legend of St William of the Desert, though in a fashion sometimes
odd. M. Gautier will not allow any of these poems (except the
_Bataille Loquifer_ and the two _Moniages_) great age; and even if it
were otherwise, and more of them were directly accessible,[42] there
could be no space to say much of them here. The sketch given should be
sufficient to show the general characteristics of the _chansons_ as
each is in itself, and also the curious and ingenious way in which
their successive authors have dovetailed and pieced them together into
continuous family chronicles.

[Footnote 42: _Foulques de Candie_ (ed. Tarbe, Reims, 1860) is the
only one of this batch which I possess, or have read _in extenso_.]

[Sidenote: _Some other_ chansons.]

If these delights can move any one, they may be found almost
universally distributed about the _chansons_. Of the minor groups the
most interesting and considerable are the crusading cycle, late as it
is in part, and that of the Lorrainers, which is, in the main, very
early. Of the former the _Chansons d'Antioche_ and _de Jerusalem_ are
almost historical, and are pretty certainly based on the account of an
actual partaker. _Antioche_ in particular has few superiors in the
whole hundred and more poems of the kind. _Helias_ ties this historic
matter on to legend proper by introducing the story of the Knight of
the Swan; while _Les Chetifs_ (_The Captives_) combines history and
legend very interestingly, starting as it does with a probably
historical capture of certain Christians, who are then plunged in
dreamland of romance for the rest of it. The concluding poems of this
cycle, _Baudouin de Sebourc_ and the _Bastart de Bouillon_, have been
already more than once mentioned. They show, as has been said, the
latest form of the _chanson_, and are almost pure fiction, though they
have a sort of framework or outline in the wars in Northern Arabia, at
and round the city of Jof, whose crusading towers still, according to
travellers, look down on the _hadj_ route through the desert. _Garin
le Loherain_, on the other hand, and its successors, are pure early
feudal fighting, as is also the early, excellent, and very
characteristic _Raoul de Cambrai_. These are instances, and no doubt
not the only ones, of what may be called district or provincial
_gestes_, applying the principles of the _chansons_ generally to local
quarrels and fortunes.

Of what purists call the sophisticated _chansons_, thos