The Chanson de Guillaume or Chançun de Willame (English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

: "Song of William") is a chanson de geste

Chanson de geste

The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds", are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères and...

from the first half of the twelfth-century (c.1140, although the first half of the poem may date from as early as the eleventh century; along with The Song of Roland

The Song of Roland

The Song of Roland is the oldest surviving major work of French literature. It exists in various manuscript versions which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in the 12th to 14th centuries...

and Gormont et Isembart, it is considered one of three chansons de geste whose composition incontestably dates from before 1150). The work is generally considered to have two distinct halves: the first tells of Guillaume (or William) of Orange

William of Gellone

Saint William of Gellone was the second Count of Toulouse from 790 until his replacement in 811. His Occitan name is Guilhem, and he is known in French as Guillaume d'Orange, Guillaume Fierabrace, and the Marquis au court nez.He is the hero of the Chanson de Guillaume, an early chanson de geste,...

, his nephew Vivien and this latter's young brother Gui and their various battles with Saracen

Saracen

Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...

s at L'Archamp; in the second half of the poem (after 2000 lines), Guillaume is aided by Rainouard, a giant

Giant (mythology)

The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology.In various Indo-European mythologies,...

.

The poem comprises 3,553 verses in assonance

Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the is repeated within the sentence and is...

d laisse

Laisse

A laisse is a type of stanza, of varying length, found in medieval French literature, specifically medieval French epic poetry , such as The Song of Roland. In early works, each laisse was made up of assonanced verses, although the appearance of rhymed laisses was increasingly common in later...

s; most of the verses are decasyllable

Decasyllable

Decasyllable is a poetic meter of ten syllables used in poetic traditions of syllabic verse...

s, but there are occasional recurring short six-syllable lines. The poem exists in only one 13th century manuscript, written in an Anglo-Norman

Anglo-Norman language

Anglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....

 dialect, which only was brought to light in 1901 at the sale of the books of Sir Henry Hope Edwardes. The manuscript has since passed to the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

 ((British Library, Additional 38663),

It is the only chanson de geste concerning the deeds of William of Orange that was not included in the cyclic 13th century collections of chansons de geste generally referred to as the Geste de Guillaume d'Orange.

Much of the poem's material (especially the second half) was expanded and adapted by the later chanson de geste Aliscans

Aliscans

Aliscans is a chanson de geste of the late twelfth century. It recounts the story of the disastrous but fictional battle of Aliscans in France, between Christian and pagan armies. The name 'Aliscans' presumably refers to the Alyscamps in Arles...

.

Historical sources

The chanson appears to be based on William of Gellone's battle at the Orbieu

Orbieu

The Orbieu is a long river in the Aude département, in south central France. Its source is at Fourtou, in the Corbières. It flows generally northeast...

 or Orbiel river near Carcassonne

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a fortified French town in the Aude department, of which it is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.It is divided into the fortified Cité de Carcassonne and the more expansive lower city, the ville basse. Carcassone was founded by the Visigoths in the fifth century,...

in 793.

See also

• Google Books La chançun de Willame Edited with an Introduction by Elizabeth Stearns Tyler. Oxford University Press, 1919.