g the initials of his degree as A.M.

Apropos of Oxford, I recently met the following sentence at p. 3. of
_Verdant Green_:

"Although pronounced by Mrs. Toosypegs, his nurse, to be 'a perfect
progidye,' yet we are not aware that his _debut_ on the stage of life,
although thus applauded by such a _clacqueur_ as the indiscriminating
Toosypegs, was announced to the world at large by any other means than
the notices in the county papers."

If the author ever watched the hired applauders in a Parisian theatre, he
would have discerned among them _clacqueuses_ as well as _clacqueurs_.

JUVERNA, M.A.

* * * * *

ROLAND THE BRAVE.

(Vol. ix., p. 372.)

In justification of Dr. Forbes' identifying Roland the Brave with the hero
of Schiller's ballad, Ritter Toggenburg, I beg to refer your correspondent
X. Y. Z. to _Deutsches Sagenbuch, von L. Bechstein_, Leipzig, 1853, where
(p. 95.) the same tale is related which forms the subject of Mrs. Hemans'
beautiful ballad, only with this difference, that there the account of
Roland's death entirely agrees with Schiller's version of the story,
whereas the English poet has adopted the general tradition of Roland's fall
at Roncesvalles.

Most of the epic poems of the middle ages in which Roland's death is
recorded, especially the different old French _Chansons de Roland ou de
Roncevaux_, an Icelandic poem on the subject, and Stricker's middle-high
German lay of Roland, all of them written between A.D. 1100 and 1230--agree
in this, that after Roland's fall at Roncesvalles, and the complete rout of
the heathen by Charlemagne, the latter returns home and is met--some say at
Aix-la-Chapelle, others at Blavie, others at Paris--by Alda or Alite,
Olivier's sister, who inquires of him where Roland, her betrothed, is. On
learning his fate she dies on the spot of grief. According to monk Conrad
(about A.D. 1175), Alda was Roland's wife. See _Ruolandes Liet, von W.
Grimm_, Goettingen, 1838, pp. 295--297.

The legend of Rolandseck, as told by Bechstein from Rhenish folk lore,
begins thus:

"Es sasz auf hoher Burg am Rhein hoch ueber dem Stromthal ein junger
Rittersmann, Roland geheiszen, (manche sagen Roland von Angers, Neffe
Karls des Groszen), der liebte ein Burgfraeulein, Hildegunde, die
Tochter des Burggrafen Heribert, der auf dem nahen Schlosz Drachenfels
sasz," &c.

Here the question is left open whether the hero