Meis Fenice est sor toz pansive; Ele ne trueve fonz ne rive El panser dont ele est anplie, Tant li abonde et mouteplie.

Cliges, l. 4339.

In the later works of Chrestien, in Yvain, Lancelot, and Perceval, there are new developments of romance, more particularly in the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. But these three later stories, unlike Cliges, are full of the British marvels, which no one would wish away, and yet they are encumbrances to what we must regard as the principal virtue of the poet—his skill of analysis in cases of sentiment, and his interest in such cases. Cliges, at any rate, however far it may come short of the Chevalier de la Charrette and the Conte du Graal in variety, is that one of Chrestien's poems, it might be said that one of the twelfth-century French romances, which best corresponds to the later type of novel. It is the most modern of them; and at the same time it does not represent its own age any the worse, because it also to some extent anticipates the fashions of later literature.

In this kind of romance, which reduces the cost of the "machinery," and does without enchanters, dragons, magic mists, and deadly castles, there are many other examples besides Cliges.

A hundred years after Chrestien, one of his cleverest pupils wrote the Provenal story of Flamenca,[88] a work in which the form of the novel is completely disengaged from the unnecessary accidents of romance, and reaches a kind of positive and modern clearness very much at variance in some respects with popular ideas of what is medieval. The Romance of the medieval Romantic School attains one of its highest and most distinctive points in Flamenca, and shows what it had been aiming at from the beginning—namely, the expression in an elegant manner of the ideas of the Art of Love, as understood in the polite society of those times. Flamenca is nearly contemporary with the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris. Its inspiring ideas are the same, and though its influence on succeeding authors is indiscernible, where that of the Roman de la Rose is widespread and enduring, Flamenca would have as good a claim to be considered a representative masterpiece of medieval literature, if it were not that it appears to be breaking loose from medieval conventions where the Roman de la Rose makes all it can out of them. Flamenca is a simple narrative of society, with the indispensable three characters—the husband, the lady, and the lover. The scene of the story is principally at the baths of Bourbon, in the then present day; and of the miracles and adventures of the more marvellous and adventurous romances there is nothing left but the very pleasant enumeration of the names of favourite stories in the account of the minstrelsy at Flamenca's wedding. The author knew all that was to be known in romance, of Greek, Latin, or British invention—Thebes and Troy, Alexander and Julius Caesar, Samson and Judas Maccabeus, Ivain and Gawain and Perceval, Paris and Tristram, and all Ovid's Legend of Good Women—but out of all these studies he has retained only what suited his purpose. He does not compete with the Greek or the British champions in their adventures among the romantic forests. Chrestien of Troyes is his master, but he does not try to copy the magic of the Lady of the Fountain, or the Bridge of the Sword, or the Castle of the Grail. He follows the doctrine of love expounded in Chrestien's Lancelot, but his hero is not sent wandering at random, and is not made to display his courtly emotions among the ruins and shadows of the lost Celtic mythology, like Lancelot in Chrestien's poem. The life described in Flamenca is the life of the days in which it was composed; and the hero's task is to disguise himself as a clerk, so as to get a word with the jealously-guarded lady in church on Sundays, while giving her the Psalter to kiss after the Mass. Flamenca, is really the triumph of Ovid, with the Art of Love, over all his Gothic competitors out of the fairy tales. The Provenal poet has discarded everything but the essential dominant interests, and in so doing has gone ahead of his master Chrestien, who (except in Cliges) allowed himself to be distracted between opposite kinds of story, between the school of Ovid and the school of Blethericus; and who, even in Cliges, was less consistently modern than his Provenal follower.

[Footnote 88: Ed. Paul Meyer, 1865, and, again, 1901.]

Flamenca is the perfection and completion of medieval romance in one kind and in one direction. It is all sentiment; the ideal courtly sentiment of good society and its poets, made lively by the author's knowledge of his own time and its manners, and his decision not to talk about anything else. It is perhaps significant that he allows his heroine the romance of Flores and Blanchefleur for her reading, an older story of true lovers, after the simpler pattern of Greek romance, which the author of Flamenca apparently feels himself entitled to refer to with the condescension of a modern and critical author towards some old-fashioned prettiness. He is completely self-possessed and ironical with regard to his story. His theme is the idle love whose origin is explained by Ovid; his personages are nothing to him but the instruments of the symphony which he composes and directs: sopra lor vanit che par persona, over and through their graceful inanity, passes the stream of sentiment, the shifting, flickering light which the Provenal author has borrowed from Ovid and transferred for his own purposes to his own time. It is perhaps the first complete modern appropriation of classical examples in literary art; for the poem of Flamenca is classical in more than one sense of the term—classical, not only because of its comprehension of the spirit of the Latin poet and his code of manners and sentiment, but because of its clear proportions and its definite abstract lines of composition; because of the self-possession of the author and his subordination of details and rejection of irrelevances.

Many things are wanting to Flamenca which it did not suit the author to bring in. It was left to other greater writers to venture on other and larger schemes with room for more strength and individuality of character, and more stress of passion, still keeping the romantic framework which had been designed by the masters of the twelfth century, and also very much of the sentimental language which the same masters had invented and elaborated.

The story of the Chastelaine de Vergi[89] (dated by its editor between 1282 and 1288) is an example of a different kind from Flamenca; still abstract in its personages, still sentimental, but wholly unlike Flamenca in the tragic stress of its sentiment and in the pathos of its incidents. There is no plot in Flamenca, or only just enough to display the author's resources of eloquence; in the Chastelaine de Vergi there is no rhetorical expansion or effusion, but instead of that the coherent closely-reasoned argument of a romantic tragedy, with nothing in it out of keeping with the conditions of "real life." It is a moral example to show the disastrous result of breaking the first law of chivalrous love, which enjoins loyal secrecy on the lover; the tragedy in this case arises from the strong compulsion of honour under which the commandment is transgressed.

[Footnote 89: Ed. G. Raynaud, Romania, xxi. p. 145.]

There was a knight who was the lover of the Chastelaine de Vergi, unknown to all the world. Their love was discovered by the jealous machinations of the Duchess of Burgundy, whom the knight had neglected. The Duchess made use of her knowledge to insult the Chastelaine; the Chastelaine died of a broken heart at the thought that her lover had betrayed her; the knight found her dead, and threw himself on his sword to make amends for his unwilling disloyalty. Even a summary like this may show that the plot has capabilities and opportunities in it; and though the scheme of the short story does not allow the author to make use of them in the full detailed manner of the great novelists, he understands what he is about, and his work is a very fine instance of sensitive and clearly-executed medieval narrative, which has nothing to learn (in its own kind, and granting the conditions assumed by the author) from any later fiction.

The story of the Lady of Vergi was known to Boccaccio, and was repeated both by Bandello and by Queen Margaret of Navarre.

It is time to consider how the work of the medieval romantic schools was taken up and continued by many of the most notable writers of the period which no longer can be called medieval, in which modern literature makes a new and definite beginning; especially in the works of the two modern poets who have done most to save and adapt the inheritance of medieval romance for modern forms of literature—Boccaccio and Chaucer.

The development of romance in these authors is not always and in all respects a gain. Even the pathetic stories of the Decameron (such as the Pot of Basil, Tancred and Gismunda, William of Cabestaing) seem to have lost something by the adoption of a different kind of grammar, a more learned rhetoric, in comparison with the best of the simple French stories, like the Chastelaine de Vergi. This is the case in a still greater degree where Boccaccio has allowed himself a larger scale, as in his version of the old romance of Flores and Blanchefleur (Filocolo), while his Teseide might be taken as the first example in modern history of the pernicious effect of classical studies. The Teseide is the story of Palamon and Arcita. The original is lost, but it evidently was a French romance, probably not a long one; one of the favourite well-defined cases or problems of love, easily understood as soon as stated, presenting the rivalry of the two noble kinsmen for the love of the lady Emily. It might have been made into one of the stories of the Decameron, but Boccaccio had other designs for it. He wished to write a classical epic in twelve books, and not very fortunately chose this simple theme as the groundwork of his operations. The Teseide is the first of the solemn row of modern epics; "reverend and divine, abiding without motion, shall we say that they have being?" Everything is to be found in the Teseide that the best classical traditions require in epic—Olympian machinery, catalogues of armies, descriptions of works of art to compete with the Homeric and Virgilian shields, elaborate battles, and epic similes, and funeral games. Chaucer may have been at one time tempted by all this magnificence; his final version of the story, in the Knight's Tale, is a proof among other things of his critical tact. He must have recognised that the Teseide, with all its ambition and its brilliancy of details, was a failure as a story; that this particular theme, at any rate, was not well fitted to carry the epic weight. These personages of romance were not in training for the heavy classical panoply. So he reduced the story of Palamon and Arcita to something not very different from what must have been its original scale as a romance. His modifications of Boccaccio here are a lesson in the art of narrative which can hardly be overvalued by students of that mystery.

