Abstract
THIS paragraph is taken from the fabulous story of the crusade of Charlemagne (d. 814) as found in Pseudo-Turpin's 'Historia de vita Caroli Magni ', in which we are told that the sound of the Saracens' kettledrums so disconcerted the Christians that they were compelled to cover the eyes and stop the ears of their horses. The later English romance of' Richard Coeur de Lion' tells a similar story. Indeed, the Saracen looms large in the European literature of the period. So great was the veneration paid to the Eastern warrior that, in this romance, Richard's mother is made, for the nonce, the daughter of a notional Saracen king of Antioch. Seemingly so redoubtable a hero as the Lion Heart could only have issued from such a union. When Henry II married her, so the romance tells us, there were great doings in London, and the best that martial music could sound rent the air at Westminster.
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