Chapter 10

ROMANCE

AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS

Romance in many varieties is to be found inherent in Epic and in Tragedy; for some readers, possibly, the great and magnificent forms of poetry are most attractive when from time to time they forget their severity, and when the tragic strength is allowed to rest, as in the fairy interludes of the _Odyssey_, or the similes of the clouds, winds, and mountain-waters in the _Iliad_. If Romance be the name for the sort of imagination that possesses the mystery and the spell of everything remote and unattainable, then Romance is to be found in the old Northern heroic poetry in larger measure than any epic or tragic solemnity, and in no small measure also even in the steady course of the Icelandic histories. Possibly Romance is in its best place here, as an element in the epic harmony; perhaps the romantic mystery is most mysterious when it is found as something additional among the graver and more positive affairs of epic or tragic personages. The occasional visitations of the dreaming moods of romance, in the middle of a great epic or a great tragedy, are often more romantic than the literature which is nothing but romance from beginning to end. The strongest poets, Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, have along with their strong reasoning enough of the lighter and fainter grace and charm to be the despair of all the "romantic schools" in the world. In the Icelandic prose stories, as has been seen already, there is a similar combination. These stories contain the strongest imaginative work of the Middle Ages before Dante. Along with this there is found in them occasionally the uncertain and incalculable play of the other, the more airy mode of imagination; and the romance of the strong Sagas is more romantic than that of the medieval works which have no other interest to rely upon, or of all but a very few.

One of the largest and plainest facts of medieval history is the change of literature in the twelfth century, and the sudden and exuberant growth and progress of a number of new poetical forms; particularly the courtly lyric that took shape in Provence, and passed into the tongues of Italy, France, and Germany, and the French romance which obeyed the same general inspiration as the Provençal poetry, and was equally powerful as an influence on foreign nations. The French Romantic Schools of the twelfth century are among the most definite and the most important appearances even in that most wonderful age; though it is irrational to contrast them with the other great historical movements of the time, because there is no real separation between them. French romance is part of the life of the time, and the life of the twelfth century is reproduced in French romance.

The rise of these new forms of story makes an unmistakable difference between the age that preceded them and everything that comes after. They are a new, fresh, and prosperous beginning in literature, and they imply the failure of the older manner of thought, the older fashion of imagination, represented in the epic literature of France, not to speak of the various Teutonic forms of heroic verse and prose that are related to the epic of France only by a remote common ancestry, and a certain general likeness in the conditions of "heroic" life.

The defeat of French epic, as has been noted already, was slow and long resisted; but the victory of romance was inevitable. Together with the influence of the Provençal lyric idealism, it determined the forms of modern literature, long after the close of the Middle Ages. The change of fashion in the twelfth century is as momentous and far-reaching in its consequences as that to which the name "Renaissance" is generally appropriated. The later Renaissance, indeed, in what concerns imaginative literature, makes no such abrupt and sudden change of fashion as was made in the twelfth century. The poetry and romance of the Renaissance follow naturally upon the literature of the Middle Ages; for the very good reason that it was the Middle Ages which began, even in their dark beginnings, the modern study of the humanities, and in the twelfth century made a remarkable and determined effort to secure the inheritance of ancient poetry for the advantage of the new tongues and their new forms of verse. There is no such line of division between Ariosto and Chrestien of Troyes as there is between Chrestien and the primitive epic.

The romantic schools of the twelfth century are the result and evidence of a great unanimous movement, the origins of which may be traced far back in the general conditions of education and learning, in the influence of Latin authors, in the interchange of popular tales. They are among the most characteristic productions of the most impressive, varied, and characteristic period in the Middle Ages; of that century which broke, decisively, with the old "heroic" traditions, and made the division between the heroic and the chivalric age. When the term "medieval" is used in modern talk, it almost always denotes something which first took definite shape in the twelfth century. The twelfth century is the source of most of the "medieval" influences in modern art and literature, and the French romances of that age are the original authorities for most of the "Gothic" ornaments adopted in modern romantic schools.

The twelfth-century French romances form a definite large group, with many ranks and divisions, some of which are easily distinguished, while all are of great historical interest.