Chaucer's procedure in regard to his romantic subjects is often very difficult to understand. How firm and unwavering his critical meditations and calculations were may be seen by a comparison of the Knight's Tale with its Italian source. At other times and in other stories he appears to have worked on different principles, or without much critical study at all. The Knight's Tale is a complete and perfect version of a medieval romance, worked out with all the resources of Chaucer's literary study and reflexion; tested and considered and corrected in every possible way. The story of Constance (the Man of Law's Tale) is an earlier work in which almost everything is lacking that is found in the mere workmanship of the Knight's Tale; though not, of course, the humanity, the pathos, of Chaucer. The story of Constance appears to have been taken by Chaucer from one of the least artificial specimens of medieval romance, the kind of romance that worked up in a random sort of way the careless sequence of incidents in a popular traditional tale. Just as the tellers of the stories in Campbell's Highland Tales, and other authentic collections, make no scruple about proportion where their memory happens to fail them or their irrelevant fancy to distract them, but go on easily, dropping out a symmetrical adventure here and there, and repeating a favourite "machine" if necessary or unnecessary; so the story of Constance forgets and repeats itself. The voice is the voice of Chaucer, and so are the thoughts, but the order or disorder of the story is that of the old wives' tales when the old wives are drowsy. All the principal situations occur twice over; twice the heroine is persecuted by a wicked mother-in-law, twice sent adrift in a rudderless boat, twice rescued from a churl, and so on. In this story the poetry of Chaucer appears as something almost independent of the structure of the plot; there has been no such process of design and reconstruction as in the Knight's Tale.

It is almost as strange to find Chaucer in other stories, as in the Franklin's Tale and the Clerk's Tale, putting up with the most abstract medieval conventions of morality; the Point of Honour in the Franklin's Tale, and the unmitigated virtue of Griselda, are hopelessly opposed to anything like dramatic truth, and very far inferior as motives to the ethical ideas of many stories of the twelfth century. The truth of Enid would have given no opportunity for the ironical verses in which Chaucer takes his leave of the Clerk of Oxford and his heroine.

In these romances Chaucer leaves some old medieval difficulties unresolved and unreconciled, without attempting to recast the situation as he found it in his authorities, or to clear away the element of unreason in it. He takes the framework as he finds it, and embroiders his poetry over it, leaving an obvious discrepancy between his poetry and its subject-matter.

In some other stories, as in the Legend of Good Women, and the tale of Virginia, he is content with pathos, stopping short of vivid drama. In the Knight's Tale he seems to have deliberately chosen a compromise between the pathetic mood of pure romance and a fuller dramatic method; he felt, apparently, that while the contrast between the two rivals admitted of drama, the position of the lady Emily in the story was such as to prevent a full dramatic rendering of all the characters. The plot required that the lady Emily should be left without much share of her own in the action.

The short and uncompleted poem of Anelida gains in significance and comes into its right place in Chaucer's works, when it is compared with such examples of the older school as the Chastelaine de Vergi. It is Chaucer's essay in that delicate abstract fashion of story which formed one of the chief accomplishments of the French Romantic School. It is his acknowledgment of his debt to the artists of sensibility, the older French authors, "that can make of sentiment," and it proves, like all his writings, how quick he was to save all he could from the teaching of his forerunners, for the profit of "that fair style that has brought him honour." To treat a simple problem, or "case," of right and wrong in love, was a favourite task of medieval courtly poetry, narrative and lyric. Chaucer in his Anelida takes up this old theme again, treating it in a form between narrative and lyric, with the pure abstract melody that gives the mood of the actors apart from any dramatic individuality. He is one of the Extractors of Quintessence, and his Anelida is the formal spirit, impalpable yet definite, of the medieval courtly romance.

It is not here, but in a poem the opposite of this in fulness and richness of drama, that Chaucer attains a place for himself above all other authors as the poet who saw what was needed to transform medieval romance out of its limitations into a new kind of narrative. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is the poem in which medieval romance passes out of itself into the form of the modern novel. What Cervantes and what Fielding did was done first by Chaucer; and this was the invention of a kind of story in which life might be represented no longer in a conventional or abstract manner, or with sentiment and pathos instead of drama, but with characters adapting themselves to different circumstances, no longer obviously breathed upon by the master of the show to convey his own ideas, but moving freely and talking like men and women. The romance of the Middle Ages comes to an end, in one of the branches of the family tree, by the production of a romance that has all the freedom of epic, that comprehends all good and evil, and excludes nothing as common or unclean which can be made in any way to strengthen the impression of life and variety. Chaucer was not tempted by the phantasm of the Epic Poem like Boccaccio, and like so many of the great and wise in later generations. The substance of Epic, since his time, has been appropriated by certain writers of history, as Fielding has explained in his lectures on that science in Tom Jones. The first in the line of these modern historians is Chaucer with his Troilus and Criseyde, and the wonder still is as great as it was for Sir Philip Sidney:—

Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his Troylus and Cresseid; of whom, truly I know not whether to mervaile more, either that he in that mistie time could see so clearely, or that wee in this cleare age walke so stumblingly after him.

His great work grew out of the French Romantic School. The episode of Troilus and Briseide in Benoit's Roman de Troie is one of the best passages in the earlier French romance; light and unsubstantial like all the work of that School, but graceful, and not untrue. It is all summed up in the monologue of Briseide at the end of her story (l. 20,308):—

Dex donge bien a Troylus! Quant nel puis amer ne il mei A cestui[90] me done et otrei. Molt voldreie aveir cel talent Que n'esse remembrement Des ovres faites d'en arriere: o me fait mal grant manire!

[Footnote 90: i.e. Diomede.]

Boccaccio took up this story, from the Latin version of the Tale of Troy, the Historia Trojana of Guido. His Filostrato is written on a different plan from the Teseide; it is one of his best works. He did not make it into an epic poem; the Filostrato, Boccaccio's Troilus and Cressida, is a romance, differing from the older French romantic form not in the design of the story, but in the new poetical diction in which it is composed, and its new poetical ideas. There is no false classicism in it, as there is in his Palamon and Arcita; it is a novel of his own time, a story of the Decameron, only written at greater length, and in verse. Chaucer, the "great translator," took Boccaccio's poem and treated it in his own way, not as he had dealt with the Teseide. The Teseide, because there was some romantic improbability in the story, he made into a romance. The story of Troilus he saw was strong enough to bear a stronger handling, and instead of leaving it a romance, graceful and superficial as it is in Boccaccio, he deepened it and filled it with such dramatic imagination and such variety of life as had never been attained before his time by any romancer; and the result is a piece of work that leaves all romantic convention behind. The Filostrato of Boccaccio is a story of light love, not much more substantial, except in its new poetical language, than the story of Flamenca. In Chaucer the passion of Troilus is something different from the sentiment of romance; the changing mind of Cressida is represented with an understanding of the subtlety and the tragic meaning of that life which is "Time's fool." Pandarus is the other element. In Boccaccio he is a personage of the same order as Troilus and Cressida; they all might have come out of the Garden of the Decameron, and there is little to choose between them. Chaucer sets him up with a character and a philosophy of his own, to represent the world outside of romance. The Comic Genius claims a share in the tragedy, and the tragedy makes room for him, because the tragic personages, "Tragic Comedians" as they are, can bear the strain of the contrast. The selection of personages and motives is made in another way in the romantic schools, but this poem of Chaucer's is not romance. It is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Socrates, just before Aristophanes and the tragic poet had to be put to bed at the end of the Symposium, that the best author of tragedy is the best author of comedy also. It is the freedom of the imagination, beyond all the limits of partial and conventional forms.



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS



APPENDIX

NOTE A (p. 133)

Rhetoric of the Western and Northern Alliterative Poems

Any page of the Anglo-Saxon poets, and of the "Elder Edda," will show the difference between the "continuous" and the "discrete"—the Western and the Northern—modes of the alliterative verse. It may be convenient to select some passages here for reference.

(1) As an example of the Western style ("the sense variously drawn out from one verse to another"), the speech of the "old warrior" stirring up vengeance for King Froda (Beowulf, l. 2041 sq.; see above, p. 70):—

onne cwi t beore se e beah gesyh, eald scwiga, se e eall geman garcwealm gumena (him bi grim sefa) onginne geomormod geongum cempan urh hrera gehygd higes cunnian, wigbealu weccean, ond t word acwy: "Meaht u, min wine, mece gecnawan, one in fder to gefeohte br under heregriman, hindeman sie, dyre iren, r hine Dene slogon, weoldon wlstowe, syan Wiergyld lg fter hlea hryre, hwate Scyldingas? Nu her ara banena byre nathwylces, frtwum hremig, on flet g, mordres gylpe ond one maum byre one e u mid rihte rdan sceoldest!"

(The "old warrior"—no less a hero than Starkad himself, according to Saxo—bears a grudge on account of the slaying of Froda, and cannot endure the reconciliation that has been made. He sees the reconciled enemies still wearing the spoils of war, arm-rings, and even Froda's sword, and addresses Ingeld, Froda's son):—

Over the ale he speaks, seeing the ring, the old warrior, that remembers all, the spear-wrought slaying of men (his thought is grim), with sorrow at heart begins with the young champion, in study of mind to make trial of his valour, to waken the havoc of war, and thus he speaks: "Knowest thou, my lord? nay, well thou knowest the falchion that thy father bore to the fray, wearing his helmet of war, in that last hour, the blade of price, where the Danes him slew, and kept the field, when Withergyld was brought down after the heroes' fall; yea, the Danish princes slew him! See now, a son of one or other of the men of blood, glorious in apparel, goes through the hall, boasts of the stealthy slaying, and bears the goodly heirloom that thou of right shouldst have and hold!"

