THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

210
© 2009 Max Wickert
by my fault and your mother’s!” Weeping, he handed him to his mother, and she placed him by her
side. For eight days Miles nursed Bertha and the boy, until Bertha could rise and tend to the boy.
Miles went begging to feed Bertha and the baby and himself. After the eight days had passed, Miles
said to Bertha: “What name shall we give our son?” Bertha replied: “Whatever name you please.”
Said Miles: “The first time I laid eyes on him, I saw him rolling, and in French, when they mean to
say ‘roll’, they say ‘roolar’. 44 Therefore,” (said Miles) “in remembrance thereof, I wish the boy to be
named as I first saw him, that is Rooland.”
On the following morning, Miles carried him to Sutri. He found two poor men to sponsor his
baptism, had him Christened, and he was baptized for love of God and given the name Rooland.
He was a little cross-eyed, had a fierce aspect, but was endowed with great virtue, courteous,
generous, extremely strong of limb, honest, and a virgin until death. He was a man utterly without
fear, a virtue possessed by no other Frenchman.
Miles lived with Bertha in that place until Roland had completed his fifth year. He was already
walking to the city by himself, begging for the love of God, and already knew how to shoulder his
sack and bottle; he begged alms for himself and for his mother. He went clad in a garment of coarse
woolen cloth that had been given him for the love of God. His mother Bertha and his father Miles
dressed in like manner, to do penance for the sin they had committed while conquered by love.
54-56: Sir Misadventure [summary]
Ashamed to remain inactive and obscure, Miles left his family to venture abroad. He first came to the court of
Rambald, Duke of Calabria, at Reggio. Rambald had three sons: Bertram, his first-born; Milo, a bastard; and
Richier, then aged eight. Miles was engaged as a fencing master to the elder two.
44 The pun (for once) works better in English than in the original, making the French reference somewhat nugatory.
The double “o” in the name Rooland disappears after this chapter.