(iii) An elongated tapering flag containing the arms or badges of a king or noble. (iv) A rectangular banner containing the royal arms. One of the earliest appearances of the word is in the _Chanson de Roland_. The oldest existing MS. of this poem was, it is true, not written before the latter part of the twelfth century, but it is well known that the poem itself is much older. In this long poem of some 4000 lines the word occurs thrice only, and is confined to the episode which relates to Baligant, Emir of Babylon, which M. Gaston Paris considers to be the work of another author. The passages in question are: 3265. Li amiralz mult par est riches hum Dedavant lui fait porter sun dragun E l'estandart Tervagan e Mahum. [The Emir is a very great man Before him he has carried his dragon And the standard of Tervagan and Mahomet.] 3329. Carles li magnes, cum il vit l'amiraill E le dragun, l'enseigne, e l'estandart, [Charlemagne, when he saw the emir And the dragon, the flag and the standard,] 3551. Baliganz veit sun gunfanun cadeir E l'estandart Mahumet remaneir. [Baligant sees his gonfanon fall And the standard of Mahomet remain (defenceless).] In speaking of the flags the poet (or perhaps poets) uses either the words "enseigne" or "gunfanun" or, in one instance, "orie flambe." What then was the "Standard of Mahomet" which the author of this section has in mind? The story he is telling is, of course, purely mythical, so that he, or the original inventor of the myth, must have met the word and the object which it connoted in some other connection. The most likely source of this knowledge is the First Crusade. During the struggle for the possession of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099, Robert of Normandy, in personal combat, seized from one of the Saracen Emirs an object which is described as a very long pole covered over with silver, having at its top a golden ball or apple (_pomum aureum_). This was called a standard, a word which was evidently at that time of recent introduction, for the contemporary historians, some of whom had been eye-witnesses of the events they relate, have various ways of spelling it, and usually refer to it in such a way as to indicate that the word was not in familiar use[3]. According to Albert of Aix[4] this standard was borne in front of the army of the "King of Babylon" and was the centre around which the flower of the army gathered and to which stragglers returned. A few years later Fulcher of Chartres notes the capture of three more "standards," but does not describe them.