Chansons de Geste and 12th Century Performance Sample

0:00This week on the members' feed, we dive deep into the song of Roland, how it was performed, what it meant, what the symbols were, and the thing that was most fascinating, at least to me about this whole thing, is how, even though it's about an old French king and it's an old French poem, it's actually properly British history. And you'll find out why towards the end of this sample. Here we go. So the song of Roland or La Chanson de Roland is a famous and by famous, I mean like, foundational epic French poem that was popular right around the turn of the 12th century and then forward. So it had a long, long life in terms of it being told and performed in various ways. Sort of the foundational example of a style of epic poetry that was called the Shansond de Guest, which is like the songs of deeds. So this was a form of poetry, of epic performance that was

1:00done all over France and the great French and Gemini that we've been talking about that happens in the 12th century and which means up and to including Britain. Well, and it seems like it's just a continuation of previous forms. Like, the idea that you would gather in a group and tell stories, like that's what Bale Wolf was, that's what Homer was. Yeah, it sits in this tradition quite comfortably. There are things that make it very distinct as like a very recognizable Shansond de Guest. But yeah, this is how people spent their time in the evenings. Now, what the sort of definitive version is very interesting for us as the British history podcast because our definitive version of the song of Roland appears to be a British copy. It's the most complete version and the oldest version. And it's called the manuscript that we have. The actual document is called the Oxford Digby 23 manuscript. The thing that's come to us today is actually stitched in with another book that's kind of unrelated, like someone had two books and stitched them together. Do we know who did that? We don't.

2:04But it could just be some monk being like these are my two favorite books. Yeah, and it was done much later. So the other thing that would, that's, I believe it's like a piece of Plato or something, not like Plato, but Plato. I was assuming. I think it's taburious. So it's like some scholar, somebody who could read in England was like these two stories just kick ass and belong together and binding them together. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, yeah, they wanted to be able to carry them together, preserve them together, but they weren't originally together. So the manuscript we have is called a digby 23b because a is that other book, but this other thing this song of Roland is complete and it looks worn and interesting. And I'll get to that in a minute, but let's go back over to what makes song of Roland, song of Roland and just chance on to guest style. Okay. So the actual poem, not the summary that we gave you, is a poem it's written in rhyme and

3:07meter or certain kind of rhyme and it's organized in what are called lasers. So these are not uniformly long, but essentially the stanzas of the poem. And sometimes there are just a few lines and sometimes there are like several lines, many, many lines. And each laser is kind of like a topic. You can think of it as like if we're talking about a movie, it's like where the camera is focused. So each laser is like a camera focused. You see a scene or the scene has a emotional tone. As soon as the tone shifts or the scene shifts, you have a new lace and it's written in and would have been performed in a deca syllabic meter. So 10 syllables. And it would have been cut up in four and six syllables, this is the way it was performed. So the first four syllables are you sort of speak at rising. And then there's a dramatic pause after four. And then the last six are descending. So think of this. So it starts with Iambic and then it ends with Trocheic. Try this. Call Lule.

4:10No Stratempre Magne. Where is it Magne or is it Magne? I believe that last one is up. Okay, so that's not an expert at this at all. I'm trying to read what I understood having not sat through a bunch of performances. Okay. But I believe it's something like that. The last syllable is important. There is a final stress on it, which becomes important about the manuscript that we have in just a minute. But generally think of it this way. 10 syllables per line. You talk rising pause. Talk down. Okay. And each line was like that. And it goes over and over. And it would have felt kind of hypnotic. Yeah. As you listen to this for four thousand lines, several hours about duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. That's cool. Now the meter does allow for that sort of like there's a there's a weirdness of that last syllable. And part of it comes out in various translations. Because again, we think that the last that this manuscript that we have is it's written down for this, but was part of an oral tradition

5:17that was much older. So we have an old definitive version that was probably particular to a person, a performer. But there would have been versions of this over and over again. We think that like oral tradition may have been as much as a hundred fifty years old by the time we get to the 12th century even. So it would have flowed and changed it through time. There's other characteristic narrative devices in here that would have made it really distinct. And it's fascinating because it's to me reading about it was like, Oh, it sounds like an action film, but as far as poetry goes. Yeah. So one thing we know about like romantic poetry from like the 19th century is it's very flowy, very soft focus. This was not that each lace has hard cuts between scenes. You just go from one scene to the other and you don't really let there's no like softness to it. So in example, Roland is dead, his soul with God in heaven. The emperor arrives at Rochival like that is a scene shift and it is just immediate. So when it's performed, is there any indication as to whether

