The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - September 05, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #62 ｜ Song Of Roland with Elizabeth Heverin


Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

149.42

Word count

3,072

Sentence count

143

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about
00:00:17.520 The Song of Rowland by an unknown poet. And here making her Chronicles debut is Elizabeth
00:00:24.160 Heverin. Thank you for joining me. It's great to be here. Wonderful. Thank you for coming on to
00:00:27.920 talk about such a a magnificent medieval epic poem and and also as well this is not just any
00:00:35.680 medieval epic poem this is the oldest surviving french language piece of literature that we have
00:00:44.320 as well the particular translation that most people go off of is based off of the the oxford
00:00:51.360 i was gonna say extract yeah written in anglo-norman yes by someone who'd obviously come
00:00:57.360 over after the conquest but uh we don't like to talk about that much but obviously like any of
00:01:03.340 these things um there is a little bit of history in the legend and in the myth but also as well
00:01:10.000 there is that aspect of it that it you can tell it's obviously come from the oral tradition of
00:01:16.180 storytelling right and the old sort of um frankish and germanic um heroic songs of deeds and that's
00:01:23.500 indeed what this is. It is a chanson de guest. It is a song of deeds. And this is quite different
00:01:30.900 in the medieval sense from pieces of literature that we obviously have towards the end of the
00:01:38.180 12th century and the 13th century, where we start to get people like Chrétien de Troyes
00:01:42.260 writing the romances, because this is not romance, of course. This is not about chivalry for the
00:01:48.540 sake of beauty and love this is about chivalry for your lord for service for service and honor
00:01:54.940 and fealty to the great king to charlemagne uh himself one of the greatest kings of course
00:02:01.780 um of all time and a man who left an indelible mark uh on the landscape of europe and of course
00:02:09.140 you know the carolingian court was uh something of such a breathtaking vitality and so i suppose
00:02:15.160 that brings us to the history of it as well the history that the the song of roland is actually
00:02:21.460 based on and the fact that actually to say that this um entire uh story is about um one massive
00:02:33.200 good versus evil battle between the christians and the muslims the history that it's based on
00:02:39.780 is not like that at all. This is actually something that was a meek disaster for Charlemagne 0.87
00:02:48.420 during the Iberian campaign that he was leading. Well, France was not France as we knew it back
00:02:54.380 then, for one thing. You obviously still had the Bretons of Brittany holding out against,
00:03:01.160 in fact, Rowland, historically speaking. It's only a couple of hundred years after Fortigan
00:03:08.020 where the Britons fled to Brittany, which is interesting.
00:03:11.080 It is.
00:03:11.540 So it's quite close to the time span.
00:03:14.600 Yeah, it is.
00:03:16.020 And Roland was a prefect of the Breton Marches.
00:03:22.380 So like what we obviously had in your more local Cheshire
00:03:26.220 with the Cheshire March Wars, and it was their duty to watch that border. 0.65
00:03:31.500 To watch the Welsh once again, even in the lands of France. 0.70
00:03:34.720 Yeah, keep an eye on them. 0.97
00:03:35.940 So it was with Rowland and the Bretons.
00:03:38.380 The Bretons never change.
00:03:39.540 No, no. 0.90
00:03:40.480 Like Hadrian's war to keep the Scots in.
00:03:42.560 Yeah. 0.95
00:03:43.820 Good sider, though.
00:03:44.860 I'll give them that.
00:03:47.020 But obviously, so Charlemagne is consolidating his power.
00:03:50.980 You've obviously got the Accutane and you go down to Gascony. 0.62
00:03:54.040 And then essentially what ended up happening was due to some negotiations between the Moorish Muslims and Charlemagne,
00:04:02.340 he saw an opportunity to further Frankish power into the Pyrenees
00:04:07.700 and into the peninsula of Spain.
00:04:11.400 And he was attacked on his retreat back to France.
00:04:14.980 His rear guard was attacked in the Pyrenees at the Battle of Ronceveau,
00:04:20.160 Ronceveau Pass.
00:04:22.380 And in this tale, in the actual history, Roland, Anselm
00:04:27.660 and some other figures perished in it.
00:04:30.840 Well, the whole rear guard was wiped out.
00:04:32.920 It was a great calamity.
00:04:34.560 Yeah, I have a quote here.
00:04:37.040 There's not a few sources.
00:04:39.100 There's only a few sources on the actual Sotiroland.
00:04:43.180 We don't know too much about him.
00:04:44.540 So a lot of what we know has been translated through all tradition,
00:04:48.280 like many things.
00:04:49.680 So much of our mythology as a British people
00:04:51.920 is translated through all traditions.
