237.
[Footnote 5: Laing's _Sea-Kings of Norway_, Vol. II. p. 312; Vol.
III. p. 90.]
William's minstrel, Taillefer, sang a song before the Battle of
Hastings: but the Normans loved the purely martial strain, and this
was a ballad of French composition, perhaps a fragment of the older
"Roland's Song." The "Roman de Rou," composed by Master Wace, or Gasse,
a native of Jersey and Canon of Bayeux, who died in 1184, is very
minute in its description of the Battle of Val des Dunes, near Caen,
fought by Henry of France and William the Bastard against Guy, a Norman
noble in the Burgundian interest. The year of the battle was 1047.
There is a Latin narrative of the Battle of Hastings, in eight hundred
and thirty-five hexameters and pentameters. This was composed by Wido,
or Guido, Bishop of Amiens, who died in 1075.
The German knights on their way to Jerusalem sang a holy psalm,
beginning, "Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of the earth." This was
discovered not long ago in Westphalia; a translation of it, with the
music, can be found in Mr. Richard Willis's collection of hymns.
One would expect to gather fragments of war-poetry from the early times
of the Hungarians, who held the outpost of Europe against the Turks,
and were also sometimes in arms against the imperial policy of Germany.
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