Laudator Temporis Acti

Andrew Robert Burn (1902-1991), Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West, 546-478 B.C. (1962; rpt. Totowa: Minerva Press, 1968), pp. 6-7:

Tradition is a great corrupter. It may preserve important facts, though even then the preservation may take the form of seizing on one important or merely picturesque fact and embroidering it. Einhard tells us that Hrodland, Count of the Breton Marches, was killed by the Basques in an attack on the rearguard of Charlemagne's army returning from Spain; three hundred years later, Roland is the hero of a mighty epic, falling after tremendous slaughter before a huge host of Saracens, and avenged by the destruction of all the hosts of Babylon by his lord (who a few weeks earlier, with Roland to help him, had been unable to capture Pampeluna). Why Roland became the hero of the great poem, we may perhaps guess when we remember what was Roland's most famous attribute: a horn; and what was famous about the horn: that, at the crisis of his fortunes, he refused to blow it. Did the real Count Hrodland refuse to call for help and stop the main column in a defile, for an attack by these barbarians? If so, for his gallantry and pride he paid with his life. This is exactly the kind of thing that seizes the imagination of mankind; but it constitutes a warning against expecting popular tradition to preserve reliable history for long periods.