Chapter II: Chansons De Geste.15 (1)

[Footnote 15: I prefer, as more logical, the plural form _chansons de gestes_, and have so written it in my _Short History of French Literature_ (Oxford, 4th ed., 1892), to which I may not improperly refer the reader on the general subject. But of late years the fashion of dropping the _s_ has prevailed, and, therefore, in a book meant for general reading, I follow it here. Those who prefer native authorities will find a recent and excellent one on the whole subject of French literature in M. Lanson, _Histoire de la Littérature Française_, Paris, 1895. For the mediæval period generally M. Gaston Paris, _La Littérature Française au Moyen Age_ (Paris, 1888), speaks with unapproached competence; and, still narrowing the range, the subject of the present chapter has been dealt with by M. Léon Gautier, _Les Epopées Françaises_ (Paris, 4 vols., 1878-92), in a manner equally learned and loving. M. Gautier has also been intrusted with the section on the _Chansons_ in the new and splendidly illustrated collection of monographs (Paris: Colin) which M. Petit de Julleville is editing under the title _Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Française_. Mr Paget Toynbee's _Specimens of Old French_ (Oxford, 1892) will illustrate this and the following chapters.]

EUROPEAN LITERATURE IN 1100. LATE DISCOVERY OF THE
"CHANSONS." THEIR AGE AND HISTORY. THEIR DISTINGUISHING
CHARACTER. MISTAKES ABOUT THEM. THEIR ISOLATION AND ORIGIN.
THEIR METRICAL FORM. THEIR SCHEME OF MATTER. THE CHARACTER
OF CHARLEMAGNE. OTHER CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
REALIST QUALITY. VOLUME AND AGE OF THE "CHANSONS." TWELFTH
CENTURY. THIRTEENTH CENTURY. FOURTEENTH, AND LATER.
"CHANSONS" IN PRINT. LANGUAGE: "OC" AND "OÏL." ITALIAN.
DIFFUSION OF THE "CHANSONS." THEIR AUTHORSHIP AND
PUBLICATION. THEIR PERFORMANCE. HEARING, NOT READING, THE
OBJECT. EFFECT ON PROSODY. THE "JONGLEURS." "JONGLERESSES,"
ETC. SINGULARITY OF THE "CHANSONS." THEIR CHARM. PECULIARITY
OF THE "GESTE" SYSTEM. INSTANCES. SUMMARY OF THE "GESTE" OF
WILLIAM OF ORANGE. AND FIRST OF THE "COURONNEMENT LOYS."
COMMENTS ON THE "COURONNEMENT." WILLIAM OF ORANGE. THE
EARLIER POEMS OF THE CYCLE. THE "CHARROI DE NÎMES." THE
"PRISE D'ORANGE." THE STORY OF VIVIEN. "ALISCANS." THE END
OF THE STORY. RENOUART. SOME OTHER "CHANSONS." FINAL REMARKS
ON THEM.

[Sidenote: _European literature in 1100._]

When we turn from Latin and consider the condition of the vernacular tongues in the year 1100, there is hardly more than one country in Europe where we find them producing anything that can be called literature. In England Anglo-Saxon, if not exactly dead, is dying, and has for more than a century ceased to produce anything of distinctly literary attraction; and English, even the earliest "middle" English, is scarcely yet born, is certainly far from being in a condition for literary use. The last echoes of the older and more original Icelandic poetry are dying away, and the great product of Icelandic prose, the Saga, still _volitat per ora virum_, without taking a concrete literary form. It is in the highest degree uncertain whether anything properly to be called Spanish or Italian exists at all--anything but dialects of the _lingua rustica_ showing traces of what Spanish and Italian are to be; though the originals of the great _Poema del Cid_ cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between its "Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature active. The northern tongue, the _langue d'oïl_, shows us--in actually known existence, or by reasonable inference that it existed--the national epic or _chanson de geste_; the southern, or _langue d'oc_, gives us the Provençal lyric. The latter will receive treatment later, the former must be dealt with at once.

It is rather curious that while the _chansons de geste_ are, after Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poetry, the oldest elaborate example of verse in the modern vernaculars; while they exhibit a character, not indeed one of the widest in range or most engaging in quality, but individual, interesting, intense as few others; while they are entirely the property of one nation, and that a nation specially proud of its literary achievements,--they were almost the last division of European literature to become in any degree properly known. In so far as they were known at all, until within the present century, the knowledge was based almost entirely on later adaptations in verse, and still later in prose; while--the most curious point of all--they were not warmly welcomed by the French even after their discovery, and cannot yet be said to have been taken to the heart of the nation, even to the limited extent to which the Arthurian romances have been taken to the heart of England, much less to that in which the old, but much less old, ballads of England, Scotland, Germany, and Spain have for periods of varying length been welcomed in their respective countries. To discuss the reason of this at length would lead us out of our present subject; but it is a fact, and a very curious fact.

[Sidenote: _Late discovery of the_ chansons.]

[Sidenote: _Their age and history._]

The romances of Charlemagne, or, to employ their more technical designation, the _chansons de geste_, form a large, a remarkably homogeneous, and a well-separated body of compositions. These, as far as can be decided, date in time from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, with a few belated representatives in the fourteenth; but scarcely, as far as probability shows, with any older members in the tenth. Very little attention of any kind was paid to them, till some seventy years ago, an English scholar, Conybeare, known for his services to our own early literature, following the example of another scholar, Tyrwhitt, still earlier and more distinguished, had drawn attention to the merit and interest of, as it happens, the oldest and most remarkable of all. This was the _Chanson de Roland_, which, in this oldest form, exists only in one of the MSS. of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But they very soon received the care of M. Paulin Paris, the most indefatigable student that in a century of examination of the older European literature any European country has produced, and after more than half a century of enthusiastic resuscitation by M. Paris, by his son M. Gaston, and by others, the whole body of them has been thoroughly overhauled and put at the disposal of those who do not care to read the original, in the four volumes of the remodelled edition of M. Léon Gautier's _Epopées Françaises_, while perhaps a majority of the actual texts are in print. This is as well, for though a certain monotony is always charged against the _chansons de geste_[16] by those who do not love them, and may be admitted to some extent even by those who do, there are few which have not a more or less distinct character of their own; and even the generic character is not properly to be perceived until a considerable number have been studied.

