I was reading Roland's Song and I encountered this part:
stand everything, the great heat, the great cold,
lose the hide and hair on him for his good lord.
Do you know what "lose the hide and hair on him for his lord" means here?
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I do not know who did the translation, but it is poor. The lines without context are all but meaningless. The extract is -- Answers Rollanz: "God grant us then the fee! / For our King's sake well must we quit us here; / Man for his lord should suffer great disease, / Most bitter cold endure, and burning heat, / His hair and skin should offer up at need." https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/391/pg391.html – Greybeard Oct 05 '21 at 10:51
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There's an idiom "not see hide nor hair of somebody" meaning to not see them at all. But that's the only context you normally see the phrase "hide and/or hair" in English. – Stuart F Oct 05 '21 at 11:57
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Presumably the sense is "He should be so devoted to his (feudal) lord that he would be willing to give even his own skin and hair for his sake if required". – Kate Bunting Oct 05 '21 at 13:19
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It is an almost literal translation of «E endurer e granz chalz e granz freiz / Si’n deit hom perdre e del quir e del peil» where quir (cuir) is animal skin or leather, and peil (poil) is hair. – Henry Oct 05 '21 at 13:43
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@Henry That's the problem with literal translations, they're not always idiomatic. Anyway, the poem is very old, so it uses archaic term phrasing. – Barmar Oct 08 '21 at 00:50