The New International Encyclopædia/Aymon

AYMON, ā'mon. The surname of four brothers, called respectively Alard, Richard, Guiscard, and Renaud, sons of Aymon, or Haimon, Count of Dordogne, who figure among the most illustrious heroes of the chivalrie poetry of the Middle Ages. The story belongs to the cycle of romances in which Charlemagne is the central figure. Huon de Villeneuve, a French poet of the time of Philip Augustus (1180-1223), tells the story in his poem, entitled, Les quatre fils Aymon, while Ariosto later conferred poetical immortality on the family by the publication of his Orlando furioso, in which Renaud, or Roland, the bravest of the four brothers, plays the most distinguished part. Caxton printed, about 1489, an English translation of the story, and in 1884-85 the Early English Text Society reprinted Caxton's work, under the title, The Four Sons of Aymon. Tieck, the popular German writer, edited and published the story, but seems to have taken it from a different source. See Roland, The Song of.