Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
The durandal bomb, an explosive developed in France to destroy airport runways, is named after Durendal, Roland's fantastically powerful sword. (Source)
If you thought "oliphant" sounded suspiciously like "elephant," you're right on. These common ivory medieval hunting horns were made out of elephant tusks. (Source)
The Charlemagne Window in Chartres Cathedral is based on the mid-twelfth-century Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, written by someone claiming to be Archbishop Turpin. What? Didn't he die of a million wounds while crawling miserably to fetch Roland water? Right and right. That's why this fatvolume immediately became known as the Pseudo-Turpin, as in, not the real Turpin. (Source: The Legend of Roland: a Pageant of the Middle Ages by D. D. R. Owen [London: Phaidon, 1973], 45)
An oral form of the Song of Roland was sung to William the Conqueror's Norman troops before invading Anglo-Saxon England in the 1066 Battle of Hastings. (Source: William of Malmesbury, History of the Kings of England 3.1. and Wace, Roman de Rou, 8013–18.)