from the rule of the French king, Philip Augustus, Marie sought an asylum in England; while, on the other hand, the poet Alexander, born in Bernay, betook himself to the court of that king, and, although a Norman, nevertheless flattered the French monarch in an allegorical poem on Alexander the Great. But soon a wider field was opened for the Anglo-Norman poets. The poems of Britain and Brittany, the heroic exploits of the Paladins of Charles the Great, the Eastern fictions, brought to Europe by the Arabians and crusaders, gave to the Anglo-Norman poetry a new impulse; it soared into an imaginary world of wonders, and led people to forget the cares of the real one. Hebert composed a romance named Dolopathos, of Indian origin; Luce du Gast wrote an imitation of the Latin romance of Tristan; Hélis and Robert de Borron translated into French other tales of the Round Table. The large poems, composed by the Anglo-Normans, are the first, at least of that class, that French literature gave to the world 1. In vain we seek herein imitations of the old Norse poesy, or allusions to the history or customs of Scandinavia. There may, perhaps, exist some resemblance between the heroic sagas of the North and the romances of chivalry of the south of Europe, both having for subjects wonderful adventures, and the praise of heroism and beauty; but from this resemblance it cannot be concluded that the Anglo-Norman poets have borrowed their fictions from the Northern skalds. We have not a single proof that they were acquainted with any saga or any skaldic composition. All remembrance of their national poetry was as completely obliterated among the posterity of the Northmen in France as if, in traversing the ocean, they had drunk of the water of Lethe. This total oblivion of In this view the Normans have exercised an influence on the literature of France. See Heeren über den Einfluss der Normannen auf die Französische Sprache und Literatur,' in his Histor. Schriften. 2den Th. their original home they have in common with the West Goths, who in Castilian poesy have not left the faintest trace of their original manners and opinions. The same remark has been applied to the Vareger, who founded a royal dynasty in Russia, and to whom that country, as a Russian author remarks, is not indebted for a single new idea. The causes are here the same with those that effected a complete oblivion of their mother-tongue, namely their inferior civilization, their intermixture with the natives, their marriages with the women of the country, who knew no other traditions than those of their native land. In Normandy, too, the Christian clergy must have suppressed every memorial of the ancient mythology; though it would seem that the. god Thor was not totally forgotten, if it is true what Wace relates that a Norman chieftain, Raoul Tesson, at the battle of Val-desDunes1, chose for his war-cry Tur aïe! (that is, Thor aid!) while, on the opposite side, William's cry was Dex aie! (God aid !) 2 : In the Shetland isles the Northern rovers propagated the belief in Trolls and Dwarfs which is still to be found there. This belief seems also to have been brought to France by the Northmen, though it did not last long in that country. Wace relates that the archbishop of Rouen, Mauger, who excommunicated William the Conqueror, whom William deposed, and the chroniclers charge with bad morals and sorcery, had a familiar called Toret, who obeyed his commands, but was invisible to all3. This was probably the name of I See p. 47. 2 Rom. de Rou, ii. pp. 32, 34. 3 Plusors distrent por vérité Ke un deable aveit privé, E Toret se feseit nomer. Plusors some Northern sprite (Thor?) preserved in Normandy. The belief in elves or fairies the Northmen had no occasion to propagate in France, it existed there already. The poetess Marie of France places the sojourn of the fairies in Brittany, and Wace tells us very good-humouredly that he made a journey into that province, for the purpose of ascertaining whether it were true what was everywhere related about fairies in the forest of Brecheliant, but that he was a fool for his pains1. It was Brittany, too, that the romance writers of the middle age made the scene of their fairynarratives. De la Rue has endeavoured to prove that the belief in fairies has prevailed in Brittany from the first century of our era, and that it was introduced neither by Arabians nor Normans, and that the trouvères, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, always borrowed their poetic beings from the ancient Armorica, and never from the North. They even sometimes declare that they have the subjects of their romantic epics from the works of the Bretons. The Northmen, who established themselves in France, must, with the language, naturally lose their old writing. In Plusors les poeient oïr, Maiz nus d'els nes poet véir. Rom. de Rou, v. 9713 sqq. [Toret is, no doubt, meant as the diminutive of Thor. This is the opinion also of M. Pluquet; "but another MS. reads Turie,' and M. Le Provost considers the latter to be the true reading, and that the cry was really Thury, and most probably referred to the chief seat of Raol Tesson." See "Master Wace," by Edgar Taylor. p. 20, note.