r these young people who are not
scholars I made it in the Romance tongue, for better will they
understand the language they have been accustomed to since childhood."

A la simple gent
Ai fait simplement
Un simple sarmun.
Nel fis as letrez
Car il unt assez
Escriz e raisun.

Por icels enfanz
Le fis en romanz
Qui ne sunt letre
Car miel entendrunt
La langue dunt sunt
Des enfance use.[167]

Religious works, as well as the chronicles, are mainly written in a
clear, thin, transparent style; neither sight nor thought is absorbed by
them; the world can be seen through the light religious veil; the
reader's attention wanders. In truth, the real religious poems we owe to
the Normans are those poems in stone, erected by their architects at
Ely, Canterbury, York, and Durham.

Much more conspicuous was the literature of the imagination composed for
them, a radiant literature made of numberless romaunts, songs, and
love-tales. They had no taste for the doleful tunes of the Anglo-Saxon
poet; his sadness was repellent to them, his despairs they abhorred;
they turned the page and shut the book with great alacrity. They were
happy men; everything went well with them; they wanted a literature
meant for happy men.

III.

First of all they have epic tales; but how different from "Beowulf"! The
Song of Roland, sung at Hastings, which was then the national song of
the Normans as well as of all Frenchmen, is the most warlike poem in the
literature of mediaeval France, the one that best recalls the Germanic
origins of the race; yet a wide interval already separates these origins
from the new nation; the change is striking.[168] Massacres, it is true,
still occupy the principal place, and a scent of blood pervades the
entire poem; hauberks torn open, bodies hewn in two, brains scattered on
the grass, the steam rising from the battle, fill the poet's heart with
rapture, and his soul is roused to enthusiasm. But a place is also kept
for tender sentiments, and another for winged speeches. Woman is not yet
the object of this tenderness; Charlemagne's peers do not remember Aude
while they fight; they expire without giving her a sigh. But their eyes
are dim with tears at the recollection of fair France; they weep to see
their companions lie prostrate on the grass; the real mistress of
Roland, the one to whom his last thought reverts, is not Aude but
Durandal, his sword. This is his love,