Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/283

Rh of romance, in the celebrated Gérard de Roussillon, who as a historical character appears simply as a certain Count Gérard, governor of Provence, and whose connection with any place of the name of Roussillon is as hard to trace as that of William Taillefer with any place of the name of Léon.

The few historical facts we have concerning this Count William Taillefer, are told us chiefly by Adémar of Chabsannes, a monk of the monastery of St. Chybar, Angoulême, who lived in the time of King Robert of France, and whose chronicle goes down to the year 1028. Though so little removed from the times of which he writes, Adémar makes many grave mistakes, and is not a trustworthy historian. The historic part of the chronicle from which I have read translations, including even part of what I have translated, closely resembles Adémar, and in places must be a translation, not as I believe from his actual work, but from some earlier original, which is the basis of this part of Adémar's History. Adémar's first mention of William Taillefer is that he was sent by his father Alduin to restore to the Abbey of Charroux the wood of the True Cross, the abbey's most precious relic, which had been bestowed on it by Charlemagne, and gave it the title of Holy, Sanctum. During the Norman incursions this valued relic had been sent for safe keeping, with other valuables, to Angoulême in the lifetime of Count Vulgrin the first hereditary Count of Angoulême. His son, Alduin, refusing to give the valuable relics back, fell into a sore sickness, and his people were reduced to such a state of starvation that they devoured human flesh like wolves, till Alduin restored the relic by the hands of his son, William Taillefer. This story is translated in Tote Listoire, but as Taillefer had already been made out to be the son of Raoul of Burgundy, who defeated the Normans at The Straits, the compiler judiciously omitted