The next fact--one almost more interesting, inasmuch as it bears on that community of Romance tongues of which we have evidence in Dante,[24] and perhaps also makes for the antiquity of the Charlemagne story in its primitive form--is the existence of _chansons_ in Italian, and, it may be added, in a most curious bastard speech which is neither French, nor Provencal, nor Italian, but French Italicised in part.[25] The substance, moreover, of the Charlemagne stories was very early naturalised in Italy in the form of a sort of abstract or compilation called the _Reali di Francia_,[26] which in various forms maintained popularity through mediaeval and early modern times, and undoubtedly exercised much influence on the great Italian poets of the Renaissance. They were also diffused throughout Europe, the _Carlamagnus Saga_ in Iceland marking their farthest actual as well as possible limit, though they never in Germany attained anything like the popularity of the Arthurian legend, and though the Spaniards, patriotically resenting the frequent forays into Spain to which the _chansons_ bear witness, and availing themselves of the confession of disaster at Roncesvalles, set up a counter-story in which Roland is personally worsted by Bernardo del Carpio, and the quarrels of the paynims are taken up by Spain herself. In England the imitations, though fairly numerous, are rather late. They have been completely edited for the Early English Text Society, and consist (for Bevis of Hampton has little relation with its _chanson_ namesake save the name) of _Sir Ferumbras_ (_Fierabras_), _The Siege of Milan_, _Sir Otuel_ (two forms), the _Life of Charles the Great_, _The Soudone of Babylone_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, and _The Four Sons of Aymon_, besides a very curious semi-original entitled _Rauf Coilzear_ (Collier), in which the well-known romance-_donnee_ of the king visiting some obscure person is applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version of _Huon of Bordeaux_,[27] is literature of no mean kind; but this is because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and substance of the _chansons_ proper. [Footnote 24: _V._ the famous and all-important ninth chapter of the first book of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_.] [Footnote 25: See especially _Macaire_, ed. Guessard, Paris, 1860.] [Footnote 26: So also the _geste_ of Montglane became the _Nerbonesi_.] [Footnote 27: Ed. S. Lee, London, 1883-86.] [Sidenote: _Their authorship and publication._]