once with six (or twelve) of them,3 must also have been pretty familiar to French readers, as the name of Fierabras is met with in the sense of a simple common noun, signifying “a bragging bully or swaggering hector.”4

Rabelais5 also alludes to Fierabras, thinking him renowned enough as to figure in the pedigree of Pantagruel.

In 1833, on a tour made through the Pyrenees, M. Jomard witnessed ‹vii› a kind of historical drama, represented by villagers, in which Fierabras and Balan were the principal characters.6

That in our own days, the tradition of Fierabras continues to live, is evident from the fact, that copies of the Fierabras story, in the edition of the Bibliothèque Bleue, still circulate amongst the country people of France.7 There is even an illustrated edition, published in 1861, the pictures of which have been executed by no less an artist than Gustave Doré. And like Oberon, that other mediæval hero of popular celebrity,8 Fierabras has become the subject of a musical composition. There is an Opera Fierabras composed by Franz Schubert (words by Joseph Kupelwieser) in 1823, the overture of which has been arranged for the piano in 1827, by Carl Czerny.9

The different versions and the popularity of the present romance in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, having been treated in the Introduction to Sir Ferumbras, we need not repeat it again here.10 As to the popularity of the Fierabras romance in the Netherlands, the following passage from Hoffmann, Horæ Belgicæ (Vratislaviæ, 1830), I. 50, may be quoted here11:—