[Footnote 16: This monotony almost follows from the title. For _geste_ in the French is not merely the equivalent of _gesta_, "deeds." It is used for the record of those deeds, and then for the whole class or family of performances and records of them. In this last sense the _gestes_ are in chief three--those of the king, of Doon de Mayence, and of Garin de Montglane--besides smaller ones.]

[Sidenote: _Their distinguishing character._]

The old habit of reading this division of romance in late and travestied versions naturally and necessarily obscured the curious traits of community in form and matter that belong to it, and indeed distinguish it from almost all other departments of literature of the imaginative kind. Its members are frequently spoken of as "the Charlemagne Romances"; and, as a matter of fact, most of them do come into connection with the great prince of the second race in one way or another. Yet Bodel's phrase of _matière de France_[17] is happier. For they are all still more directly connected with French history, seen through a romantic lens; and even the late and half-burlesque _Hugues Capet_, even the extremely interesting and partly contemporary set on the Crusades, as well as such "little _gestes_" as that of the Lorrainers, _Garin le Loherain_ and the rest, and the three "great _gestes_" of the king, of the southern hero William of Orange (sometimes called the _geste_ of Montglane), and of the family of Doon de Mayence, arrange themselves with no difficulty under this more general heading. And the _chanson de geste_ proper, as Frenchmen are entitled to boast, never quite deserts this _matière de France_. It is always the _Gesta Francorum_ at home, or the _Gesta Dei per Francos_ in the East, that supply the themes. When this subject or group of subjects palled, the very form of the _chanson de geste_ was lost. It was not applied to other things;[18] it grew obsolete with that which it had helped to make popular. Some of the material--_Huon of Bordeaux_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, and others--retained a certain vogue in forms quite different, and gave later ages the inexact and bastard notion of "Charlemagne Romance" which has been referred to. But the _chanson de geste_ itself was never, so to speak, "half-known"--except to a very few antiquaries. After its three centuries of flourishing, first alone, then with the other two "matters," it retired altogether, and made its reappearance only after four centuries had passed away.

[Footnote 17: Jean Bodel, a _trouvère_ of the thirteenth century, furnished literary history with a valuable stock-quotation in the opening of his _Chanson des Saisnes_ for the three great divisions of Romance:--

"Ne sont que trois matières à nul home attendant,
De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant."
--_Chanson des Saxons_, ed. Michel, Paris, 1839, vol. i. p. 1.

The lines following, less often quoted, are an interesting early _locus_ for French literary patriotism.]

[Footnote 18: Or only in rare cases to later French history itself--Du Guesclin, and the _Combat des Trente_.]

[Sidenote: _Mistakes about them._]

This fact or set of facts has made the actual nature of the original Charlemagne Romances the subject of much mistake and misstatement on the part of general historians of literature. The widely read and generally accurate Dunlop knew nothing whatever about them, except in early printed versions representing their very latest form, and in the hopelessly travestied eighteenth-century _Bibliothèque des Romans_ of the Comte de Tressan. He therefore assigned to them[19] a position altogether inferior to their real importance, and actually apologised for the writers, in that, coming _after_ the Arthurian historians, they were compelled to imitation. As a matter of fact, it is probable that all the most striking and original _chansons de geste_, certainly all those of the best period, were in existence before a single one of the great Arthurian romances was written; and as both the French and English, and even the German, writers of these latter were certainly acquainted with the _chansons_, the imitation, if there were any, must lie on their side. As a matter of fact, however, there is little or none. The later and less genuine _chansons_ borrow to some extent the methods and incidents in the romances; but the romances at no time exhibit much resemblance to the _chansons_ proper, which have an extremely distinct, racy, and original character of their own. Hallam, writing later than Dunlop, and if with a less wide knowledge of Romance, with a much greater proficiency in general literary history, practically passes the _chansons de geste_ over altogether in the introduction to his _Literature of Europe_, which purports to summarise all that is important in the _History of the Middle Ages_, and to supplement and correct that book itself.

[Footnote 19: Dunlop, _History of Prose Fiction_ (ed. Wilson, London, 1888), i. 274-351. Had Dunlop rigidly confined himself to _prose_ fiction, the censure in the text might not be quite fair. As a matter of fact, however, he does not, and it would have been impossible for him to do so.]

