"You're never too old to learn", people used say. I suppose the modern-day version would be, "Learning, that's for old gits with time on their hands. I'm too busy making money/binge drinking/trying to get on the telly."
Anyway here's something I learned today, courtesy of one John Feffer -

"The Song of Roland, an eleventh century rendering in verse of an eighth century battle, is a staple of Western Civilization classes at colleges around the country. A “masterpiece of epic drama,” in the words of its renowned translator Dorothy Sayers, it provides a handy preface for students before they delve into readings on the Crusades that began in 1095. More ominously, the poem has schooled generations of Judeo-Christians to view Muslims as perfidious enemies who once threatened the very foundations of Western civilization.
"The problem, however, is that the whole epic is built on a curious falsehood. The army that fell upon Roland and his Frankish soldiers was not Muslim at all. In the real battle of 778, the slayers of the Franks were Christian Basques furious at Charlemagne for pillaging their city of Pamplona. Not epic at all, the battle emerged from a parochial dispute in the complex wars of medieval Spain. Only later, as kings and popes and knights prepared to do battle in the First Crusade, did an anonymous bard repurpose the text to serve the needs of an emerging cross-against-crescent holy war."

Anonymous bard = medieval spin-doctor

Addendum: I had to leave this posting in a hurry, and didn't get the link right; now done. Also, didn't credit 'Pitirre' who posted a link to this article on the Angry Arab's Comment Section.