(2) The Northern arrangement, with "the sense concluded in the couplet," is quite different from the Western style. There is no need to quote more than a few lines. The following passage is from the last scene of Helgi and Sigrun (C.P.B., i. p. 143; see p. 72 above—"Yet precious are the draughts," etc.):—

Vel skolom drekka drar veigar tt misst hafim munar ok landa: skal engi mar angr-li kvea, tt mer bristi benjar lti. N ero brir byrgar haugi, lofa dsir, hj oss linom.

The figure of Anadiplosis (or the "Redouble," as it is called in the Arte of English Poesie) is characteristic of a certain group of Northern poems. See the note on this, with references, in C.P.B., i. p. 557. The poems in which this device appears are the poems of the heroines (Brynhild, Gudrun, Oddrun), the heroic idylls of the North. In these poems the repetition of a phrase, as in the Greek pastoral poetry and its descendants, has the effect of giving solemnity to the speech, and slowness of movement to the line.

So in the Long Lay of Brynhild (C.P.B., i. p. 296):—

svrar sifjar, svarna eia, eia svarna, unnar trygir;

and (ibid.)—

hann vas fyr utan eia svarna, eia svarna, unnar trygir;

and in the Old Lay of Gudrun (C.P.B., i. p. 319)—

Hverr vildi mer hnossir velja hnossir velja, ok hugat mla.

There are other figures which have the same effect:—

Gott es at ra Rnar malmi, ok unandi aui styra, ok sitjandi slo nita.

C.P.B., i. p. 296.

But apart from these emphatic forms of phrasing, all the sentences are so constructed as to coincide with the divisions of the lines, whereas in the Western poetry, Saxon and Anglo-Saxon, the phrases are made to cut across the lines, the sentences having their own limits, independent of the beginnings and endings of the verses.

NOTE B (p. 205)

The Meeting of Kjartan and King Olaf Tryggvason (Laxdla Saga, c. 40)

Kjartan rode with his father east from Hjardarholt, and they parted in Northwaterdale; Kjartan rode on to the ship, and Bolli, his kinsman, went along with him. There were ten men of Iceland all together that followed Kjartan out of goodwill; and with this company he rides to the harbour. Kalf Asgeirsson welcomes them all. Kjartan and Bolli took a rich freight with them. So they made themselves ready to sail, and when the wind was fair they sailed out and down the Borg firth with a gentle breeze and good, and so out to sea. They had a fair voyage, and made the north of Norway, and so into Throndheim. There they asked for news, and it was told them that the land had changed its masters; Earl Hacon was gone, and King Olaf Tryggvason come, and the whole of Norway had fallen under his sway. King Olaf was proclaiming a change of law; men did not take it all in the same way. Kjartan and his fellows brought their ship into Nidaros.

At that time there were in Norway many Icelanders who were men of reputation. There at the wharves were lying three ships all belonging to men of Iceland: one to Brand the Generous, son of Vermund Thorgrimsson; another to Hallfred the Troublesome Poet; the third ship was owned by two brothers, Bjarni and Thorhall, sons of Skeggi, east in Fleetlithe,—all these men had been bound for Iceland in the summer, but the king had arrested the ships because these men would not accept the faith that he was proclaiming. Kjartan was welcomed by them all, and most of all by Brand, because they had been well acquainted earlier. The Icelanders all took counsel together, and this was the upshot, that they bound themselves to refuse the king's new law. Kjartan and his mates brought in their ship to the quay, and fell to work to land their freight.

King Olaf was in the town; he hears of the ship's coming, and that there were men in it of no small account. It fell out on a bright day in harvest-time that Kjartan's company saw a number of men going to swim in the river Nith. Kjartan said they ought to go too, for the sport; and so they did. There was one man of the place who was far the best swimmer. Kjartan says to Bolli:

"Will you try your swimming against this townsman?"

Bolli answers: "I reckon that is more than my strength."

"I know not what is become of your hardihood," says Kjartan; "but I will venture it myself."

"That you may, if you please," says Bolli.

Kjartan dives into the river, and so out to the man that swam better than all the rest; him he takes hold of and dives under with him, and holds him under for a time, and then lets him go. After that they swam for a little, and then the stranger takes Kjartan and goes under with him, and holds him under, none too short a time, as it seemed to Kjartan. Then they came to the top, but there were no words between them. They dived together a third time, and were down longer than before. Kjartan thought it hard to tell how the play would end; it seemed to him that he had never been in so tight a place in his life. However, they come up at last, and strike out for the land.

Then says the stranger: "Who may this man be?"

Kjartan told his name.

The townsman said: "You are a good swimmer; are you as good at other sports as at this?"

Kjartan answers, but not very readily: "When I was in Iceland it was thought that my skill in other things was much of a piece; but now there is not much to be said about it."

The townsman said: "It may make some difference to know with whom you have been matched; why do you not ask?"

Kjartan said: "I care nothing for your name."

The townsman says: "For one thing you are a good man of your hands, and for another you bear yourself otherwise than humbly; none the less shall you know my name and with whom you have been swimming; I am Olaf Tryggvason, the king."

Kjartan makes no answer, and turns to go away. He had no cloak, but a coat of scarlet cloth. The king was then nearly dressed. He called to Kjartan to wait a little; Kjartan turned and came back, rather slowly. Then the king took from his shoulders a rich cloak and gave it to Kjartan, saying he should not go cloakless back to his men. Kjartan thanks the king for his gift, and goes to his men and shows them the cloak. They did not take it very well, but thought he had allowed the king too much of a hold on him.

Things were quiet for a space; the weather began to harden with frost and cold. The heathen men said it was no wonder they had ill weather that autumn; it was all the king's newfangledness and the new law that had made the gods angry.

The Icelanders were all together that winter in the town; and Kjartan took the lead among them. In time the weather softened, and men came in numbers to the town at the summons of King Olaf. Many men had taken the Christian faith in Throndheim, but those were more in number who were against it. One day the king held an assembly in the town, out on the point of Eyre, and declared the Faith with many eloquent words. The Thronds had a great multitude there, and offered battle to the king on the spot. The king said they should know that he had fought against greater powers than to think of scuffling with clowns in Throndheim. Then the yeomen were cowed, and gave in wholly to the king, and many men were christened; then the assembly broke up.

That same evening the king sends men to the Icelanders' inn to observe and find out how they talked. When the messengers came there, there was a loud sound of voices within.

Kjartan spoke, and said to Bolli: "Kinsman, are you willing to take this faith of the king's?"

"I am not," says Bolli, "for it seems to me a feeble, pithless thing."

Says Kjartan: "Seemed the king to you to have no threats for those that refused to accept his will?"

Says Bolli: "Truly the king seemed to us to come out clearly and leave no shadow on that head, that they should have hard measure dealt them."

"No man's underling will I be," says Kjartan, "while I can keep my feet and handle a sword; it seems to me a pitiful thing to be taken thus like a lamb out of the pen, or a fox out of the trap. I hold it a far better choice, if one must die, to do something first that shall be long talked of after."

"What will you do?" says Bolli.

"I will not make a secret of it," says Kjartan; "burn the king's house, and the king in it."

"I call that no mean thing to do," says Bolli; "but yet it will not be, for I reckon that the king has no small grace and good luck along with him; and he keeps a strong watch day and night."

Kjartan said that courage might fail the stoutest man; Bolli answered that it was still to be tried whose courage would hold out longest. Then many broke in and said that this talk was foolishness; and when the king's spies had heard so much, they went back to the king and told him how the talk had gone.

On the morrow the king summons an assembly; and all the Icelanders were bidden to come. When all were met, the king stood up and thanked all men for their presence, those who were willing to be his friends and had taken the Faith. Then he fell to speech with the Icelanders. The king asks if they will be christened. They make little sound of agreement to that. The king said that they might make a choice that would profit them less.

"Which of you was it that thought it convenient to burn me in my house?"

Then says Kjartan: "You think that he will not have the honesty to confess it, he that said this. But here you may see him."

"See thee I may," says the king, "and a man of no mean imagination; yet it is not in thy destiny to see my head at thy feet. And good enough cause might I have to stay thee from offering to burn kings in their houses in return for their good advice; but because I know not how far thy thought went along with thy words, and because of thy manly declaration, thou shalt not lose thy life for this; it may be that thou wilt hold the Faith better, as thou speakest against it more than others. I can see, too, that it will bring the men of all the Iceland ships to accept the Faith the same day that thou art christened of thine own free will. It seems to me also like enough that thy kinsmen and friends in Iceland will listen to what thou sayest when thou art come out thither again. It is not far from my thought that thou, Kjartan, mayst have a better Faith when thou sailest from Norway than when thou camest hither. Go now all in peace and liberty whither you will from this meeting; you shall not be penned into Christendom; for it is the word of God that He will not have any come to Him save in free will."

There was much approval of this speech of the king's, yet chiefly from the Christians; the heathen men left it to Kjartan to answer as he would. Then said Kjartan: "We will thank you, Sir, for giving us your peace; this more than anything would draw us to accept your Faith, that you renounce all grounds of enmity and speak gently altogether, though you have our whole fortunes in your hand to-day. And this is in my mind, only to accept the Faith in Norway if I may pay some small respect to Thor next winter when I come to Iceland."

