Chapter CCVII: Section III: Roland, &c

When the army of Charles the Great was marching back from Spain, the Gascons, Navarrese, and Goths, who were afraid of being swallowed up by his empire, if they exchanged his protection for that of the Arabs, plotted together, fell on the rear of his columns as they were passing through the defile of Roncesvalles, close to the little town of Fuente Arabia, and slaughtered the whole division that were guarding the baggage. ‘There was slain Rotlandus, prefect of the Armorican border.’

So says Eginhard, the contemporary chronicler, and as he mentions only two other nobles as having been killed, it is natural to conclude that this Rotlandus was a man of mark. Who was he? Certainly Warden of the Marches of Brittany, but was he a Frank Hruodland (the country’s glory), the repressor of the Kelts, or was he a Breton in the Frankish service? The Cymry have laid claim to him; they say that the rolling word is intended to render Tallwch, a rolling or overwhelming torrent, the name of the father of Tristrem; and in the later romances, this knight has actually been turned into Rowland, which thus has become a favourite national Welsh name.

It is far more likely that ‘Rotlandus’ was Frank, but the next question is, what were the deeds that made his birth worth contending for, and the war song of Rou be the chant of the gallant minstrel Taillefer, to cheer the Normans on to their victory at Hastings?

Eginhard is utterly silent. Turpin tells us that Rolandus was the emperor’s nephew, the son of his sister Bertha, and of Milo de Anglars. With Turpin, the expedition to Spain is the prominent feature of the reign, and he gives us an account of a mingled battle and controversy between Roland and Ferragus, a giant of the race of Goliath, and only vulnerable in one point, where, however, Roland managed to pierce him. Very soon after follows the ambush of Roncesvalles, the enemy being Saracens, not Christians, but conducted by the traitor Ganelon. After a terrible battle, Roland, sorely wounded, lay down under a tree, and apostrophizing his good sword Durenda, in the most tender manner, thrice struck it upon a block of marble, and shattered it in twain, lest it should fall into the Saracen hands. Then he blew upon his horn, which had such wondrous tones that all other horns split at the sound, and this blast was with such effort that he burst all the veins in his neck, and the sound reached the king, eight miles off! He then commended his soul to heaven, and made a most pious and beautiful end.

That block of marble is magnified by popular fame into the mountain itself, and la Brèche de Roland is supposed to be the cleft made by his sword! The Northern Lights, too, are said to be King Charles riding by, and Roland bearing the banner. The Spaniards, so far as they were Christians and Teutons, felt with the Franks; so far as they were Celtiberians, against them, and the result was a collection of admirable popular ballads, all prime authorities with Don Quixote, in which _il rey Carlos_ and his peers are treated as national heroes. Nevertheless they are proud of his defeat at Roncesvalles, declare that the emperor broke his word to Don Alfonso of Leon, and that the attack was therefore made in which Don Alfonso’s nephew, Bernardo de Carpio, was leader, and demolished the invulnerable Conde Roldan, by squeezing him to death in his arms.

It is the Spaniards alone who have transferred to Roldan the invulnerability of Achilles, Siegfried, and Diarmaid; the French and Italians bestow it only on Ferragus, who is, as already mentioned, an evident Keltic importation through the Breton poets, being either the Irish Fergus, or the Welsh Vreichfras, though he has since become a Moorish giant.

The English, having their own Arthur to engage their attention, did little more than versify Turpin, but allowed Roland’s sword to be carried away by his friend Sir Baldwin, and took vengeance for his death.

But it was the Italians who did the most for their Orlando. Some floating Valkyr notion had attached itself in German fancy to his mother, who was at first Bertha the goose-footed, and then the large-footed, and romance further related that she was the emperor’s sister, who had secretly married the knight Milone di Anglante, and therefore was driven out of the court, and forced to take refuge in a cave, where the hero was born, and was called Rotolando, from his rolling himself on the ground. His father went to the wars, and Berta became the diligent spinner before alluded to, but she was still so poor that his young companions each gave her boy a square of cloth to cover him, two white, and two red, whence he always bore those colours quartered on his shield. Afterwards he was taken into favour, and became the chief Paladin.

Here Luigi Pulci took him up, and made him the hero of a poem called the _Morgante Maggiore_, from a giant whom Orlando converted, and who followed him faithfully about through all his adventures. Orlando is here a high-spirited Christian knight, brave, pious, and faithfully attached to his wife Alda. When slain at Roncesvalles, he mentions her in his last and very beautiful prayer, and his sorrow for his comrades, and parting with his horse and sword, are very touching.