00:04:53.460 It's how our ancestors passed down heroic stories.
00:04:56.920 Like Beowulf.
00:04:57.520 Yeah, like Beowulf, like the Arthurian legends
00:05:00.120 and the history of the Britons, because before that,
00:05:05.160 the two sources before Geoffrey of Monometh was Gildas and Nennius,
00:05:08.680 and that was it.
00:05:09.500 So all of their history was passed down by their forefathers.
00:05:13.220 Stories around the fire, great poems told by bards,
00:05:18.300 which they could recite via memory. 0.99
00:05:21.080 These were truly passed down and weren't put onto paper.
00:05:26.100 And so much of what we know from Rowland is through that oral tradition.
00:05:30.120 So there's only a couple of writings and only one I can find, which just speaks on the actual Roland.
00:05:37.620 It's by this guy called N. Hoods, who writes the life of Charlemagne.
00:05:42.840 And then he has this quote here in this book.
00:05:46.040 And he says, in the battle of Eginhar, the overseer of the king's table, Anselm, the court of the palace,
00:05:52.680 and Roland, the perfect of the Breton March, were killed, along with others.
00:05:56.560 and the deed could not be offenged at the time
00:05:58.820 because the enemy had so deserted
00:06:01.200 that not even a rumour remained
00:06:03.200 as to where they might be sought
00:06:04.980 so it seems that
00:06:08.820 in the real sort of offence of Rowland
00:06:13.740 Chardemain doesn't offenge him
00:06:15.860 like that of the poem
00:06:17.940 and that's sort of added on
00:06:19.820 to sort of build up the greatness around Chardemain
00:06:23.440 um and sort of tell of his heroic journey um sort of like how you see in what's written by
00:06:32.700 jeffrey of monomer from relation to king arthur he uh sort of builds them out to be this
00:06:38.200 empire builder which he wasn't and so in the story in his story of aging britainy um arthur goes and
00:06:45.540 conquers all of europe which is simply just conquers the roman empire but it seems to be
00:06:49.480 this theme of when all tradition is written down and it's molded and things are added and it's
00:06:55.400 turned into a great epic epic that um the achievements of the king is exaggerated
00:07:02.020 yes well we see that in here as well charlemagne yeah yeah well for example um so to begin with
00:07:09.620 with the poem it opens with the context of the fact that charlemagne and his great host of
00:07:15.420 Christian forces have been fighting for many, many years at this point against the Muslim Moors,
00:07:22.140 obviously, who had conquered the way across with the Umayyad Caliphate all the way, obviously,
00:07:27.560 across the Spanish peninsula. And what would eventually be the Reconquista would, of course,
00:07:33.740 retake all of that territory. Here, from the very beginning, what we get is the fact that
00:07:39.120 Charlemagne has already done that. And so Charlemagne's great host of Christians have
00:07:44.580 conquered the Muslims all the way back to Saragossa. And this is a final holdout of the 1.00
00:07:50.960 Muslims. And so obviously this is entirely ahistorical. But at the end of the day, this is 0.95
00:07:56.520 not a story that is aiming for historicity. What the tale is doing is inculcating moral
00:08:04.980 correctness. It's a moral fabric for its own age. It is. Such as what all texts are transformed
00:08:11.300 into. So for the age in which the Song of Roland's put onto paper by an unknown monk,
00:08:19.940 likely, or an unknown author, he sort of transforms it to be a moral exemplar for the age of the
00:08:26.820 Crusades. In the same way that when you look at Geoffrey of Monomus' Historia Raging Brittany,
00:08:34.020 it's remoulded as a moral fabrica for the anarchy and to warn the Anglo-Norman
00:08:40.580 and Contepreys about the dangers of infighting, saying, here's the history of the Britons
00:08:45.480 who, through their own infighting, led to their own downfall, and they betrayed the
00:08:49.700 highest king, which was King Arthur.
00:08:51.780 Right.
00:08:52.620 You'll end up like them if you don't fix your ways.
00:08:55.940 And, of course, the Song of Roland's much different because they don't bring down
00:09:00.720 Charlemagne.
00:09:01.400 They serve him with honour and greatness.
00:09:03.620 And those that don't end up getting their just comeuppance.
00:09:07.020 It's telling the people of age that God is greater than you are and you have to serve the Lord and you have to serve Christianity and put it above yourself. 0.94
00:09:19.440 Yes, definitely. 0.82
00:09:20.240 That this is a fight between good versus evil. And it's really echoed in the Song of Rowland.
00:09:25.240 Yes. One of the interesting things to mention as well is that though most modern day adaptations of translations of the Song of Rowland are based on the Oxford manuscript, there are obviously other surviving fragments of it as well that have been found as far away as Italy.