One common quality, hardly to be mistaken, is that which marks them all as belonging to a romantic _school_, in almost all the modern senses of that term. That is to say, they are not the spontaneous product of an uncritical and ingenuous imagination; they are not the same sort of thing as the popular stories on which many of them are founded; they are the literary work of authors more or less sophisticated, on the look-out for new sensations and new literary devices. It is useless to go to those French books in order to catch the first fresh jet of romantic fancy, the "silly sooth" of the golden age. One might as well go to the _Légende des Siècles_. Most of the romance of the medieval schools is already hot and dusty and fatigued. It has come through the mills of a thousand active literary men, who know their business, and have an eye to their profits. Medieval romance, in its most characteristic and most influential form, is almost as factitious and professional as modern Gothic architecture. The twelfth-century dealers in romantic commonplaces are as fully conscious of the market value of their goods as any later poet who has borrowed from them their giants and enchanters, their forests and their magic castles; and these and similar properties are used in the twelfth century with the same kind of literary sharpness, the same attention to the demands of the "reading public," as is shown by the various poets and novelists who have waited on the successes, and tried to copy the methods, of Goethe, Scott, or Victor Hugo. Pure Romance, such as is found in the old Northern poems, is very rare in the French stories of the twelfth century; the magical touch and the sense of mystery, and all the things that are associated with the name romance, when that name is applied to the _Ancient Mariner_, or _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, or the _Lady of Shalott_, are generally absent from the most successful romances of the great medieval romantic age, full though they may be of all the forms of chivalrous devotion and all the most wonderful romantic machines. Most of them are as different from the true irresistible magic of fancy as _Thalaba_ from _Kubla Khan_. The name "romantic school" is rightly applicable to them and their work, for almost the last thing that is produced in a "romantic school" is the infallible and indescribable touch of romance. A "romantic school" is a company for the profitable working of Broceliande, an organised attempt to "open up" the Enchanted Ground; such, at least, is the appearance of a great deal of the romantic literature of the early part of the nineteenth century, and of its forerunner in the twelfth. There is this difference between the two ages, that the medieval romanticists are freer and more original than the moderns who made a business out of tales of terror and wonder, and tried to fatten their lean kine on the pastures of "Gothic" or of Oriental learning.

The romance-writers of the twelfth century, though they did much to make romance into a mechanic art, though they reduced the game to a system and left the different romantic combinations and conventions within the reach of almost any 'prentice hand, were yet in their way original explorers. Though few of them got out of their materials the kind of effect that appeals to us now most strongly, and though we think we can see what they missed in their opportunities, yet they were not the followers of any great man of their own time, and they chose their own way freely, not as bungling imitators of a greater artist. It is a disappointment to find that romance is rarely at its finest in the works that technically have the best right in the world to be called by that name. Nevertheless, the work that is actually found there is interesting in its own way, and historically of an importance which does not need to be emphasised.

The true romantic interest is very unequally distributed over the works of the Middle Ages, and there is least of it in the authors who are most representative of the "age of chivalry." There is a disappointment prepared for any one who looks in the greater romantic authors of the twelfth century for the music of the _Faery Queene_ or _La Belle Dame sans Merci_. There is more of the pure romantic element in the poems of Brynhild, in the story of Njal, in the _Song of Roland_, than in the famous romances of Chrestien of Troyes or any of his imitators, though they have all the wonders of the Isle of Britain at their command, though they have the very story of Tristram and the very mystery of the Grail to quicken them and call them out. Elegance, fluency, sentiment, romantic adventures are common, but for words like those of Hervor at the grave of her father, or of the parting between Brynhild and Sigurd, or of Helgi and Sigrun, it would be vain to search in the romances of Benoit de Sainte More or of Chrestien. Yet these are the masters of the art of romance when it was fresh and strong, a victorious fashion.

