“NOW THIS IS WHAT you’ll do, my lords,” the villain ordered:
“We’ll halt our progress here to rest our weary horses.
You know as well as I how far and fast we’ve brought them:
Let’s wait a while and see what hasty Ganor’s course is.
If he should turn on us, we’ll challenge him, most surely,
But if he strikes the town, we’ll hasten to support him
Till Avignon submits to our united forces.”
“My lord,” his men replied, “we shall obey, as always.”
But even as he spoke, and they received his orders,
1650 Sir Gui and all his folk burst forth and bounded forward:
Some thirty thousand men, and more, they rushed towards them,
Their battle-flags secured, their bodies armed for warfare.
Young Gui outran the rest two acres’ length, and calling
‘Nanteuil!’ for all his worth, made certain that they saw him!
“You sons of whores,” he cried, “ you thieves, at last we’ve caught you!
My mother, Lady Aye, has finished with your torments!”
On saying this, her son caught up with those before him
And ere his spear was spent, it sent some seven sprawling,
Who never stood again or rode again on horseback.
1660 At once the youngster seized his ready-girded sword-blade,
As from the rear his men attacked Sir Miles’s forces.
Then Ganor, from in front, turned rapidly towards them,
With fifty thousand men well armed in shining hauberks!
A bitter clash ensued: how mean it was and mortal:
Your eyes will never see so terrible a slaughter.
A BITTER CLASH ensued: how fearsome was the fray!
From every side the cries grew louder and apace,
But Miles could never hope his forces would prevail:
The force that Ganor brought against him was too great,
1670 Some seven men to one the numbers were that day.
The Lady Aye had climbed her tower’s height to gaze
Upon the bitter fight before her as it raged.
She watched as Ganor spurred and, with his spearhead raised,
Struck Pinabel’s first son, Acart of Valconbrez.
For all his armour’s strength it couldn’t take the strain
As Ganor stung his heart so well it split in twain
And flung him to his death one lance’s length away.
“By Aufalerne,” he cried, “these villains who have made
Fair Aye to suffer so will never rove again!
1680 Before this day is done, their work shall win its wage!”
The duchess watched him still and saw him draw a blade
That slaughtered seven more without the least delay.
“Dear God above,” she cried, “Whom sun and rain obey,
I’ve thought it many times and think it now a shame
That King Ganor the Moor, so gallant and so brave,
Is ignorant of Christ and of the Virgin Maid.
For, ever since the death of my lord Garnier,
Who wed me with his ring before King Charlemagne,
I’ve never seen a man so worthy to be saved.
1690 Today, may he be blessed sufficiently by fate
To be allowed to free my country from its pain!
If God Himself will give this Saracen such aid,
Then I at least should give the best reward I may!”
FAIR AYE WAS AT the windows of Avignon’s great castle
To watched the ambush closing and then the battle starting.
If you, alike, had been there when Ganor was advancing,
And seen him batter helmets and shatter sturdy armour,
And witnessed Gui employing his weapons like a master,
You would have looked on heroes and not forgotten after!
1700 King Ganor’s forces also lacked nothing in their ardour:
They fought en masse and fiercely where fighting was the hardest.
So many knights were smitten upon the ridden pastures
Their bodies lay in middens that grew forever larger.
The forces of the villain were facing a disaster!
“Nanteuil!” the youngster shouted, to drive his people harder,
“For Aufalerne as well!” the voice of Ganor answered.
When Gui could see before him the villain Miles, he asked for
A special lance his vassal, one Renier, had guarded,
Then, with it raised, he braced and chased towards his target.
1710 With ringing voice he shouted, while riding up to charge him,
“I challenge, you, Count Milon, to judgement everlasting!
How dare you vex my mother, her fortresses and farmlands?
The wages of your evil are here upon my lance head.
I’ll pay you for my mother and Garnier my father.”
Sir Miles, already charging towards him at his fastest,
Struck Gui upon the buckler while he was still advancing:
Its boss of gold was shattered, and though the panels parted,
They stopped the mail beneath them from being torn or tarnished.
The villain lost his lance, and any chance he harboured,
1720 When Gui the gallant youngster spared nothing in his answer:
The shield that Miles was bearing did naught at all to guard him,
Nor aught that he was wearing, nor all of his bravado:
The sturdy lance went through him as if he had no armour,
Through gut and rib it cleft him and left him broken-hearted!
The lad withdrew his weapon and slew the vicious varlet!
“Nanteuil!” he cried, “Good barons, now finish what I’ve started!
These felons will be feeble, bereft of their commander.
The death of Miles avenges my mother and my father.”
AS SOON AS Miles was down, his followers with fear
1730 Went fleeing through the field like startled flocks of sheep,
Penned in on either side by Ganor and young Gui,
Who sheared them of their heads as freely as their fleece!
So much of Miles’s stock was slaughtered in retreat
Ten thousand at the most were left alive to bleat
For mercy, which they did at once, upon their knees,
From King Ganor himself and Nanteuil’s scion Gui.