Then answered the king, smiling: "It is well seen from the bearing of Kjartan that he thinks he has better surety in his strength and his weapons than there where Thor and Odin are."

After that the assembly broke up.

NOTE C (p. 257)

Eyjolf Karsson: an Episode in the History of Bishop Gudmund Arason, A.D. 1222 (from Arons Saga Hjrleifssonar, c. 8, printed in Biskupa Sgur, i., and in Sturlunga, ii. pp. 312-347).

[Eyjolf Karsson and Aron stood by Bishop Gudmund in his troubles, and followed him out to his refuge in the island of Grimsey, lying off the north coast of Iceland, about 30 miles from the mouth of Eyjafirth. There the Bishop was attacked by the Sturlungs, Sighvat (brother of Snorri Sturluson) and his son Sturla. His men were out-numbered; Aron was severely wounded. This chapter describes how Eyjolf managed to get his friend out of danger and how he went back himself and was killed.]

Now the story turns to Eyjolf and Aron. When many of Eyjolf's men were down, and some had run to the church, he took his way to the place where Aron and Sturla had met, and there he found Aron sitting with his weapons, and all about were lying dead men and wounded. It is reckoned that nine men must have lost their lives there. Eyjolf asks his cousin whether he can move at all. Aron says that he can, and stands on his feet; and now they go both together for a while by the shore, till they come to a hidden bay; there they saw a boat ready floating, with five or six men at the oars, and the bow to sea. This was Eyjolf's arrangement, in case of sudden need. Now Eyjolf tells Aron that he means the boat for both of them; giving out that he sees no hope of doing more for the Bishop at that time.

"But I look for better days to come," says Eyjolf.

"It seems a strange plan to me," says Aron; "for I thought that we should never part from Bishop Gudmund in this distress; there is something behind this, and I vow that I will not go unless you go first on board."

"That I will not, cousin," says Eyjolf; "for it is shoal water here, and I will not have any of the oarsmen leave his oar to shove her off; and it is far too much for you to go afoot with wounds like yours. You will have to go on board."

"Well, put your weapons in the boat," says Aron, "and I will believe you."

Aron now goes on board; and Eyjolf did as Aron asked him. Eyjolf waded after, pushing the boat, for the shallows went far out. And when he saw the right time come, Eyjolf caught up a battle-axe out of the stern of the boat, and gave a shove to the boat with all his might.

"Good-bye, Aron," says Eyjolf; "we shall meet again when God pleases."

And since Aron was disabled with wounds, and weary with loss of blood, it had to be even so; and this parting was a grief to Aron, for they saw each other no more.

Now Eyjolf spoke to the oarsmen and told them to row hard, and not to let Aron come back to Grimsey that day, and not for many a day if they could help it.

They row away with Aron in their boat; but Eyjolf turns to the shore again and to a boat-house with a large ferry-boat in it, that belonged to the goodman Gnup. And at the same nick of time he sees the Sturlung company come tearing down from the garth, having finished their mischief there. Eyjolf takes to the boat-house, with his mind made up to defend it as long as his doom would let him. There were double doors to the boat-house, and he puts heavy stones against them.

Brand, one of Sighvat's followers, a man of good condition, caught a glimpse of a man moving, and said to his companions that he thought he had made out Eyjolf Karsson there, and they ought to go after him. Sturla was not on the spot; there were nine or ten together. So they come to the boat-house. Brand asks who is there, and Eyjolf says it is he.

"Then you will please to come out and come before Sturla," says Brand.

"Will you promise me quarter?" says Eyjolf.

"There will be little of that," says Brand.

"Then it is for you to come on," says Eyjolf, "and for me to guard; and it seems to me the shares are ill divided."

Eyjolf had a coat of mail, and a great axe, and that was all.

Now they came at him, and he made a good and brave defence; he cut their pike-shafts through; there were stout strokes on both sides. And in that bout Eyjolf breaks his axe-heft, and catches up an oar, and then another, and both break with his blows. And in this bout Eyjolf gets a thrust under his arm, and it came home. Some say that he broke the shaft from the spear-head, and let it stay in the wound. He sees now that his defence is ended. Then he made a dash out, and got through them, before they knew. They were not expecting this; still they kept their heads, and a man named Mar cut at him and caught his ankle, so that his foot hung crippled. With that he rolls down the beach, and the sea was at the flood. In such plight as he was in, Eyjolf set to and swam; and swimming he came twelve fathoms from shore to a shelf of rock, and knelt there; and then he fell full length upon the earth, and spread his hands from him, turning to the East as if to pray.

Now they launch the boat, and go after him. And when they came to the rock, a man drove a spear into him, and then another, but no blood flowed from either wound. So they turn to go ashore, and find Sturla and tell him the story plainly how it had all fallen out. Sturla held, and other men too, that this had been a glorious defence. He showed that he was pleased at the news.

NOTE D (p. 360)

Two Catalogues of Romances

There are many references to books and cycles of romance in medieval literature—minstrels' enumerations of their stock-in-trade, and humorous allusions like those of Sir Thopas, and otherwise. There are two passages, among others, which seem to do their best to cover the whole ground, or at least to exemplify all the chief groups. One of these is that referred to in the text, from Flamenca; the other is to be found, much later, in the Complaint of Scotland (1549).

I. FLAMENCA (ll. 609-701)

Qui volc ausir diverses comtes De reis, de marques e de comtes, Auzir ne poc tan can si volc; Anc null' aurella non lai colc, Quar l'us comtet de Priamus, E l'autre diz de Piramus; L'us contet de la bell'Elena Com Paris l'enquer, pois l'anmena; L'autres comtava d'Ulixes, L'autre d'Ector et d'Achilles; L'autre comtava d'Eneas, E de Dido consi remas Per lui dolenta e mesquina; L'autre comtava de Lavina Con fes lo breu el cairel traire A la gaita de l'auzor caire; L'us contet d'Apollonices De Tideu e d'Etidiocles; L'autre comtava d'Apolloine Comsi retenc Tyr de Sidoine; L'us comtet del rei Alexandri L'autre d'Ero et de Leandri; L'us dis de Catmus quan fugi Et de Tebas con las basti, L'autre contava de Jason E del dragon que non hac son; L'us comte d'Alcide sa forsa, L'autre con tornet en sa forsa Phillis per amor Demophon; L'us dis com neguet en la fon Lo bels Narcis quan s'i miret; L'us dis de Pluto con emblet Sa bella moillier ad Orpheu; L'autre comtet del Philisteu Golias, consi fon aucis Ab treis peiras quel trais David; L'us diz de Samson con dormi, Quan Dalidan liet la cri; L'autre comtet de Machabeu Comen si combatet per Dieu; L'us comtet de Juli Cesar Com passet tot solet la mar, E no i preguet Nostre Senor Que nous cujes agues paor; L'us diz de la Taula Redonda Que no i venc homs que noil responda Le reis segon sa conoissensa, Anc nuil jorn ne i failli valensa; L'autre comtava de Galvain, E del leo que fon compain Del cavallier qu'estors Luneta; L'us diz de la piucella breta Con tenc Lancelot en preiso Cant de s'amor li dis de no; L'autre comtet de Persaval Co venc a la cort a caval; L'us comtet d'Erec e d'Enida, L'autre d'Ugonet de Perida; L'us comtava de Governail Com per Tristan ac grieu trebail, L'autre comtava de Feniza Con transir la fes sa noirissa L'us dis del Bel Desconogut E l'autre del vermeil escut Que l'yras trobet a l'uisset; L'autre comtava de Guiflet; L'us comtet de Calobrenan, L'autre dis con retenc un an Dins sa preison Quec senescal Lo deliez car li dis mal; L'autre comtava de Mordret; L'us retrais lo comte Duret Com fo per los Ventres faiditz E per Rei Pescador grazits; L'us comtet l'astre d'Ermeli, L'autre dis com fan l'Ancessi Per gein lo Veil de la Montaina; L'us retrais con tenc Alamaina Karlesmaines tro la parti, De Clodoveu e de Pipi Comtava l'us tota l'istoria; L'autre dis con cazec de gloria Donz Lucifers per son ergoil; L'us diz del vallet de Nantoil, L'autre d'Oliveir de Verdu. L'us dis lo vers de Marcabru, L'autre comtet con Dedalus Saup ben volar, et d'Icarus Co neguet per sa leujaria. Cascus dis lo mieil que sabia. Per la rumor dels viuladors E per brug d'aitans comtadors Hac gran murmuri per la sala.

