELANDIC SAGAS

I

Iceland and the Heroic Age

The close of Teutonic Epic—in Germany the old forms were lost, but not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages	179
England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle Ages	180
Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere	181
Place of Iceland in the heroic tradition—a new heroic literature in prose	182

II

Matter and Form

The Sagas are not pure fiction	184
Difficulty of giving form to genealogical details	185
Miscellaneous incidents	186
Literary value of the historical basis—the characters well known and recognisable	187
The coherent Sagas—the tragic motive	189
Plan of NjÁla of LaxdÆla of Egils Saga	190 191 192
VÁpnfirÐinga Saga, a story of two generations	193
VÍga-GlÚms Saga, a biography without tragedy	193
ReykdÆla Saga	194
Grettis Saga and GÍsla Saga clearly worked out	195
Passages of romance in these histories	196
Hrafnkels Saga FreysgoÐa, a tragic idyll, well proportioned	198
Great differences of scale among the Sagas—analogies with the heroic poems	198

III

The Heroic Ideal

Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas	200
Heroic characters	201
Heroic rhetoric	203
Danger of exaggeration—Kjartan in LaxdÆla	204
The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal	206

IV

Tragic Imagination

Tragic contradictions in the Sagas—Gisli, Njal	207
Fantasy	208
LaxdÆla, a reduction of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild to the terms of common life	209
Compare Ibsen's Warriors in Helgeland	209
The Sagas are a late stage in the progress of heroic literature	210
The Northern rationalism	212
Self-restraint and irony	213
The elegiac mood infrequent	215
The story of Howard of Icefirth—ironical pathos	216
The conventional Viking	218
The harmonies of NjÁla and of LaxdÆla	219 222
The two speeches of Gudrun	223

V

Comedy

The Sagas not bound by solemn conventions	225
Comic humours	226
Bjorn and his wife in NjÁla	228
Bandamanna Saga: "The Confederates," a comedy	229
Satirical criticism of the "heroic age"	231
Tragic incidents in Bandamanna Saga	233
Neither the comedy nor tragedy of the Sagas is monotonous or abstract	234

VI

The Art of Narrative

Organic unity of the best Sagas	235
Method of representing occurrences as they appear at the time	236
Instance from Þorgils Saga	238
Another method—the death of Kjartan as it appeared to a churl	240
Psychology (not analytical)	244
Impartiality—justice to the hero's adversaries (FÆreyinga Saga)	245

VII

Epic and History

Form of Saga used for contemporary history in the thirteenth century	246
The historians, Ari (1067-1148) and Snorri (1178-1241)	248
The Life of King Sverre, by Abbot Karl JÓnsson	249
Sturla (c. 1214-1284), his history of Iceland in his own time (Islendinga or Sturlunga Saga)	249
The matter ready to his hand	250
Biographies incorporated in Sturlunga: Thorgils and Haflidi	252
Sturlu Saga	253
The midnight raid (a.d. 1171)	254
Lives of Bishop Gudmund, Hrafn, and Aron	256
Sturla's own work (Islendinga Saga)	257
The burning of Flugumyri	259
Traces of the heroic manner	264
The character of this history brought out by contrast with Sturla's other work, the Life of King Hacon of Norway	267
Norwegian and Icelandic politics in the thirteenth century	267
Norway more fortunate than Iceland—the history less interesting	267
Sturla and Joinville contemporaries	269
Their methods of narrative compared	270

VIII

The Northern Prose Romances

Romantic interpolations in the Sagas—the ornamental version of FÓstbrÆÐra Saga	275
The secondary romantic Sagas—Frithiof	277
French romance imported (Strengleikar, Tristram's Saga, etc.)	278
Romantic Sagas made out of heroic poems (Volsunga Saga, etc.) and out of authentic Sagas by repetition of common forms and motives	279 280
Romantic conventions in the original Sagas	280
LaxdÆla and Gunnlaug's Saga—Thorstein the White	281
Thorstein Staffsmitten	282
Sagas turned into rhyming romances (RÍmur) and into ballads in the Faroes	283 284