Their weapons cast aside upon the open field,
They swore to hold their lands in future from Sir Gui,
And always be his men until their lives should cease.
1740 “This suits me well,” said Gui, “if Ganor too agrees.
But if it’s not his wish, I’ll not accept your pleas.”
Said Ganor: “By Mahom, I grant it willingly.”
And so, before the knights, Gui took their fealty.
The clan of Ganelon, those left alive at least,
Swore pledges by the saints, before the gathered Peers,
That they would honour Gui and serve him as their liege.
When this was done the fight in every quarter ceased.
Dear God, what battle spoils King Ganor’s knights received!
The youngest ones were asked to bear them from the field.
1750 They rode then to the tower where Aye had watched the scene,
And she came out to them, her lovely face a-gleam
With smiles of thankful joy, and hugged them royally.
Then Ganor spoke his mind, exactly as you’ll hear:
“At compline yesterday, both Lady Aye and Gui
Swore pledges to myself that all of you could hear –
There’s no one who can say that this was not agreed –
They said that when they’d won this victory with me,
When Miles had been destroyed, his clansmen dealt defeat,
The first request I made in all propriety
; 1760 Would never be refused but granted speedily.”
“God bless me,” answered Aye, “you speak the truth indeed.
Request your wish, my lord, before us all and each.”
“My lady,” said the Moor, “The thing I hold most dear,
By Mahom’s beard, is you – and you are all I seek!
I want to wed you, Aye, in Pagan law and creed.
Now keep your plighted word from blight of perjury!”
THUS GANOR SPOKE his mind – and Aye was mindful ever
That he had left his land to offer hers protection,
Returning to her hands young Gui, the son she cherished.
1770 She wisely answered thus, without advice from any.
“My lord,” she said, “in truth, I owe you much affection.
Since, as you say you do, you truly wish to wed me,
I seek one favour more before I will accept you.”
Said he: “Upon my word, it’s good as done already!
There is no deed or gift of any kind or measure
That you could ask of me that I’d be loath to render!”
“My lord,” fair Aye replied, “the Word of God has blest you!
If you desire my love, my true love never ending,
I bid you to become a Christian king, and tender
1780 Your people and your land to Jesus Christ forever.
Thus shall we join our gifts and both our selves together.”
At this King Ganor ran to hug her, in acceptance,
And bade a bishop there to fill the founts for many!
With Sanson and Sir Gui as godfathers to help him,
King Ganor shed his robes to be baptised directly.
They didn’t change a name that had achieved such merit,
And called him, as before, King Ganor, then and henceforth.
King Ganor bade his knights to do as he himself had,
And any who would not, but stubbornly objected
1790 To take the Christian Faith, he straightaway beheaded!
That very day – the same that ended Aye’s adventures,
King Ganor wed his bride: to holy church he led her
And, as his wife and peer that he revered, he wed her.
If only you had seen the minstrels that attended –
As soon as any heard one word about the wedding,
So many of them came their sum could not be reckoned.
How great a day it was! How happy and how splendid!
If only you had heard those minstrels making merry
On trumpets, pipes and drums and on vièles a-plenty,
1800 You’d always have recalled the richness of their revels!
But I must carry on with what is left to tell you:
When day had turned to night and suppertime had ended,
The bishop put his stole around his neck and entered
Their royal rooms to give their marriage-bed his blessing.
Then Lady Aye was led, by maidens, to her bedroom,
With Ganor at her side, that good and gallant Gentile
Who for the love of Aye had heeded Christ in Heaven.
The room at last was cleared for their repose together,
And Ganor lay beside the bride he’d always cherished
1810 And could, at last that night, embrace alone at leisure
And take his joy of her and make of love a pleasure.
On that delightful night, good people, he engendered
A son, whose story too is very worth the telling:
They named him Anthony, at Ganor’s own suggestion,
And he would help Sir Gui in future times protecting
His gallant brother’s land from Ganelon’s descendants!
King Ganor, on the morn, went off to church, attending
The raising of the Host in sign of Resurrection.
Lord Jesus touched his heart, and from that day forever
1820 It beat with love of God, and hate of Pagan error.
King Ganor paid each bard and minstrel who was present
So richly that they sang his praises to the Heavens!
Addressing Gui, he said: “I cannot leave my empire,
But I will leave to you your father’s land, un-levied.”
But don’t you leave, my lords! I’ve plenty more to tell you
Of gallant Gui himself and of his life tormented
By Ganelon’s foul clan, whose plotting planned to end it!
❦
PART III
Martyred Minds
‘I want to tell a new kind of story,
‘I’ll tell you now a truly wondrous tale
Never heard before.
Of olden France, but well beyond the day
Know that it does not concern Ogier,
When Oliver and Roland had been slain.’
Nor Roland, nor Oliver,
But a most holy maiden
The Song of Blancheflor, ll.1–3, c.1240
Who was very courteous and beautiful.’
