the Iliad. Its
continuation, _Jourdains de Blaivies_, adds the element of foreign
travel and adventure; but that element is perhaps more
characteristically represented, and the representation has certainly
been more generally popular, in _Huon de Bordeaux_.

[Sidenote: Other principal Chansons.]

Of the remaining Chansons, the following are the most remarkable.
_Aliscans_ (twelfth century) deals with the contest between William of
Orange, the great Christian hero of the south of France, and the
Saracens. This poem forms, according to custom, the centre of a whole
group of Chansons dealing with the earlier and later adventures of the
hero, his ancestors, and descendants. Such are _Le Couronnement Loys_,
_La Prise d'Orange_, _Le Charroi de Nimes_, _Le Moniage Guillaume_. The
series formed by these and others[22] is among the most interesting of
these groups. _Le Chevalier au Cygne_ is a title applied directly to a
somewhat late version of an old folk-tale, and more generally to a
series of poems connected with the House of Bouillon and the Crusades.
The members of this bear the separate headings _Antioche_[23], _Les
Chetifs_, _Les Enfances Godefroy_, etc. _Antioche_, the first of these,
which describes the exploits of the Christian host, first in attacking
and then in defending that city, is one of the finest of the Chansons,
and is probably in its original form not much later than the events it
describes, being written by an eye-witness. The variety of its
personages, the vivid picture of the alternations of fortune, the vigour
of the verse, are all remarkable. This group is terminated by _Baudouin
de Sebourc_[24], a very late but very important Chanson, which falls in
with the poetry of the fourteenth century, and the _Bastart de
Bouillon_[25]. _La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche_[26] is the oldest
form in which the adventures of one of the most popular and romantic of
Charlemagne's heroes are related. _Fierabras_ had also a very wide
popularity, and contains some of the liveliest pictures of manners to be
found in these poems, in its description of the rough horse-play of the
knights and the unfilial behaviour of the converted Saracen princess.
This poem is also of much interest philologically[27]. _Garin le
Loherain_[28] is the centre of a remarkable group dealing not directly
with Charlemagne, but with the provincial disputes and feuds of the
nobility of Lorraine. _Raoul de Cambrai_[29] is another of the Chansons
w