It was Bojardo who deprived Orlando of his old traditional character of the high-minded champion, that crusading days had dwelt upon. Led, perhaps, by the idea of the frenzy of Amadis de Gaul, he made Orlando fall desperately in love with the fair and false Angelica, princess of Catay, and leave the court and all his duties just as the Saracen king Gradasso was invading France, to obtain possession of Durindana, Orlando’s sword. The action of the poem is taken up with the adventures imposed upon Orlando by the mischievous beauty, and the pursuit of him by the other Paladins, and finally it leaves off with the whole chivalry of Charlemagne besieged in Paris by the Saracens.

Orlando was only _innamorato_ according to Bojardo; Ariosto took him up and made him _furioso_. Continuing the poem where it had dropped from Bojardo’s hands, Ariosto made Angelica fall in love with an obscure youth, and marry him, whereupon Orlando, after the example of Amadis de Gaul, went into the state of frenzy that Don Quixote tried to imitate; and the Christians suffered as much as the Greeks did without Achilles, till the champion’s senses were brought back from the moon; when he returned to his duty, restored fortune to the Christians, and saved France from becoming tributary to the infidel.

Charles VIII. of France, in his romantic youth, named one of his short-lived children, Charles Roland, by the way of union of the two heroes.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │
│Roland │Roland │Orlando │Roldan │
│Rowland │ │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│Portuguese. │ German. │ Netherlands. │ │
│Rolando │Roland │Roeland │ │
│Roldao │Ruland │ │ │
│ │Rudland │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The derivation of the first syllable is the word _hruod_ in Frank, _hrothr_ in the North, and in modern German _ruhm_, meaning fame or glory.

_Hruod_ is a most prolific word. As Hruodgar, famous spear, it figures in the _Nibelungenlied_, where the Markgraf Rudiger is the special friend of Dietrich, and for a long time, like him, refrains from the fray, though at last he plunges into it and is killed.

There seems to have been a veritable Hruodgar living in the time of Pepin, who married a lady whose father’s name was Hector, whence it was taken for granted that she descended from Hector of Troy. Therefore the House of Este bore the white eagle in their coat of arms, because it was said he of Troy had a shield azure with a silver eagle! Roger, Olivier, and Roland are mentioned together as subjects of minstrel songs. In the old romances there is a Ruggieri de Risa, or Reggio, who marries an Amazon, called Galaciella, but is soon after murdered, and she is carried off by sea by her enemies, whom, however, she manages to overpower and destroy on the voyage, but only to be driven to a desert island, where she dies at the birth of her twins, Ruggiero and Marfisa. This Ruggiero is the prime favourite of the Italian poets. Bojardo tells how he was bred up on lion’s marrow by the enchanter Atlante, in Africa, and when his education was finished, was sent to France with the wonderful hippogriff, or winged horse. And Ariosto, probably in compliment to the House of Este, made his adventures the main plot of the _Orlando Furioso_, and completed it by converting him to Christianity, and marrying him to the brave and amiable Amazon, Bradamante.

Bojardo probably adopted Ruggiero because his country was Reggio, a country with which the name had become connected, when Roger de Hauteville had founded the kingdom of Sicily, and Ruggero, the son of his elder brother, Robert Guiscard, had been count of Apulia. These were both, of course, direct from the northern Hruodgeir, as was the turbulent Roger de Montgomery, who gave so much trouble in Normandy. It was once a famous knightly name, but is now too much discarded. Roger must once have been very frequent in England, since Hodge is still proverbial for a rustic,—whereas as a rule he is never so called, though the Registrar-General noted an extraordinary number of Roger Tichbornes in the year of the claimant’s trial!

