Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/284

258 any mention of hini here, where he would have had to make him the son of a less illustrious, if more genuine, father. On the death of Alduin, William Taillefer became Count of Angoulême in 916, his first cousin Bernard being Count of Perigord. The two together restored the monastic habit in the Church of St. Chybar, and in 947 Count William Taillefer by will made certain grants to the same church. He died (in 962), and was buried in the Church of St. Chybar in Angoulême, leaving no legitimate children, but his illegitimate son Arnold succeeded, later, in regaining the countship of Angoulême. The brief chronicle of Angoulême (which ends in 991, and was therefore written only thirty years after this) merely records his death in 962, with the addition of Valde amantissimus, "greatly beloved." Adémar records an act of justice done by him in restoring to honour a certain Odolric, whose brother had been killed by William's cousin, Bernard; and he perhaps means us to understand that the restoration of the relics before mentioned was due to his influence, as well as carried out by his hands. Slight as these indications are, still they seem, when taken in connection with his legendary repute, to justify us in regarding him as having deserved the Valde amantissimus on grounds of real character, not merely as the benefactor to the church of his monkish chronicler. In the chronicle of Richard of Poitou he is mentioned as being "reputed to be of the race of Charles the Bald," and as having restored the relics to Charroux.

This appears to be all that history has to say of him, even allowing that all this is to be called history. But Adémar has further a short passage accounting for the origin of his name Taillefer, which is exceedingly suggestive and interesting, and seems to show that, whatever his unrecorded merits and unstoried deeds had been, they had at least won