[Sidenote: _Their isolation and origin._]

The only excuse (besides mere unavoidable ignorance, which, no doubt, is a sufficient one) for this neglect is the curious fact, in itself adding to their interest, that these _chansons_, though a very important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection, save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed. Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There used to be a theory that the Charlemagne Romances owed their origin more or less directly to the fabulous _Chronicle_ of Tilpin or Turpin, the warrior-Archbishop of Rheims. It has now been made tolerably certain that the Latin chronicle on the subject is not anterior even to our existing _Chanson de Roland_, and very probable that it is a good deal later. On the other hand, of actual historical basis we have next to nothing except the mere fact of the death of Roland ("Hruotlandus comes Britanniæ") at the skirmish of Roncesvalles. There are, however, early mentions of certain _cantilenæ_ or ballads; and it has been assumed by some scholars that the earliest _chansons_ were compounded out of precedent ballads of the kind. It is unnecessary to inform those who know something of general literary history, that this theory (that the corruption of the ballad is the generation of the epic) is not confined to the present subject, but is one of the favourite fighting-grounds of a certain school of critics. It has been applied to Homer, to _Beowulf_, to the Old and Middle German Romances, and it would be very odd indeed if it had not been applied to the _Chansons de geste_. But it may be said with some confidence that not one tittle of evidence has ever been produced for the existence of any such ballads containing the matter of any of the _chansons_ which do exist. The song of Roland which Taillefer sang at Hastings may have been such a ballad: it may have been part of the actual _chanson_; it may have been something quite different. But these "mays" are not evidence; and it cannot but be thought a real misfortune that, instead of confining themselves to an abundant and indeed inexhaustible subject, the proper literary study of what does exist, critics should persist in dealing with what certainly does not, and perhaps never did. On the general point it might be observed that there is rather more positive evidence for the breaking up of the epic into ballads than for the conglomeration of ballads into the epic. But on that point it is not necessary to take sides. The matter of real importance is, to lay it down distinctly that we _have_ nothing anterior to the earliest _chansons de geste_; and that we have not even any satisfactory reason for presuming that there ever was anything.

[Sidenote: _Their metrical form._]

One of the reasons, however, which no doubt has been most apt to suggest anterior compositions is the singular completeness of form exhibited by these poems. It is now practically agreed that--scraps and fragments themselves excepted--we have no monument of French in accomplished profane literature more ancient than the _Chanson de Roland_.[20] And the form of this, though from one point of view it may be called rude and simple, is of remarkable perfection in its own way. The poem is written in decasyllabic iambic lines with a cæsura at the second foot, these lines being written with a precision which French indeed never afterwards lost, but which English did not attain till Chaucer's day, and then lost again for more than another century. Further, the grouping and finishing of these lines is not less remarkable, and is even more distinctive than their internal construction. They are not blank; they are not in couplets; they are not in equal stanzas; and they are not (in the earliest examples, such as _Roland_) regularly rhymed. But they are arranged in batches (called in French _laisses_ or _tirades_) of no certain number, but varying from one to several score, each of which derives unity from an _assonance_--that is to say, a vowel-rhyme, the consonants of the final syllable varying at discretion. This assonance, which appears to have been common to all Romance tongues in their early stages, disappeared before very long from French, though it continued in Spanish, and is indeed the most distinguishing point of the prosody of that language. Very early in the _chansons_ themselves we find it replaced by rhyme, which, however, remains the same for the whole of the _laisse_, no matter how long it is. By degrees, also, the ten-syllabled line (which in some examples has an octosyllabic tail-line not assonanced at the end of every _laisse_) gave way in its turn to the victorious Alexandrine. But the mechanism of the _chanson_ admitted no further extensions than the substitution of rhyme for assonance, and of twelve-syllabled lines for ten-syllabled. In all other respects it remained rigidly the same from the eleventh century to the fourteenth, and in the very latest examples of such poems, as _Hugues Capet_ and _Baudouin de Seboure_--full as enthusiasts like M. Gautier complain that they are of a spirit very different from that of the older _chansons_--there is not the slightest change in form; while certain peculiarities of stock phrase and "epic repetition" are jealously preserved. The immense single-rhymed _laisses_, sometimes extending to several pages of verse, still roll rhyme after rhyme with the same sound upon the ear. The common form generally remains; and though the adventures are considerably varied, they still retain a certain general impress of the earlier scheme.

[Footnote 20: _Editio princeps_ by Fr. Michel, 1837. Since that time it has been frequently reprinted, translated, and commented. Those who wish for an exact reproduction of the oldest MS. will find it given by Stengel (Heilbronn, 1878).]

[Sidenote: _Their scheme of matter._]

[Sidenote: _The character of Charlemagne._]

That scheme is, in the majority of the _chansons_, curiously uniform. It has, since the earliest studies of them, been remarked as odd that Charlemagne, though almost omnipresent (except of course in the Crusading cycle and a few others), and though such a necessary figure that he is in some cases evidently confounded both with his ancestor Charles Martel and his successor Charles the Bald, plays a part that is very dubiously heroic. He is, indeed, presented with great pomp and circumstance as _li empereres à la barbe florie_, with a gorgeous court, a wide realm, a numerous and brilliant baronage. But his character is far from tenderly treated. In _Roland_ itself he appears so little that critics who are not acquainted with many other poems sometimes deny the characteristic we are now discussing. But elsewhere he is much less leniently handled. Indeed the plot of very many _chansons_ turns entirely on the ease with which he lends an ear to traitors (treason of various kinds plays an almost ubiquitous part, and the famous "trahis!" is heard in the very dawn of French literature), on his readiness to be biassed by bribes, and on the singular ferocity with which, on the slightest and most unsupported accusation, he is ready to doom any one, from his own family downwards, to block, stake, gallows, or living grave. This combination, indeed, of the irascible and the gullible tempers in the king defrays the plot of a very large number of the _chansons_, in which we see his best knights, and (except that they are as intolerant of injustice as he is prone to it) his most faithful servants, forced into rebellion against him, and almost overwhelmed by his own violence following on the machinations of their and his worst enemies.

