Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rotelande, Hue de
ROTELANDE, HUE de, or RUTLAND, HUGH of (fl. 1185), Anglo-Norman poet, was connected with the English district on the Welsh border. In his ‘Ipomedon’ (l. 10569) he says, ‘A Credehulle a ma meisun.’ The reference is no doubt to Credenhill, near Hereford, but De La Rue says wrongly Credenhill in Cornhill, and this mistake has been followed by Wright and others. It is questionable whether Rotelande can mean Rutland, and Mr. Ward conjectures that possibly Rhuddlan is intended. From an allusion in the ‘Ipomedon’ it is clear that Hugh wrote it after 1174. The ‘Prothesilaus’ contains lines in honour of Gilbert FitzBalderon, who died in 1190–1, and was lord of Monmouth and father of John de Monmouth [q. v.] In another passage of the ‘Ipomedon’ Hugh refers to Walter Map as a romance writer like himself [see under Map, Walter]. Hugh was the author of two Anglo-Norman romances in verse: 1. ‘Ipomedon,’ a poem, of about ten thousand lines, printed at Breslau in 1889 from Cotton. MS. Vesp. A. vii. and Egerton MS. 2515 in the British Museum, and a fragment in Rawlinson MS. Misc. 1370 in the Bodleian Library. Hugh professes to translate from the Latin. It is possible that he used the ‘Fabulæ’ of Hyginus. An account of the romance, with some extracts, is given in Ward's ‘Catalogue of Romances.’ A critical study of the text was published by Signor Adolfo Mussafia in 1890. 2. ‘Prothesilaus,’ a romance, by Rotelande, which is a continuation of the ‘Ipomedon,’ is preserved in a manuscript at the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.
[De La Rue's Bardes, ii. 285–96; Wright's Biogr. Brit. Litt. ii. 338; Ward's Cat. of Romances in the Brit. Mus. i. 728–34; Ipomedon, ein französischer Abenteuerroman, ed. E. Kolbing und E. Koschwitz; Sulla critica del testo del romanzo in francese antico Ipomedon. Studio di Adolfo Mussafia (Kaiserliche Academie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte … Philosophisch-historische Classe, Vienna, 1890).]