A Book of Myths
Turpin, their dear bishop, lay a-dying. Each step that he took cost
him a pang of agony; each step took from him a toll of blood. Yet
faithfully he performed his task, until they all lay around Turpin,
who gladly blessed them and absolved them all. And then the agony of
soul and of heart and body that Roland had endured grew overmuch for
him to bear, and he gave a great cry, like the last sigh of a mighty
tree that the woodcutters fell, and dropped down, stiff and chill, in
a deathly swoon. Then the dying bishop dragged himself towards him and
lifted the horn Olifant, and with it in his hand he struggled, inch by
inch, with very great pain and labour, to a little stream that
trickled down the dark ravine, that he might fetch some water to
revive the hero that he and all men loved. But ere he could reach the
stream, the mists of death had veiled his eyes. He joined his hands in
prayer, though each movement meant a pang, and gave his soul to
Christ, his Saviour and his Captain. And so passed away the soul of a
mighty warrior and a stainless priest.
Thus was Roland alone amongst the dead when consciousness came back to
him. With feeble hands he unlaced his helmet and tended to himself as
best he might. And, as Turpin had done, so also did he painfully crawl
towards the stream. There he found Turpin, the horn Olifant by his
side, and knew that it was in trying to fetch him water that the brave
bishop had died, and for tenderness and pity the hero wept.
"Alas! brave priest, fair lord of noble birth,
Thy soul I give to the great King of Heaven!
* * * * *
May thy fair soul escape the pains of Hell,
And Paradise receive thee in its bowers!"
Then did Roland know that for him, also, there "was no other way but
death." With dragging steps he toiled uphill a little way, his good
sword Durendala in one hand, and in the other his horn Olifant. Under
a little clump of pines were some rough steps hewn in a boulder of
marble leading yet higher up the hill, and these Roland would have
climbed, but his throbbing heart could no more, and again he fell
swooning on the ground. A Saracen who, out of fear, had feigned death,
saw him lying there and crawled out of the covert where he lay
concealed.
"It is Roland, the nephew of the Emperor!" he joyously thought, and in
triumph he said to himself, "I shall bear his sword back with me!" But
as his Pagan hand touched the hilt of the sword and would have torn it
from Roland's dying grasp, the hero was aroused from his swoon. One
great stroke cleft the Saracen's skull and laid him dead at Roland's
feet. Then to Durendala Roland spoke:
"I surely die; but, ere I end,
Let me be sure that thou art ended too my friend!
For should a heathen grasp thee when I am clay,
My ghost would grieve full sore until the judgment day!"
More ghost than man he looked as with a mighty effort of will and of
body he struggled to his feet and smote with his blade the marble
boulder. Before the stroke the marble split asunder as though the
pick-axe of a miner had cloven it. On a rock of sardonyx he strove to
break it then, but Durendala remained unharmed. A third time he
strove, and struck a rock of blue marble with such force that the
sparks rushed out as from a blacksmith's anvil. Then he knew that it
was in vain, for Durendala would not be shattered. And so he raised
Olifant to his lips and blew a dying blast that echoed down the cliffs
and up to the mountain tops and rang through the trees of the forest.
And still, to this day, do they say, when the spirit of the warrior
rides by night down the heights and through the dark pass of
Roncesvalles, even such a blast may be heard, waking all the echoes
and sounding through the lonely hollows of the hills.
Then he made confession, and with a prayer for pardon of his sins and
for mercy from the God whose faithful servant and soldier he had been
unto his life's end, the soul of Roland passed away.
"... With hands devoutly joined
He breathed his last. God sent his Cherubim,
Saint Raphael, Saint Michel del Peril.
Together with them Gabriel came.--All bring
The soul of Count Rolland to Paradise.
Aoi."
Charlemagne and his army found him lying thus, and very terrible were
the grief and the rage of the Emperor as he looked on him and on the
others of his Douzeperes and on the bodies of that army of twenty
thousand.
"All the field was with blod ouer roun"--"Many a good swerd was broken
ther"--"Many a fadirles child ther was at home."
By the side of Roland, Charlemagne vowed vengeance, but ere he avenged
his death he mourned over him with infinite anguish:
"'The Lord have mercy, Roland, on thy soul!
Never again shall our fair France behold
A knight so worthy, till France be no more!
* * * * *
How widowed lies our fair France, and how lone!
How will the realms that I have swayed rebel,
Now thou art taken from my weary age!
So deep my woe that fain would I die too
And join my valiant Peers in Paradise,
While men inter my weary limbs with thine!'"
A terrible vengeance was the one that he took next day, when the
Saracen army was utterly exterminated; and when all the noble dead had
been buried where they fell, save only Roland, Oliver, and Turpin, the
bodies of these three heroes were carried to Blaye and interred with
great honour in the great cathedral there.
