_
(two forms), the _Life of Charles the Great_, _The Soudone of
Babylone_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, and _The Four Sons of Aymon_, besides a
very curious semi-original entitled _Rauf Coilzear_ (Collier), in
which the well-known romance-_donnee_ of the king visiting some
obscure person is applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version
of _Huon of Bordeaux_,[27] is literature of no mean kind; but this is
because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present
period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form
of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very
large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the
punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and
substance of the _chansons_ proper.

[Footnote 24: _V._ the famous and all-important ninth chapter of the
first book of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_.]

[Footnote 25: See especially _Macaire_, ed. Guessard, Paris, 1860.]

[Footnote 26: So also the _geste_ of Montglane became the
_Nerbonesi_.]

[Footnote 27: Ed. S. Lee, London, 1883-86.]

[Sidenote: _Their authorship and publication._]

Very great pains have been spent on the question of the authorship,
publication, or performance of these compositions. As is the case with
so much mediaeval work, the great mass of them is entirely anonymous.
A line which concludes, or rather supplements, _Roland_--

"Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet"--

has been the occasion of the shedding of a very great deal of ink. The
enthusiastic inquisitiveness of some has ferreted about in all
directions for Turolds, Thorolds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh
century, and discovering them even among the companions of the
Conqueror himself, has started the question whether Taillefer was or
was not violating the copyright of his comrade at Hastings. The fact
is, however, that the best authorities are very much at sea as to the
meaning of _declinet_, which, though it must signify "go over," "tell
like a bead-roll," in some way or other, might be susceptible of
application to authorship, recitation, or even copying. In some other
cases, however, we have more positive testimony, though they are in a
great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned the work of Richard the
Pilgrim, an actual partaker of the first Crusade, into the present
_Antioche_, _Jerusalem_, and perhaps _Les Chetifs_. Either Richard or
Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of the whole