Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/281

Rh And he raised the abbey of Charroux (for the monks had all fled to Angoulême) and that of St. Maixent. At that time William count of Auvergne was Duke of Aquitaine. And he was son of Taillefer. And Ramnulf count of Poitou, son of Taillefer; and he had a son named Theobald. This Ramnulf died of poison at the court of Count William who founded Cluny."

Here the chronicle deviates for a short while into history, or at least into something approaching it. But presently we find the following startling assertion:—

"Taillefer de Léon by his prowess recovered the empire of Allemagne, and drove out thence the Hungarians as he did the Normans. And then he went over-sea, and left Odo his son Emperor."

Now this account I have been translating, as well as some parts which I have omitted as not referring to Taillefer, is the most extraordinary jumble of the names of actual personages, and the facts of real history, manipulated with the wildest daring, and supplemented with touches and details which seem drawn from local knowledge or local legend. It reminds one of the kaleidoscopic effects of those mediaeval stained glass windows, which were broken in the Puritan days, and have been pieced together anyhow—heads of saints on legs of soldiers, and scrolls, bearing the names of illustrious archangels, put in where they would go, haphazard.

Who was this Taillefer de Léon, who was son of Raoul and father of William and Ramnulf? These are historical characters. Rodolph the First, King of Burgundy, really defeated the Normans; William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, was really founder of Cluny; Ramnulf, Count of Poitou, really died of poison. But the relationship here made out among them is purely and entirely mythical; and at first sight it might be imagined that the person, Taillefer de Léon, to whom they are here attributed respectively as father and offspring, was as mythical as this