One of the most stirring of the romances which tell of the wars of Charlemagne in the Rhine country is the Song of the Saxons, fifth in number of the Romans des Douze Pairs de France, and composed by Jean Bodel, a poet of Artois, who flourished toward the middle of the thirteenth century.  Charles, sitting at table in Laon one Whitsuntide with fourteen kings, receives news of an invasion of the Saxons, who have taken Cologne, killed many Frankish nobles, and laid waste the country.  A racy epitome of the events which follow has been given by Ludlow in his Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (1865) as follows:  “Charles invades Saxony, and reaches the banks of ‘Rune the Deep,’ beyond which lies Guiteclin’s palace of ‘Tremoigne’ (supposed to be Dortmund, in Westphalia).  The river is too deep to be crossed by the army, although the two young knights, Baldwin and Berard, succeed in doing so in quest of adventure.  The Saxons will not attack, trusting that the French will be destroyed by delay and the seasons.  And, indeed, after two years and four months, the barons represent to the Emperor the sad plight of the host, and urge him to call upon the men of Herupe (North-west France) for performance of their warlike service.  This is done accordingly, and the Herupe barons make all haste to their sovereign’s aid, and come up just after the Saxons have made an unsuccessful attack.  They send to ask where they are to lodge their troops.  The Emperor points them laughingly to the other side of the Rune, where float the silken banners of the Saxons, but says that any of his men shall give up their camping-place to them.  The Herupe men, however, determine to take him at his word and, whilst the Archbishop of Sens blesses the water, boldly fling themselves in and cross it, and end, after a tremendous struggle, in taking up the quarters assigned to them; but when he sees their prowess the Emperor recalls them to his own side of the river.

“A bridge is built, the army passes over it, the Saxons are discomfited in a great battle, and Guiteclin is killed in single combat by Charlemagne himself.

“By this time the slender vein of historic truth which runs through the poem may be considered as quite exhausted.  Yet the real epic interest of the work centres in its wholly apocryphal conclusion, connected essentially with its purely romantic side.

“Sebile, the wife of Guiteclin, is a peerless beauty, wise withal and courteous; ’hair had she long and fair, more than the shining gold, a brow polished and clear, eyes blue and laughing, a very well-made nose, teeth small and white, a savourous mouth, more crimson than blood; and in body and limbs so winning was she that God never made the man, howsoever old and tottering, if he durst look at her, but was moved with desire.’”

Fair Helissend, the daughter of the murdered Milo of Cologne, is her captive at once and her favourite, and when the French host takes up its position before the Rune, names and points out young Baldwin to her.