THE GENESIS OF A ROMANCE-HERO, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF TAILLEFER DE LÉON.
BY F. V. BOURDILLON, M.A. OXON.
In the Saintonorese version of the famous chronicle of Turpin—the chronicle called by the learned, for safety's sake, the pseudo-Turpin—there is mentioned among the other trusty companions of Charlemagne a certain Taillefer de Léon, Count of Angoulême, of whom nothing else is written. History knows him not, and Romance elsewhere ignores him. It is true that we have one other mention of his name, but it is only on the same authority. In the curious little chronicle in the Saintongese dialect, prefixed in two MSS. to the Saintongese Turpin, which I am about to print under the title of Tote Listoire de France, and which M. Gaston Paris shows to be in all probability the work of the same translator as the Turpin, there is a brief but most mendacious account of the prowess of a later hero of the same name, another Taillefer de Léon, called, as the writer says, "after his uncle, who went with Charlemagne into Spain."
In endeavouring to trace this name from Romance backwards into History, I have come across certain indications which seem to point to a lost lay, possibly even a local epic, in which Taillefer de Léon was the prominent hero, and from which the Saintongese chronicler "reduced" his account, following therein the method of all early chroniclers back to the time of Cadmus, Pherecydes, and Hecatæus, who, according to Strabo,[1] compiled their histories by doing
- ↑ λύσαντες δὲ τὸ μέτρον τἀλλα δὲ φυλάξαντες τὰ ποιητικὰ συνέγραψαν οἱ περὶ Κάδμον καὶ Φερεκύδην καὶ Ἑκαταῖον.—Strabo, lib. i., c. 2, §. 6.