The allusions are explained by the editor, M. Paul Meyer. The stories are as follows: Priam, Pyramus, Helen, Ulysses, Hector, Achilles, Dido, Lavinia (how she sent her letter with an arrow over the sentinel's head, Roman d'Eneas, l. 8807, sq.), Polynices, Tydeus, and Eteocles; Apollonius of Tyre; Alexander; Hero and Leander; Cadmus of Thebes; Jason and the sleepless Dragon; Hercules; Demophoon and Phyllis (a hard passage); Narcissus; Pluto and the wife of Orpheus ("Sir Orfeo"); David and Goliath; Samson and Dalila; Judas Maccabeus; Julius Caesar; the Round Table, and how the king had an answer for all who sought him; Gawain and Yvain ("of the lion that was companion of the knight whom Lunete rescued"[91]); of the British maiden who kept Lancelot imprisoned when he refused her love; of Perceval, how he rode into hall; Ugonet de Perida (?); Governail, the loyal comrade of Tristram; Fenice and the sleeping-draught (Chrestien's Cliges, see p. 357, above); Guinglain ("Sir Libeaus)"; Chrestien's Chevalier de la Charrette ("how the herald found the red shield at the entry," an allusion explained by M. Gaston Paris, in Romania, xvi. p. 101), Guiflet, Calobrenan, Kay punished for his railing accusations; Mordred; how the Count Duret was dispossessed by the Vandals and welcomed by the Fisher King (?); the luck of Hermelin (?); the Old Man of the Mountain and his Assassins; the Wars of Charlemagne; Clovis and Pepin of France; the Fall of Lucifer; Gui de Nanteuil; Oliver of Verdun; the Flight of Daedalus, and how Icarus was drowned through his vanity. The songs of Marcabrun, the troubadour, find a place in the list among the stories.

[Footnote 91: In a somewhat similar list of romances, in the Italian poem of L'Intelligenza, ascribed to Dino Compagni (st. 75), Luneta is named Analida; possibly the origin of Chaucer's Anelida, a name which has not been clearly traced.]

The author of Flamenca has arranged his library, though there are some incongruities; Daedalus belongs properly to the "matter of Rome" with which the catalogue begins, and Lucifer interrupts the series of Chansons de geste. The "matter of Britain," however, is all by itself, and is well represented.

II. THE COMPLAYNT OF SCOTLAND, c. vi.

(Ed. J.A.H. Murray, E.E.T.S., pp. 62-64)

[This passage belongs to the close of the Middle Ages, when the old epic and romantic books were falling into neglect. There is no distinction here between literary romance and popular tales; the once-fashionable poetical works are reduced to their original elements. Arthur and Gawain are no more respected than the Red Etin, or the tale of the Well at the World's End (the reading volfe in the text has no defender); the Four Sons of Aymon have become what they were afterwards for Boileau (Ep. xi. 20), or rather for Boileau's gardener. But, on the whole, the list represents the common medieval taste in fiction. The Chansons de geste have provided the Bridge of the Mantrible (from Oliver and Fierabras, which may be intended in the Flamenca reference to Oliver), and the Siege of Milan (see English Charlemagne Romances, E.E.T.S., part ii.), as well as the Four Sons of Aymon and Sir Bevis. The Arthurian cycle is popular; the romance of Sir Ywain (the Knight of the Lion) is here, however, the only one that can be definitely traced in the Flamenca list also, though of course there is a general correspondence in subject-matter. The classical fables from Ovid are still among the favourites, and many of them are common to both lists. See Dr. Furnivall's note, in the edition cited, pp. lxxiii.-lxxxii.]

Quhen the scheiphird hed endit his prolixt orison to the laif of the scheiphirdis, i meruellit nocht litil quhen i herd ane rustic pastour of bestialite, distitut of vrbanite, and of speculatioune of natural philosophe, indoctryne his nychtbours as he hed studeit ptholome, auerois, aristotel, galien, ypocrites, or Cicero, quhilk var expert practicians in methamatic art. Than the scheiphirdis vyf said: my veil belouit hisband, i pray the to desist fra that tideus melancolic orison, quhilk surpassis thy ingyne, be rason that it is nocht thy facultee to disput in ane profund mater, the quhilk thy capacite can nocht comprehend. ther for, i thynk it best that ve recreat our selfis vytht ioyus comonyng quhil on to the tyme that ve return to the scheip fald vytht our flokkis. And to begin sic recreatione i thynk it best that everie ane of vs tel ane gude tayl or fable, to pas the tyme quhil euyn. Al the scheiphirdis, ther vyuis and saruandis, var glaid of this propositione. than the eldest scheiphird began, and al the laif follouit, ane be ane in their auen place. it vil be ouer prolixt, and no les tideus to reherse them agane vord be vord. bot i sal reherse sum of ther namys that i herd. Sum vas in prose and sum vas in verse: sum vas stories and sum var flet taylis. Thir var the namis of them as eftir follouis: the taylis of cantirberrye, Robert le dyabil duc of Normandie, the tayl of the volfe of the varldis end, Ferrand erl of Flandris that mareit the deuyl, the taiyl of the reyde eyttyn vitht the thre heydis, the tail quhou perseus sauit andromada fra the cruel monstir, the prophysie of merlyne, the tayl of the giantis that eit quyk men, on fut by fortht as i culd found, vallace, the bruce, ypomedon, the tail of the three futtit dug of norrouay, the tayl quhou Hercules sleu the serpent hidra that hed vij heydis, the tail quhou the king of est mure land mareit the kyngis dochtir of vest mure land, Skail gillenderson the kyngis sone of skellye, the tail of the four sonnis of aymon, the tail of the brig of the mantribil, the tail of syr euan, arthour's knycht, rauf col3ear, the seige of millan, gauen and gollogras, lancelot du lac, Arthour knycht he raid on nycht vitht gyltin spur and candil lycht, the tail of floremond of albanye that sleu the dragon be the see, the tail of syr valtir the bald leslye, the tail of the pure tynt, claryades and maliades, Arthour of litil bertang3e, robene hude and litil ihone, the meruellis of mandiueil, the tayl of the 3ong tamlene and of the bald braband, the ryng of the roy Robert, syr egeir and syr gryme, beuis of southamtoun, the goldin targe, the paleis of honour, the tayl quhou acteon vas transformit in ane hart and syne slane be his auen doggis, the tayl of Pirramus and tesbe, the tail of the amours of leander and hero, the tail how Iupiter transformit his deir love yo in ane cou, the tail quhou that iason van the goldin fleice, Opheus kyng of portingal, the tail of the goldin appil, the tail of the thre veird systirs, the tail quhou that dedalus maid the laborynth to keip the monstir minotaurus, the tail quhou kyng midas gat tua asse luggis on his hede because of his auereis.



INDEX

Aage, Danish ballad, related to Helgi and Sigrun, 144; cf. York Powell, C.P.B. i. 502, and Grimm Centenary Papers (1886), p. 47

Achilles, 12, 13, 19, 35, 39, 67

Aeneid, 18, 22, 334, 349

Alboin the Lombard (O.E. lfwine, see Davenant), 23, 66, 69, 82 n, 189

Alexander the Great, in old French poetry, 27; his Epistle; (Anglo-Saxon version), 329

Aliscans, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, 296

Alvssml, in 'Elder Edda,' 112

Amadis of Gaul, a formal hero, 175, 203, 222

Ammius (O.N. Hamer): see Hamisml

Andreas, old English poem on the legend of St. Andrew, 28, 50, 90, 329

Andvari, 115

Angantyr, the Waking of, poem in Hervarar Saga, 48, 70, 73, 78, 112, 129 n

Apollonius of Tyre, in Anglo-Saxon, 329

Ari Thorgilsson, called the Wise (Ari Fri, A.D. 1067-1148), his Landnmabk and Konunga fi, 248; Ynglinga Saga, 279

Ariosto, 30, 31, 40, 323

Aristotle on the dramatic element in epic, 17 sq.; his summary of the Odyssey, 36, 74, 120, 139, 159 sq.

Arnaldos, romance del Conde, Spanish ballad, 327

Arni, Bishop of Skalholt (ob. 1298), his Life (Arna Saga), 268

Arni Beiskr (the Bitter), murderer of Snorri Sturluson, his death at Flugumyri, 263

Aron Hjrleifsson (Arons Saga), a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 225, 257, 381 sq.

Asbjrnsen, P. Chr., 170 n

Asdis, Grettir's mother, 216 n

Askel: see Reykdla Saga

Atlakvia, the Lay of Attila, 146 sq.: see Attila

Atlaml, the Greenland Poem of Attila, 92, 137, 146-156: see Attila

Atli and Rimgerd, Contention of, in 'Elder Edda,' 113 sq.

Atli in Grettis Saga, his dying speech, 218 in Hvarar Saga, 227

Attila (O.E. tla, O.N. Atli), the Hun, adopted as a German hero in epic tradition, 22; different views of him in epic, 24; in Waltharius, 84; in Waldere, 86; in the 'Elder Edda,' 80, 83, 105 sq., 110, 137, 149 sq.

Aucassin et Nicolette, 312, 327

Audoin the Lombard (O.E. Eadwine), father of Alboin, 67

Aymon, Four Sons of, i.e. Renaus de Montauban (chanson de geste), 313, 387

Balder, death of, 43, 78, 112

Bandamanna Saga, 'The Confederates,' 187, 226, 229-234

Beatrice the Duchess, wife of Begon de Belin, mother of Gerin and Hernaudin, 307 sq.

Begon de Belin, brother of Garin le Loherain, q.v.

Benoit de Sainte More, his Roman de Troie, 330 sq., 334

Beowulf, 69, 88 sq., 110, 136, 145, 158-175, 290 and the Odyssey, 10

Beowulf and the Hliand, 28

Bergthora, Njal's wife, 190, 220 sq.

