ROLAND THE BRAVE.
(Vol. ix., p. 372.)
In justification of Dr. Forbes' identifying Roland the Brave with the hero of Schiller's ballad, Ritter Toggenburg, I beg to refer your correspondent X. Y. Z. to Deutsches Sagenbuch, von L. Bechstein, Leipzig, 1853, where (p. 95.) the same tale is related which forms the subject of Mrs. Hemans' beautiful ballad, only with this difference, that there the account of Roland's death entirely agrees with Schiller's version of the story, whereas the English poet has adopted the general tradition of Roland's fall at Roncesvalles.
Most of the epic poems of the middle ages in which Roland's death is recorded, especially the different old French Chansons de Roland ou de Roncevaux, an Icelandic poem on the subject, and Stricker's middle-high German lay of Roland, all of them written between A.D. 1100 and 1230—agree in this, that after Roland's fall at Roncesvalles, and the complete rout of the heathen by Charlemagne, the latter returns home and is met—some say at Aix-la-Chapelle, others at Blavie, others at Paris—by Alda or Alite, Olivier's sister, who inquires of him where Roland, her betrothed, is. On learning his fate she dies on the spot of grief. According to monk Conrad (about A.D. 1175), Alda was Roland's wife. See Ruolandes Liet, von W. Grimm, Göttingen, 1838, pp. 295—297.
The legend of Rolandseck, as told by Bechstein from Rhenish folk lore, begins thus:
"Es sasz auf hoher Burg am Rhein hoch über dem Stromthal ein junger Rittersmann, Roland geheiszen, (manche sagen Roland von Angers, Neffe Karls des Groszen), der liebte ein Burgfräulein, Hildegunde, die Tochter des Burggrafen Heribert, der auf dem nahen Schlosz Drachenfels sasz," &c.
Here the question is left open whether the hero of the story was Roland the Brave, or some other knight of that name. The latter seems the more probable, as Roland's fall at Roncesvalles is one of the chief subjects of mediæval poetry, whereas the death of knight Roland in sight of
Nonnenwerth on the Rhine, forms the very pith of the German local legend. From certain coincidences, however, it was easy to blend the two stories together into one, as was done by Mrs. Hemans. As to Schiller, we may suppose that he either followed altogether a different legend, or, perhaps to avoid misconception, substituted another name for that of knight Roland, similar to what he has done in other instances.
R. R.
Canterbury.
I think your correspondent X. Y. Z. is mistaken in attributing to Mrs. Hemans the lines on the "Brave Roland." In Mr. Campbell's Poems he will find some stanzas which bear a striking resemblance to those he has quoted. I subjoin those stanzas to which X. Y. Z. has referred:
"The brave Roland! the brave Roland!
False tidings reach'd the Rhenish strand
That he had fall'n in fight;
And thy faithful bosom swoon'd with pain,
O loveliest maiden of Allemayne!
For the loss of thine own true knight.
"But why so rash has she ta'en the veil,
In yon Nonnenwerder's cloisters pale,
For her vow had scarce been sworn,
And the fatal mantle o'er her flung,
When the Drachenfels to a trumpet rung,
'Twas her own dear warrior's horn!
. . . . . .
"She died! he sought the battle plain;
Her image fill'd his dying brain,
When he fell and wish'd to fall:
And her name was in his latest sigh,
When Roland, the flower of chivalry,
Expired at Roncevall."
X. Y. Z. seems also to have forgotten what Mr. Campbell duly records, viz. that Roland used to station himself at a window overlooking "the nun's green isle;" it being after her decease that he met his death at Roncevall, which event, by the way, is alluded to by Sir W. Scott in Marmion, canto vi.:
"Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come;
When Roland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
At Roncesvalles died!"
H. B. F.
The legends of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, are very numerous and vary much from each other. The Orlando of Pulci has a very different history from the Orlando of Bojardo and Ariosto.
The legend of "Rolandseck and the Nonnenwerth," which has been adopted by Campbell, not Mrs. Hemans, and charmingly set to music by Mrs. Arkwright, is well known on the Rhine. There are two poems on the legend in Simrock's Rheinsagen (12mo., Bonn, 1841), one by the editor, and another by August Kopisch. They exactly accord with Campbell's poem.
The legend of Ritter Toggenburg resembles that of Roland in many particulars, but it is not the same, and it belongs to another locality, to Kloster Fischingen, and not to Nonnenwerth. "Roland the Brave" appears in all the later editions of Campbell's Poems. Simrock's Rheinsagen is one of the most delightful handbooks that any one can take through the romantic region which the poems (partly well selected by the editor, and partly as well written by himself) describe.
E. C. H.
The author of the beautiful lines which are quoted by your correspondent X. Y. Z., is Campbell, not Mrs. Hemans. The poet, in the fifth stanza of his ballad, tells how the unfortunate Roland, on finding that Hildegund had taken the veil, was accustomed to sit at his window, and "sad and oft" to look "on the mansion of his love below."
"There's yet one window of that pile,
Which he built above the nun's green isle;
Thence sad and oft look'd he
(When the chant and organ sounded slow)
On the mansion of his love below,
For herself he might not see.
"She died! He sought the battle plain,
Her image fill'd his dying brain,
When he fell and wish'd to fall;
And her name was in his latest sigh,
When Roland, the flower of chivalry,
Expired at Roncevall."
F. M. Middleton.
Scott has, in Marmion,—
"When Roland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
At Roncesvalles died!"
I quote from memory, and have not the poem.
F. C. B.