The Life of Saint Barbara, ll.1–6, c.1240
Many surviving testaments to the strongly religious society of Western Europe in the Middle Ages articulate an iconification of women that continues to speak to the fears, hopes and fantasies of some groups and individuals to this day. In medieval writings, both sacred and secular, a strong masculine ambivalence towards the mysterious ‘female other’ is exhibited in texts that alternate between the unequivocally misogynistic and the resolutely reverential. At both extremes of its ideological and rhetorical needs the medieval Church found two perfect symbols for its view of womankind in the biblical figures of Eve, the attested root of all evil, and that of the Virgin Mary, the invested flower of all perfection. Similarly, in secular French texts of the Middle Ages, women were both vilified in lengthy satirical tracts or short, bawdy verse-tales called fabliaux, and, at the same time, extolled in the lyrical southern love-poetry of the troubadours, and in the narrative courtly romances of the northern French trouvères.
In Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the new masculine reverence of women, in upper secular society at least, as expressed in the ethos, practice and literature of ‘courtly’ love (see Saracen Sirens pp.1–2), was greatly strengthened by the enormous growth throughout all Christendom of the cult of the Virgin Mary. At its Council of Ephesus in 431, Eastern theologians had established a parallel between the Passion of Christ and the compassion of His grieving mother: while He had suffered physically on the Cross, she had been crucified ‘in spirit’. From that century onwards, images of the Virgin and Child, in various iconographic representations that embodied different aspects of Church doctrine, bear witness to the Marian cult’s expansion into a vast devotional and imaginative aspect of Christian piety in the Western world. In France itself, the writings of churchmen such as Anselm of Bec (1033–1109) and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) were influential in establishing a theology for Marian devotion which synchronised in many respects with the ideology of courtly love that the upper reaches of French society had already embraced. The prayers to Mary composed by Anselm made use of the language of courtly romance and queenship to stress her benevolence and status as ‘redemptrix’, highlighting her maternal aspect as both the vehicle of the Incarnation and as the embodiment of forgiveness and grace. Bernard of Clairvaux identified Mary as the ‘Bride’ referred to in the passionate Song of Songs in the Old Testament, a figure both real and symbolic, to be worshipped as the Bride of Christ, the Personification of the Church and the Intercessor for all of human kind.
Thus, devotion to the Virgin Mary proved an ideal complement, sanctioned by the Church, to the secular service of a knight to his lady in the ‘courts of love’. Mary was a heavenly lady (lover) to be worshipped (wooed) and honoured as a royal personage (Our Lady, indeed, to whom many of the churches and cathedrals of the time were themselves dedicated). As the ethos of courtly love implied that love-service, o
r courtship, was to be viewed as a means of personal transformation on a moral journey, and not as the social vehicle to a sexual destination, the figure of the Virgin Mary symbolised perfectly the paradoxical role of the courtly lady: one who was, at once, both physically accessible but essentially unattainable.
The veneration of saints other than Mary – holy mortals who had lived a life of heroic virtue befitting them of heavenly reward as well as of human admiration – had also lain at the heart of Western religious practice since late antiquity. By its heyday in the thirteenth century hagiographic literature had recorded and praised many hundreds of these exemplary male and female lives. Widely disseminated and appreciated, hagiography had also greatly influenced other genres of French literature, altering particularly the traditional concept of what a hero – or heroine in fact –was. Several of the chansons de geste of the thirteenth century reflect in their own generic way this new kind of piety, which focused on the suffering of Christ. These Old French epics demonstrate, alongside many of the stylistic features of the courtly romances, new patterns of narration that bear a striking resemblance to those of the documented saintly career, in which separation from the family, suffering bravely endured, spiritual enlightenment and its rewards are the significant stages.
The Song of Blancheflor
Both Blancheflor and Bertha Broad-Foot do indeed introduce a new kind of epic tale into the chanson de geste repertoire, one which reflects many of the developments and changes that had taken place in medieval society since the actual days and subsequent imaginative ways in which the archetypal heroes of the Songs of Deeds had lived and died. A gradual but stunning transformation of the genre’s traditional ethos, characters and episodes can be witnessed in the narratives of the following poems – narratives that reflect more and more the hand of a writer, and not the voice a reciter.
The religious sentiment expressed so unequivocally in the Song of Roland as: ‘The Pagan’s wrong; the Christian way is right’ (l.1015) undoubtedly inspires and pervades the majority of the earliest, oral-based epics, providing the ethical fulcrum on which the entire drama and humour of their stories turn. The opening pair of poems translated in the present volume is imbued with the spirit of this combative assertion and both narratives are predicated upon it. In Aye of Avignon, however, this bias, having been tacitly assumed, is never actually proclaimed, and is eventually even challenged in the depiction of French aristocrats who are weak, selfish or evil, and a Pagan king who is strong, noble-hearted and good. In both Blancheflor and Bertha, however, any suggestion of this originally essential narrative bias has completely disappeared – indeed no Pagan character, in word or deed, is involved in the action of either poem at all. Religious and national conquest by the strength of heroes over adversaries are replaced in these compositions by the moral and personal triumph of virtuous heroines over adversities.
Heroines of the French Epic Page 34
