Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

There is scarcely an incident or a feature in the narrative which has not its parallel in other epics of the Aryan world; but throughout his whole life there presses on him the doom which is never taken off from Herakles, Perseus, Achilles, and the rest-the doom of unremitting toil, for which he himself receives no recompense. As Olaf says, 'If ever a man has been cursed, of all men must thou have been;' and in strange accordance with the story of Ixion, his father says of him, 'Methinks over much on a whirling wheel his life turns.' But this invincible hero dreads darkness like a child, as we may well suppose that he should, if his character was moulded by phrases which spoke of the extinguishing of the sun's light when the dark hours have come. He is, of course, avenged, as are the three Helgis and Sigurd, and the avenging of all these is the avenging of Balder.2

XI. The story of

According to the tale which relates the battle of Roncesvalles, Roland and his comrades win a victory as splendid as that of Leonidas at Thermopylai, Roland. although at the same cost. But at best this is but a popular tradition; and another popular tradition is found in the magnificent Song of Attabiscar, which gives a vivid picture of the utter defeat of the invaders. The one tradition is, perhaps, worth as much as the other, and no more; and the attempt to extract any history from them must be fruitless. Of the two, the popular Basque song is the more credible. Armies may be as utterly routed as that of the great Charles is there said to have been; but the exploits of Roland and his comrades are absolute impossibilities. Even when the ground is piled with the dead whom their swords have smitten down, Roland has not so much as a scratch upon his body, though his armour is pierced everywhere with spear points, and his death is

1 For the evidence of this see Myth. of Ar. Nat. book i. ch. xii.
2 Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, p. 400.

3 Ibid. p. 202.

Myth. of Ar. Nat. i. 189.

THE SWORD OF ROLAND.

301

caused not by any wound but by the excessive toil, which splits his skull and lets his brain ooze out at his temples. He is, in short, one of those invulnerable heroes, whom death must nevertheless be suffered somehow or other to lay low; and his sword Durandal is one of those magic weapons of which Excalibur, and Morglay, and Gram, are the fellows. If, when drawn from its sheath, it flashes like lightning and blinds the eyes of foemen, this may be put down to the licence of poetical fancy; but there must surely be some method in the madness of so many poets, when all describe the armour of their heroes in the like terms of hyperbole, absurd when the words are spoken of any weapons fashioned by human hands, but less than the reality when spoken of the spears of Indra or of Phoebus. Nay, Roland himself knows that it is no earthly weapon which he wields. It has been brought by angels from heaven, like the robe which came to Medeia from Helios; and when Roland feels that his death hour has come, even he is utterly unable to break it. In vain he tries to shiver it against marble, sardonyx, and adamant; and then he sinks down exhausted, but with the firm conviction that the angels who brought the sword will bear it away again, as Excalibur is drawn down beneath the waters from which it had arisen. Of the beautiful Hilda, to whom Roland is betrothed, it is enough to say that she belongs to that bright array of beings to whom death brings life and gladness, and among whom are seen the glorious forms of Kleopatra and Brynhild, of Daphnê and Arethousa, of Iolê and Brisêis, and that with this touching myth ends the lay of the hero, in whom some see the prefect of the Britannic march named in the pages of Eginhard.

The

But Roland appears again in Olger the Dane. name may be changed, and the incidents of his career may be somewhat different, but he is the same invincible hero, whose weapons have been forged on no earthly anvil.

1 Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, p. 223.

He

is the defender of the same land, a warrior in the same hosts which the mythical Roland led on to victory; and XII. Olger those points in which he seems to be unlike the the Dane. mighty Paladin serve only to identify him with other heroes to whom both he and Roland stand in the relation of brothers. Like Arthur, and Tristram, and Macduff, like Telephos, Perseus, Cyrus, Romulus, Edipus, he is one of the Fatal Children, whose greatness no earthly obstacles can hinder. At his birth the fairies appear to bestow on him their gift and their blessing, as the Moirai are seen round the cradle of Meleagros. His life on earth is to be spent in defending the realm of the great Karl; but he stands to him in the relation of Herakles to Eurystheus. He is a hostage placed in the emperor's hands by his father the king of Denmark, and is sentenced to a hard punishment because his father fails in his trust. He is rescued from death only by the sudden appearance of formidable enemies, against whom Karl sees that Olger may be as useful as Herakles was to his Argive master. In the cause of Karl Olger performs exploits as wonderful as those of the son of Alkmene; but a sense of wrongs suffered at the hands of the emperor sends him forth to be, like Indra, and Savitar, and Woden, and Phoebus, a wanderer over the wide earth. But Olger is also, like them, one whom all women love; and more especially he is the darling of Morgan le Fay, who at his birth had promised that when he had achieved his greatness she would take him to dwell with her in her fairy palace of Avilion. In her love for the Danish warrior we have simply a reflexion of the love of Eôs for Tithonos, of the goddess of the Horselberg for Tanhaüser, of the Fairy Queen for True Thomas of Ercildoune. But in this her delicious land, where he forgets the years which have passed away, Olger may not tarry for ever. The influence of the old faith still survives, which holds that Helgi the slayer of Hunding1 must appear