00:09:43.080 And they're not all the same. Some of them, because it's obviously started out as an oral tradition, that means that wherever the story is travelled to, there are different variations on it.
00:09:54.240 just like the orphirian legends yeah some parts are lingered on more than others some parts are
00:09:58.720 skipped over some minor characters in one are made into more middling characters of middling
00:10:05.420 importance in others so with this one but this is a general one that most people go off of
00:10:11.580 and my translation here is by C.K. Scott Moncrief who was a Scottish writer who was also a veteran
00:10:19.080 of world war one um yeah quite remarkable live story in and of himself um but he uh obviously
00:10:26.700 translated this after the war and it's a really fantastic adaptation also by chance my what's the
00:10:34.320 name my guy who's translated uh ck scott munkrie mine's dorphy l sayers but he he writes it in sort
00:10:44.120 Shakespearean language which is utterly beautiful. I'm going to say as well, a lot of people might
00:10:53.320 say that the Song of Roland's fabricated because it comes around in the 12th century, and how do
00:10:59.800 we know that this sort of epic tale was around before that? Well, there's one example we have
00:11:09.240 by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Weiss. He writes in 1160, so it predates this.
00:11:18.040 So you say he wrote in 1160? 1160.
00:11:21.320 So that's actually probably a few years after the copy we have.
00:11:26.600 Yeah, I mean, they don't really know when the copy actually dates to.
00:11:31.960 Between 1100 and 1150 is the guess that most scholars give.
00:11:39.240 Or even in the late 1100s, we just simply don't know.
00:11:43.200 All we have is just estimations.
00:11:45.540 But he writes in Roman de Roe, that a member of William Concord's household
00:11:50.500 sung a version of the Song of Roland at the Battle of Hastings in 1066,
00:11:56.420 which is utterly remarkable.
00:11:58.640 And it sort of shows that actually the Song of Roland's part of our mythos,
00:12:02.960 having a Norman aristocracy 0.89
00:12:06.060 sort of Roland is as worthy
00:12:10.540 as our tales as King Arthur as a people
00:12:14.680 he is really in our blood
00:12:16.760 fire, our ancestors
00:12:19.900 that came from William the Conqueror's army
00:12:23.840 but it reminds me of
00:12:26.200 going back, I think Geoffrey of Monomath
00:12:30.200 his story is raging in Britain
00:12:31.540 and it's just a great Conterbury comparison
00:12:33.800 to the Song of Rowland.
00:12:35.760 But a lot of people say he fabricated this history.
00:12:38.300 But when you look at just a couple of years
00:12:41.440 before his book was published,
00:12:42.800 there was tales of people already retelling
00:12:47.800 this legend of Arthur.
00:12:49.240 There's one example in Cornwall
00:12:51.440 where a Norman said to a Cornish man
00:12:54.480 that King Arthur was dead and he wasn't coming back,
00:12:56.900 and the Cornish man punched him,
00:12:58.320 which showed how seriously they took this old tradition.
00:13:02.320 And so the same is with the Song of Roland.
00:13:05.320 This is, and we know for certain, a song that was sung by our ancestors through all tradition.
00:13:12.320 It wasn't completely fabricated from some parts of the original story.
00:13:18.320 Charlemagne and his army have conquered the way all the way to Saragossa.
00:13:22.320 And we actually begin within this context with the king, the Muslim king of Saragossa himself, King Marseille.
00:13:30.040 Now, if that doesn't sound like a particularly Islamic name, none of the Muslims in this have Islamic names, right?
00:13:37.100 There is just kind of this alien otherness. 0.95
00:13:40.220 Well, it sounded foreign to me. 0.71
00:13:42.360 Yeah, it's foreign enough.
00:13:45.000 But all of these people, first of all, there is no core truth 0.54
00:13:53.700 to the way that Islamic theology is portrayed in this.
00:13:57.300 For example, just for the most obvious thing,
00:14:00.500 they don't seem to be monolithic, monotheistic, I should say, sorry.
00:14:04.880 They seem to worship both or praise both Mahomet,
00:14:09.700 early archaic spelling of muhammad uh to the to the franks and also apollo as well yeah but
00:14:16.920 apollo is that of destruction so um i mean i have a such great first city nor wall is left for him
00:14:24.880 to break save saragossa in its high mountain place mausolean holds it the king who hates god's name
00:14:31.400 mahound he serves and to apollo praise he'll not escape the ruin that rates and apollo
00:14:36.860 means destruction. So he's talking about how destructive this king is. He's just poisonous
00:14:45.500 to his core. And so that's what the writer's adding. Interesting. And you can see this
00:14:51.420 immediately once we're introduced to the Muslim court, because we have old white-haired Blancandrin, 0.83