[Sidenote: _Other characters and characteristics._]

Nevertheless, Charlemagne is always the defender of the Cross, and the antagonist of the Saracens, and the part which these latter play is as ubiquitous as his own, and on the whole more considerable. A very large part of the earlier _chansons_ is occupied with direct fighting against the heathen; and from an early period (at least if the _Voyage à Constantinoble_ is, as is supposed, of the early twelfth century, if not the eleventh) a most important element, bringing the class more into contact with romance generally than some others which have been noticed, is introduced in the love of a Saracen princess, daughter of emperor or "admiral" (emir), for one of the Christian heroes. Here again _Roland_ stands alone, and though the mention of Aude, Oliver's sister and Roland's betrothed, who dies when she hears of his death, is touching, it is extremely meagre. There is practically nothing but the clash of arms in this remarkable poem. But elsewhere there is, in rather narrow and usual limits, a good deal else. Charlemagne's daughter, and the daughters of peers and paladins, figure: and their characteristics are not very different from those of the pagan damsels. It is, indeed, unnecessary to convert them,--a process to which their miscreant sisters usually submit with great goodwill,--and they are also relieved from the necessity of showing the extreme undutifulness to their more religiously constant sires, which is something of a blot on Paynim princesses like Floripas in _Fierabras_. This heroine exclaims in reference to her father, "He is an old devil, why do you not kill him? little I care for him provided you give me Guy," though it is fair to say that Fierabras himself rebukes her with a "Moult grant tort avès." All these ladies, however, Christian as well as heathen, are as tender to their lovers as they are hard-hearted to their relations; and the relaxation of morality, sometimes complained of in the later _chansons_, is perhaps more technical than real, even remembering the doctrine of the mediæval Church as to the identity, for practical purposes, of betrothal and marriage. On the other hand, the courtesy of the _chansons_ is distinctly in a more rudimentary state than that of the succeeding romances. Not only is the harshest language used by knights to ladies,[21] but blows are by no means uncommon; and of what is commonly understood by romantic love there is on the knights' side hardly a trace, unless it be in stories such as that of _Ogier le Danois_, which are obviously late enough to have come under Arthurian influence. The piety, again, which has been so much praised in these _chansons_, is of a curious and rather elementary type. The knights are ready enough to fight to the last gasp, and the last drop of blood, for the Cross; and their faith is as free from flaw as their zeal. _Li Apostoiles de Rome_--the Pope--is recognised without the slightest hesitation as supreme in all religious and most temporal matters. But there is much less reference than in the Arthurian romances, not merely to the mysteries of the Creed, but even to the simple facts of the birth and death of Christ. Except in a few places--such as, for instance, the exquisite and widely popular story of _Amis and Amiles_ (the earliest vernacular form of which is a true _chanson de geste_ of the twelfth century)--there are not many indications of any higher or finer notion of Christianity than that which is confined to the obedient reception of the sacraments, and the cutting off Saracens' heads whensoever they present themselves.[22]

[Footnote 21: _V. infra_ on the scene in _Aliscans_ between William of Orange and his sister Queen Blanchefleur.]

[Footnote 22: Even the famous and very admirable death-scene of Vivien (again _v. infra_) will not disprove these remarks.]

[Sidenote: _Realist quality._]

In manners, as in theology and ethics, there is the same simplicity, which some have called almost barbarous. Architecture and dress receive considerable attention; but in other ways the arts do not seem to be far advanced, and living is still conducted nearly, if not quite, as much in public as in the _Odyssey_ or in _Beowulf_. The hall is still the common resort of both sexes by day and of the men at night. Although gold and furs, silk and jewels, are lavished with the usual cheap magnificence of fiction, very few details are given of the minor _supellex_ or of ways of living generally. From the _Chanson de Roland_ in particular (which, though it is a pity to confine the attention to it as has sometimes been done, is undoubtedly the type of the class in its simplest and purest form) we should learn next to nothing about the state of society depicted, except that its heroes were religious in their fashion, and terrible fighters. But it ought to be added that the perusal of a large number of these _chansons_ leaves on the mind a much more genuine belief in their world (if it may so be called) as having for a time actually existed, than that which is created by the reading of Arthurian romance. That fair vision we know (hardly knowing why or how we know it) to have been a creation of its own Fata Morgana, a structure built of the wishes, the dreams, the ideals of men, but far removed from their actual experience. This is not due to miracles--there are miracles enough in the _chansons de geste_ most undoubtingly related: nor to the strange history, geography, and chronology, for the two divisions are very much on a par there also. But strong as the fantastic element is in them, the _chansons de geste_ possess a realistic quality which is entirely absent from the gracious idealism of the Romances. The emperors and the admirals, perhaps even their fair and obliging daughters, were not personages unknown to the contemporaries of the Norman conquerors of Italy and Sicily, or to the first Crusaders. The faithful and ferocious, covetous and indomitable, pious and lawless spirit, which hardly dropped the sword except to take up the torch, was, poetic presentation and dressing apart, not so very different from the general temper of man after the break up of the Roman peace till the more or less definite mapping out of Europe into modern divisions. More than one Vivien and one William of Orange listened to Peter the Hermit. In the very isolation of the atmosphere of these romances, in its distance from modern thought and feeling, in its lack (as some have held) of universal quality and transcendent human interest, there is a certain element of strength. It was not above its time, and it therefore does not reach the highest forms of literature. But it was intensely _of_ its time; and thus it far exceeds the lowest kinds, and retains an abiding value even apart from the distinct, the high, and the very curious perfection, within narrow limits, of its peculiar form.

[Sidenote: _Volume and age of the_ chansons.]

