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The Abbe de la Rue, also, was of opinion that Gaimar, an Anglo-Norman, in the reign of Stephen, usually regarded as a translator of Geoffrey of Monmouth, had access to a Welsh independent authority.
About the year 1150, five years before the death of Geoffrey, an Anglo-Norman, Geoffrey Gaimar, wrote the first French metrical chronicle. It consisted of two parts, the Estorie des Bretons and the Estorie des Engles, of which only the latter is extant, but the former is known to have been a rhymed translation of the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
After which, according to Gaimar, Hereward tarried three days at Stamford, laying a heavy tribute on the burgesses for harboring Thorold and his Normans; and also surprised at a drinking-bout a certain special enemy of his, and chased him from room to room sword in hand, till he took refuge shamefully in an outhouse, and begged his life.
It was subsequently translated into Anglo-Norman by Gaimar and Wace, and into English by Layamon. Philosophical writer, s. of Rev. Gilbert G., was ed. at Aberdeen, where he became Prof., first of Natural Philosophy, and afterwards of Divinity, and one of the ministers of the city. As a prof. he introduced various reforms.
And is this your Norman honor? To take a man unawares over his meat? And he ran right at the press of knights; and the fight began. "He gored them like a wood-wild boar, As long as that lance might endure," says Gaimar. "And when that lance did break in hand, Full fell enough he smote with brand." And as he hewed on silently, with grinding teeth and hard, glittering eyes, of whom did he think?
Alfred of Beverley transferred Geoffry's inventions into the region of sober history, while two Norman trouveurs, Gaimar and Wace, translated them into French verse. So complete was the credence they obtained that Arthur's tomb at Glastonbury was visited by Henry the Second, while the child of his son Geoffry and of Constance of Britanny received the name of the Celtic hero.
William went to the wedding; and swore horrible oaths that they were the handsomest pair he had ever seen. And so Hereward married Alftruda. How Holy Church settled the matter is not said. But that Hereward married Alftruda, under these very circumstances, may be considered a "historic fact," being vouched for by Gaimar, and by the Peterborough Chronicler.
Translated into English, 1st ed, I., H.M. Kennedy, New York, 1888, II., i., W.C. Robinson, 1893, II., ii., L.D. Schmidt, 1896. GEOFFREY GAIMAR, L'Estorie des Engles, ed. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. Translated, J.A. Giles, Six Old English Chronicles, London, 1896; S. Evans, London, 1903. LAYAMON, Brut, ed. with translation, Sir F. Madden, 3 vols, London, 1847.
A knight rushes in, to fall headlong down, cloven through the helm: but Hereward's blade snaps short, and he hurls it away as his foes rush in with a shout of joy. He tears his shield from his left arm, and with it, says Gaimar, brains two more. But the end is come. Taillebois and Evermue are behind him now; four lances are through his back, and bear him down to his knees.
But the intellectual energy of Henry the Second's time is shown even more remarkably in the mass of general literature which lies behind these distinctively historical sources, in the treatises of John of Salisbury, the voluminous works of Giraldus Cambrensis, the "Trifles" and satires of Walter Map, Glanvill's treatise on Law, Richard Fitz-Neal's "Dialogue on the Exchequer," to which we owe our knowledge of Henry's financial system, the romances of Gaimar and of Wace, the poem of the San Graal.
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