Le rei feri, mort le rua.
E Gauter Tirel fost corut
La ou li reis chai e iut.”
The other French rimers are this time, though certainly less trustworthy than Wace, of more importance in one way, as showing that there was in some quarters, as there well might be in Normandy, a more charitable feeling towards the Red King than we find in the English writers. I have given in the text the substance of the accounts of Geoffrey Gaimar and Benoît de Sainte-More. The version of Geoffrey Gaimar (Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, i. 54) I do not remember to have ever seen referred to, except in M. Michel’s note to Benoît. It is so curious in its details that it is worth giving at length. It is absolutely impossible to believe it in the teeth of opposite statements of so much higher authority, yet it is strange if all its graphic touches are a mere play of fancy;
“En la foreste estoit li rois,
En l’espesse, juste un maroi.
Talent li prist d’un cerf berser
Qu’en une herde vist aler,
Dejuste une arbre est descendu,
Il méisme ad son arc tendu.