[Sidenote: _Twelfth century._]

It is probable that very few persons who are not specially acquainted with the subject are at all aware of the enormous bulk and number of these poems, even if their later _remaniements_ (as they are called) both in verse and prose--fourteenth and fifteenth century refashionings, which in every case meant a large extension--be left out of consideration. The most complete list published, that of M. Léon Gautier, enumerates 110. Of these he himself places only the _Chanson de Roland_ in the eleventh century, perhaps as early as the Norman Conquest of England, certainly not later than 1095. To the twelfth he assigns (and it may be observed that, enthusiastic as M. Gautier is on the literary side, he shows on all questions of age, &c., a wariness not always exhibited by scholars more exclusively philological) _Acquin_, _Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche Aspremont_, _Auberi le Bourgoing_, _Aye d'Avignon_, the _Bataille Loquifer_, the oldest (now only known in Italian) form of _Berte aus grans Piés_, _Beuves d'Hanstone_ (with another Italian form more or less independent), the _Charroi de Nîmes_, _Les Chétifs_, the _Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche_, the _Chevalerie Vivien_ (otherwise known as _Covenant Vivien_), the major part (also known by separate titles) of the _Chevalier au Cygne_, _La Conquête de la Petite Bretagne_ (another form of _Acquin_), the _Couronnement Loys_, _Doon de la Roche_, _Doon de Nanteuil_, the _Enfances Charlemagne_, the _Enfances Godefroi_, the _Enfances Roland_, the _Enfances Ogier_, _Floovant_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Garnier de Nanteuil_, _Giratz de Rossilho_, _Girbert de Metz_, _Gui de Bourgogne_, _Gui de Nanteuil_, _Hélias_, _Hervis de Metz_, the oldest form of _Huon de Bordeaux_, _Jérusalem_, _Jourdains de Blaivies_, the Lorraine cycle, including _Garin_, &c., _Macaire_, _Mainet_, the _Moniage Guillaume_, the _Moniage Rainoart_, _Orson de Beauvais_, _Rainoart_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Les Saisnes_, the _Siège de Barbastre_, _Syracon_, and the _Voyage de Charlemagne_. In other words, nearly half the total number date from the twelfth century, if not even earlier.

[Sidenote: _Thirteenth century._]

By far the larger number of the rest are not later than the thirteenth. They include--_Aimeri de Narbonne_, _Aiol_, _Anséis de Carthage_, _Anséis Fils de Gerbert_, _Auberon_, _Berte aus grans Piés_ in its present French form, _Beton et Daurel_, _Beuves de Commarchis_, the _Département des Enfans Aimeri_, the _Destruction de Rome_, _Doon de Mayence_, _Elie de Saint Gilles_, the _Enfances Doon de Mayence_, the _Enfances Guillaume_, the _Enfances Vivien_, the _Entrée en Espagne_, _Fierabras_, _Foulques de Candie_, _Gaydon_, _Garin de Montglane_, _Gaufrey_, _Gérard de Viane_, _Guibert d'Andrenas_, _Jehan de Lanson_, _Maugis d'Aigremont_, the _Mort Aimeri de Narbonne_, _Otinel_, _Parise la Duchesse_, the _Prise de Cordres_, the _Prise de Pampelune_, the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_, _Renaud de Montauban_ (a variant of the same), _Renier_, the later forms of the _Chanson de Roland_, to which the name of _Roncevaux_ is sometimes given for the sake of distinction, the _Siège de Narbonne_, _Simon de Pouille_, _Vivien l'Amachour de Montbranc_, and _Yon_.

[Sidenote: _Fourteenth, and later._]

By this the list is almost exhausted. The fourteenth century, though fruitful in _remaniements_, sometimes in mono-rhymed tirades, but often in Alexandrine couplets and other changed shapes, contributes hardly anything original except the very interesting and rather brilliant last branches of the _Chevalier au Cygne_--_Baudouin de Seboure_, and the _Bastart de Bouillon_; _Hugues Capet_, a very lively and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an almost undisguised tone of parody; and some fragments known by the names of _Hernaut de Beaulande_, _Renier de Gennes_, &c. As for fifteenth and sixteenth century work, though some pieces of it, especially the very long and unprinted poem of _Lion de Bourges_, are included in the canon, all the _chanson_-production of this time is properly apocryphal, and has little or nothing left of the _chanson_ spirit, and only the shell of the _chanson_ form.

[Sidenote: Chansons _in print._]

It must further be remembered that, with the exception of a very few in fragmentary condition, all these poems are of great length. Only the later or less genuine, indeed, run to the preposterous extent of twenty, thirty, or (it is said in the case of _Lion de Bourges_) sixty thousand lines. But _Roland_ itself, one of the shortest, has four thousand; _Aliscans_, which is certainly old, eight thousand; the oldest known form of _Huon_, ten thousand. It is probably not excessive to put the average length of the older _chansons_ at six thousand lines; while if the more recent be thrown in, the average of the whole hundred would probably be doubled.