1 Myth. of Ar. Nat. i. 286.

THE MAGIC RING.

303 again on earth in other guise, that Arthur must once more be king, that the slumber of the Ephesian Sleepers must come to an end, that Sarpêdôn must once again gladden his bright Lykian home, and the slain Memnon return to the courts of Olympos. While his days pass away in Avilion in a dream of delight, the land which he had guarded is overrun by foes, and in answer to the cry of the Franks Morgan le Fay lifts from his head the cap of forgetfulness, and instantly he is eager to hasten to the help of the people for whom he had fought in times past. But the years which have rolled by have had an effect which only the magic of Morgan has been able to counteract; and by a singular modification of the myth of Tithonos she gives him a ring which shall preserve his youth so long as he keeps it on his hand. If he parts with it he will be a wrinkled old man from whose fingers all strength will have passed utterly away. Thus defended, he appears again in the land of the Franks; and the scenes to which his strange questions and answers lead reflect the incidents which followed the visit of the Seven Sleepers to the Ephesus where they had spent the days of their youth. The old fortune of Olger pursues him still. Women cannot see him without loving him, and, more than all others, the princess of the land seeks to obtain him for a husband. But the strange rumours which had gone abroad about this redoubtable champion had reached her ears, and she determines to test their truth by taking away the ring from his hand. Instantly he becomes the withered old man which Odysseus appeared to be, when Athênê took away all beauty from his face and all brightness from his golden hair. When it is replaced on his finger, he is seen again in all the vigour of early manhood; and in this lusty guise he is leading the daughter of the land to the altar, when he is once more taken away by the Fay Morgan to her beautiful home, from which, the popular tale still averred that, like Arthur, and

■ Od. xiii. 431; xvi. 175.

Helgi, and Harold, and Sebastian, he would return once more.1

XIII. Havelok

The story of Havelok is more curious and important, not so much in its own incidents, as in the strange modifications which it has undergone, and the wide the Dane. range of myths with which, etymologically or otherwise, it is connected. The comparatively late date at which the English story, as we have it, was put together, may be taken for granted; but although from a certain point of view this fact has its significance, it has little to do with the nature of the materials out of which the legend has been evolved. Havelok is one of the Fatal Children who are born to be kings, and to destroy those who keep them out of their rightful inheritance; and there is, therefore, but one maiden in the world who may be his wife. Into the Havelok myth the story of this maiden is introduced independently; and thus we have in Denmark Havelok and his sisters entrusted to the care of Godard, and in England, Goldborough, the daughter of Æthelwald, entrusted to the care of Godric, the trust in both cases betrayed, and the treachery made to subserve the exaltation of the intended victims. Godard is resolved that he, not Havelok, shall bear rule in Denmark, and Godric that Goldborough shall not stand in his way in England. But the Norns do not work in vain. Godard puts Havelok into the hands of Grimm, the fisherman, with the strict

In the infinite multiplicity of details introduced into the myth by French romance-makers it is possible that some may be really borrowed from history, while others are mere arbitrary fictions, as, from their stupidity, many of them may be fairly supposed to be. Others are as manifestly borrowed from the old familiar stores of mythical imagery. Ogier's horse, Broiefort, while his master is in the underground prison, is carried away, and made to serve in a lime-pit, where all his hair is burnt off his flanks, and his tail is shorn to the stump. But when Ogier, whose weight crushes all other beasts, leans against him, Broiefort, far from yielding, only strengthens himself against the weight. This is, plainly, only another version of the myths in which the sword or the cloak is useless except to the one man who is destined to draw the one or to put on the other, as in the stories of Arthur, Balin, Lancelot, and Orendil. When Ogier draws his sword, we have, as we might expect, the comparison with which the weapons of Achilles, of Arthur, and other heroes have rendered us familiar.

« ZurückWeiter »