Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/280

254 just as the mediæval romancers did long after them, resolving the metre, but otherwise preserving the poetical element.

Here is the account in the Saintongese chronicle (p. 87):

"When the French had driven Charles the Simple from the kingdom, the best of France were at variance one with another, so that their knights slew each other; and because this land was without a lord, it was wasted and destroyed by foreign folk. For the Normans came thither because they found it abundant and plentiful, and destroyed Bordeaux and all the land as far as Toulouse. But Raoul the king of Burgundy arose against them, and fought with them at The Straits between the Boutonne and the Charente, and slew so many that no man knows the number, and then he pursued them to Mont d'Arvert, where he slew a marvellous quantity. At Montpoire they died; and he pursued them to Bordeaux and Toulouse, and rid all the Bordelais and all the land of Toulouse of them. Then he returned, and rid all the land of them as far as Paris, and fought with them at Salercaine. And Taillefer de Léon the son of Raoul slew them all at Pui d'Arçon over a fountain. And because he was so valiant Raoul his father gave him all Aquitaine and Angoulême the city. And then he built a castle in Brittany, which is called Léonz, and another in Poitou which is called Mauléons. And men called him Taillefer because of his uncle Taillefer who went with Charlemagne into Spain. And for the prowess that he had, they gave him the daughter of Walter Frapan of Rome, and sent him over gold and silver, and twenty thousand knights, with whom he drove out the Normans from Paris. This Taillefer drove out the Normans from Oléron, whence no man could drive them out, and built his castle in Oléron. Here the churches lost their tithes; for the knights whom Taillefer brought, took them because they found there no inhabitant. Then he returned to St. Jean d'Angély, and raised the abbey of St. John, which the Normans had destroyed. And hither were carried the horns of the barons, who died at Champdolent.