This immense body of verse, which for many reasons it is very desirable to study as a whole, is still, after the best part of a century, to a great extent unprinted, and (as was unavoidable) such of its constituents as have been sent to press have been dealt with on no very uniform principles. It was less inevitable, and is more to be regretted, that the dissensions of scholars on minute philological points have caused the repeated printing of certain texts, while others have remained inaccessible; and it cannot but be regarded as a kind of petty treason to literature thus to put the satisfaction of private crotchets before the "unlocking of the word-hoard" to the utmost possible extent. The earliest _chansons_ printed[23] were, I believe, M. Paulin Paris's _Berte aus grans Piés_, M. Francisque Michel's _Roland_; and thereafter these two scholars and others edited for M. Techener a very handsome set of "Romances des Douze Pairs," as they were called, including _Les Saisnes_, _Ogier_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Garin_, and the two great crusading _chansons_, _Antioche_ and _Jérusalem_. Other scattered efforts were made, such as the publication of a beautiful edition of _Baudouin de Seboure_ at Valenciennes as early as 1841; while a Belgian scholar, M. de Reiffenberg, published _Le Chevalier au Cygne_, and a Dutch one, Dr Jonckbloët, gave a large part of the later numbers of the Garin de Montglane cycle in his _Guillaume d'Orange_ (2 vols., The Hague, 1854). But the great opportunity came soon after the accession of Napoleon III., when a Minister favourable to literature, M. de Fourtou, gave, in a moment of enthusiasm, permission to publish the entire body of the _chansons_. Perfect wisdom would probably have decreed the acceptance of the godsend by issuing the whole, with a minimum of editorial apparatus, in some such form as that of our Chalmers's Poets, the bulk of which need probably not have been exceeded in order to give the oldest forms of every real _chanson_ from _Roland_ to the _Bastart de Bouillon_. But perfect wisdom is not invariably present in the councils of men, and the actual result took the form of ten agreeable little volumes, in the type, shape, and paper of the "Bibliothèque Elzévirienne" with abundant editorial matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the like. _Les Anciens Poètes de la France_, as this series was called, appeared between 1858, which saw the first volume, and 1870, which fatal year saw the last, for the Republic had no money to spare for such monarchical glories as the _chansons_. They are no contemptible possession; for the ten volumes give fourteen _chansons_ of very different ages, and rather interestingly representative of different kinds. But they are a very small portion of the whole, and in at least one instance, _Aliscans_, they double on a former edition. Since then the Société des Anciens Textes Français has edited some _chansons_, and independent German and French scholars have given some more; but no systematic attempt has been made to fill the gaps, and the pernicious system of re-editing, on pretext of wrong selection of MSS. or the like, has continued. Nevertheless, the number of _chansons_ actually available is so large that no general characteristic is likely to have escaped notice; while from the accounts of the remaining MSS., it would not appear that any of those unprinted can rank with the very best of those already known. Among these very best I should rank in alphabetical order--_Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche_, _Baudouin de Seboure_ (though in a mixed kind), _Berte aus grans Piés_, _Fierabras_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Gérard de Roussillon_, _Huon de Bordeaux_, _Ogier de Danemarche_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Roland_, and the _Voyage de Charlemagne à Constantinoble_. The almost solitary eminence assigned by some critics to _Roland_ is not, I think, justified, and comes chiefly from their not being acquainted with many others; though the poem has undoubtedly the merit of being the oldest, and perhaps that of presenting the _chanson_ spirit in its best and most unadulterated, as well as the _chanson_ form at its simplest, sharpest, and first state. Nor is there anywhere a finer passage than the death of Roland, though there are many not less fine.

[Footnote 23: Immanuel Bekker had printed the Provençal _Fierabras_ as early as 1829.]

It may, however, seem proper, if not even positively indispensable, to give some more general particulars about these _chansons_ before analysing specimens or giving arguments of one or more; for they are full of curiosities.

[Sidenote: _Language._ Oc _and_ oïl.]

In the first place, it will be noticed by careful readers of the list above given, that these compositions are not limited to French proper or to the _langue d'oïl_, though infinitely the greater part of them are in that tongue. Indeed, for some time after attention had been drawn to them, and before their actual natures and contents had been thoroughly examined, there was a theory that they were Provençal in origin. This, though it was chiefly due to the fact that Raynouard, Fauriel, and other early students of old French had a strong southern leaning, had some other excuses. It is a fact that Provençal was earlier in its development than French; and whether by irregular tradition of this fact, or owing to ignorance, or from anti-French prejudice (which, however, would not apply in France itself), the part of the _langue d'oc_ in the early literature of Europe was for centuries largely overvalued. Then came the usual reaction, and some fifty years ago or so one of the most capable of literary students declared roundly that the Provençal epic had "le défaut d'être perdu." That is not quite true. There is, as noted above, a Provençal _Fierabras_, though it is beyond doubt an adaptation of the French; _Betonnet d'Hanstone_ or _Beton et Daurel_ only exists in Provençal, though there is again no doubt of its being borrowed; and, lastly, the oldest existing, and probably the original, form of _Gérard de Roussillon_, _Giratz de Rossilho_, is, as its title implies, Provençal, though it is in a dialect more approaching to the _langue d'oïl_ than any form of _oc_, and even presents the curious peculiarity of existing in two forms, one leaning to Provençal, the other to French. But these very facts, though they show the statement that "the Provençal epic is lost" to be excessive, yet go almost farther than a total deficiency in proving that the _chanson de geste_ was not originally Provençal. Had it been otherwise, there can be no possible reason why a bare three per cent of the existing examples should be in the southern tongue, while two of these are evidently translations, and the third was as evidently written on the very northern borders of the "Limousin" district.

[Sidenote: _Italian._]

[Sidenote: _Diffusion of the_ chansons.]