If the search be continued further, the search for that kind of imaginative beauty which these authors do not give, it will not be unsuccessful. The greater authors of the twelfth century have more affinity to the "heroic romance" of the school of the _Grand Cyrus_ than to the dreams of Spenser or Coleridge. But, while this is the case with the most distinguished members of the romantic school, it is not so with all the rest. The magic that is wanting to the clear and elegant narrative of Benoit and Chrestien will be found elsewhere; it will be found in one form in the mystical prose of the _Queste del St. Graal_--a very different thing from Chrestien's _Perceval_--it will be found, again and again, in the prose of Sir Thomas Malory; it will be found in many ballads and ballad burdens, in _William and Margaret_, in _Binnorie_, in the _Wife of Usher's Well_, in the _Rime of the Count Arnaldos_, in the _Königskinder_; it will be found in the most beautiful story of the Middle Ages, _Aucassin and Nicolette_; one of the few perfectly beautiful stories in the world, about which there is no need, in England at any rate, to say anything in addition to the well-known passages in which it has been praised. _Aucassin and Nicolette_ cannot be made into a representative medieval romance: there is nothing else like it; and the qualities that make it what it is are the opposite of the rhetorical self-possession, the correct and deliberate narrative of Chrestien and his school. It contains the quintessence of romantic imagination, but it is quite unlike the most fashionable and successful romances.

There are several stages in the history of the great Romantic School, as well as several distinct sources of interest. The value of the best works of the school consists in their representation of the passion of love. They turn the psychology of the courtly amatory poets into narrative. Chaucer's address to the old poets,--"Ye lovers that can make of sentiment,"--when he complains that they have left little for him to glean in the field of poetry, does not touch the lyrical poets only. The narrative poetry of the courteous school is equally devoted to the philosophy of love. Narrative poets like Chrestien, when they turn to lyric, can change their instrument without changing the purport of their verse; lyric or narrative, it has the same object, the same duty. So also, two hundred years later, Chaucer himself or Froissart may use narrative or lyric forms indifferently, and observe the same "courteous" ideal in both.

In the twelfth-century narratives, besides the interest of the love-story and all its science, there was the interest of adventure, of strange things; and here there is a great diversity among the authors, and a perceptible difference between earlier and later usage. Courteous sentiment, running through a succession of wonderful adventures, is generally enough to make a romance; but there are some notable varieties, both in the sentiment and in the incidents. The sentiment comes later in the history of literature than the adventures; the conventional romantic form of plot may be said to have been fixed before the romantic sentiment was brought to its furthest refinement. The wonders of romantic story are more easily traced to their origin, or at least to some of their earlier forms, than the spirit of chivalrous idealism which came in due time to take possession of the fabulous stories, and gave new meanings to the lives of Tristram and Lancelot.

Variety of incident, remoteness of scene, and all the incredible things in the world, had been at the disposal of medieval authors long before the French Romantic Schools began to define themselves. The wonders of the East, especially, had very early come into literature; and the Anglo-Saxon _Epistle of Alexander_ seems to anticipate the popular taste for Eastern stories, just as the Anglo-Saxon version of _Apollonius of Tyre_ anticipates the later importation of Greek romance, and the appropriation of classical rhetoric, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; as the grace and brightness of the old English poems of St. Andrew or St. Helen seem to anticipate the peculiar charm of some of the French poems of adventures. In French literature before the vogue of romance can be said to have begun, and before the epic form had lost its supremacy, the poem of the _Pilgrimage of Charlemagne_, one of the oldest extant poems of the heroic cycle, is already far gone in subjection to the charm of mere unqualified wonder and exaggeration--rioting in the wonders of the East, like the Varangians on their holiday, when they were allowed a free day to loot in the Emperor's palace.[79] The poem of Charlemagne's journey to Constantinople is unrefined enough, but the later and more elegant romances deal often in the same kind of matter. Mere furniture counts for a good deal in the best romances, and they are full of descriptions of riches and splendours. The story of Troy is full of details of various sorts of magnificence; the city of Troy itself and "Ylion," its master-tower, were built by Priam out of all kinds of marble, and covered with sculpture all over. Much further on in Benoit's poem (l. 14,553) Hector is brought home wounded to a room which is described in 300 lines, with particulars of its remarkable decorations, especially its four magical images. The tomb of Penthesilea (l. 25,690) is too much for the author:--

Sepolture ot et monument Tant que se _Plenius_ fust vis Ou _cil qui fist Apocalis_ Nel vos sauroient il retraire: Por ço si m'en dei gie bien taire: N'en dirai plus, que n'oseroie; Trop halte chose envaïroie.

