Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 264

250
3988: Quant l’emperere ad faite sa justice
E esclargiez est la sue grant ire,)
3991: Passet li jurz, la nuit est aserie.
Culcez s’est li reis en sa carabre voltice.
Seint Gabriel de part Deu li vint dire:
“Caries, summi les oz de tun emperie!
3995: Par force iras en la tere de Bire,
Reis Vivien si succuras en Imphe,
A la citet que paien unt asise;
Li chrestien te recleiment e crient.”
The last three verses of O, with Charlemagne’s exclamation Si penuse est
ma vie!, have left no trace in the chronicle.
The Danish form Ywan is the equivalent of lven, Ivein, in Icelandic
and Norwegian MSS, i.e. the Ivain of the Arthurian romances. The cor-
ruption of uiuien to iuein is very slight, in comparison with many other
corruptions in the saga. Nor is libialand very far from tere debire, but the
form in D may be due to the insertion of a fairly well known Libia for the
totally unknown Bire96.
There is no parallel in any French chanson de geste, as far as I know87,
to the rest of the tale of the fight with “Gealwer”. I cannot agree with
Storm and Steitz88 that the episode shows that the “original Chanson de
Roland” really contained this episode. It is unlikely that the Norse version,
which in so many respects is a remaniement, should have preserved the
original last laisse (s) of the poem. If Turoldus is not the original author,
but the remanieur who omitted this supposedly last episode of the story,
it is strange that the French MSS have not preserved any trace of it. If
the “omission” was due to the common source of O and the other versions,
we are again launched on the hopeless quest for an "Ur-Roland”.
The episode in the Danish chronicle is very short, and cannot have been
much longer in the saga, and the contents of the last part of it could not
possibly correspond to more than a few laisses. The tale is extremely
meagre and uninteresting, and has nothing whatever to do with the Roland
story. M. Aebischer concludes that the French source “donnait--------------en
dix ou vingt vers peut-étre, un rapide récit de la guerre de Charles contre
86 Libialand is mentioned in a collection of excerpts from various sources in
Hauksbok (ed. Finnur Jonsson, p. 165). The MS belongs to the early 14th century.
81 Cp. also Steitz, op. cit. pp. 668-69.
88 Storm: Sagnkredsene, p. 17; Steitz: Zur Textkritik etc. p. 669.