The next fact--one almost more interesting, inasmuch as it bears on that community of Romance tongues of which we have evidence in Dante,[24] and perhaps also makes for the antiquity of the Charlemagne story in its primitive form--is the existence of _chansons_ in Italian, and, it may be added, in a most curious bastard speech which is neither French, nor Provençal, nor Italian, but French Italicised in part.[25] The substance, moreover, of the Charlemagne stories was very early naturalised in Italy in the form of a sort of abstract or compilation called the _Reali di Francia_,[26] which in various forms maintained popularity through mediæval and early modern times, and undoubtedly exercised much influence on the great Italian poets of the Renaissance. They were also diffused throughout Europe, the _Carlamagnus Saga_ in Iceland marking their farthest actual as well as possible limit, though they never in Germany attained anything like the popularity of the Arthurian legend, and though the Spaniards, patriotically resenting the frequent forays into Spain to which the _chansons_ bear witness, and availing themselves of the confession of disaster at Roncesvalles, set up a counter-story in which Roland is personally worsted by Bernardo del Carpio, and the quarrels of the paynims are taken up by Spain herself. In England the imitations, though fairly numerous, are rather late. They have been completely edited for the Early English Text Society, and consist (for Bevis of Hampton has little relation with its _chanson_ namesake save the name) of _Sir Ferumbras_ (_Fierabras_), _The Siege of Milan_, _Sir Otuel_ (two forms), the _Life of Charles the Great_, _The Soudone of Babylone_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, and _The Four Sons of Aymon_, besides a very curious semi-original entitled _Rauf Coilzear_ (Collier), in which the well-known romance-_donnée_ of the king visiting some obscure person is applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version of _Huon of Bordeaux_,[27] is literature of no mean kind; but this is because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and substance of the _chansons_ proper.

[Footnote 24: _V._ the famous and all-important ninth chapter of the first book of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_.]

[Footnote 25: See especially _Macaire_, ed. Guessard, Paris, 1860.]

[Footnote 26: So also the _geste_ of Montglane became the _Nerbonesi_.]

[Footnote 27: Ed. S. Lee, London, 1883-86.]

[Sidenote: _Their authorship and publication._]

Very great pains have been spent on the question of the authorship, publication, or performance of these compositions. As is the case with so much mediæval work, the great mass of them is entirely anonymous. A line which concludes, or rather supplements, _Roland_--

"Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet"--

has been the occasion of the shedding of a very great deal of ink. The enthusiastic inquisitiveness of some has ferreted about in all directions for Turolds, Thorolds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh century, and discovering them even among the companions of the Conqueror himself, has started the question whether Taillefer was or was not violating the copyright of his comrade at Hastings. The fact is, however, that the best authorities are very much at sea as to the meaning of _declinet_, which, though it must signify "go over," "tell like a bead-roll," in some way or other, might be susceptible of application to authorship, recitation, or even copying. In some other cases, however, we have more positive testimony, though they are in a great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned the work of Richard the Pilgrim, an actual partaker of the first Crusade, into the present _Antioche_, _Jérusalem_, and perhaps _Les Chétifs_. Either Richard or Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of the whole cycle. Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited _Garin le Loherain_; and Jehan Bodel of Arras _Les Saisnes_. Adenès le Roi, a _trouvère_, of whose actual position in the world we know a little, wrote or refashioned three or four _chansons_ of the thirteenth century, including _Berte aus grans Piés_, and one of the forms of part of _Ogier_. Other names--Bertrand of Bar sur Aube, Pierre de Rieu, Gérard d'Amiens, Raimbert de Paris, Brianchon (almost a character of Balzac!), Gautier of Douai, Nicolas of Padua (an interesting person who was warned in a dream to save his soul by compiling a _chanson_), Herbert of Dammartin, Guillaume de Bapaume, Huon de Villeneuve--are mere shadows of names to which in nearly all cases no personality attaches, and which may be as often those of mere _jongleurs_ as of actual poets.

[Sidenote: _Their performance._]

No subject, however, in connection with these _chansons de geste_ has occupied more attention than the precise mode of what has been called above their "authorship, publication, or performance." They are called _chansons_, and there is no doubt at all that in their inception, and during the earlier and better part of their history, they strictly deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all the lighter literature of mediæval times. Far later than our present period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the present time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer view these things become of very small interest. Singing and recitation--as the very word recitative should be enough to remind any one--pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the performance of the _chansons_, the extent of that accompaniment, and the rest, concern, if they concern history at all, the history of music, not that of literature.

[Sidenote: _Hearing, not reading, the object._]

[Sidenote: _Effect on prosody._]

But it is a matter of quite other importance that, as has been said, lighter mediæval literature generally, and the _chansons_ in particular, were meant for the ear, not the eye--to be heard, not to be read. For this intention very closely concerns some of their most important literary characteristics. It is certain as a matter of fact, though it might not be very easy to account for it as a matter of argument, that repetitions, stock phrases, identity of scheme and form, which are apt to be felt as disagreeable in reading, are far less irksome, and even have a certain attraction, in matter orally delivered. Whether that slower irritation of the mind through the ear of which Horace speaks supplies the explanation may be left undiscussed. But it is certain that, especially for uneducated hearers (who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, if not in the thirteenth, must have been the enormous majority), not merely the phraseological but the rhythmical peculiarities of the _chansons_ would be specially suitable. In particular, the long maintenance of the mono-rhymed, or even the single-assonanced, _tirade_ depends almost entirely upon its being delivered _vivâ voce_. Only then does that wave-clash which has been spoken of produce its effect, while the unbroken uniformity of rhyme on the printed page, and the apparent absence of uniformity in the printed assonances, are almost equally annoying to the eye. Nor is it important or superfluous to note that this oral literature had, in the Teutonic countries and in England more especially, an immense influence (hitherto not nearly enough allowed for by literary historians) in the great change from a stressed and alliterative to a quantitative and rhymed prosody, which took place, with us, from about 1200 A.D. Accustomed as were the ears of all to quantitative (though very licentiously quantitative) and rhymed measures in the hymns and services of the Church--the one literary exercise to which gentle and simple, learned and unlearned, were constantly and regularly addicted--it was almost impossible that they should not demand a similar prosody in the profaner compositions addressed to them. That this would not affect the _chansons_ themselves is true enough; for there are no relics of any alliterative prosody in French, and its accentual scanning is only the naturally "crumbled" quantity of Latin. But it is extremely important to note that the metre of these _chansons_ themselves, single-rhyme and all, directly influenced English writers. Of this, however, more will be found in the chapter on the rise of English literature proper.

