Glyn Burgess - The Song of Roland

It contains a number of errors committed by the scribe and has been touched up in over sixty places by a twelfth-century reviser. Manuscript Digby 23 is certainly not the poets original, but some of the errors suggest that it represents the copy of a copy of the original (see Whitehead, pp. vivii).saga), Welsh (Cn Rolant), Dutch (the Roelantslied) and Middle English (Song of Roland). The precise date of composition of the Oxford version is difficult to determine. The numerous proper names, of individuals and places, seem at first sight to offer a fruitful source of information. But many appear to be the product of poetic invention.

Some, however, have made scholars wonder whether the poet had in mind a specific historical event. Allusions to the Col de Cize (vv. The poem has been dated as early as 1060 and as late as the second half of the twelfth century, but the most frequently accepted date is around the very end of the eleventh century (10981100). This would place the poem at the time of the First Crusade. Indeed the inclusion of a relic of the Holy Lance in Charlemagnes sword (vv. 2231, English edition, pp. 1624). 1624).

The story recounted in the Song of Roland has a certain historical foundation. The context is the dissension in the Muhammadan world which crept in around the year 750. Charles entered Spain in the year 778 at the solicitation of the governor of Barcelona, Suleiman ibn-al-Arabi, who sought his assistance against his enemy Abderrahman. Charles was promised in return the surrender of several cities in Spain. After a few months of campaigning and while he was besieging Saragossa, Charles was informed of a Saxon uprising in the north. He lifted the siege and began to make his way back to France, taking Suleiman with him as a prisoner.

The latters promises had not been adequately fulfilled and Charles probably suspected him of treachery. On the way back he destroyed Pamplona, to prevent it from rebelling against him, and drove out many of its inhabitants. As the Franks were crossing the Pyrenees on 15 August 778 their rearguard was ambushed by Basques. Their baggage train was pillaged and all the members of the rearguard were slaughtered. The ambush took place in the pass of Roncesvalles (Old French Rencesvals, French Roncevaux). This defeat taught Charles a lesson and his attitude towards Spain became defensive.

He eventually managed, with the capture of Barcelona in 803, to establish as a buffer zone an area of Frankish influence known as the Spanish March. The best-known account of these happenings is preserved in the Vita Karoli Magni of Einhard, written some fifty or sixty years after the event. Einhard tells us that the loss of the rearguard was due to Basque/Gascon treachery and that this was the only loss sustained by Charlemagne during his energetic attacks against Spain: At a moment when Charlemagnes army was stretched out in a long column of march, as the nature of the local defiles forced it to be, these Basques [Wascones], who had set their ambush on the very top of one of the mountains, came rushing down on the last part of the baggage train and the troops who were marching Particularly noticeable in this account is the presence of Roland and the absence of other protagonists of the