Charlemagne then returned to Aix, and as he entered his palace, Aude
the Fair, sister of Oliver, and the betrothed of Roland, hastened to
meet him. Where were the Douzeperes? What was the moaning murmur as of
women who wept, that had heralded the arrival in the town of the
Emperor and his conquering army? Eagerly she questioned Charlemagne of
the safety of Roland, and when the Emperor, in pitying grief, told
her:
"Roland, thy hero, like a hero died," Aude gave a bitter cry and fell
to the ground like a white lily slain by a cruel wind. The Emperor
thought she had fainted, but when he would have lifted her up, he
found that she was dead, and, in infinite pity, he had her taken to
Blaye and buried by the side of Roland.
Very tender was Charlemagne to the maiden whom Roland had loved, but
when the treachery of Ganelon had been proved, for him there was no
mercy. At Aix-la-Chapelle, torn asunder by wild horses, he met a
shameful and a horrible death, nor is his name forgotten as that of
the blackest of traitors. But the memory of Roland and of the other
Douzeperes lives on and is, however fanciful, forever fragrant.
"... Roland, and Olyvere,
And of the twelve Tussypere,
That dieden in the batayle of Runcyvale;
Jesu lord, heaven king,
To his bliss hem and us both bring,
To liven withouten bale!"
Sir Otuel.
THE CHILDREN OF LIR
"Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water;
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose;
While murmuring mournfully, Lir's lonely daughter
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes."
Moore.
They are the tragedies, not the comedies of the old, old days that are
handed down to us, and the literature of the Celts is rich in tragedy.
To the romantic and sorrowful imagination of the Celts of the green
island of Erin we owe the hauntingly piteous story of the children of
Lir.
In the earliest times of all, when Ireland was ruled by the Dedannans,
a people who came from Europe and brought with them from Greece magic
and other arts so wonderful that the people of the land believed them
to be gods, the Dedannans had so many chiefs that they met one day to
decide who was the best man of them all, that they might choose him to
be their king. The choice fell upon Bodb the Red, and gladly did every
man acclaim him as king, all save Lir of Shee Finnaha, who left the
council in great wrath because he thought that he, and not Bodb,
should have been chosen. In high dudgeon he retired to his own place,
and in the years that followed he and Bodb the Red waged fierce war
against one another. At last a great sorrow came to Lir, for after an
illness of three days his wife, who was very dear to him, was taken
from him by death. Then Bodb saw an opportunity for reconciliation
with the chief whose enemy he had no wish to be. And to the
grief-stricken husband he sent a message:
"My heart weeps for thee, yet I pray thee to be comforted. In my house
have I three maidens, my foster-daughters, the most beautiful and the
best instructed in all Erin. Choose which one thou wilt for thy wife,
and own me for thy lord, and my friendship shall be thine forever."
And the message brought comfort to Lir, and he set out with a gallant
company of fifty chariots, nor ever halted until he had reached the
palace of Bodb the Red at Lough Derg, on the Shannon. Warm and kindly
was the welcome that Lir received from his overlord, and next day, as
the three beautiful foster-daughters of Bodb sat on the same couch as
his queen, Bodb said to Lir:
"Behold my three daughters. Choose which one thou wilt."
And Lir answered, "They are all beautiful, but Eve is the eldest, so
she must be the noblest of the three. I would have her for my wife."
That day he married Eve, and Lir took his fair young wife back with
him to his own place, Shee Finnaha, and happy were both of them in
their love. To them in course of time were born a twin son and a
daughter. The daughter they named Finola and the son Aed, and the
children were as beautiful, as good, and as happy as their mother.
Again she bore twins, boys, whom they named Ficra and Conn, but as
their eyes opened on the world, the eyes of their mother closed on
pleasant life forever, and once again Lir was a widower, more bowed
down by grief than before.
The tidings of the death of Eve brought great sorrow to the palace of
Bodb the Red, for to all who knew her Eve was very dear. But again the
king sent a message of comfort to Lir:
"We sorrow with thee, yet in proof of our friendship with thee and our
love for the one who is gone, we would give thee another of our
daughters to be a mother to the children who have lost their mother's
care."
And again Lir went to the palace at Loch Derg, the Great Lake, and
there he married Eva, the second of the foster-daughters of the king.
At first it seemed as if Eva loved her dead sister's children as
though they were her own. But when she saw how passionate was her
husband's devotion to them, how he would have them to sleep near him
and would rise at their slightest whimper to comfort and to caress
them, and how at dawn she would wake to find he had left her side to
see that all was well with them, the poisonous weed of jealousy began
to grow up in the garden of her heart. She was a childless woman, and
she knew not whether it was her sister who had borne them whom she
hated, or whether she hated the children themselves. But steadily the
hatred grew, and the love that Bodb the Red bore for them only
embittered her the more. Many times in the year he would come to see
them, many times would take them away to stay with him, and each year
when the Dedannans held the Feast of Age--the feast of the great god
Mannanan, of which those who partook never grew old--the four children
of Lir were present, and gave joy to all who beheld them by their
great beauty, their nobility, and their gentleness.
But as the love that all others gave to the four children of Lir grew,
the hatred of Eva, their stepmother, kept pace with it, until at
length the poison in her heart ate into her body as well as her soul,
and she grew worn and ill out of her very wickedness. For nearly a
year she lay sick in bed, while the sound of the children's laughter