[Sidenote: _The_ jongleurs.]

Another, and for literature a hardly less important, consequence of this intention of being heard, was that probably from the very first, and certainly from an early period, a distinction, not very different from that afterwards occasioned by the drama, took place between the _trouvère_ who invented the _chanson_ and the _jongleur_ or minstrel who introduced it. At first these parts may, for better or worse, have been doubled. But it would seldom happen that the poet who had the wits to indite would have the skill to perform; and it would happen still seldomer that those whose gifts lay in the direction of interpretation would have the poetical spirit. Nor is it wonderful that, in the poems themselves, we find considerably more about the performer than about the author. In the cases where they were identical, the author would evidently be merged in the actor; in cases where they were not, the actor would take care of himself. Accordingly, though we know if possible even less of the names of the _jongleurs_ than of those of the _trouvères_, we know a good deal about their methods. Very rarely does an author like Nicolas of Padua (_v. supra_) tell us so much as his motive for composing the poems. But the patient study of critics, eked out it may be by a little imagination here and there, has succeeded in elaborating a fairly complete account of the ways and fortunes of the _jongleur_, who also not improbably, even where he was not the author, adjusted to the _chansons_ which were his copyright, extempore _codas_, episodes, tags, and gags of different kinds. Immense pains have been spent upon the _jongleur_. It has been asserted, and it is not improbable, that during the palmiest days--say the eleventh and twelfth centuries--of the _chansons_ a special order of the _jongleur_ or minstrel hierarchy concerned itself with them,--it is at least certain that the phrase _chanter de geste_ occurs several times in a manner, and with a context, which seem to justify its being regarded as a special term of art. And the authors at least present their heroes as deliberately expecting that they will be sung about, and fearing the chance of a dishonourable mention; a fact which, though we must not base any calculations upon it as to the actual sentiments of Roland or Ogier, Raoul or Huon, is a fact in itself. And it is also a fact that in the _fabliaux_ and other light verse of the time we find _jongleurs_ presented as boasting of the particular _chansons_ they can sing.

[Sidenote: Jongleresses, _&c._]

But the enumeration of the kinds of _jongleurs_--those itinerant, those attached to courts and great families, &c.--would lead us too far. They were not all of one sex, and we hear of _jongleresses_ and _chanteresses_, such as Adeline who figures in the history of the Norman Conquest, Aiglantine who sang before the Duke of Burgundy, Gracieuse d'Espagne, and so forth--pretty names, as even M. Gautier, who is inclined to be suspicious of them, admits. These suspicions, it is fair to say, were felt at the time. Don Jayme of Aragon forbade noble ladies to kiss _jongleresses_ or share bed and board with them; while the Church, which never loved the _jongleur_ much, decided that the duty of a wife to follow her husband ceased if he took to jongling, which was a _vita turpis et inhonesta_. Further, the pains above referred to, bestowed by scholars of all sorts, from Percy downwards, have discovered or guessed at the clothes which the _jongleur_ and his mate wore, and the instruments with which they accompanied their songs. It is more germane to our purpose to know, as we do in one instance on positive testimony, the principles (easily to be guessed, by the way) on which the introduction of names into these poems were arranged. It appears, on the authority of the historian of Guisnes and Ardres, that Arnold the Old, Count of Ardres, would actually have had his name in the _Chanson d'Antioche_ had he not refused a pair of scarlet boots or breeches to the poet or performer thereof. Nor is it more surprising to find, on the still more indisputable authority of passages in the _chansons_ themselves, that the _jongleur_ would stop singing at an interesting point to make a collection, and would even sometimes explicitly protest against the contribution of too small coins--_poitevines_, _mailles_, and the like.

It is impossible not to regard with a mixture of respect and pity the labour which has been spent on collecting details of the kind whereof, in the last paragraph or two, a few examples have been given. But they really have very little, if anything, to do with literature; and what they have to do with it is common to all times and subjects. The excessive prodigality to minstrels of which we have record parallels itself in other times in regard to actors, jockeys, musicians, and other classes of mechanical pleasure-makers whose craft happens to be popular for the moment. And it was never more likely to be shown than in the Middle Ages, when generosity was a profane virtue; when the Church had set the example--an example the too free extension of which she resented highly--of putting reckless giving above almost all other good deeds; and when the system of private war, of ransoms and other things of the same kind, made "light come, light go," a maxim almost more applicable than in the days of confiscations, in those of pensions on this or that list, or in those of stock-jobbing. Moreover, inquirers into this matter have certainly not escaped the besetting sin of all but strictly political historians--a sin which even the political historian has not always avoided--the sin of mixing up times and epochs.

It is the great advantage of that purely literary criticism, which is so little practised and to some extent so unpopular, that it is able to preserve accuracy in this matter. When with the assistance (always to be gratefully received) of philologists and historians in the strict sense the date of a literary work is ascertained with sufficient--it is only in a few cases that it can be ascertained with absolute--exactness, the historian of literature places it in that position for literary purposes only, and neither mixes it with other things nor endeavours to use it for purposes other than literary. To recur to an example mentioned above, Adeline in the eleventh century and Gracieuse d'Espagne in the fifteenth are agreeable objects of contemplation and ornaments of discourse; but, once more, neither has much, if anything, to do with literature.

[Sidenote: _Singularity of the_ chansons.]