Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/289

Rh his legendary transformation would come just at the time when the Charlemagne cycle was growing into its great splendour round the Chanson de Roland, and when it was becoming the fashion for every person of distinction to have some ancestor "who went with Charlemagne into Spain."

There is one more small point which Taillefer the younger seems to have contributed to the joint hero-image of himself and his predecessor. It is said in Tote Listoire de France that Taillefer de Léon after his deeds "went over sea." William Taillefer III. at the end of his life made a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.

There was a still later William Taillefer, Count of Angoulême who went to Jerusalem in 1178, and died on his way home, in Messina, and who also had many wars with his barons. But the Chronique Saintongeaise was written probably too soon after him to have benefitted by any legendary transformations which he may have undergone. Its date is uncertain; but the MS. was written during the next century—before 1250, says M. Gaston Paris, about 1270, says Herr Görlich—and it is plain that we have not the original MS. In fact it seems not impossible that this history was compiled either actually in the life of the last Count William Taillefer or very soon after, by a compiler who was anxious to compliment the family by an exaltation of their illustrious ancestor.

But besides these intelligible, and, as we may suppose, popular confusions, this compiler seems to have introduced wilfully many fresh confusions of his own. He appears to have snatched at every chance likeness of name, and especially to have attributed to his hero every relation and every feat of anyone who had ever borne the name of Taillefer. And in the mythical deeds of Taillefer de Léon we seem to catch echoes of the historical doings of various Taillefers belonging to different families, introduced deliberately to glorify the Taillefers of Angoulême.