Very great pains have been spent on the question of the authorship, publication, or performance of these compositions. As is the case with so much mediaeval work, the great mass of them is entirely anonymous. A line which concludes, or rather supplements, _Roland_-- "Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet"-- has been the occasion of the shedding of a very great deal of ink. The enthusiastic inquisitiveness of some has ferreted about in all directions for Turolds, Thorolds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh century, and discovering them even among the companions of the Conqueror himself, has started the question whether Taillefer was or was not violating the copyright of his comrade at Hastings. The fact is, however, that the best authorities are very much at sea as to the meaning of _declinet_, which, though it must signify "go over," "tell like a bead-roll," in some way or other, might be susceptible of application to authorship, recitation, or even copying. In some other cases, however, we have more positive testimony, though they are in a great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned the work of Richard the Pilgrim, an actual partaker of the first Crusade, into the present _Antioche_, _Jerusalem_, and perhaps _Les Chetifs_. Either Richard or Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of the whole cycle. Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited _Garin le Loherain_; and Jehan Bodel of Arras _Les Saisnes_. Adenes le Roi, a _trouvere_, of whose actual position in the world we know a little, wrote or refashioned three or four _chansons_ of the thirteenth century, including _Berte aus grans Pies_, and one of the forms of part of _Ogier_. Other names--Bertrand of Bar sur Aube, Pierre de Rieu, Gerard d'Amiens, Raimbert de Paris, Brianchon (almost a character of Balzac!), Gautier of Douai, Nicolas of Padua (an interesting person who was warned in a dream to save his soul by compiling a _chanson_), Herbert of Dammartin, Guillaume de Bapaume, Huon de Villeneuve--are mere shadows of names to which in nearly all cases no personality attaches, and which may be as often those of mere _jongleurs_ as of actual poets. [Sidenote: _Their performance._]