00:14:58.060 who is this court advisor, and he's very shrewd, and he's got a lot of guile. And he basically 0.95
00:15:04.620 says look um it's been a few years now uh we've been getting steamrolled out there and charlemagne
00:15:11.840 is just unstoppable um so we need to pretend to sue for peace right we'll say whatever we need to
00:15:18.660 say we'll give him hostages uh we'll claim that you're going to convert to christianity and we'll
00:15:24.980 also say as well that we will surrender the city of saragossa to to charlemagne to come to but all
00:15:31.100 of this is false. Everything in the morality of the Song of Roland is absolutely in black and
00:15:40.440 white. When you see the conduct of the Christians, save Ganelan, which we'll get to, against that of 1.00
00:15:47.540 the pagan Muslims, it is, this is how to be virtuous, this is how to be evil. And there is no 1.00
00:15:55.000 real moral grayness to this whatsoever, which is good because it's something that is trying to be
00:16:03.660 unambiguous in its moral instruction to noble knights of the realm who are deeply concerned
00:16:12.460 with the preservation of their own soul and care deeply about living by the Christian chivalric
00:16:20.220 ideal and so it doesn't want to be ambiguous it wants to explain to them all of the different
00:16:27.140 ways in which we go through this story and those characters like oliver or like um archbishop turpin
00:16:34.500 or like roland of course reading it as archbishop turnip turnip yeah and um and so it manages to
00:16:44.620 achieve all these things with just absolute moral clarity. And so these terms, Blancandring goes
00:16:53.240 to Charlemagne. And Charlemagne and his army are obviously still marshaled in Spain because the
00:17:01.160 war is still on. But Blancandring is sent forth to deliver these pretend peace terms. Actually,
00:17:08.100 when we meet um charlemagne within the story as well we meet him not in a castle and you know a
00:17:15.560 palace of stone we meet him in an orchard and he gives counsel beneath a pine tree this is all very
00:17:22.180 earthy organic naturalistic uh you know just seeing the king and the land together as one
00:17:30.720 you know it's very arthurian in that sense uh seeing the two together where where the king
00:17:35.680 stands are his bounty and fruit and all of these sorts of things. And it's obviously deeply
00:17:41.100 metaphorical for the way that a king should govern his realm. He should encourage growth and to
00:17:47.200 nurture and to guide and to be, you know, a man who cares for the land and the people upon it.
00:17:54.860 But Charlemagne, by this point as well, he is an old man. This is not a young Charlemagne who is
00:18:04.800 at the top of his game and is in himself full of vitality and youth. This is an old man
00:18:12.240 who has dedicated his life to defeating God's enemies and preserving Christian goodness
00:18:19.920 throughout the realm. And so the introduction to Charlemagne is terrific, I think. He's surrounded
00:18:26.160 by all of his vassals and we get Roland and we get Ganelon and we get Archbishop Turpin and we get
00:18:34.320 Oliver um and they're all great characters but they all so Roland comes out and Roland just says
00:18:41.240 my barons says the emperor then Charles King Marsilus hath sent me his messages out of his
00:18:48.820 wealth he's given me weighty masses greyhounds on leash and bears and lions also thousand mewed
00:18:55.540 hawks and 700 camels 400 mules with gold Arabian charged 50 wagons yay more than 50
00:19:04.180 drawings, but into France demands he my departure. He'll follow me to X, where is my castle? Then
00:19:12.280 he'll receive the law of our salvation, Christian he'll be, and hold from me his marches, but I know
00:19:19.160 not what purpose in his heart is. Then says the Franks, beseem us action with caution, that 0.51
00:19:25.760 emperor hath ended now his speech. The Count Rollins, he never will agree, quick to reply he
00:19:31.920 springs upon his feet, and to the king. Believe not, Marseille, seven years since, when into Spain
00:19:38.420 came we, I conquered you Nopols, also Camibres, and took Volturn, and all the land of Pine,
00:19:45.800 and Balagut, and Tuel, and Seville. Traitor in all his ways was Marseille. Of his pagans he sent 0.57
00:19:53.220 you then fifteen, bearing in hands their olive branches green, who even as now these very words
00:19:59.880 did speak. You of your franks a council did decree. Praise ye your words that foolish
00:20:05.280 were indeed. Two of your counts did to the pagan speed. Bassin was one, and the other 0.99
00:20:10.880 Basile. Their heads ye took on the hill by Houtile. War have ye waged, so on to war proceed. 1.00
00:20:18.420 To Saragus lead forth your great army. All your life long, if need be, lie in siege. Vengeance
00:20:25.760 for those that fell and slew to wreck.
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