into the Latin panegyrics produced by the court
poets. Before the end of the 9th century a monk of St Gall drew up a
chronicle _De gestis Karoli Magni_, which was based partly on oral
tradition, received from an old soldier named Adalbert, who had served
in Charlemagne's army. This recital contains various fabulous incidents.
The author relates a conversation between Otkar the Frank (Ogier the
Dane) and the Lombard king Desiderius (Didier) on the walls of Pavia in
view of Charlemagne's advancing army. To Didier's repeated question "Is
this the emperor?" Otkar continues to answer "Not yet," adding at last
"When thou shalt see the fields bristling with an iron harvest, and the
Po and the Ticino swollen with sea-floods, inundating the walls of the
city with iron billows, then shall Karl be nigh at hand." This episode,
which bears the marks of popular heroic poetry, may well be the
substance of a lost Carolingian _cantilena_.[1]

The legendary Charlemagne and his warriors were endowed with the great
deeds of earlier kings and heroes of the Frankish kingdom, for the
romancers were not troubled by considerations of chronology. National
traditions extending over centuries were grouped round Charlemagne, his
father Pippin, and his son Louis. The history of Charles Martel
especially was absorbed in the Charlemagne legend. But if Charles's name
was associated with the heroism of his predecessors he was credited with
equal readiness with the weaknesses of his successors. In the earlier
_chansons de geste_ he is invariably a majestic figure and represents
within limitations the grandeur of the historic Charles. But in the
histories of the wars with his vassals he is often little more than a
tyrannical dotard, who is made to submit to gross insult. This picture
of affairs is drawn from later times, and the sympathies of the poet are
generally with the rebels against the monarchy. Historical tradition was
already dim when the hypothetical and much discussed _cantilenae_, which
may be taken to have formed the repository of the national legends from
the 8th to the 10th century, were succeeded in the 11th and the early
l2th centuries by the _chansons de geste_. The early poems of the cycle
sometimes contain curious information on the Frankish methods in war, in
council and in judicial procedure, which had no parallels in
contemporary institutions. The account in the _Chanson de Roland_ of the
trial of Ganelon after the battle of Roncesv