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ German. │
│Roger │Roger │Ruggiero │Rogerio │Rüdiger │
│Hodge │ │Rogero │ │Roger │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ Nor. │Netherlands.│ Russian. │ Polish. │ Lettish. │
│Hrodgjer │Rogier │Rozer │Rydygier │Rekkerts │
│Raadgjer │Rutger │ │ │ │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Hrothgar was also a famed name among the Angles. It appears in Beowulf, as the chief of the Scyldings, the son of Healfdane. There, too, are found Hrothmund and Hrothwulf; and the northern names of Hroar and Hrolfr are contractions of these, though the characters they belong to are not the same as those in Beowulf. Hrolf Krake was the subject of a northern Saga; and the father of our Norman kings, whom we are wont to call by his Latinism of Rollo, formed from the French stammer of Rou, was in fact Hrolf Gangr, or at full length, Hrothulf, Fame-Wolf. A name of fame and terror it was, when the mighty man, too weighty for steed to carry him, was expelled from his own land, and fought for a home, not for plunder, among the fertile orchards of Neustria, when his followers' rude homage overthrew the degenerate Karling, and ‘the grisly old proselyte,’ in his baptism, assumed, without perhaps knowing of the similarity, the French Robert. This change prevented his original name from being very prevalent among the Normans; and the German form, Rudolf, is chiefly from a sainted Karling prince, who was bishop of Bourges, and from whom Rudolf of Hapsburg must have derived it. From him it became imperial, and other countries received it, without knowing it for their old friend.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │
│Rodolph │Rodolphe │Rodulfo │Rodolfo │
│Rolf │Raoul │ ————————— │Ridolfo │
│ │Roul │ Portuguese. │ │
│ │Rou │Rodolpho │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Bavarian. │ Frisian. │ Swiss. │
│Rudolf │Ruedolf │Rulef │Ruedi │
│ │ │Rulves │Ruedeli │
│ │ │Rotholf │Rudi │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

│ Swedish. │ Nor. │ Lettish. │ Hungarian. │
│Rudolf │Hruodulf │Rohlops │Rudolf │
│Rolf │Hrolfr │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Robert, the name assumed by Rolf Gauge at his baptism was Frank, rather than Northern, inasmuch as _bjart_ is an uncommon conclusion among his native race. Hruadperaht, or bright fame, was the original form, the property of a bishop, who somewhere about the year 700 founded the first Christian church at Wurms. Honoured alike in France and Germany, he became Ruprecht in the latter, and Robert in the former. Like St. Nicolas, he is in Germany supposed to exercise a secret supervision over children; in some places _Knecht Ruprecht_ dispenses Christmas gifts, but he more often keeps watch over naughty children, and thus answers to the English Robin Goodfellow, or Hob Goblin. _Red_ was long supposed to be the origin of the name, which some made Redbert, or bright speech, others Redbeard! The German form, however, disproves both of these, and Ruprecht continued in honour in its own country, naming in especial that wise Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, who in 346 founded the university of Heidelberg; and on the deposition of the crazy Bohemian Kaisar Wenzel, was elected Emperor of Germany, and reigned for nine years with great success and glory. It was after him that the infant, born at Prague, during the brief greatness of the Winter King, received that name of Rupert, which was so terrible to the Roundheads, but which for the most part they translated by their native Robert—native, because thoroughly Anglicized, for it was of French growth, had belonged to two or three saints, and to the hymn-writing and much persecuted king called the pious, the second of the Capet or Parisian dynasty; but after the son of St. Louis carried it off to the House of Bourbon, it scantily appeared among the royal family. Normandy, however, cultivated it after it had been chosen at the baptism of her first duke, and sent it to Apulia with the astute Robert Guiscard, whence Roberto became national in the Neapolitan realms, and was adopted by the Angevin line, among others by the king who patronized Petrarch. The next Duke of Normandy who bore it was that wild pilgrim, whose soubriquet varies between the Devil and the Magnificent. The disinheritance of his equally wild, but more unfortunate grandson, Robert Courthose, diverted it from the English throne, but a flood of knights and nobles had poured in and established it so completely, that in a few generations more Hob was one of the established peasant names in England. Robin was its more gracious contraction—let our dearly beloved archer be who he will—either as ballad tells, the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, or as late critics would have us believe, only another manifestation of Robin Goodfellow, or of the wild huntsman. Robin was the epithet by which Queen Elizabeth was wont to address the two earls, step-father and stepson, who so long sunned themselves in her favour; and though it has now acquired a homely sound, and the popularity of the full name has somewhat waned, it is still frequent. To Scotland it was brought by the Anglo-Norman barons, and when the English Bruces had made their distant drop of Royal Scottish blood float them to the throne, Robert the Bruce became a passionately beloved national hero, and his name one of the most favoured in the Lowlands. In Ireland it is called Roibin, a gentleman called in English Robin Lawless being in Irish, Roibin Laighleis.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Italian. │
│Robert │Robert │Robert │Roberto │
│Robin │Robin │Robers │Ruberto │
│Hob │Robbie │Robi │Ruperto │
│Bob │Rab │Robinet │ │
│Rupert │ │Rupert │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