6:22or not the performer is letting you know like is there one of those cool A O I guitar riffs that goes on there or something to let you know that now we're moving the camera like an audio version of me saying meanwhile. Yeah. In that main manuscript, there are these sort of enigmatic A O I's that are just at the end of some, but they're not consistent enough for us to be sure that exactly what was happening. So the assumption is that that's a note. What that note means we're not sure. But we are pretty sure that this would have been performed by a person. So you can assume that this performer had maybe a gesture. Maybe they took another stance. There's always a possibility that this was actually someone speaking over a troupe of performers. Yeah. Maybe storytelling at that point didn't need it. My guess is that there are no notes because everyone knows how to know. It anticipates and has such recognized conventions that I mean someone who is a performer of this may well have been born into it. This is about a second nature as you get. Sure. So that's

7:24why I think more of the audience perspective. So would this be something where the audience is already familiar with the story. So it's not going to be that train wreck of wait. What's going on in Charlottesville main? Yeah, probably because this would have been a very, very, very well-known story especially where we think it was performed. It also has this other convention which is really interesting, which is which made it just almost impossible for me to like wrestle into a BHP style summary, which is when something gets really emotional or the action gets really intense, they will like basically do like the slow-mo matrix version of poetry, which is you see the same shot from three different angles. So they will do one less, one less, one less of the same action, which was confusing AF to try and figure out what was going on. This is the poetry version of or medieval poetry version of like physical 100 where right at the end where they're crossing

8:26the finish line, you see it three times on the same guy, but the first time you see it you're kind of confused. Yeah, yeah. So they do it with so Roland refuses to blow the all-of-aunt. You see that three different time. Like, there's no separation, just they explain it one way, they explain it the same action another way, they explain the same action yet another way. You know, that there's also I'm feeling pretty good about describing it as the MC here because that also feels all of this feels very much like a comic book where they've got hard cuts, action scene, action scene, when they've got a really intense scene, they do it. All over again, that's what's happening and that is classically this style of epic poetry, not just the shanshan, lorolland, it's a lot of them. And this would have been a style that everyone knew, a style that people look forward to, a style that was very old and that people were kind of experts in doing. And it wasn't the only one there were other forms of art and performance going on.

9:26So this would have stood out as this kind of poem and maybe you had dirty jokes before and music after, right? Right. And if we go back to that manuscript through the digby 23, what's really exciting about this piece is that we think it is the working book of an actual guy, like an actual performer, a young player. We've got his name too, right? Maybe. We think we might have his name because at the very end there is an enigmatic line like the way it ends. It's line 4,000 in two. And it's a very last line that says, see fall, la gest, cue, t'erol de st'iclene. Okay. Here ends the guest, which t'erol de st'iclines to follow. So the the barit is like, I've gone as far as I want to go. My voice is wrecked. I'm getting a drink. Y'all in your own. It's not that because it's right before Shra'l remains lament that, oh, my life is a penance. And it's more like to roll this, who appears to be the performer, is going, that is so sad I can no longer tell anymore of the story. I declined

10:29to follow through. And so it's actually the whole thing just sort of ends on this like very dramatic, like, oh, like the it is about the burden of Christendom, right? Faced with a world that refuses to turn away from its paganness. We'll get to all of that. But because of this line, we think it's t'erol de st'iclene. We think we think this is the guy who owned this manuscript. This is his performance, his version that he ran around and performed. And we think that partly because of what this manuscript looked like, it's a little book. It's like six and a half inch by four and a half inch. So it's like a pocket copy. It's not like some rich guys. Oh, this is my favorite version of Lord of the Rings. So I'm going to get a really nice bound copy so I can read it. It's not that. And it's got those little notes in it. And this t'erol de st'iclene is not seen anywhere else. So it's not like a character in the poem. It's not some known scribe or some known other type of

11:30performer. It just seems to be this guy's copy, which is fascinating. The manuscript itself is also kind of beat up. And it's not particularly fine. Again, suggesting that it's a working copy. It would have been expensive, but it would have been this guy's probably craft. Right. And he would have been presumably one of these long lures, which are, which that is where the word juggler eventually turns into. But these were itinerant performers. The Bards. Bards. 100%. Just a bar glass guy moving from from presumably hall to hall city to city. Toss of coin to your witcher. Yeah. 100% that guy. We think they he probably would have used an instrument assuming he was traveling alone or he could have been traveling with their work troops. So maybe this was actually he was the sort of chanter or the the speaker in a troop. And maybe they had like a little action show going on in front of them. All a rocky horror picture show. Oh, man. That would be awesome.