Bernier: see Raoul de Cambrai

Broul: see Tristram

Bevis, Sir, 388

Biarkaml, 78

Bjargey: see Hvarar Saga

Bjorn, in Njla, and his wife, 228-229

Blethericus, a Welsh author, 348

Boccaccio, his relation to the French Romantic School, and to Chaucer, 363-370

Bodvild, 95

Boethius On the Consolation of Philosophy, a favourite book, 46

Bolli, Gudrun's husband (Laxdla Saga), 191, 207, 223, 376 sq.; kills Kjartan, 242

Bolli the younger, son of Bolli and Gudrun, 223-224

Bossu, on the Epic Poem, his opinion of Phaeacia, 32, 40 n

Bradley, Mr. Henry, on the first Riddle in the Exeter Book, 135 (Academy, March 24, 1888, p. 198)

Brri, cited by Thomas as his authority for the story of Tristram: see Blethericus

Brink, Dr. Bernhard Ten, some time Professor at Strassburg, 145, 290

Broceliande visited by Wace, 26, 171

Brunanburh, poem of the battle of, 76

Brynhild, sister of Attila, wife of Gunnar the Niblung, passim long Lay of, in the 'Elder Edda' (al. Sigurarkvia in Skamma), 83, 100 sq. Hell-ride of, 102 short Lay of (fragment), 103, 256 lost poem concerning, paraphrased in Volsunga Saga, 71 Danish ballad of: see Sivard

Bugge, Dr. Sophus, sometime Professor in Christiania, 77 n, 87 n, 137 n

Byrhtnoth: see Maldon

C.P.B., i.e. Corpus Poeticum Boreale, q.v.

Campbell, J.F., of Islay, 170 n, 340

Casket of whalebone (the Franks casket), in the British Museum, subjects represented on it, 48; runic inscriptions, 49 (cf. Napier, in An English Miscellany, Oxford 1901)

Charles the Great, Roman Emperor (Charlemagne), different views of him in French Epic, 24; in Huon de Bordeaux 314 sq.; history of, in Norwegian (Karlamagnus Saga), 278; in Spanish (chap-book), 297 n: see Plerinage de Charlemagne

Charlot: see Huon de Bordeaux

Charroi de Nismes, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, quoted, 312

Chaucer, 328, 332 n; his relation to the French Romantic School, and to Boccaccio, 363-370

Chrestien de Troyes, 323, 344 his works, Tristan (lost), 344; Erec (Geraint and Enid), 6, 332, 355 sq.; Conte du Graal (Perceval), 327; Cliges, 333, 357 sq., 387; Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot), 341, 357, 387; Yvain (Chevalier au Lion), 352 sq., 386 sq. his influence on the author of Flamenca, 359 sq.

Codex Regius (2365, 4to), in the King's Library, Copenhagen: see Edda, 'the Elder'

Comdie Humaine, la, 188

Connla (the story of the fairy-bride): see Guingamor

Contract, Social, in Iceland, 59

Coronemenz Loos, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, quoted, 311

Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Oxford, 1883, passim

Corsolt, a pagan, 311

Cressida, in Roman de Troie, 330; the story treated in different ways by Boccaccio and Chaucer, q.v.

Cynewulf, the poet, 51

Cynewulf and Cyneheard (English Chronicle, A.D. 755), 5, 82 n

Dag, brother of Sigrun, 72

Dandie Dinmont, 201

Dante, 31; his reference to William of Orange, 296

Dart, Song of the (Darraarli, Gray's 'Fatal Sisters'), 78

Davenant, Sir William, on the heroic poem (Preface to Gondibert), quoted, 30; author of a tragedy, 'Albovine King of the Lombards,' 67

Deor's Lament, old English poem, 76, 115, 134

Drangey, island in Eyjafirth, north of Iceland, Grettir's refuge, 196

Dryden and the heroic ideal, 30

Du Bartas, 31

Edda, a handbook of the Art of Poetry, by Snorri Sturluson, 42, 138, 181

'Edda,' 'the Elder,' 'the Poetic,' 'of Smund the Wise' (Codex Regius), 77, 93, 156 passim

Egil the Bowman, Weland's brother, represented on the Franks casket (gili), 48

Egil Skallagrimsson, 192, 215, 220

Einar Thorgilsson: see Sturla of Hvamm

Ekkehard, Dean of St. Gall, author of Waltharius, 84

Elene, by Cynewulf, an old English poem on the legend of St. Helen (the Invention of the Cross), 50, 90, 329

Eneas, Roman d', 386

Enid: see Chrestien de Troyes

Erec: see Chrestien de Troyes

Eric the Red, his Saga in Hauk's book, 47

Ermanaric (O.E. Eormenrc, O.N. Jrmunrekr), 22; killed by the brothers of Suanihilda, 66: see Hamisml

Erp: see Hamisml

Exodus, old English poem of, 28, 90

Eyjolf Karsson, a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 257, 381, sq.

Eyjolf Thorsteinsson: see Gizur

Eyrbyggja Saga, the story of the men of Eyre, 187 sq., 201, 227, 253

Freyinga Saga, the story of the men of the Faroes (Thrond of Gata and Sigmund Brestisson), 206, 245

Faroese ballads, 181, 283

Fielding, Henry, 266

Fierabras, 388

Finn: see Finnesburh

Finnesburh, old English poem (fragment), published by Hickes from a Lambeth MS., now mislaid, 81 sq., 265 episode in Beowulf, giving more of the story, 81 sq.

Filsvinnsml see Svipdag

Flamenca, a Provenal romance, by a follower of Chrestien de Troyes, in the spirit of Ovid, 359-362; romances named in, 360, 384-387

Flamanna Saga, the story of the people of Floi, 259

Flores et Blanchefleur, romance, referred to in Flamenca, 361; translated by Boccaccio (Filocolo), 364

Flosi the Burner, in Njla, 218, 219, 190, 191, 219 sq.

Flugumyri, a homestead in Northern Iceland (Skagafjord), Earl Gizur's house, burned October 1253, the story as given by Sturla, 259-264

Fstbrra Saga (the story of the two sworn brethren, Thorgeir and Thormod) 38 n, 47; in Hauk's book, 187, 194, 196; euphuistic interpolations in, 275 sq.

Frey, poem of his wooing of Gerd (Skirnisml), in the 'Poetic Edda,' 77, 94, 114

Frithiof the Bold, a romantic Saga, 247, 277, 280 sq.

Froda (Fr), homestead in Olafsvk, near the end of Snfellsnes, Western Iceland, a haunted house, Eyrbyggja Saga, 208

Froda (Frotho in Saxo Grammaticus), his story alluded to in Beowulf, 69, 72, 82 n, 163, 373 sq.

Froissart and the courteous ideal, 328

Fromont, the adversary in the story of Garin le Loherain, q.v.

Galopin the Prodigal, in the story of Garin le Loherain, 310

Gareth, in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, original of the Red Cross Knight in the Faery Queene, 343

Garin le Loherain (chanson de geste), 53 n, 300-309

Gawain killed dragons, 168: see Walewein

Gawain and the Green Knight, alliterative poem, 180

Gay Goshawk, ballad of the, 357

Genesis, old English poem of, 90, 136

Geraint, Welsh story, 355

Gerd: see Frey

Germania of Tacitus, 46

Gsla Saga, the story of Gisli the Outlaw, 187, 196 sq., 207, 225; its relations to the heroic poetry, 210

Giuki (Lat. Gibicho, O.E. Gifica), father of Gunnar, Hogni, Gothorm, and Gudrun, q.v.

Gizur Thorvaldsson, the earl, at Flugumyri, 258, 259-264

Glam (Grettis Saga), 172, 196

Glum (Vga-Glms Saga), 193 sq., 225 and Raoul de Cambrai, 299

Gollancz, Mr., 135 (see Academy, Dec. 23, 1893, p. 572)

Gothorm, 101

Gray, his translations from the Icelandic, 78, 157 n

Gregory (St.) the Great, de Cura Pastorali, studied in Iceland, 59

Grendel, 165: see Beowulf

Grettis Saga, the story of Grettir the Strong, 172, 187, 195 sq., 216 n, 218, 226

Grimhild, mother of Gudrun, 110

Grimild's Revenge, Danish ballad (Grimilds Hvn), 105, 149

Grimm, 136 n; story of the Golden Bird, 340 Wilhelm, Deutsche Heldensage, 79

Grmnisml, in 'Elder Edda,' 112

Gripir, Prophecy of (Grpissp) in the 'Elder Edda,' a summary of the Volsung story, 94

Groa, wife of Earl Gizur, q.v.

Grgaldr: see Svipdag

Grottasngr (Song of the Magic Mill), 90

Gudmund Arason, Bishop of Hlar, 170, 256, 381

Gudmund, son of Granmar: see Sinfiotli

Gudmund the Mighty (Gumundr inn Riki), in Ljsvetninga and other Sagas, 188, 225

Gudny, wife of Sturla of Hvamm, q.v.

