Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Qupperneq 250

236
C Kms
6121-25: The Christians are buried.
Another miracle happens: hazel shrubs
grow up on the graves.
6126-34: These are used to make biers p. 52927'29: The emperor orders biers to
for the heroes who are going to be be made, and the bodies of Roland and
brought home. They leave Roncevaux. the peers and the chieftains who had
died there are put on them.
As already pointed out above (pp. 223-28), the first part of the episode
in the saga agrees fairly well with O, although with extensive omis-
sions: of the first hundred O verses (w. 2845-2944), only 13 have been
translated in the saga, and of the last part of the O episode (vv. 2945-73)
there is no trace. On the other hånd, in the second Roncevaux episode as
it appears in the version rimée, there are hardly more than a couple of
verses that faintly resemble the saga text (quoted in the table above).
But the sequence of events is the same in the version rimée episode as in
Kms. What the French MSS have in addition to the saga are the long
prayers, the allusions to Ganeion, and the intervention of St. Martin and
the miracle of the hazel shrubs. Such additions are typical of the version
rimée as a whole, not only of the episode we are dealing with. “Son but
essentiel est l’émotion puissante et facile. De lå sa recherche des gros
effets, des traits massifs”67, as M. Horrent justly remarks of the author
of this version.
There are also several smaller differences: in the saga, as in O, Roland
is found by the emperor, and the bodies of the peers are discovered after-
wards. There is no search for the peers, since the bodies had already been
put in one place by Roland. In the second scene in the version rimée, there
is of course no need to search for the peers; they are still where they were
discovered the first time. The emperor has to search for Roland, because,
in the MSS P and T, which have both the Roncevaux scenes, the bodies
of Roland, Oliver and Turpin have been taken away by the pagans dur-
ing the fight against Baligant: Malprimes, the son of the Saracen king,
goes to Roncevaux with a band of pagans, finds the bodies, and
P 4024: La fu Rolians sor un cheval levez,
Et Oliviers et Torpins li membrez;
Les autres laissent, nes ont pas remuez.
” La Chanson de Roland etc., p. 349. Cp. his survey of the development of the
version rimée, pp. 343-57.