Then would I seek the Pyrenean breach,
Which Roland clove with huge two-handed sway,
And to the enormous labor left his name.
Wordsworth.
*** A sword is shown at Rocamadour, in the department of Lot (France), which visitors are assured was Roland’s Durandal. But the romances says that Roland, dying, threw his sword into a poisoned stream.
Death of Roland. There is a tradition that Roland escaped the general slaughter in the defile of Roncesvallês, and died of starvation while trying to make his way across the mountains.—John de la Bruiere Champier, De Cibaria, xvi. 5.
Died like Roland, died of thirst.
Nonnulli qui de Gallicis rebus historias conscripserunt, non dubitarunt posteris significare Rolandum Caroli illius magni sororis filium, verum certe bellica gloria omnique fortitudine nobillissimum, post ingentem Hispanorum cædem prope Pyrenæi saltus juga, ubi insidiæ ab hoste collocatæ fuerint, siti miserrime extinctum. Inde nostri intolerabili siti et immiti volentes significare se torqueri, facete aiunt “Rolandi morte se perire.”—John de la Bruiere Champier, De Cibaria, xvi. 5.
Roland (The Roman). Sicinius Dentātus is so called by Niebuhr. He is not unfrequently called “The Roman Achillês” (put to death B.C. 450).
Roland Blake. Hero of a war-novel of the same name.—Silas Weir Mitchell, M.D. (1886).
Roland and Oliver, the two most famous of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. To give a “Roland for an Oliver” is to give tit for tat, to give another as good a drubbing as you receive.
Froissart, a countryman of ours [the French] records,
England all Olivers and Rowlands bred
During the time Edward the Third did reign.
Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI. act i. sc. 2 (1589).