CHAPTER IV

THE OLD FRENCH EPIC

(Chansons de Geste)

Lateness of the extant versions	287
Competition of Epic and Romance in the twelfth century	288
Widespread influence of the Chansons de geste—a contrast to the Sagas	289
Narrative style	290
No obscurities of diction	291
The "heroic age" imperfectly represented but not ignored	292 293
Roland—heroic idealism—France and Christendom	293
William of Orange—Aliscans	296
Rainouart—exaggeration of heroism	296
Another class of stories in the Chansons de geste, more like the Sagas	297
Raoul de Cambrai	298
Barbarism of style	299
Garin le Loherain—style clarified	300
Problems of character—Fromont	301
The story of the death of Begon unlike contemporary work of the Romantic School	302 304
The lament for Begon	307
Raoul and Garin contrasted with Roland	308
Comedy in French Epic—"humours" in Garin in the Coronemenz LooÏs, etc.	310 311
Romantic additions to heroic cycles—la Prise d'Orange	313
Huon de Bordeaux—the original story grave and tragic converted to Romance	314 314

APPENDIX

Note A—Rhetoric of the Alliterative Poetry	373
Note B—Kjartan and Olaf Tryggvason	375
Note C—Eyjolf Karsson	381
Note D—Two Catalogues of Romances	384
INDEX	391

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arly; it contains some fine expressions of heroic sentiment, and a good fight, as well as the ineffectual sorrows and good intentions of the anti-hero Fromont, with all the usual tissue of violence which goes along with a feud in heroic narrative, when the feud is regarded as something impersonal and fatal, outside the wishes of the agents in it.

It may be said here that although the story of Garin and of the feud between the house of Lorraine and their enemies is long drawn out and copious in details, it is not confused, but falls into a few definite episodes of warfare, with intervals of truce and apparent reconciliation. Of these separate acts in the tragedy, the Death of Begon is the most complete in itself; the most varied, as well as the most compact. The previous action is for a modern taste too much occupied with the commonplaces of epic warfare, Homeric combats in the field, such as need the heroic motives of Maldon or Roncesvalles to make them interesting. In the story of the Death of Begon there is a change of scene from the common epic battlefield; the incidents are not taken from the common stock of battle-poetry, and the Homeric supernumeraries are dismissed.

This episode[73] begins after an interval in the feud, and tells how Begon one day thought of his brother Garin whom he had not seen for seven years and more (the business of the feud having been slack for so long), and how he set out for the East country to pay his brother a visit, with the chance of a big boar-hunt on the way. The opening passage is a very complete and lively selection from the experience and the sentiments of the heroic age; it represents the old heroic temper and the heroic standard of value, with, at the same time, a good deal of the gentler humanities.

Begon's combined motives are all alike honest, and his rhetoric is as sound as that of Sarpedon or of Gunnar. Nor is there any reason to suppose, any more than in the case of Byrhtnoth, that what is striking in the poem is due to its comparative lateness, and to its opportunities of borrowing from new discoveries in literature. If that were so, then we might find similar things among the newer fashions of the contemporary twelfth-century literature; but in fact one does not find in the works of the romantic school the same kind of humanity as in this scene. The melancholy of Begon at the thought of his isolation—"Bare is back without brother behind it"—is an adaptation of a common old heroic motive which is obscured by other more showy ideas in the romances. The conditions of life are here essentially those of the heroic age, an age which has no particular ideas of its own, which lives merely on such ideas as are struck out in the collision of lawless heavy bodies, in that heroic strife which is the parent of all things, and, among the rest, of the ideas of loyalty, fellowship, fair dealing, and so on. There is nothing romantic or idealist in Begon; he is merely an honest country gentleman, rather short of work.

