Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Page 266
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XVII
Conclusion
In this chapter I have tried to show that we have in Kms a number of
additions and changes in the text of the original Chanson de Roland which
must be due to a French remanieur. It has never been disputed that most
of these episodes are of French rather than Norse origin (e.g. the story
of Durendal, the burial of the peers, etc.), but I have tried to show that
even many of the omissions are in some way or other connected with the
additions, and that consequently, these too are due to the same remanieur.
For example, the punishment of Ganeion in the saga is a shorter and much
more prosaic affair than in the French MSS, and I have tried to show
that the Pinabel-Tierri episode had already been omitted in the French
source, and that this is why the translator could make neither head nor
tail of Charlemagne’s dream in vv. 2555-69. In the same way I have tried
to show that the omissions and changes in the account of Roland’s death,
vv. 2355-96, were caused by the inclusion, in the French version from
which the saga is derived, of the Durendal episode. Other omissions, such
as the shortening of the description of the approaching pagan army in vv.
1002-48, are not connected with other changes in this way, but I have
tried to show that the omission is deliberate, and part of a plan to shorten
the descriptions and to concentrate the action, to put Roland and Oliver
in the centre and omit references to the other French warriors. I am fully
aware that a hypothesis of this kind is incapahle of proof, since all evidence
built on the omission of a certain laisse must necessarily be negative. For
all we know some of the omissions may be due to sheer laziness on the
part of the translator.
The most important result reached in this chapter is the demonstration
that there are traces of this version in the later French MSS, and that V4
and all MSS of the version rimée are derived from a composite version,
in which a jongleur had combined the O and the Kms forms of the poem.
In the case of the description of the flight of Margariz at the end of the
first battie, the relationship between O. Kms and V4-version rimée is only
satisfactorily explained if this theory is accepted, and in a number of other
cases the text of the later French MSS is most naturally explained if we
assume that it is a combination of at least two variant editions of the poem.
If my theory is not accepted, it means that we shall have to assume that