Bayard

Bayard is a legendary bay horse of supernatural powers. The statue of Bayard in the photo to the left has riding on his back, the Four Aymon Brothers who are said to have escaped on Bayard from the pursuing troops of Charlemagne across the River Meuse (this statue stands beside the River Meuse in the Belgian town of Namur).

His story is told in the poem "Renaud de Montauban" part of the cycle of epic poetry of the Doon de Mayence/Doon of Mainz of the Chansons de Geste (french heroic poetry from the 12th to 15th Century). The poem, "Renaud de Montauban" dates from the late 12th Century and in Italian is "Rinaldo de Montalbano".The Montauban name relating to a number of very ancient settlements in the Ardennes and beyond.

"Bayard" is the French form; in Italian he is known as Baiardo and in Dutch as Beiaard.

Renaud de Montauban, was the owner of Bayard . The horse was capable of carrying Reynaud/Rinaldo and his three brothers, les quatre fils Aymon ("the four sons of Aymon") all at the same time.

Initially, the horse belonged to Amadis of Gaul. In the poem, Charlemagne is angered at Renaud, and orders him to be banished, and his horse to be slain by being cast into a river with a millstone around its neck. Bayard survives the ordeal, and after other adventures is reunited with Renaud.

Bayard also appears in the epic poems by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto.

The Brewer’s dictionary of phrase and fable states that ‘Bayard was a horse of incredible swiftness, belonging to the four sons of King Aymon’. The legend states that if only one of the kings sons mounted Bayard, the horse was of the ordinary size, but if all four of them mounted, his body became elongated to the necessary length. These four brothers were on the run from Charlemagne and escaped through the Ardennes sitting on the back of the Bayard Horse.

The name Bayard comes from the word 'bay' describing a reddish colouring commonly used today to describe horses of that colour (with a black mane) but interestingly enough in the Oxford dictionary of Etymology the word 'bay' is related to the Irish Gaelic word 'buide' meaning 'fair' or 'yellow'! Did our ancestors know that when they changed Bayard to Boyd?

Le Rocher Bayard Dinant in Belgium

Outside the city of Dinant in Belgium stands the "Le Rocher Bayard" in English, "Bayard rock", a large cleft rock formation that was said to have been split by Bayard's mighty hooves.

It stands completely separated  from the rest of the main rock of which it obviously used to be a part. The Rocher Bayard was separated with an explosion to provide passage for the  French troops of Louis XIV after they had taken Dinant. However, popular belief has it that the rock was split by the hoof of the giant Bayard Horse, when it jumped from here over the Meuse river.

The Four Knights and the Steed Bayard are featured in pageants in Flanders where they are known as the Vier Heemskindere; the legend lives on.

It is interesting that the Frisians invaded Brittany in 500AD at the instigation of Clovis I were there Flemish among them? That the names of Dinan in Brittany and Dinant in Belgium are related is a tempting proposition.

I found in one of my searches on the internet that there is a spring with a footprint of a horse in the vicinity of Dinan but I lost it! If anyone knows about this and can give me the information to post I would be very greatful.

There are other stones:

The Pas Bayard Stone in France

Just beyond the hamlet Pas Bayard, lies an enigmatic block, near circular, measuring 8 by 5 feet, known as the Pas Bayard stone. It bears a slight cavity reminiscent of the "imprint " of a horses hoof, of which the later dimensions are approximate 15 by 19 inches.

Though its shape can disqualify it as a relic of a menhir, it is nonetheless a legendary stone, and this geological curiosity, a horse's hoof "print", is also found at other sites in the Ardennes. Julius Ceasar entered the Ardennes at Chateaux-Regnault, where the Roche Bayard is located, surmounted by a gigantic statue of the Four Knights. There is also Buzenol Montauban, a Gallo-Roman fortification with a central medieval keep, believed to be one of the hideouts of the Four Knights in the thickly forested Ardennes. In legend,these Four Knight, fought Charlemagne, possibly symbolizing a relic of pagan dissent to Charlemagne's projects of Christianization.

To escape from their enemies, the Steed Bayard is said to have made a gigantic leap from the Pas Bayard stone to the fortified town of Durbuy, a distance of two miles! A first castle at Durbuy, the old "Drubutum", dates back to the year 887 AD, to the Carolingian era. And, there may be more to this legend, because the direction of the gigantic leap of the Steed Bayard is the direction of Beltaine sunset, as observed from the Pas Bayard stone.

Blind Byard and Byard's Leap in Lincolnshire

A magical horse Blind Byard is part of Lincolnshire folklore at Byard's Leap:

Byard's Leap is a small hamlet, west of Cranwell in Lincolnshire, associated with various legends, including the origin of the name.

The story, best re-told by Ethel Rudkin, [1] goes that there was a witch called Old Meg, an evil crone who plagued the local villagers from her cave or hut in a spinney near the turning to Sleaford on Ermine Street, here called High Dike.

She was a bane of the countryside and caused the crops to whither. A local champion, a retired soldier, came forward in response to the villagers' requests, and he asserted that he could kill her by driving a sword through her heart. To select a horse suitable for this task, he went to a pond where horses drank and dropped a stone in the pond, selecting the horse that reacted quickest, and this horse was known locally as 'Blind Byard', as he was blind.

The champion went to the witch’s cave and called her out, but the witch refused, saying she was eating and he would have to wait. However, she crept up behind him and sank her long nails into the horse who ran, leaping over a 60-foot (18 m) cliff. The champion regained control of the horse when they reached the pond, pursued by the witch, where he turned and thrust his sword into her heart, and she fell in the pond and drowned.

The spot where Blind Byard landed is marked by four posts in the ground with horseshoes on, and a commemorative stone. The sharply cut small valley in the limestone, which is now smoothed over by ploughing, is as likely a site as any for the dramatic events, assuming they happened. This aerial photograph shows the High Dike running north and south in the centre, RAF Cranwell is to the east and the valley lies between them. Byard's leap is at the south centre.

Byard's Leap is also associated with the activities of the Knights Templar, who allegedly held tournaments and jousts on the site. It lay at the southern end of their Temple Bruer military training ground.

References

1. ^ Rudkin, Ethel (1934). Lincolnshire Folklore, Witches and Devils, Ethel H. Rudkin, Folklore, Vol. 45, No. 3. (Sep., 1934), pp. 249-267, see p255. 

Chaucer

Bayard is also the name given to Troilus' horse in Chaucer's epic poem "Troilus and Criseyde".

Bayards Cove, Dartmouth

The ancient borough and port of Dartmouth sits picturesquely on a steep slope on the west side of the Dart estuary, opposite Kingswear, about a mile 1.6 km) upriver. To the north are the granite heights of Exmoor. Off the main road which stops short of the town, the charming narrow streets of Elizabethan half-timbered houses are virtually intact. The main embankment runs the length of Dartmouth from New Quay, built on reclaimed land, towards Bayard’s Cove where the large sheltered harbour, guarded by Dartmouth and Kingswear Castles, has been in use since the Roman period. It was from these shores that Richard the Lionheart set sail for the Crusades and Edward III rallied 31 vessels for the Siege of Calais in 1347. Bayard’s Cove has changed little since 1539. The Pilgrim Fathers called here on 20th August 1620 en route from Southampton for the New World. Of the two ships The Mayflower and The Speedwell that sailed from Dartmouth only The Mayflower completed the voyage. Unseaworthy, The Speedwell was forced to abandon the attempt 300 miles (480 km) west of Land’s End. Over 420 years later, in 1944, the town also witnessed the departure of the historic D-Day landing craft bound for France