12:31I don't know if you like through your bread trunchers at the at Gantelon at any point, but you know, maybe we we genuinely don't know. What's also interesting, especially for us, is that this thing is written again. The actual song of Roland would have been in oral tradition for a long, long time. We assume there were many different versions with slight variations. Though we can assume that like Decaux syllabic thing was probably pretty consistent. But whether or not all sections always made it. We assume that the trolless line is not anything else. But another thing that makes this manuscript, we think it's a particular guy, is it's written in a dialect that really places him not in the center of France, not even on the continent. It seems to be a Anglo-Norman dialect of French. So we think he was probably Anglo-Northy and performing in Britain or at least Normandy. Okay, so we've got the Anglo-Norman version and it's spoken in its own dialect. But that's the earliest one. The later copies are those in a

13:39more pure French. It's more that we know the pure French because of this style of epic poem. We have lots of this style of epic poem and what it is supposed to look like. So is this our only copy then? No, it's just the best most complete copy of the song of Roland. Okay. But it's not our best most complete copy of these chants on the guests. We're like a very famous. What I'm asking is like do we have other copies of the song of Roland to be able to compare in contrast and be like okay, so I keep on wanting to call him Thorvald. Thrall this. Thrall this. He left this part out or he inserted this bit in or do we have anything that's as complete to compare it to. But there's lots of references to the song of Roland being sung or performed both before and after this manuscript is found. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. And just people who do this can just tell based on what the style should be and how this guy's deviating from it. Right. And certain replacements like

14:46the O and O U of the Continental Pure French is gone and it keeps you in a place with you which is a very dialectic choice that places him as an Anglo-Norman. Would that be reflected in how it's pronounced or is that just a spelling thing? Probably both. Like they're spelling it as they're pronouncing it. So O is turning into. Okay. So Roland. Roland. Normal French kept turning into a Roland. Oh, okay. And I'm sure I'm mangling that because I'm not great at accents as it is. But there are there's the people who know what they're doing here are very certain that not only is that a deliberate thing that's reflecting an accent that's consistent that they know exactly which accent it is. And they're so good at it that they're pretty sure they can date the thing just based on this accent and how far it's drifted which places this as between 1140 and 1170. Cool. Specifically. Okay. So this is they're doing the kind of work on this that scholars have done like recreating the accent of Shakespeare. Yes. Cool. Yeah. And like to me it's like Blackmagic.

15:52So I'm terrible at even speaking my own language in my own way. But if you if you want to really dive into it, like I've got it here, but if I runny through it, I think I'll get lost. I think the audience will get lost. Fair enough. But it's there for those people who are like, oh, this is my thing. It is very interesting. But it's basically they're following different syllabic and pronunciation changes that are consistent. And they drift through the century as obviously French changes in England. And for the thought is is that for a lot of these young glurs, French would have kind of been their second language. And they speak in a kind of a dialectical way. Now this all makes sense. If if you're going to recreate an accent or a dialect poetry is going to be where it's at for you, because the meter and the rhyme scheme are going to be able to pick apart what's getting dropped and or even added. Yeah. Another one they I noticed that they had that I think I can pronounce is in continental, they have Dolor and in Britain, Normandy,

16:52that section, it becomes Dolor. So Dolor, Dolor, just that Oh turns into you. And they see it enough. And there's like changes in the nasal vowels. Okay. As well. And the thing that clinches it, I think for scholars is that this is it's a dialectical enough that it starts screwing with that decous syllabic meter. So a lot of the lines in this version are either there's only nine or they go up to 11 because stuff is starting to get dropped in England, Norman, French. Interesting. Is it dropped or are they like adding in syllables that aren't in there like doing the classic thing that the North tends to do? You take all the missing syllables in southern England and you shove them in northward. So you have like, South, in the South, and then you have like, Edinburgh in the north of Britain. It's something like that. I think it's specifically like that. And I'll

17:53see if I can, again, I was terrible at my linguistics class. But the Anglo-Norman French was specifically losing the last syllable if it was soft at the end of French words. So if something had like a soft E at the end, it was just starting to get dropped. And so that specifically was starting to screw with some of these things where we had a very specific syllable count. Okay. Okay. And because it's in a very particular style, that's I think my scholars are convinced that they know exactly where this guy was working and exactly what kind of dialect he was working in. Right. Which places him as, well even though this is a French poem about an old French king, this is a British piece and it would have been performed to Britain's. And from here we go all over the place. We're talking about the symbolism. We're talking about how the audience is constructive. We're talking about the musical accompaniment that goes on and what that would sound like. There's a lot of stuff that we cover in here and it's all a ton of fun. I learned

18:54quite a bit chatting with Z about this and I hope you will too. And we're not done yet. Z has another episode lined up where we're going to dive into the politics of this because actually this poem is throwing a lot of shade at contemporary politics and about historical figures that you are almost certainly familiar with. And so if you'd like to learn more and help keep this podcast going, please consider signing up for membership. And you can do so at the BritishAstratePodcast.com. Thanks for listening.