"The figure of Charles Martel was destined to occupy an important place in the epic poetry of France. His splendid victory over the Saracens at Poitiers was doubtless made the subject of many contemporary songs, and its memory may perhaps still be traced in some of the incidents of the Song of Roland. But it is interesting to note that certain traditions which in the later French epic are attached to Martel's more illustrious grandson, must have originally related to the victor of Poitiers himself, in whose history they have their only actual counterpart. This substitution of a later and more celebrated hero in the place of one more remote, has already been indicated as a common phenomenon in the development of epic poetry. But the confusion of these two heroes in the tradition is of later generations becomes still more intelligible if we remember that the fathers of both bore the name of Pepin, and that they themselves were known generally to their contemporaries by the simple name of Charles. Of those epic poems which form what has been called the Charlemagne Cycle, two at least—those which claim to relate the birth and the youthful exploits of the great emperor—formed originally a part of the poetic tradition which had Charles Martel for its hero, while a large number of isolated episodes in other poems point to the same process of epic substitution."