Note 1280 — The Romaunce of the Sowdone of Babylone and of Ferumbras his Sone who Conquerede Rome: ◊

p. 37, l. 1277. The scene as related here widely differs from that described in the Ashmolean version. In the Sowdone, Oliver gets hold of the sword which is “trussed on Ferumbras’s stede.” In the Ashmolean poem it is not Oliver who is disarmed, but Ferumbras, and Oliver allows him to pick up his weapon again. This in itself furnishes us an argument for conjecturing that the author of the Sowdon did not follow, or even know of, the Ashmolean version. In the French poem, as well as in the Provençal, it is likewise Oliver who is disarmed. If in those poems we find mentioned besides that Ferumbras offered his enemy to take up his sword again—an incident not related in the Sowdan—we do not consider this to disprove our supposition that the French version was the source of the Sowdan, as we may consider our author in this case simply to have adhered to his favourite practice of shortening his original as much as possible, so far as no essential point is concerned. Cf. the French Fierabras, ll. 1289–1346.