He continues in the same strain, after the duchess has tried to dissuade him. She points out to him the risk he runs by going to hunt on his enemy's marches,—

C'est en la marche Fromont le poËsti,

—and tells him of her foreboding that he will never return alive. His answer is like that of Hector to Polydamas:—

Diex! dist il, dame, merveilles avez dit: Ja mar croiroie sorciere ne devin; Par aventure vient li biens el paÏs, Je ne lairoie, por tot l'or que Diex fist, Que je n'i voise, que talens m'en est prins.

The hunting of the boar is as good as anything of its kind in history, and it is impossible to read it without wishing that it had been printed a few years earlier to be read by Sir Walter Scott. He would have applauded as no one else can this story of the chase and of the hunter separated from his companions in the forest. There is one line especially in the lament for Begon after his death which is enough by itself to prove the soundness of the French poet's judgment, and his right to a welcome at Abbotsford: "This was a true man; his dogs loved him":—

Gentis hons fu, moult l'amoient si chien.

Begon came by his death in the greenwood. The forester found him there and reported him to Fromont's seneschal, who called out six of his men to go and take the poacher; and along with them went Thibaut, Fromont's nephew, an old rival of Begon. Begon set his back to an aspen tree and killed four of the churls and beat off the rest, but was killed himself at last with an arrow.

The four dead men were brought home and Begon's horse was led away:—

En une estable menerent le destrier Fronce et hennit et si grate des pies Que nus de char ne li ouse aprochier.

Begon was left lying where he fell and his three dogs came back to him:—

Seul ont Begon en la forest laissiÉ: Et jouste lui revindrent si trois chien, Hulent et braient com fuissent enragiÉ.

This most spirited passage of action and adventure shows the poet at his best; it is the sort of thing that he understands, and he carries it through without a mistake. It is followed by an attempt at another theme where something more is required of the author, and his success is not so perfect. He is drawn into the field of tragic emotion. Here, though his means are hardly sufficient for elaborate work, he sketches well. The character of Fromont when the news of his opponent's death is brought to him comes out as something of a different value from the sheer barbarism of Raoul de Cambrai. The narrative is light and wanting in depth, but there is no untruth and no dulness in the conception, and the author's meaning is perfectly clear. Fromont is different from the felons of his own household. Fromont is the adversary, but he is a gentleman. Even when he knows no more of the event than that a trespasser has been killed in the forest, he sends his men to bring in the body;—

Frans hons de l'autre doient avoir pitiÉ

—and when he sees who it is (vif l'ot vÉu, mort le reconnut bien) he breaks out into strong language against the churls who have killed the most courteous knight that ever bore arms. Mingled with this sentiment is the thought of all the trouble to come from the revival of the feud, but his vexation does not spring from mere self-interest. Fromondin his son is also angry with Thibaut his cousin; Thibaut ought to be flayed alive for his foul stroke. But while Fromondin is thinking of the shame of the murder which will be laid to the account of his father's house, Fromont's thought is more generous, a thought of respect and regret for his enemy. The tragedy of the feud continues after this; as before, Fromont is involved by his irrepressible kinsmen, and nothing comes of his good thoughts and intentions.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run, Our thoughts are ours, the ends none of our own.

This moral axiom is understood by the French author, and in an imaginative, not a didactic way, though his imagination is not strong enough to make much of it.

In this free, rapid, and unforced narrative, that nothing might be wanting of the humanities of the French heroic poetry, there is added the lament for Begon, by his brother and his wife. Garin's lament is what the French epic can show in comparison with the famous lament for Lancelot at the end of the Mort d'Arthur:—

Ha! sire Begues, li Loherains a dit Frans chevaliers, corajeus et hardis! Fel et angris contre vos anemis Et dols et simples a trestoz vos amis! Tant mar i fustes, biaus frÈres, biaus amis!

Here the advantage is with the English romantic author, who has command of a more subtle and various eloquence. On the other hand, the scene of the grief of the Duchess Beatrice, when Begon is brought to his own land, and his wife and his sons come out to meet him, shows a different point of view from romance altogether, and a different dramatic sense. The whole scene of the conversation between Beatrice and Garin is written with a steady hand; it needs no commentary to bring out the pathos or the dramatic truth of the consolation offered by Garin.

