as Campbell.

"Hero-worship endures for ever while man
endures."

Carlyle.

"Roland, the gode knight."

Turpin's _History of Charlemagne_.

The old chroniclers tell us that on that momentous morning when
William the Conqueror led his army to victory at Hastings, a Norman
knight named Taillefer (and a figure of iron surely was his) spurred
his horse to the front. In face of the enemy who hated all things that
had to do with France, he lifted up his voice and chanted aloud the
exploits of Charlemagne and of Roland. As he sang, he threw his sword
in the air and always caught it in his right hand as it fell, and,
proudly, the whole army, moving at once, joined with him in the
_Chanson de Roland_, and shouted, as chorus, "God be our help! God be
our help!"

"Taillefer ... chantoit de Rollant
Et d'Olivier, et de Vassaux
Qui mourent en Rainschevaux."

Wace, _Roman de Rose_.

Fifteen thousand of those who sang fell on that bloody day, and one
wonders how many of those who went down to the Shades owed half their
desperate courage to the remembrance of the magnificent deeds of the
hero of whom they sang, ere ever sword met sword, or spear met the
sullen impact of the stark frame of a Briton born, fighting for his
own.

The story of Roland, so we are told, is only a splendid coating of
paint put on a very slender bit of drawing. A contemporary chronicle
tells of the battle of Roncesvalles, and says: "In which battle was
slain Roland, prefect of the marches of Brittany." Merely a Breton
squire, we are told to believe--a very gallant country gentleman whose
name would not have been preserved in priestly archives had he not won
for himself, by his fine courage, such an unfading laurel crown. But
because we are so sure that "it is the memory that the soldier leaves
after him, like the long trail of light that follows the sunken sun,"
and because so often oral tradition is less misleading than the
written word, we gladly and undoubtingly give Roland high place in the
Valhalla of heroes of all races and of every time.

777 or 778 A.D. is the date fixed for the great fight at Roncesvalles,
where Roland won death and glory. Charlemagne, King of the Franks, and
Head of the Holy Roman Empire, was returning victoriously from a seven
years' campaign against the Saracens in Spain.

"No fortress stands before him unsubdued,
Nor wall, nor city left to be destroyed,"

sa