Gudrun (O.N. Gurn), daughter of Giuki, sister of Gunnar and Hogni, wife of Sigurd, 23, 71, 101, 149 sq. and Theodoric, the Old Lay of Gudrun (Gurnarkvia in forna), 103, 109 Lay of (Gurnarkvia), 111 Lament of, or Chain of Woe (Tregrof Gurnar), 111, 215 Ordeal of, 111 daughter of Osvifr (Laxdla Saga), 191, 209, 222-224

Guingamor, Lay of, by Marie de France, 337-340

Guinglain, romance, by Renaud de Beaujeu: see Libeaux Desconus

Gundaharius (Gundicarius), the Burgundian (O.E. Ghere, O.N. Gunnarr; Gunther in the Nibelungenlied, etc.), 22: see Gunnar, Gunther

Gunnar of Lithend (Hlarendi), in Njls Saga, 190; his death, 214

Gunnar, son of Giuki, brother of Gudrun, 101 sq., 168 sq.: see Gundaharius, Gunther

Gunnlaug the Poet, called Wormtongue, his story (Gunnlaugs Saga Ormstungu), 207, 281

Gunther (Guntharius, son of Gibicho) in Waltharius, 84 sq.; in Waldere, 100: see Gundaharius, Gunnar

Hacon, King of Norway (A.D. 1217-1263): see Hkonar Saga; his taste for French romances, 278

Hadubrand, son of Hildebrand, 81

Hagen (Hagano), in Waltharius, 84 sq.

Hagen, in Waldere (Hagena), 86, 239 in Sivard, q.v.: see Hogni

Hkonar Saga, the Life of Hacon, Hacon's son, King of Norway (ob. 1263), written by Sturla, contrasted with his history of Iceland, 267 sq.

Halfs Saga, 280

Hall, son of Earl Gizur, 259

Hama, 163

Hamlet in Saxo, 70

Hamisml ('Poetic Edda'), Lay of the death of Ermanaric, 66, 70-71, 109, 140

Harald, king of Norway (Fairhair), 58; in Egils Saga, 192 king of Norway (Hardrada), killed dragons, 168; his Saga referred to (story of Hreidar the Simple), 310; (Varangian custom), 329 n

Harbarzli: see Thor

Harar Saga ok Holmverja, the story of Hord and the men of the island, 212 n

Hauk's Book, an Icelandic gentleman's select library in the fourteenth century, 47 sq. (Hauksbk, ed. Finnur Jnsson, 1892-1896)

Hvaml in 'Poetic Edda,' a gnomic miscellany, 77

Hvarar Saga Isfirings, the story of Howard of Icefirth, 199, 216 sq., 227

Hearne, Thomas, 78

Hedin, brother of Helgi, Hiorvard's son, 99

Heiarvga Saga, the story of the battle on the Heath (connected with Eyrbyggja Saga), 209: see Vga-Styrr

Heireks Saga: see Hervarar Saga

Heimskringla, Snorri's Lives of the Kings of Norway, abridged, 248

Helgi and Kara, 98

Helgi, Hiorvard's son, and Swava, 97 sq., 113

Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun, 72, 93 n, 95 sq., 239

Hliand, old Saxon poem on the Gospel history, using the forms of German heroic poetry, 27, 90, 204

Hengest: see Finnesburh

Heremod, 162

Herkja, 111

Hermes, in the Homeric hymn, 43

Hervarar Saga ok Heireks Konungs (Heireks Saga), one of the romantic mythical Sagas in Hauk's book, 48; contains the poems of the cycle of Angantyr, 78, 280

Hervor, daughter of Angantyr, 70, 73, 112, 208

Heusler, Dr. Andreas, Professor in Berlin, 100 n

Hialli, 151

Hickes, George, D.D., 73 n, 78

Hildebrand, Lay of, 76, 79, 81, 87 n, 91

Hildeburg: see Finnesburh

Hildegund (Hildegyth), 84 sq.: see Walter

Hnf: see Finnesburh

Hobs, Mr. (i.e. Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury), 31

Hodbrodd, in story of Helgi and Sigrun, 72, 96

Hogni, father of Sigrun, 72, 96

Hogni, son of Giuki, brother of Gunnar, Gothorm, and Gudrun, 101, 151 sq.: see Hagen

Homeric analogies in medieval literature, 9 sq.

Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson, a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 257; Hrafns Saga quoted, 38 n

Hrafn: see Gunnlaug

Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoa, the story of Hrafnkel, Frey's Priest, 187, 198

Hrefna, Kjartan's wife, 223

Hreidar the Simple, an unpromising hero, in Haralds Saga Harra, 310

Hrolf Kraki (Hroulf in Beowulf), 166, 280

Hromund Greipsson, Saga of, 99

Hrothgar, 10, 166.

Hunding, 95

Hunferth, 10, 166

Huon de Bordeaux (chanson de geste), epic and romance combined inartistically in, 37, 53, 314-317

Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 30

Hygelac, 161 sq.: see Beowulf

Hymiskvia: see Thor

Ibsen, Henrik, his Hrmndene paa Helgeland (Warriors in Helgeland), a drama founded on the Volsung story, its relation to Laxdla Saga, 209 his Kongsemnerne (Rival Kings, Hacon and Skule), 268

Ider, romance, 331 sq., 347 n

Iliad, 11 sq., 18, 38 sq., 52, 162 sq., 348, 352 n

Ingeld: see Froda

Ingibjorg, daughter of Sturla, her wedding at Flugumyri, 259 sq.

Intelligenza, L', 386 n

Jehoram, son of Ahab, in the famine of Samaria, 239

Johnson, Dr., 9, 244

Joinville, Jean de, Seneschal of Champagne, his Life of St. Louis compared with Icelandic prose history, 269 sq.

Jn Arason the poet, Bishop of Hlar, the last Catholic Bishop in Iceland, beheaded by Reformers, 7th November 1550, a notable character, 268

Jordanes, historian of the Goths, his version of the story of Ermanaric, its relation to Hamisml, 65

Judith, old English poem of, 28, 29, 90

Julian, the Emperor, his opinion of German songs, 65

Kara, 98 sq.

Kari, in Njla, 206 and Bjorn, 228-229

Karl Jnsson, Abbot of Thingeyri in Iceland, author of Sverris Saga, 249

Kjartan, son of Olaf the Peacock (Laxdla Saga), 13, 191, 204, 207, 375 his death, 240 sq.

Knigskinder, die, German ballad, 327

Kormaks Saga, 129 n, 281

Lancelot, the French prose romance, 335

Landnmabk, in Hauk's book, 47

Laurence, Bishop of Hlar (ob. 1331), his Life (Laurentius Saga), 268

Laxdla Saga, the story of Laxdale (the Lovers of the Gudrun), 185, 190, 240 sq., 375; a new version of the Niblung story, 209 sq., 222 sq., 281

Leconte de Lisle, L'Epe d'Angantyr, 73 n

Lessing's Laocoon, 237

Libeaux Desconus, romance in different versions—French, by Renaud de Beaujeu (Guinglain), 337, 343 sq., 387; English, 337, 343; Italian (Carduino), 337, 343

Ljsvetninga Saga, story of the House of Ljsavatn, 188 sq.

Lokasenna (the Railing of Loki), 41, 77, 113

Longnon, Auguste, 314 n

Louis IX., king of France (St. Louis): see Joinville

Lusiad, the, a patriotic epic, unlike the poetry of the 'heroic age,' 22

Macrobius, 47, 333

Maldon, poem of the battle of (A.D. 991), 69, 88, 95 n, 134, 205, 244; compared with the Iliad, 11; compared with Roland, 51, 54 sq., 294

Malory, Sir Thomas, his Morte d'Arthur, 215, 307

Mantrible, Bridge of the, 388

Marie de France, her Lays translated into Norwegian (Strengleikar), 278; Guingamor criticised, 337-340

Marino, 31

Martianus Capella, de Nuptiis Philologiae, studied in the Middle Ages, 47

Medea, 334, 347 sq.

Menglad, Rescue of, 78, 114: see Svipdag

Mephistopheles in Thessaly, 10

Meyer, Paul, 290 n, 359 n, 386

Milan, Siege of, 388

Mimming, the sword of Weland, 86

Morris, William, 205, 282, 334

Mort Arthure, alliterative poem, 180

Mort Artus, French prose romance, 335

Morte d'Arthur: see Malory

Nibelungenlied, 105, 120, 149, 179

Niblung story, its relation to historical fact, 22 sq.: see Gunnar, Hogni, Gudrun, Laxdla Saga

Nidad, 95

Njal, story of (Njla), 8, 13, 60, 185, 207, 219-221

Oberon; see Huon de Bordeaux

Odd, Arrow (rvar-Oddr), 73

Oddrun, sister of Brynhild and Attila, 102 Lament of (Oddrnargrtr), in the 'Elder Edda,' 103, 107 sq., 151 sq.

Odd Ufeigsson: see Bandamanna Saga

Odoacer, referred to in Lay of Hildebrand, 81

Odysseus, 7, 9, 32 sq., 35, 71

Odyssey, the, 10, 163, 171; Aristotle's summary of, 18; romance in, 32 sq.

Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway, 205, 375 sq.

Olkofra ttr, the story of Alecap, related to Bandamanna Saga, 226

Ossian, in the land of youth: see Guingamor

Ovid in the Middle Ages, 47, 346, 412; [Transcriber's Note: No page 412 in original.] Ovidius Epistolarum studied in Iceland, 59

Ovid's story of Medea, translated in the Roman de Troie, 334 sq., 348 sq.; Heroides became the 'Saints' Legend of Cupid,' 347

Paris, Gaston, 290, 291, 331, 337, 343, 345, 348 n, 387

Paulus Diaconus, heroic stories in the Lombard history, 66 sq.