Roland, Raoul de Cambrai, and Garin le Loherain represent three kinds of French heroic poetry. Roland is the more purely heroic kind, in which the interest is concentrated on the passion of the hero, and the hero is glorified by every possible means of patriotism, religion, and the traditional ethics of battle, with the scenery and the accompaniments all chosen so as to bring him into relief and give him an ideal or symbolical value, like that of the statues of the gods. Raoul and Garin, contrasted with Roland, are two varieties of another species; namely, of the heroic poetry which (like the Odyssey and the Icelandic stories) represents the common life of an heroic age, without employing the ideal motives of great causes, religious or patriotic, and without giving to the personages any great representative or symbolical import. The subjects of Raoul and Garin belong to the same order. The difference between them is that the author of the first is only half awake to the chances offered by his theme. The theme is well chosen, not disabled, like so many romantic plots, by an inherent fallacy of ethics or imagination; a story that shapes itself naturally, if the author has the wit to see it. The author of Raoul de Cambrai, unhappily, has "no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man," and leaves his work encumbered with his dulness of perception; an evidence of the fertility of the heroic age in good subjects, and of the incompetence of some of the artists. Garin, on the other hand, shows how the common subject-matter might be worked up by a man of intelligence, rather discursive than imaginative, but alive to the meaning of his story, and before everything a continuous narrator, with the gift of natural sequence in his adventures. He relates as if he were following the course of events in his own memory, with simplicity and lucidity, qualities which were not beyond the compass of the old French verse and diction. He does not stop to elaborate his characters; he takes them perhaps too easily. But his lightness of spirit saves him from the untruth of Raoul de Cambrai; and while his ethics are the commonplaces of the heroic age, these commonplaces are not mere formulas or cant; they are vividly realised.

There is no need to multiply examples in order to prove the capacity of French epic for the same kind of subjects as those of the Sagas; that is, for the representation of strenuous and unruly life in a comprehensive and liberal narrative, noble in spirit and not much hampered by conventional nobility or dignity.

Roland is the great achievement of French epic, and there are other poems, also, not far removed from the severity of Roland and inspired by the same patriotic and religious ardour. But the poem of Garin of Lorraine (which begins with the defence of France against the infidels, but very soon passes to the business of the great feud—its proper theme), though it is lacking in the political motives, not to speak of the symbolical imagination of Roland, is significant in another way, because though much later in date, though written at a time when Romance was prevalent, it is both archaic in its subject and also comprehensive in its treatment. It has something like the freedom of movement and the ease which in the Icelandic Sagas go along with similar antique subjects. The French epic poetry is not all of it made sublime by the ideas of Roland; there is still scope for the free representation of life in different moods, with character as the dominant interest.

It should not be forgotten that the French epic has room for comedy, not merely in the shape of "comic relief," though that unhappily is sometimes favoured by the chansons de geste, and by the romances as well, but in the "humours" inseparable from all large and unpedantic fiction.

A good deal of credit on this account may be claimed for Galopin, the reckless humorist of the party of Garin of Lorraine, and something rather less for Rigaut the Villain Unwashed, another of Garin's friends. This latter appears to be one of the same family as Hreidar the Simple, in the Saga of Harald Hardrada; a figure of popular comedy, one of the lubbers who turn out something different from their promise. Clumsy strength and good-nature make one of the most elementary compounds, and may easily be misused (as in Rainouart) where the author has few scruples and no dramatic consistency. Galopin is a more singular humorist, a ribald and a prodigal, yet of gentle birth, and capable of good service when he can be got away from the tavern.

