a circumstance of real importance is that in 1854 was published the said “Song of Roland” as translated by the author of “Emilia Wyndham”, the Introduction to which is as follows:-
“It was on the 13th of October, 1066, that the armies of Harold, of England, and William, of Normandy, met upon the plains of Hastings. But before they came to blows a Norman knight issued from the ranks, and spurring his horse in front of the battle array, animated his fellow-countrymen to conquer or die, as in a loud voice he chanted forth the Song of Roland. This incident is no poetical invention. All the historians most worthy of credit make mention of it. William of Malmsbury, Matthew Paris, Ralph Higden, Alberic de Trois Fontaines, all speak of this celebrated song of the Carlovingiens as inaugurating the battle of Hastings, and as being repeated with one voice by the soldiers. Even the very name of the intrepid Trouvère is recorded who thus sang forth between the armies. He was called Taillefer and was a follower of the Count de Mortain. There have been many songs written upon this subject, of Roncesvalles, and the death there of the renowned Roland, Paladin of the still greater Charlemagne. All of them, however, with which, until lately, the world had been made acquainted, bore undoubted evidence that they were composed long subsequent to the date of the Conquest – which took place three centuries below the times of the great Emperor. At Paris, at Lyons at Metz and at Cambridge, versions of the Song of Roland had been known to exist; but each one, as we said, bore indubitable evidence, both as regarded the language and construction that they belonged to a later age – to the twelfth, to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuris(sic). It had become a question of considerable interest among antiquarians whether the identical Song of Roland as chanted at the battle of Hastings were still in existence. At length it has been discovered; and singularly enough, it is by a learned Frenchman that it has been drawn forth from the Bodleian Library at our own University of Oxford. It appears that the existence of a manuscript answering to this description had been slightly noticed by Tyrwhitt, in a note to his edition of the “Canterbury Tales”. This note and the existence of the manuscript in question, were first announced to the literary world of France by the Abbé de la Rue, in his Essay “Sur les Trouvères Normands,” upon which announcement, M. Guizot, at that time Minister of Public Instruction, immediately despatched M. Francisque Michel to Oxford, who made a copy of the manuscript, and in the course of two years, -
