THE HARVARD CLASSICS

EDITED BY CHARLES W. ELIOT LLD.

EPIC AND SAGA

THE SONG OF ROLAND

THE DESTRUCTION OF DÁ DERGA'SHOSTEL

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES

VOLUME 49

1910

THE SONG OF ROLAND

TRANSLATED BY

JOHN O'HAGAN

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In the year 778 A.D., Charles the Great, King of the Franks,returned from a military expedition into Spain, whither he had beenled by opportunities offered through dissensions among the Saracenswho then dominated that country. On the 15th of August, while hisarmy was marching through the passes of the Pyrenees, hisrear-guard was attacked and annihilated by the Basque inhabitantsof the mountains, in the valley of Roncesvaux About this disastermany popular songs, it is supposed, soon sprang up; and the chiefhero whom they celebrated was Hrodland, Count of the Marches ofBrittany.

There are indications that the earliest of these songs aroseamong the Breton followers of Hrodland or Roland; but they spreadto Maine, to Anjou, to Normandy, until the theme became national.By the latter part of the eleventh century, when the form of the"Song of Roland" which we possess was probably composed, thehistorical germ of the story had almost disappeared under the massof legendary accretion. Charlemagne, who was a man of thirty-six atthe time of the actual Roncesvaux incident, has become in the poeman old man with a flowing white beard, credited with endlessconquests; the Basques have disappeared, and the Saracens havetaken their place; the defeat is accounted for by the invention ofthe treachery of Ganelon; the expedition of 777-778 has become acampaign of seven years; Roland is made the nephew of Charlemagne,leader of the twelve peers, and is provided with a faithful friendOliver, and a betrothed, Alda.

The poem is the first of the great French heroic poems knownas "chansons de geste." It is written in stanzas of various length,bound together by the vowel-rhyme known as assonance. It is notpossible to reproduce effectively this device in English, and theauthor of the present translation has adopted what is perhaps thenearest equivalent--the romantic measure of Coleridge andScott.

Simple almost to bareness in style, without subtlety or highimagination, the Song of Roland is yet not without grandeur; andits patriotic ardor gives it a place as the earliest of the trulynational poems of the modern world.

THE SONG OF ROLAND

PART I

THE TREASON OF GANELON

SARAGOSSA. THE COUNCIL OF KING MARSIL

I

The king our Emperor Carlemaine,
Hath been for seven full years in Spain.
From highland to sea hath he won the land;
City was none might his arm withstand;
Keep and castle alike went down--
Save Saragossa, the mountain town.
The King Marsilius holds the place,
Who loveth not God, nor seeks His grace:
He prays to Apollin, and serves Mahound;
But he saved him not from the fate he found.

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