-T. 1 Là alai jo merveilles querre, Vis la forest è vis la terre ; Fol i alai, fol m'en revins, Folie quis, por fol me tins. Rom. de Rou, v. 11534 sqq.-T. 2 Recherches sur les Ouvrages des Bardes de la Bretagne Armoricaine. Caen 1815. Normandy no runic stones are to be found, as in the Northern kingdoms; no Northman on the shore of his new country has caused to be cut in stone the name of his father or of the heroes of the land of his birth. When they had acquired possessions in France they forgot both native land and kindred; and when they had also forgotten their mother-tongue, what could they do with runes, which the priests would, no doubt, regard as magical characters, or a device of the devil? Whatever partiality the Normans may have entertained for history, they, nevertheless, betrayed an almost perfect indifference for their original country. The historians of Normandy describe the heathen North as a den of robbers. After an interval of two centuries, they knew nothing of the events that had caused the founder of their ruling family to forsake the North; they did not even know where Denmark and Norway lay. Benoît de Ste More begins his chronicle with a geographic sketch, in which he takes Denmark for Dacia and places it at the mouth of the Danube, between the extensive countries of the Alani and Getæ, which are always covered with ice, and surrounded by a chain of mountains1. Having thus taken a brief survey of the intellectual condition of the Frankish Normans, we will now proceed to a review of their manner of living. Husbandry, domestic and rural economy could not flourish under a rule of violence. Almost all our knowledge of the subject is derived from charters, whereby the greater portion Entre Alane, qui mult est lee, Que altre si est cume corone, Chron. de Norm. liv. i. Comp. Dudo, de Mor. et Act. Norm. and W. Gemmet. lib. i. c. 2. of the produce of the soil is transferred to churches and convents. The several sorts of grain were cultivated, also flax, hemp, pulses and fruit1. The extensive oak and beech forests yielded a superabundance of food for swine, of which frequent mention occurs in the charters. A lord, at one time, allows a monastery to send from sixty to a hundred swine into his forest; at another, he grants to the monks a tithe of the swine on his farms. An abbot of Cluny, whom duke Richard had sent for to reform the abbey of Fécamp, refused to come unless the duke would allow the abbey free grazing in his forests for swine and cattle3. Mention of oxen and cows is not very frequent; in the earliest times swine's flesh must have been the most general food. The culture of the vine must at that time have been more universal in Normandy than it is in our days; it appears from the charters that most abbeys had vineyards. Without doubt, this branch of husbandry was in use there before the settlement of the Northmen, and might have afforded the vikings an additional motive for choosing that province. But as almost everything was given to the churches, it is probable that the wine also fell to the share of the monks, and that the people retained only beer and cider. Wace relates that the French gave the Normans the nicknames of bigots and beer-drinkers3. Although the apple was cultivated in gardens, it seems that the cider was made from the wild fruit. At least we find by a charter of the year 1185, that the count of Meulan allows the monks of Jumièges to gather apples in his forest, 1 Decimam annonæ et vinearum, lini, cannabi, et leguminum. Chart. of Henry to St. Evroult, 1128. Neustria Pia. 2 Habeant monachi in eodem parco centum porcos, etc. Chart. of donat. of K. Henry to the abbey of Essay. Neust. Pia, p. 618. 3 Mabillon, Annal. Bened. P. iv. Gallia Christ. P. xi. 4 Vineam de Tri-decimam vinearum in monte de Calvincourt-quadraginta agros ad vineam faciendam-vineam nostram in terra Jay, etc. Charters in Neust. Pia. 5 Et claiment bigoz è draschiers. Rom. de Rou, v. 9902. |