There are several passages in the chansons de geste where, as with Rainouart, the fun is of a grotesque and gigantic kind, like the fun to be got out of the giants in the Northern mythology, and the trolls in the Northern popular tales. The heathen champion Corsolt in the Coronemenz LooÏs makes good comedy of this sort, when he accosts the Pope: "Little man! why is your head shaved?" and explains to him his objection to the Pope's religion: "You are not well advised to talk to me of God: he has done me more wrong than any other man in the world," and so on.[75]

Also, in a less exaggerated way, there is some appreciation of the humour to be found in the contrast between the churl and the knight, and their different points of view; as in the passage of the Charroi de Nismes where William of Orange questions the countryman about the condition of the city under its Saracen masters, and is answered with information about the city tolls and the price of bread.[76] It must be admitted, however, that this slight passage of comedy is far outdone by the conversation in the romance of Aucassin and Nicolette, between Aucassin and the countryman, where the author of that story seems to get altogether beyond the conventions of his own time into the region of Chaucer, or even somewhere near the forest of Arden. The comedy of the chansons de geste is easily satisfied with plain and robust practical jokes. Yet it counts for something in the picture, and it might be possible, in a detailed criticism of the epics, to distinguish between the comic incidents that have an artistic value and intention, and those that are due merely to the rudeness of those common minstrels who are accused (by their rivals in epic poetry) of corrupting and debasing the texts.

There were many ways in which the French epic was degraded at the close of its course—by dilution and expansion, by the growth of a kind of dull parasitic, sapless language over the old stocks, by the general failure of interest, and the transference of favour to other kinds of literature. Reading came into fashion, and the minstrels lost their welcome in the castles, and had to betake themselves to more vulgar society for their livelihood. At the same time, epic made a stand against the new modes and a partial compliance with them; and the chansons de geste were not wholly left to the vagrant reciters, but were sometimes copied out fair in handsome books, and held their own with the romances.

The compromise between epic and romance in old French literature is most interesting where romance has invaded a story of the simpler kind like Raoul de Cambrai. Stories of war against the infidel, stories like those of William of Orange, were easily made romantic. The poem of the Prise d'Orange, for example, an addition to this cycle, is a pure romance of adventure, and a good one, though it has nothing of the more solid epic in it. Where the action is carried on between the knights of France and the Moors, one is prepared for a certain amount of wonder; the palaces and dungeons of the Moors are the right places for strange things to happen, and the epic of the defence of France goes easily off into night excursions and disguises: the Moorish princess also is there, to be won by the hero. All this is natural; but it is rather more paradoxical to find the epic of family feuds, originally sober, grave, and business-like, turning more and more extravagant, as it does in the Four Sons of Aymon, which in its original form, no doubt, was something like the more serious parts of Raoul de Cambrai or of the Lorrains, but which in the extant version is expanded and made wonderful, a story of wild adventures, yet with traces still of its origin among the realities of the heroic age, the common matters of practical interest to heroes.

The case of Huon of Bordeaux is more curious, for there the original sober story has been preserved, and it is one of the best and most coherent of them all,[77] till it is suddenly changed by the sound of Oberon's horn and passes out of the real world altogether.

The lines of the earlier part of the story are worth following, for there is no better story among the French poems that represent the ruder heroic age—a simple story of feudal rivalries and jealousies, surviving in this strange way as an introduction to the romance of Oberon.

The Emperor Charlemagne, one hundred and twenty-five years old, but not particularly reverend, holds a court at Paris one Whitsuntide and asks to be relieved of his kingdom. His son Charlot is to succeed him. Charlot is worthless, the companion of traitors and disorderly persons; he has made enough trouble already in embroiling Ogier the Dane with the Emperor. Charlemagne is infatuated and will have his son made king:—

Si m'aÏt Diex, tu auras si franc fiet Com Damediex qui tot puet justicier Tient Paradis de regne droiturier!

Then the traitor Amaury de la Tor de Rivier gets up and brings forward the case of Bordeaux, which has rendered no service for seven years, since the two brothers, Huon and Gerard, were left orphans. Amaury proposes that the orphans should be dispossessed. Charlemagne agrees at once, and withdraws his assent again (a painful spectacle!) when it is suggested to him that Huon and his brother have omitted their duties in pure innocence, and that their father Sewin was always loyal.

