Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/286

260 right in saying that the old Frankish tongue could never have had it in this form. Plainly, therefore, the story must be derived from a Norse source, probably that is from those invading Normans, over whom the story, as here told, celebrates a victory. And it suggests, therefore, what we might not have divined, that the Norse invasions count for something in the introduction of Teutonic folktales and hero-tales into the great weft of the French Chansons de Geste. This is another illustration of that line saying of Lemcke, quoted by Gaston Paris, "As all chemical combination is accompanied by a liberation of heat, so all combination of nationalities is accompanied by a liberation of poetry."

We may reasonably think then that by the time when Ademar wrote, a hero-tale or cantilena of some kind had arisen, extolling the deeds and fame of William Taillefer. Between that time, early in the eleventh century, and the approximate date of the little Tote Listoire de France with its fabulous statements as to Taillefer de Léon, some time in the thirteenth, about two hundred years had elapsed. These were the years of the great growth and development of the Chansons de Geste. And we may feel sure that the legend of Taillefer, if handed down at all, would grow as the rest of the cantilenæ grew. We have, of course, no evidence of anything but a tradition, no trace of lay or Chanson de Geste. But the fabulous account of Taillefer de Léon in Tote Listoire de France, translated above, certainly looks rather like a desiccated chanson, with additional touches by a churchman's pen. His uncle Taillefer, "who went with Charles into Spain," his wife, daughter of an unknown Walter Frapan of Rome, with her dowry of gold and silver and twenty thousand knights, with whom he drove out the Normans from Paris—such would be the