MEDIÆVAL GARDENS
tree was sacred to Adonis, Attis, and Osiris[1] (all, perhaps, varying forms of one and the same divinity), or have been suggested by some northern Saga. It makes its appearance in the Chanson de Roland, which has come down to us in a thirteenth-century form, incorporating the earlier Epic of Roland, probably composed towards the end of the eleventh century. In this we find mention of it when Charlemagne, after he is said to have taken Cordova, retires to a garden with Roland and Oliver and his barons, the elder ones amusing themselves with chess and tric-trac, and the younger ones with fencing, the king meanwhile looking on, seated under a pine-tree. Later in the day tents are set up, in which they pass the night, and in the early morning Charlemagne, after hearing mass, again sits under the pine-tree to take counsel of his barons.
In the Roman de la Rose, the fateful fountain of Narcissus is described as being beneath a pine-tree, which is represented as being taller and fairer than any that mortal eye had seen since the glorious pine of Charlemagne's time, showing that here at least the poet is making use of tradition.
But to make our way into a mediæval garden, and see all that grows therein, we must needs get within the precincts of the castle, for inside its fortified enclosure the castle, like a small village, was self-contained. And this was
- ↑ J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1906.
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