Note 20 — PART I HIS EXPLOITS AT HOME AND ABROAD

This is the famous defeat of Roncesvalles, where later legends affirmed that “Charlemagne with all his peerage fell at Fontarabia,” and where Roland wound his horn, whose sound is still heard in the verse of Milton. By a strange chance this incident becomes one of the most famous in the cycle of mediæval Charlemagne legends; and Roland, evermore transfigured from the historical warden of the Breton march, becomes, after long wanderings, the Orlando of the “Orlando Furioso” of Ariosto. But the historical Roland seems mentioned here, and here only.