el is always Duke
Naimes of Bavaria, the Nestor of the Carlovingian epic. In the earliest
Chansons the part played by women is not so conspicuous as in the later,
but in all except _Roland_ it has considerable prominence. Sometimes the
heroine is the wife, daughter, or niece of Charlemagne, sometimes a
Saracen princess. But in either case she is apt to respond without much
delay to the hero's advances, which, indeed, she sometimes anticipates.
The conduct of knights to their ladies is also far from being what we
now consider chivalrous. Blows are very common, and seem to be taken by
the weaker sex as matters of course. The prevailing legal forms are
simple and rather sanguinary. The judgment of God, as shown by ordeal of
battle, settles all disputes; but battle is not permitted unless several
nobles of weight and substance come forward as sponsors for each
champion; and sponsors as well as principal risk their lives in case of
the principal's defeat, unless they can tempt the king's cupidity. These
common features are necessarily in the case of so large a number of
poems mixed with much individual difference, nor are the Chansons by any
means monotonous reading. Their versification is pleasing to the ear,
and their language, considering its age, is of surprising strength,
expressiveness, and even wealth. Though they lack the variety, the
pathos, the romantic chivalry, and the mystical attractions of the
Arthurian romances, there is little doubt that they paint, far more
accurately than their successors, an actually existing state of society,
that which prevailed in the palmy time of the feudal system, when war
and religion were deemed the sole subjects worthy to occupy seriously
men of station and birth. In giving utterance to this warlike and
religious sentiment, few periods and classes of literature have been
more strikingly successful. Nowhere is the mere fury of battle better
rendered than in _Roland_ and _Fierabras_. Nowhere is the valiant
indignation of the beaten warrior, and, at the same time, his humble
submission to providence, better given than in _Aliscans_. Nowhere do we
find the mediaeval spirit of feudal enmity and private war more
strikingly depicted than in the cycle of the Lorrainers, and in _Raoul
de Cambrai_. Nowhere is the devout sentiment and belief of the same time
more fully drawn than in _Amis et Amiles_.

[Sidenote: Authorship.]

The method of composition and publication of these poems was pec