The Song of Roland/Postscript
Postscript
The day after I had sent the last of my part of this book to the Press, I came by chance upon M. Leon Gautier’s final edition of Roland.
This work, prepared for the use of Secondary Schools in France, is so admirable, in every way so necessary that its effect upon me has been that of King Vivien’s appeal upon Charlemagne.
Apart from its Introduction and Excursûs it contains a Glossary, which makes me ashamedly conscious of my temerity in translating “unseen.” But at present I will only admit to one “howler,” and that with reservations. In the punishment of Guenes, 3968 reads:
“Devers une ewe ki est en mi un camp.”
The word “ewe” MM. Gautier and de Julleville have alike rendered by “jument;” I by “stream.” And to “stream” I adhere, for, although “ewe” may be derived as well from “equam” as from “aquam,” it is used in the latter sense five times elsewhere in the poem, while: “ewe”=“equam,” in a long poem abounding in the mention of horses, occurs not once. I state this here to defend myself from the charge of illiteracy which will, I know, be brought heavily, on other grounds, against me.
M. Gautier charged M. de Julleville with an idolatrous fidelity to the text of the Oxford MS. To its 3998 lines he added but four; and I have added but one more. M. Gautier, from a careful and impartial study of all the trustworthy versions of the poem, has been able to emend it in many corrupt places and to add laisses and single lines to the number of five hundred. Upon his enlarged text the next edition of this work will be based.