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Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt Comment l'igliese fut fundee Premierement et estoree. Cil qui lor dient de l'estoire Que cil demandent en memoire Ne l'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant En plusors leus e mespernant. Por faire la apertement Entendre a cels qui escient N'unt de clerzie l'a tornee De latin tote et ordenee Pars veirs romieus novelement Molt en segrei por son convent Uns jovencels moine est del Munt Deus en son reigne part li dunt. Guillaume a non de Saint Paier Cen vei escrit en cest quaier. El tens Robeirt de Torignie Fut cil romanz fait e trove.
Most pilgrims who come to the Mount Enquire much and are quite right, How the church was founded At first, and established. Those who tell them the story That they ask, in memory Have it not well, but fall in error In many places, and misapprehension. In order to make it clearly Intelligible to those who have No knowledge of letters, it has been turned From the Latin, and wholly rendered In Romanesque verses, newly, Much in secret, for his convent, By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount. God in his kingdom grant him part! William is his name, of Saint Pair As is seen written in this book. In the time of Robert of Torigny Was this roman made and invented.
These verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and if the spelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire; more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but as tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when roughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every one who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language of this "Roman" was the literary language of England. William of Saint- Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better suited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are more English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous seventeenth-century prudes.
The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme in creating their literature for the practical reason that they remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in their heads.
These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled at the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again and again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conqueror and the "Chanson de Roland."
Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. Les meschines e les vallez Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez.
De leece funt tuit semblant. Qui plus ne seit si chante outree E Dex aie u Asusee. Cil jugleor la u il vunt Tuit lor vieles traites unt Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant.
Li tens est beals la joie est grant. Cil palefrei e cil destrier E cil roncin e cil sommier Qui errouent par le chemin Que menouent cil pelerin De totes parz henissant vunt Por la grant joie que il unt. Neis par les bois chantouent tuit Li oiselet grant et petit.
Li buef les vaches vunt muant Par les forez e repaissant. Cors e boisines e fresteals E fleutes e chalemeals Sonnoent si que les montaignes En retintoent et les pleignes. Que esteit dont les plaiseiz E des forez e des larriz. En cels par a tel sonneiz Com si ce fust cers acolliz.
Entor le mont el bois follu Cil travetier unt tres tendu Rues unt fait par les chemins. Plentei i out de divers vins Pain e pastez fruit e poissons Oisels obleies veneisons De totes parz aveit a vendre Assez en out qui ad que tendre.
The day was clear, without much wind.
All have a look of joy. Who knows no more sings HURRAH, Or GOD HELP, or UP AND ON! The minstrels there where they go Have all brought their viols; Lays and songs playing as they go.
The weather is fine; the joy is great; The palfreys and the chargers, And the hackneys and the packhorses Which wander along the road That the pilgrims follow, On all sides neighing go, For the great joy they feel. Even in the woods sing all The little birds, big and small.
The oxen and the cows go lowing Through the forests as they feed. Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes And flutes and pipes of reed Sound so that the mountains Echo to them, and the plains. How was it then with the glades And with the forests and the pastures? In these there was such sound As though it were a stag at bay.
About the Mount, in the leafy wood, The workmen have tents set up; Streets have made along the roads. Plenty there was of divers wines, Bread and pasties, fruit and fish, Birds, cakes, venison, Everywhere there was for sale. Enough he had who has the means to pay.
If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art could be caught.
Whanne that April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote... Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken strange strondes... And especially, from every shires ende Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende The holy blisful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.
The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was their chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much as the minstrel who sang to amuse him,--the jugleor or jongleur,-- who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at every shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the street-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a word of abuse, equivalent to blackguard; and from the beginning the profession seems to have been socially decried, like that of a music-hall singer or dancer in later times; but in the eleventh century, or perhaps earlier still, the jongleur seems to have been a poet, and to have composed the songs he sang. The immense mass of poetry known as the "Chansons de Geste" seems to have been composed as well as sung by the unnamed Homers of France, and of all spots in the many provinces where the French language in its many dialects prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should have been the favourite with the jongleur, not only because the swarms of pilgrims assured him food and an occasional small piece of silver, but also because Saint Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors whose exploits in war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste." William of Saint- Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his "Roman" was not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but the "Chanson de Roland" was a different affair.
So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or predecessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. Wace, whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the "Roman de Rou," or "Rollo," is an English classic of the first rank, was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a singer. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose did not yet exist; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfth century were as different, in kind, from the grand style of the eleventh, as Virgil was different from Homer.
William of Saint-Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to the jongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before his time, and were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going on pilgrimages in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who would probably most interest every one, after eight hundred years have passed, would be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. Through William of Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charming literary monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, we can build up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be as historically exact as the battle of Hastings, and as artistically true as the Abbey Church.