measures of the medieval hymns with classical hexameters.[13] Yet had
Giraldus been pointing at Walter of Lille, a notable personage in his
times, there is no good reason to suppose that he would have
suppressed his real name, or have taken for granted that Golias was a
_bona fide_ surname. On the theory that he knew Golias to be a mere
nickname, and was aware that Walter of Lille was the actual satirist,
we should have to explain his paragraph by the hypothesis that he
chose to sneer at him under his _nom de guerre_ instead of
stigmatising him openly in person.

His remarks, at any rate, go far toward disposing of the old belief
that the Goliardic satires were the work of Thomas Mapes. Giraldus was
an intimate friend of that worthy, who deserves well of all lovers of
medieval romance as a principal contributor to the Arthurian cycle. It
is hardly possible that Giraldus should have gibbeted such a man under
the sobriquet of Golias.

But what, it may be asked, if Walter of Lille, without the cognisance
of our English annalist, had in France obtained the chief fame of
these poems? what if they afterwards were attributed in England to
another Walter, his contemporary, himself a satirist of the monastic
orders? The fact that Walter of Lille was known in Latin as Gualtherus
de Insula, or Walter of the Island, may have confirmed the
misapprehension thus suggested. It should be added that the ascription
of the Goliardic satires to Walter Mapes or Map first occurs in MSS.
of the fourteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: See the drinking song printed in _Walter Mapes_, p. xlv.,