Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer who wrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added the story that Taillefer died in the melee. The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing of the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke:-- "Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille." Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered to pay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the Duke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant battalion,--the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io l'otrei!" seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed the story: "Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat"; a stage- player--a juggler--the Duke's singer--whose bravery ennobled him. The Duke granted him--octroya--his patent of nobility on the field. All this preamble leads only to unite the "Chanson" with the architecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton campaign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go together, and explain each other. Their common trait is their military character, peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch is masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the end. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attempted no such feat. Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled at supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side "a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer is at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:-- Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre. Charles the king, our emperor, the great, Seven years complete has been in Spain, Conquered the land as far as the high seas, Nor is there castle that holds against him, Nor wall or city left to capture.