Peer Gynt, 170

Plerinage de Charlemagne (chanson de geste), 24, 53, 329

Percy, Thomas, D.D., Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, 73 n, 141 n

Phaeacia, Odysseus in, Bossu's criticism, 31

Pindar, his treatment of myths, 43

Poitiers, William IX., Count of, his poem on setting out for the Crusade, 317

Powell, F. York, 66: see Aage

Prise d'Orange, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, in substance a romance of adventure, 313

Queste del St. Graal, French prose romance, a contrast to the style of Chrestien de Troyes, 327, 335

Ragnar Lodbrok, his Death-Song (Krkuml), 140, 217, 295

Rainouart, the gigantic ally of William of Orange, 296, 311; their names associated by Dante (Par. xviii. 46), ibid.

Raoul de Cambrai (chanson de geste), 291 n, 298-300, 309

Rastignac, Eugne de, 188

Reykdla Saga, the story of Vemund, Askel, and Skuta son of Askel, connected with the story of Glum, 194, 201

Rigaut, son of Hervi the Villain, in the story of Garin le Loherain, 310

Rimgerd the Giantess: see Atli

Rmur, Icelandic rhyming romances, 181, 283

Roland, Chanson de, 9, 24, 83, 287, 293-295, 308; compared with Byrhtnoth (Maldon), 54 sq.; with an incident in Njla, 265

Roman de la Rose, of Guillaume de Lorris, 345, 348, 352, 359

Rood, Dream of the, old English poem, 134

Rosamund and Alboin in the Lombard history, 23, 67

Rosmunda, a tragedy, by Rucellai, 67

Rou, Roman de, the author's visit to Broceliande, 26

Sam (Smr), Gunnar's dog, 214

Sarpedon's address to Glaucus, 9, 11

Sarus and Ammius (Sorli and Hamther), brothers of Suanihilda (Jordanes), 66: see Hamisml

Saxo Grammaticus, 69, 79, 105, 149, 181, 374

Scotland, Complaynt of, romances named in, 387-389

Scottish Field, alliterative poem on Flodden, 179 sq.

Shakespeare, his treatment of popular tales, 36 sq.

Sibyl's Prophecy: see Volosp

Sidney, Sir Philip, 99, 368

Sievers, Dr. Eduard, Professor in Leipzig, 136 n, 169 n

Sigmund Brestisson, in Freyinga Saga, 206, 245, 283

Sigmund, father of Sinfiotli, Helgi, and Sigurd, 95, 110

Signild: see Sivard

Sigrdrifa, 115

Sigrun: see Helgi

Sigurd, the Volsung (O.N. Sigurr), 22, 71, 100 sq., 129, 133 fragmentary Lay of (Brot af Sigurarkviu), 103 Lay of: see Brynhild

Sinfiotli, debate of, and Gudmund, 96

Sivard og Brynild, Danish ballad, translated, 127-129

Skallagrim, how he told the truth to King Harald, 192

Skarphedinn, son of Njal, 190, 220 sq., 244, 265

Skirnir: see Frey

Skule, Duke, the rival of Hacon, 267

Skuta: see Reykdla Saga

Snorri Sturluson (A.D. 1178-1241), author of the Edda, 42; and of the Lives of the Kings of Norway, 248; his murder avenged at Flugumyri, 263

Snorri the Priest (Snorri Goi), in Eyrbyggja and other Sagas, 188, 213, 253

Sonatorrek (the Sons' Loss), poem by Egil Skallagrimsson, 215

Sorli: see Hamisml

Spenser, 343

Starkad, 166, 374

Stephens, George, sometime Professor in Copenhagen, 78

Stevenson, R.L., Catriona, 170 n

Sturla of Hvamm (Hvamm-Sturla), founder of the house of the Sturlungs, his life (Sturlu Saga) 253-256

Sturla (c. A.D. 1214-1284), son of Thord, and grandson of Hvamm-Sturla, nephew of Snorri, author of Sturlunga Saga (q.v.) and of Hkonar Saga (q.v.) 61, 251, 259

Sturlunga Saga (more accurately Islendinga Saga), of Sturla, Thord's son, a history of the author's own times, using the forms of the heroic Sagas, 61, 246 sq., 249 sq.

Suanihilda: see Swanhild

Svarfdla Saga, the story of the men of Swarfdale (Svarfaardalr), 219

Sveidal, Ungen, Danish ballad, on the story of Svipdag and Menglad, 114, 126

Sverre, king of Norway (ob. 1202), his Life (Sverris Saga) written by Abbot Karl Jnsson at the king's dictation, 249; quotes a Volsung poem, 278

Svipdag and Menglad, old Northern poems of, 78, 114 sq.: see Sveidal

Swanhild (O.N. Svanhildr), daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun, her cruel death; the vengeance on Ermanaric known to Jordanes in the sixth century, 65: see Hamisml

Tasso, 18, 21; his critical essays on heroic poetry, 30

Tegnr, Esaias, 141; his Frithiofs Saga, 277

Tennyson, Enid, 355

Theodoric (O.N. irekr), a hero of Teutonic epic in different dialects, 22, 81, 87; fragment of Swedish poem on, inscription on stone at Rk, 78: see Gudrun

Thersites, 243

Thidrandi, whom the goddesses slew, 208

idreks Saga (thirteenth century), a Norwegian compilation from North German ballads on heroic subjects, 79, 121

Thomas: see Tristram

Thor, in old Northern literature, his Fishing for the World Serpent (Hymiskvia), 43, 77, 95; the Winning of the Hammer (rymskvia), 43, 77, 81, 95 Danish ballad of, 125 the contention of, and Odin (Harbarzli), 77, 113

Thorarin, in Eyrbyggja, the quiet man, 227

Thorgils and Haflidi (orgils Saga ok Haflia), 226, 238, 252 sq.

Thorkell Hake, in Ljsvetinga Saga, 225

Thorolf Bgifot: see Eyrbyggja

Thorolf, Kveldulf's son: see Skallagrim

orsteins Saga Hvta, the story of Thorstein the White, points of resemblance to Laxdla and Gunnlaugs Saga, 281

orsteins Saga Stangarhggs (Thorstein Staffsmitten), a short story, 282

Thrond of Gata (Freyinga Saga), 245

rymskvia: see Thor

Thrytho, 162

Thurismund, son of Thurisvend, king of the Gepidae, killed by Alboin, 67

Tirant lo Blanch (Tirant the White, Romance of), 38 n; a moral work, 222

Trissino, author of Italia liberata dai Goti, a correct epic poem, 30

Tristram and Iseult, 336, Anglo-Norman poems, by Broul and Thomas, 344; of Chrestien (lost), ibid.

Troilus, 368 sq.

Troy, Destruction of, alliterative poem, 180

Ufeig: see Bandamanna Saga

Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig, 170

Uspak: see Bandamanna Saga

Vafrnisml, mythological poem in 'Elder Edda,' 77, 112, 115

Vali: see Bandamanna Saga

Vpnfiringa Saga, the story of Vopnafjord, 193, 226

Vatnsdla Saga, story of the House of Vatnsdal, 189

Vemund: see Reykdla Saga

Vergi, la Chastelaine de, a short tragic story, 362 sq.

Vga-Glms Saga, 193: see Glum

Vga-Styrr: see Heiarvga Saga

N.B.—The story referred to in the text is preserved in Jn Olafsson's recollection of the leaves of the MS. which were lost in the fire of 1728 (Islendinga Sgur, 1847, ii. p. 296). It is not given in Mr. William Morris's translation of the extant portion of the Saga, appended to his Eyrbyggja.

Vigfusson, Gudbrand, 77, 280 n, 283 n

Viglund, Story of, a romantic Saga, 278 sq.

Villehardouin, a contemporary of Snorri, 269

Volosp (the Sibyl's Song of the Doom of the Gods), in the 'Poetic Edda,' 43, 77, 139; another copy in Hauk's book, 47, 93

Volsunga Saga, a prose paraphrase of old Northern poems, 71, 77, 79, 280

Volsungs, Old Lay of the, 96

Wade, Song of, fragment recently discovered, 180 (see Academy, Feb. 15, 1896)

Waldere, old English poem (fragment), 78, 86 sq., 116, 163: see Walter of Aquitaine

Walewein, Roman van, Dutch romance of Sir Gawain; the plot compared with the Gaelic story of Mac Iain Direach, 337, 340-343

Walter of Aquitaine, 5, 78, 84 sq., 206

Waltharius, Latin poem by Ekkehard, on the story of Walter of Aquitaine, q.v.

Wanderer, the, old English poem, 134

Ward, H.L.D., his Catalogue of MS. Romances in the British Museum, 282

Wealhtheo, 166

Weland, 338 represented on the Franks casket in the British Museum, 48 mentioned in Waldere, 87, 163 Lay of, in 'Poetic Edda,' 77, 94

Well at the World's End, 387

Widia, Weland's son, 87, 163

Widsith (the Traveller's Song), old English poem, 76, 115, 134

Wiglaf, the 'loyal servitor' in Beowulf, 166

William of Orange, old French epic hero, 296: see Coronemenz Loos, Charroi de Nismes, Prise d'Orange, Aliscans, Rainouart; cf. J. Bdier, Les Lgendes piques (1908)



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