Messengers are sent to bring Huon and Gerard to Paris, and every chance is to be given them of proving their good faith to the Emperor.

This is not what Amaury the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as of Huon of Bordeaux.

The two boys set out, and on the way fall in with the Abbot of Clugni, their father's cousin, a strong-minded prelate, who accompanies them. Outside Paris they come to the ambush, and the king's son is despatched by Amaury to encounter them. What follows is an admirable piece of narrative. Gerard rides up to address Charlot; Charlot rides at him as he is turning back to report to Huon and the Abbot, and Gerard who is unarmed falls severely wounded. Then Huon, also unarmed, rides at Charlot, though his brother calls out to him: "I see helmets flashing there among the bushes." With his scarlet mantle rolled round his arm he meets the lance of Charlot safely, and with his sword, as he passes, cuts through the helmet and head of his adversary.

This is good enough for Amaury, and he lets Huon and his party ride on to the city, while he takes up the body of Charlot on a shield and follows after.

Huon comes before the Emperor and tells his story as far as he knows it; he does not know that the felon he has killed is the Emperor's son. Charlemagne gives solemn absolution to Huon. Then appears Amaury with a false story, making Huon the aggressor. Charlemagne forgets all about the absolution and snatches up a knife, and is with difficulty calmed by his wise men.

The ordeal of battle has to decide between the two parties; there are elaborate preparations and preliminaries, obviously of the most vivid interest to the audience. The demeanour of the Abbot of Clugni ought not to be passed over: he vows that if Heaven permits any mischance to come upon Huon, he, the Abbot, will make it good on St. Peter himself, and batter his holy shrine till the gold flies.

In the combat Huon is victorious; but unhappily a last treacherous effort of his enemy, after he has yielded and confessed, makes Huon cut off his head in too great a hurry before the confession is heard by the Emperor or any witnesses:—

Le teste fist voler ens el larris: Hues le voit, mais ce fu sans jehir.

The head went flying over the lea, but it had no more words to speak.

Huon is not forgiven by the Emperor; the Emperor spares his life, indeed, but sends him on a hopeless expedition.

And there the first part of the story ends. The present version is dated in the early part of the reign of St. Louis; it is contemporary with Snorri Sturluson and Sturla his nephew, and exhibits, though not quite in the Icelandic manner, the principal motives of early unruly society, without much fanciful addition, and with a very strong hold upon the tragic situation, and upon the types of character. As in Raoul de Cambrai, right and wrong are mixed; the Emperor has a real grievance against Huon, and Huon, with little fault of his own, is put apparently in the wrong. The interests involved are of the strongest possible. There was not a single lord among those to whom the minstrel repeated his story who did not know that he might have to look out for encroachments and injustice—interference at any rate—from the king, and treachery from his neighbours. No one hoped to leave his castles and lands in peace to his son, who did not also fear that his son might be left defenceless and his lands exposed to competition; a fear most touchingly expressed in the lament of William of Poitiers, when he set out on the first Crusade.[78]

Whatever general influences of law or politics or social economy are supposed to be at work in the story of Huon of Bordeaux,—and all this earlier part of it is a story of feudal politics and legal problems,—these influences were also present in the real world in which the maker and the hearers of the poem had their life. It is plain and serious dealing with matter of fact.

But after the ordeal of battle in which Huon kills the traitor, the tone changes with great abruptness and a new story begins.

The commission laid upon Huon by the implacable and doting Emperor is nothing less than that which afterwards was made a byword for all impossible enterprises—"to take the Great Turk by the beard." He is to go to Babylon and, literally, to beard the Admiral there, and carry off the Admiral's daughter. The audience is led away into the wide world of Romance. Huon goes to the East by way of Rome and Brindisi—naturally enough—but the real world ends at Brindisi; beyond that everything is magical.

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ass is unfit for agglutination