Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which tradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men- at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin legend:—"Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hic Harold dux trahebat eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to Mont-Saint- Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands.
They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame by saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to the Mount:—"Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of Saint Michael.
If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur—jugleor—was not far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this favourite was,—his name, his character, and his song. To him Wace owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault at Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance against the English lines:—
Taillefer qui mult bien chantout
Sor un cheval qui tost alout
Devant le duc alout chantant
De Karlemaigne e de Rollant
E d'Oliver e des vassals
Qui morurent en Rencevals.
Quant il orent chevalchie tant
Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant:
"Sire," dist Taillefer, "merci!
Io vos ai longuement servi.
Tot mon servise me devez.
Hui se vos plaist le me rendez.
Por tot guerredon vos require
E si vos veil forment preier
Otreiez mei que io ni faille
Le premier colp de la bataille."
Li dus respondi: "Io l'otrei."
Taillefer who was famed for song,
Mounted on a charger strong,
Rode on before the Duke, and sang
Of Roland and of Charlemagne,
Oliver and the vassals all
Who fell in fight at Roncesvals.
When they had ridden till they saw
The English battle close before:
"Sire," said Taillefer, "a grace!
I have served you long and well;
All reward you owe me still;
To-day repay me if you please.
For all guerdon I require,
And ask of you in formal prayer,
Grant to me as mine of right
The first blow struck in the fight."
The Duke answered: "I grant."
Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt everything. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not as old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient proof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace wrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a monument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland" ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the starting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself rest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll of Battle Abbey in question. The whole fabric of society totters; the British peerage turns pale.
Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is supposed to have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of the men who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expressly said: "Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplum pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fighting temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof to satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena Rollandi" must have been a Norman "Chanson de Rou," or "Rollo," or at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Norman chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is quite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old enough.
Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmesbury. If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur happens to be known on still better authority than that of William of Malmesbury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of Queen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of Hastings which must have been complete within ten years after the battle was fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the Duke's battle:—
Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus.
"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, but
Taillefer was also an actor:—