[Footnote 79: See the account of the custom in the _Saga of Harald Hardrada_, c. 16. "Harald entrusted to Jarizleif all the gold that he had sent from Micklegarth, and all sorts of precious things: so much wealth all together, as no man of the North Lands had ever seen before in one man's hands. Harald had thrice come in for the palace-sweeping (_Polotasvarf_) while he was in Micklegarth. It is the law there that when the Greek king dies, the Varangians shall have a sweep of the palace; they go over all the king's palaces where his treasures are, and every man shall have for his own what falls to his hand" (_Fornmanna Sögur_, vi. p. 171).]

Pliny and the author of the Apocalypse are here acknowledged as masters and authorities in the art of description. In other places of the same work there is a very liberal use of natural history such as is common in many versions of the history of Alexander. There is, for example, a long description of the precious clothes of Briseide (Cressida) at her departure, especially of her mantle, which had been given to Calchas by an Indian poet in Upper India. It was made by nigromancy, of the skin of the beast _Dindialos_, which is hunted in the shadowless land by the savage people whose name is _Cenocefali_; and the fringes of the mantle were not of the sable, but of a "beast of price" that dwells in the water of Paradise:--

Dedans le flum de Paradis Sont et conversent, ço set l'on Se c'est vrais que nos en lison.

Calchas had a tent which had belonged to Pharaoh:--

Diomedes tant la conduit Qu'il descendi al paveillon Qui fu al riche Pharaon, Cil qui noa en la mer roge.

In such passages of ornamental description the names of strange people and of foreign kings have the same kind of value as the names of precious stones, and sometimes they are introduced on their own account, apart from the precious work of Arabian or Indian artists. Of this sort is the "dreadful sagittary," who is still retained in Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_ on the ultimate authority (when it comes to be looked into) of Benoit de Sainte More.[80]

[Footnote 80:

Il ot o lui un saietaire Qui molt fu fels et deputaire: Des le nombril tot contreval Ot cors en forme de cheval: Il n'est riens nule s'il volsist Que d'isnelece n'ateinsist: Cors, chiere, braz, a noz semblanz Avoit, mes n'ert pas avenanz.

l. 12,207.]

A quotation by M. Gaston Paris (_Hist. litt. de la France_, xxx. p. 210), from the unpublished romance of _Ider_ (Edeyrn, son of Nudd), shows how this fashion of rich description and allusion had been overdone, and how it was necessary, in time, to make a protest against it. Kings' pavilions were a favourite subject for rhetoric, and the poet of _Ider_ explains that he does not approve of this fashion, though he has pavilions of his own, and can describe them if he likes, as well as any one:--

Tels diz n'a fors savor de songe, Tant en acreissent les paroles: Mes jo n'ai cure d'iperboles: _Yperbole_ est chose non voire, Qui ne fu et qui n'est a croire, C'en est la difinicion: Mes tant di de cest paveillon Qu'il n'en a nul soz ciel qu'il vaille.

Many poets give themselves pains to describe gardens and pavilions and other things, and think they are beautifying their work, but this is all dreaming and waste of words; I will have no such hyperbole. (_Hyperbole_ means by definition that which is untrue and incredible.) I will only say of this pavilion that there was not its match under heaven.

The author, by his definition of _hyperbole_[81] in this place, secures an ornamental word with which he consoles himself for his abstinence in other respects. This piece of science is itself characteristic of the rhetorical enterprise of the Romantic School; of the way in which Pliny, Isidore, and other encyclopaedic authors were turned into decorations. The taste for such things is common in the early and the later Middle Ages; all that the romances did was to give a certain amount of finish and neatness to the sort of work that was left comparatively rude by the earlier pedants. There many be discovered in some writers a preference for classical subjects in their ornamental digressions, or for the graceful forms of allegory, such as in the next century were collected for the Garden of the Rose, and still later for the _House of Fame_. Thus Chrestien seems to assert his superiority of taste and judgment when, instead of Oriental work, he gives Enid an ivory saddle carved with the story of Aeneas and Dido (_Erec_, l. 5337); or when, in the same book, Erec's coronation mantle, though it is fairy work, bears no embroidered designs of Broceliande or Avalon, but four allegorical figures of the quadrivial sciences, with a reference by Chrestien to Macrobius as his authority in describing them. One function of this Romantic School, though not the most important, is to make an immediate literary profit out of all accessible books of learning. It was a quick-witted school, and knew how to turn quotations and allusions. Much of its art, like the art of _Euphues_, is bestowed in making pedantry look attractive.