│ German. │ Bavarian. │ Slovak. │ Lusatian. │
│Hruodebert │Ruprecht │Ruprat │Huprecht │
│Ruprecht │Prechtl │ │ │
│Rupert │ │ │ │
│Rudbert │ │ │ │
│Robert │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Not behindhand in glory is the northern Hrothrekr, or Germanic Hruoderich, famous ruler. In Gothic Spain, it was indeed Rodrigo, who lost his country to the Moors, but became in his people’s minds the centre for pity as much as for blame, and the subject of the beautiful legends that Southey has embodied in the finest of his poems. And it was Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar,‘Ruy mi Cid Campeador,’ in whom ballad lore delighted. This became one of the most frequent of all the grand-sounding names prefaced by Don, and Rodriguez and Ruiz to be very common surnames.

The northern Hrothrekr was not long in being shortened to Hrorekr, and thence came the name of that Norseman, who, according to Russian historians, was invited by the Slaves to be their protector, and founded the Norman dynasty of Ruric, which continued on the throne during the troubled days of Tatar supremacy. Roric and Godwald were the first Northmen to obtain fiefs in France. In Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, Roderick has a sort of false honour, being adopted as the equivalent of the native Keltic names, the Welsh Rhydderc, and the Gadhaelic Ruadh; for Roy and Rorie, though rightly and traditionally so called by their friends, would now all make Teutons of themselves, and use the signature of Roderick.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │
│Roderick │Rodrigue │Rodrigo │Rodrigo │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Nor. │ Russian. │ │
│Roderich │Rothrekr │Rurik │ │
│ │Hrorek │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

There are numerous other forms from this prolific source. Rother, who figures in Lombardic history, is the German Hruodhari, or famous warrior, and in the North divides with Hrothgar the property of the strange abbreviation, Roar, and in the harsh old Latinisms of Frank names is Crotcharius.

There too is found Chrodovaldus, which in German was once Hrodowald, and afterwards Rudold, perhaps, too, the Danish and Scottish Ribolt, and in the North Roald, and in Italian Roaldo, the founder of an order of monks. Nay, Romeo de' Montecchi himself, the Montague of Shakespeare, bore a common Lombardic name, softened down from the Chrodomarus of Frankish Latin, as in Germany Hruotmar is Rudmar and Romar. Hromund, or Romund, must not be confused with the derivatives of Ragin, though it is most likely that the Irish Redmond is a Danish legacy from this source.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Nor. Hrodbern—Famous bear │
│ Frank. Chrodogang—Famous progress │
│ Nor. Hrothild; Ger. Hrodhilde; Frank. Chrodehilda—Famous │
│ heroine │
│ Ger. Hrodfrid—Famous peace │
│ Ger. Hrodhard—Famous strength │
│ Ger. Hrudo; Frank. Chrodo; Nor. Hroi—Fame │
│ Nor. Hrodny—Famous freshness │
│ Nor. Hrollaug—Famous liquor │
│ Nor. Hrolleif—Relic of fame │
│ Nor. Hrodsind; Frank. Chrodoswintha—Famous strength │
│ Ger. Hrodstein—Famous stone. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Ruod must have been evolved from the word meaning speech, _razda_ in Gothic, _rœdo_ in Anglo-Saxon, whence advice became _rede_ in Old English and Scottish, and _rath_ in modern German.

_Rad_ is chiefly a Frankish prefix, though we had one king Redwald. Radegond, or war council, was a Frankish queen who became a nun at Poitiers, and left a name still used by French girls in that neighbourhood. King Ordoño of Gallicia married, about the year 910, a lady recorded as Radegonda, or Arragonda, or Urraca, so that the perplexing Urraca may possibly be a contraction of this name. In the Spanish vernacular a magpie is called _urraca_, but probably from the likeness of the word to the note of the bird.

Radegist or Radelchis, and Radegar, were princes of Beneventum. Radbad, the Frisian Rabbo, and Radbert, seem to be Old German forms, but it is a word liable to be confused with _hramn_, and with _rand_, and though a common masculine termination in England, in the North it is only a corruption of _fred_, peace.