Valentine and Orson

"Valentine and Orson" is a romance which has been attached to the Carolingian cycle. It is the story of twin brothers, abandoned in the woods in infancy. Valentine is brought up as a knight at the court of Pippin, while Orson grows up in a bear's den to be a wild man of the woods, until he is overcome and tamed by Valentine, whose servant and comrade he becomes. The two eventually rescue their mother Bellisant, sister of Pippin and wife of the emperor of Greece, by whom she had been unjustly repudiated, from the power of a giant named Ferragus. There are versions of the tale, which appears to rest on a lost French original, in French, English, German, Icelandic, Dutch and Italian. In the older versions Orson is described as the " nameless " one. The kernel of the story lies in Orson's upbringing and wildness, and is evidently a folk-tale the connection of which with the Carolingian cycle is purely artificial. The story of the wife unjustly accused with which it is bound up is sufficiently common, and was told of the wives both of Pippin and Charlemagne.

The French prose romance was printed at Lyon in 1489 and often subsequently. "The Historye of the two Valyannte Brethren: Valentyne and Orson" by Henry Watson, printed by William Copland about 1550, is the earliest known of a long series of English versions.

It is known that Richard Hathwaye and Anthony Munday produced a version of it in 1598.

Nancy Ekholm Burkert wrote and illutrated a version of the story in 1989, in which the story is told through the lens of a traveling group of players (including two brothers) who bring the story to a village in Flanders in the Middle Ages.