[Footnote 81: Chaucer, who often yields to the temptations of "Hyperbole" in this sense of the word, lays down the law against impertinent decorations, in the rhetorical instruction of Pandarus to Troilus, about Troilus's letter to Cressida (B. ii. l. 1037):--

Ne jompre eek no discordaunt thing yfere As thus, to usen termes of phisyk; In loves termes hold of thy matere The forme alwey, and do that it be lyk; For if a peyntour wolde peynte a pyk With asses feet, and hede it as an ape, It cordeth naught; so nere it but a jape.]

The narrative material imported and worked up in the Romantic School is, of course, enormously more important than the mere decorations taken out of Solinus or Macrobius. It is not, however, with the principal masters the most important part of their study. Chrestien, for example, often treats his adventures with great levity in comparison with the serious psychological passages; the wonder often is that he should have used so much of the common stuff of adventures in poems where he had a strong commanding interest in the sentiments of the personages. There are many irrelevant and unnecessary adventures in his _Erec_, _Lancelot_, and _Yvain_, not to speak of his unfinished _Perceval_; while in _Cliges_ he shows that he did not rely on the commonplaces of adventure, on the regular machinery of romance, and that he might, when he chose, commit himself to a novel almost wholly made up of psychology and sentiment. Whatever the explanation be in this case, it is plain enough both that the adventures are of secondary value as compared with the psychology, in the best romances, and that their value, though inferior, is still considerable, even in some of the best work of the "courtly makers."

The greatest novelty in the twelfth-century narrative materials was due to the Welsh; not that the "matter of Britain" was quite overwhelming in extent, or out of proportion to the other stores of legend and fable. "The matter of Rome the Great" (not to speak again of the old epic "matter of France" and its various later romantic developments) included all known antiquity, and it was recruited continually by new importations from the East. The "matter of Rome," however, the tales of Thebes and Troy and the wars of Alexander, had been known more or less for centuries, and they did not produce the same effect as the discovery of the Celtic stories. Rather, it may be held that the Welsh stories gave a new value to the classical authorities, and suggested new imaginative readings. As Chaucer's _Troilus_ in our own time has inspired a new rendering of the _Life and Death of Jason_, so (it would seem) the same story of Jason got a new meaning in the twelfth century when it was read by Benoit de Sainte More in the light of Celtic romance. Then it was discovered that Jason and Medea were no more, and no less, than the adventurer and the wizard's daughter, who might play their parts in a story of Wales or Brittany. The quest of the Golden Fleece and the labours of Jason are all reduced from the rhetoric of Ovid, from their classical dignity, to something like what their original shape may have been when the story that now is told in Argyll and Connaught of the _King's Son of Ireland_ was told or chanted, ages before Homer, of a king's son of the Greeks and an enchantress beyond sea. Something indeed, and that of the highest consequence, as will be seen, was kept by Benoit from his reading of the _Metamorphoses_; the passion of Medea, namely. But the story itself is hardly distinguishable in kind from _Libeaux Desconus_. It is not easy to say how far this treatment of Jason may be due to the Welsh example of similar stories, and how far to the general medieval disrespect for everything in the classics except their matter. The Celtic precedents can scarcely have been without influence on this very remarkable detection of the "Celtic element" in the voyage of the Argonauts, while at the same time Ovid ought not to be refused his share in the credit of medieval romantic adventure. Virgil, Ovid, and Statius are not to be underrated as sources of chivalrous adventure, even in comparison with the unquestioned riches of Wales or Ireland.

