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The Subjunctive in the Chanson de Roland by Frank Emil Lodeman, 1892

The Subjunctive in the Chanson de Roland by Frank Emil Lodeman, 1892, Page 6

The Subjunctive in the Chanson de Roland.
The subjunctive is the mood generally used to express a Wish, an Entreaty, a Command, a Concession or a Probability. It is comparatively rare in independent sentences, being mostly found in dependent clauses, not because they are dependent, but because a wish, a possibility, &c., is now thus expressed.
The subjunctive mood, including the optative, is of earlier origin than the complex sentence, with its dependent clause, and was used to denote what was not real, at a time when thought was expressed by unconnected simple sentences. The dependent subjunctive has thus grown our of its former use in independent constructions, which is really the older form.
One general principle underlies all the various uses of the subjunctive, whatever the form of the clause, viz; the subjunctive serves to express not an actual, but a possible fact. This will explain why, after the same verbs and expressions, we sometimes find the indicative and then again the subjunctive.

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The Subjunctive in the Chanson de Roland. The subjunctive is the mood generally used to express a Wish, an Entreaty, a Command, a Concession or a Probability. It is comparatively rare in independent sentences, being mostly found in dependent clauses, not because they are dependent, but because a wish, a possibility, &c., is now thus expressed. The subjunctive mood, including the optative, is of earlier origin than the complex sentence, with its dependent clause, and was used to denote what was not real, at a time when thought was expressed by unconnected simple sentences. The dependent subjunctive has thus grown our of its former use in independent constructions, which is really the older form. One general principle underlies all the various uses of the subjunctive, whatever the form of the clause, viz; the subjunctive serves to express not an actual, but a possible fact. This will explain why, after the same verbs and expressions, we sometimes find the indicative and then again the subjunctive.