Cf. Stratmann, p. 194.
p. 41, l. [1433]. Roland and Olyver are taken prisoners. This incident is differently related in the other poems. There Roland is not taken at all, but sent afterwards among the messengers to the Soudan’s court. Together with Oliver four knights are taken, viz. Gwylmer, Berard, Geoffrey and Aubry, who all are carried away by the flying Saracens in spite of the efforts of Roland and Ogier.
p. 42, l. [1451]. what = “who.” See Koch, Eng. Gr. II. § 339, and Skeat’s note to Piers the Plowman (Clarendon Press), 113/19. So in ll. 1133, 1623.
p. 42, l. [1456]. astyte has nothing to do with the Latin astutus with which the editor of the Roxb. Club ed. apparently confounds it in explaining it as “cunningly devised.” Astyte means “at once, immediately, suddenly”; see Morris, Glossary to Allit. Poems. It is a compound of the simple word tyte, “soon, quickly,” which see above, l. 181.
p. 43, l. [1475]. Turpyn. The name of the archbishop is not mentioned in the Ashmolean version. The French text, ll. 1836–40, runs as follows: [‹p120›]
“Karles, nostre empereres, en est en piés levés,
Il apela Milon et Turpin l’alosés,
Deus rices arcevesques de moult grant sainteté:
Faites moi tost uns fons beneir et sacrer;
Je woel que cis rois soit bauptiziés et levés.”