Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/379

 9>s. vii. MAY ii, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

371

And how they rode each one On Bayard Mountalbon.*

No wonder, therefore, is it that his praises were sung by the minstrels when they visited the baronial keeps as soon as the snows of winter had melted away. Even the tears which the noble animal shed when, during the famine that prevailed in Renaud's castle, the squires opened a vein and drank his blood, were celebrated in their verses. In that olla podrida of Southey's, that "rudis indigestaque moles" entitled 'The Doctor,' which he wrote in imitation of Burton's 'Anatomy,' and probably looked upon as vastly superior to that famous book, I find the following passage :

14 He was not like the heroic horse which Amadis won in the Isle Perilous, when in his old age he was driven thither by a tempest, though the adventure has been pretermitted in his great history. After the death of that old, old, very old and most famous of all knights, this horse was enchanted by the magician Alchiso. Many genera- tions passea away before he was overcome and disenchanted by Rinaldo ; and he then became so famous by his well-known name Bajardo, that for the sole purpose of winning this horse and the sword Durlindana, which was as famous among swords as Bajardo among horses, Gradasso came from India to invade France with an army of an hundred and fifty thousand knights." One- volume edition, 1848, p. 367.

Much interesting information regarding this incomparable steed may be gathered by a careful student of the " Carlovingian cycle," which, according to M.Demogeot ('Litterature Frangaise,' sixth edition, Paris, 1864), contains some four or five hundred thousand verses,t published or in manuscript. But perhaps enough has been said to justify the horse's fame without the need of undertaking such a gigantic task, for which I have neither the leisure nor the opportunity, even if I had the inclination.

Now comes the question which I wish to put to the learned readers of *N. & Q.' Where and when, before Chaucer's time, is Bayard described as " blind " 1 What autho- rity had he for using such an epithet 1 All

happy epithet, I quote from the edition of Skelton's must be a reprint from some early copy, one would think, as there is scarcely any punctuation except in the Latin and prose portions.
 * These "breathless" lines, to use Bishop Hall's
 * Works,' " printed for C. Davis," London, 1736. It

f After referring to the " gigantesque projet de M. Fortoul," he says in a foot-note, p. xi : "On sait que ce ministre avait dessein de faire entrer dans un vaste recueil tout ce qui a ete rime au moyen age. On a restreint timidement son plan: on se contentera de publier le cycle carlovinaien, seulement quatre ou cinq cent mille vers!" This was written in 1864. How much of the plan has been carried out I do not know.

that Bishop Percy can give is this in one of his glossaries : " Bayard, a noted blind horse in the old romances, which is of no assistance, as there is no reference. I can find nothing in Archbishop Turpin's so-called ' Chronicle,' which Ariosto pretends to follow, that can be quoted to show that the animal's vision was ever destroyed, or that, notwithstanding his blindness, he was able to perform such miraculous feats. A blind horse, I am told, is of a quiet disposition, and, instead of rushing over hedges and ditches, would stand still and tremble, if he were frightened. For that reason he was employed for purposes well explained in the line, quoted from Phillips oy Johnson in his great dictionary,

Blind bayard moves the mill. I remember visiting more than fifty years ago a coal-pit about seven miles from Morpeth, that pleasant town on the Wansbeck. The mineral was brought to the surface by a machine, called a gin, worked by a horse which went round and round until the tub came in view, when at a word he stopped and the banksman tipped the contents into a screen. It was a nice gentle animal, but I felt very sorry when I was told it was blind.

So far as I have been able to ascertain, Chaucer's epithet originated with himself, and the proverbial expression " blind Bayard" would seem to be confined to our language. I can find no trace of it in French, Italian, or Spanish, where, if at all common, one would naturally expect to meet with it. The poet's words are these :

Ye been as boold as is Bayard the blynde,

That blondreth forth and peril casteth noon.

He is as boold to renne agayn a stoon,

As for to goon bisides in the weye. *

I take it that the steed mentioned is no other than the famous Bayard, and that the epithet " blind " has been borrowed from one of the old romances in which the horse's amazing swiftness and dexterity in sur- mounting obstacles are so vividly described, that the spectator might well have fancied that such rapidity of motion could scarcely consist with perfect vision. The following lines from Ariosto's great romantic poem may be quoted in support of that view : L 5 animoso cavallo urta e f racassa, Punto dal suo signer, ci6 ch' egli intoppa : Non ponno fosse o fiumi o sassi o spine Far che dal corso il corridor decline. 11. xix.

It would seem clear from the note ante, p. 106, that so late as 1275 Bayard was used as a proper name for a horse. Its


 * Globe edition, p. 258.