Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres Part 2

Chevals e armes li dona Et en Bretaigne le mena Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre Quant as Bretons se dut combattre.

William kept Harold many a day, As was his due in great honour.

To many a rich tournament Made him go very n.o.bly.

Horses and arms gave him And into Brittany led him I know not truly whether three or four times When he had to make war on the Bretons.

Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which tradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men- at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin legend:--"Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hic Harold dux trahebat eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to Mont-Saint- Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands.

They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame by saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to the Mount:--"Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to pa.s.s it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of Saint Michael.

If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur--jugleor--was not far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this favourite was,--his name, his character, and his song. To him Wace owed one of the most famous pa.s.sages in his story of the a.s.sault at Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance against the English lines:--

Taillefer qui mult bien chantout Sor un cheval qui tost alout Devant le duc alout chantant De Karlemaigne e de Rollant E d'Oliver e des va.s.sals Qui morurent en Rencevals.

Quant il orent chevalchie tant Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant: "Sire," dist Taillefer, "merci!

Io vos ai longuement servi.

Tot mon servise me devez.

Hui se vos plaist le me rendez.

Por tot guerredon vos require E si vos veil forment preier Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille."

Li dus respondi: "Io l'otrei."

Taillefer who was famed for song, Mounted on a charger strong, Rode on before the Duke, and sang Of Roland and of Charlemagne, Oliver and the va.s.sals all Who fell in fight at Roncesvals.

When they had ridden till they saw The English battle close before: "Sire," said Taillefer, "a grace!

I have served you long and well; All reward you owe me still; To-day repay me if you please.

For all guerdon I require, And ask of you in formal prayer, Grant to me as mine of right The first blow struck in the fight."

The Duke answered: "I grant."

Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt everything. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not as old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient proof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace wrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a monument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland"

ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art.

One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the starting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself rest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll of Battle Abbey in question. The whole fabric of society totters; the British peerage turns pale.

Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is supposed to have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of the men who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expressly said: "Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplum pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fighting temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof to satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena Rollandi" must have been a Norman "Chanson de Rou," or "Rollo," or at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Norman chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is quite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old enough.

Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmesbury.

If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur happens to be known on still better authority than that of William of Malmesbury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of Queen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of Hastings which must have been complete within ten years after the battle was fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the Duke's battle:--

Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus.

"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, but Taillefer was also an actor:--

Histrio cor audax nimium quem n.o.bilitabat.

"A jongleur whom a very brave heart enn.o.bled." The jongleur was not n.o.ble by birth, but was enn.o.bled by his bravery.

Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo.

Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer who wrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added the story that Taillefer died in the melee.

The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing of the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke:--

"Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille."

Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be enn.o.bled, and offered to pay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the Duke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant battalion,--the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io l'otrei!"

seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed the story: "Histrio cor audax nimium quem n.o.bilitabat"; a stage- player--a juggler--the Duke's singer--whose bravery enn.o.bled him.

The Duke granted him--octroya--his patent of n.o.bility on the field.

All this preamble leads only to unite the "Chanson" with the architecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton campaign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go together, and explain each other. Their common trait is their military character, peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch is masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the end. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attempted no such feat.

Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as a.s.sembled at supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side "a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the other chief va.s.sals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer is at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:--

Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre.

Charles the king, our emperor, the great, Seven years complete has been in Spain, Conquered the land as far as the high seas, Nor is there castle that holds against him, Nor wall or city left to capture.

The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct and personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like prophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England where Charlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of the means to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the anxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath that he would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much confidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval society. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them all about him.

He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold that his own brother, Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the plunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as to require a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle- scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them.

They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, Charlemagne or his successor was still at Aix, and the Moors were still in Spain. Archbishop Turpin of Rheims had fought with sword and mace in Spain, while Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his men at Hastings, like a modern general, with a staff, but both were equally at home on the field of battle. Verse by verse, the song was a literal mirror of the Mount. The battle of Hastings was to be fought on the Archangel's Day. What happened to Roland at Roncesvalles was to happen to Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as he was dying like Roland, was to see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver.

Even Taillefer was to be a part, and a distinguished part, of his chanson. Sooner or later, all were to die in the large and simple way of the eleventh century. Duke William himself, twenty years later, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in the same spirit, and if Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at least, like an eleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, the whole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while the monks shrived them and prayed.

Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to this day every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knows these verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heart of every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battle and the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such power over an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who were actors as well as listeners. In the melee at Roncesvalles, overborne by innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help:--

Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler.

Rollant apelet sun ami e sun per; "Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez.

A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret." Aoi.

"Montjoie!" he cries, loud and clear, Roland he calls, his friend and peer; "Sir Friend! ride now to help me here!

Parted today, great pity were."

Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knows neither how it was sung nor even how it was p.r.o.nounced. The a.s.sonances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses or a.s.sonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi," has long ago vanished from verse or song. The sense is as simple as the "Ballad of Chevy Chase," but one must imagine the voice and acting. Doubtless Taillefer acted each motive; when Oliver called loud and clear, Taillefer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef," the singer must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, with the singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, bowed to each other in parting and turned to face their deaths, Taillefer may have indicated the movement as he sang. The verses gave room for great acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Roland rode up, and at sight of the desperate field, lost for a moment his consciousness:--

As vus Rollant sur sun cheval pasmet E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez!

Tant ad sainiet li oil li sunt trublet Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel.

Sun c.u.mpaignun c.u.m il l'ad enc.u.n.tret Sil fiert amunt sur l'elme a or gemmet Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel Mais en la teste ne l'ad mie adeset.

A icel colp l'ad Rollanz reguardet Si li demandet dulcement et suef "Sire c.u.mpainz, faites le vus de gred?

Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer.

Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet,"

Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler Io ne vus vei. Veied vus d.a.m.nedeus!

Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!"