The Song of Roland/Translator's Note
Translator’s Note
What follows is not a work of scholarship, nor yet of imagination: it is an attempt to reproduce line for line, and, so far as is possible, word for word, the Old French epic poem which lay dormant for centuries in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
My part in it began almost by accident when, on a hot afternoon in the summer of 1918, turning into the coolness of Hatchard’s, I found lying there a copy of M. Petit de Julleville’s edition of La Chanson de Roland.[1] Amid the distractions of that summer in London, where the sound of the olifant came so often and so direfully across the Channel, Roland was a constant solace, and in the leisure hours of that summer the first fourteen laisses were translated, copied, and circulated in manuscript. Afterwards the original went with me during winter and spring through France and Belgium, and returned with me to London where, in the summer months of 1919, the translation was begun again.
M. Petit de Julleville’s is the only edition I have used or even seen: of Mr. Masefield’s and other translations I know only by hearsay. M. de Julleville’s text, with which his translation was interleaved,[2] is in the main that of the Oxford MS., with some emendations by Muller and himself. In the Oxford MS. there are 3,998 lines; to these Muller added four, as follows:— | Line | 1615 | from the | Venice | MS. |
| 3146 | Versailles | MS.„ | ||
| 3390 | Paris | MS.„ | ||
| 3494 | Venice | MS.„ |
I have added a fifth, which I number 1777 a, from the Venice and Paris MSS. This line is quoted in a note by M. de Julleville. I have also followed Muller’s arrangement of the lines 1466–1670, which are displaced in the Oxford, but not in other MSS. The comparative result is as follows:
| Laisses. | |
| Muller, de Julleville, and this edition. |
113–122; 123, 124, 125, 126 |
| Oxford Manuscript. | 115–124; 126, 125, 113, 114 |
With these precautions, my translation may, I hope, be used as a “Companion to the Study” of the Oxford MS.
I do not propose to discuss the operation of the Law of Assonance on our language, beyond suggesting that it is an operation under local anæsthetics, which some degree of painfulness may accompany. For variety, there are twenty-two different vowel-endings in the original poem, of which half are feminine or double endings. This number I have not attempted to match. For consonance, I know that in the old language the predominance of vowel over consonant sounds makes it almost always rhyme; and in this belief I have indulged in sequences of rhyme to which the professors of assonance may easily take exception. I claim only that my translation is literal: if it cannot be read with enjoyment, there is no more to be said.
Proper names I have spelt mostly as in the original, anglicising such words as England and Spain—as also Rhone (1583), Toledan (1568), and some others; some I have further varied to improve my assonances. I claim also the privilege of making one or two syllables, as the metre may require, of Charles, Neimes, and Guenes; and of similarly treating past participles. The vowels of “to,” “the,” and some other words I have treated as elided before initial vowels: “The Archbishop” and “The Emperour” are invariably three syllables; “That Archbishop” and “That Emperour” are four.
The light thrown by Prosody, a science that once heard my vows of lifelong service is, I find after five years spent in reading Routine Orders and writing on Army Forms, dazzling rather than illuminant. I have therefore asked the Historian of Prosody, of French and of English Literature, and (incidentally) of Criticism, to review my work in its relation to the original, asperging both with the blessings of his unexhausted pen.
Scottish Presbyterian readers may, meanwhile, like to be reminded that the whole poem can be sung, both in French and English, to the favourite tune of their metrical Psalm:
“Now Israel may say, and that truly.”
And, as of Prosody, so of Chivalry I can, after this war, speak with no certain voice. But Mr. Chesterton has shewn, as I think he only is now qualified to shew, that my work is not a mere exercise in a dead dialect, but may be read in the light of many of the aspirations, the intentions, even the despairs of to-day.
I am indebted also to some who have let themselves be charged with my manuscript at different stages of its progress; namely, Lord Howard de Walden, Mr. C. E. Montague, Mr. J. C. Squire, Mr. Robert Graves, and Mr. Alec Waugh.
To three others, on whose sympathy I can still rely, I have dedicated this book; and, when the time comes, I will thank them.
Charles Scott Moncrieff.
- ↑ “La Chanson de Roland.” Traduction Nouvelle Rhythmée et Assonancée. Avec une Introduction et des Notes par L. Petit de Julleville. Paris. Alphonse Lemerre, Editeur 27–31, Passage Choiseul, M DCCC LXXVIII.
- ↑ “La Chanson de Roland,” berichtigt und mit einem Glossar versehen, nebst Beitragen zur Geschichte der französischen Sprache, von Th. Muller. Göttingen, 1851.