There is more than one distinct stage in the progress of the Celtic influence in France. The culmination of the whole thing is attained when Chrestien makes the British story of the capture and rescue of Guinevere into the vehicle of his most finished and most courtly doctrine of love, as shown in the examples of Lancelot and the Queen. Before that there are several earlier kinds of Celtic romance in French, and after that comes what for modern readers is more attractive than the typical work of Chrestien and his school,--the eloquence of the old French prose, with its languor and its melancholy, both in the prose _Lancelot_ and in the _Queste del St. Graal_ and _Mort Artus_. In Chrestien everything is clear and positive; in these prose romances, and even more in Malory's English rendering of his "French book," is to be heard the indescribable plaintive melody, the sigh of the wind over the enchanted ground, the spell of pure Romance. Neither in Chrestien of Troyes, nor yet in the earlier authors who dealt more simply than he with their Celtic materials, is there anything to compare with this later prose.

In some of the earlier French romantic work, in some of the lays of Marie de France, and in the fragments of the poems about Tristram, there is a kind of simplicity, partly due to want of skill, but in its effect often impressive enough. The plots made use of by the medieval artists are some of them among the noblest in the world, but none of the poets were strong enough to bring out their value, either in translating _Dido_ and _Medea_, or in trying to educate Tristram and other British heroes according to the manners of the Court of Champagne. There are, however, differences among the misinterpretations and the failures. No French romance appears to have felt the full power of the story of Tristram and Iseult; no French poet had his mind and imagination taken up by the character of Iseult as more than one Northern poet was possessed by the tragedy of Brynhild. But there were some who, without developing the story as Chaucer did with the story of Troilus, at least allowed it to tell itself clearly. The Celtic magic, as that is described in Mr. Arnold's _Lectures_, has scarcely any place in French romance, either of the earlier period or of the fully-developed and successful chivalrous order, until the time of the prose books. The French poets, both the simpler sort and the more elegant, appear to have had a gift for ignoring that power of vagueness and mystery which is appreciated by some of the prose authors of the thirteenth century. They seem for the most part to have been pleased with the incidents of the Celtic stories, without appreciating any charm of style that they may have possessed. They treated them, in fact, as they treated Virgil and Ovid; and there is about as much of the "Celtic spirit" in the French versions of _Tristram_, as there is of the genius of Virgil in the _Roman d'Eneas_. In each case there is something recognisable of the original source, but it has been translated by minds imperfectly responsive. In dealing with Celtic, as with Greek, Latin, or Oriental stories, the French romancers were at first generally content if they could get the matter in the right order and present it in simple language, like tunes played with one finger. One great advantage of this procedure is that the stories are intelligible; the sequence of events is clear, and where the original conception has any strength or beauty it is not distorted, though the colours may be faint. This earlier and more temperate method was abandoned in the later stages of the Romantic School, when it often happened that a simple story was taken from the "matter of Britain" and overlaid with the chivalrous conventional ornament, losing its simplicity without being developed in respect of its characters or its sentiment. As an example of the one kind may be chosen the _Lay of Guingamor_, one of the lays of Marie de France;[82] as an example of the other, the Dutch romance of Gawain (_Walewein_), which is taken from the French and exhibits the results of a common process of adulteration. Or, again, the story of _Guinglain_, as told by Renaud de Beaujeu with an irrelevant "courtly" digression, may be compared with the simpler and more natural versions in English (_Libeaux Desconus_) and Italian (_Carduino_), as has been done by M. Gaston Paris; or the _Conte du Graal_ of Chrestien with the English _Sir Perceval of Galles_.

[Footnote 82: Not included in the editions of her works (Roquefort, Warnke); edited by M. Gaston Paris in the eighth volume of _Romania_ along with the lays of _Doon_, _Tidorel_, and _Tiolet_.]

_Guingamor_ is one of the best of the simpler kind of romances. The theme is that of an old story, a story which in one form and another is extant in native Celtic versions with centuries between them. In essentials it is the story of Ossian in the land of youth; in its chief motive, the fairy-bride, it is akin to the old Irish story of Connla. It is different from both in its definite historical manner of treating the subject. The story is allowed to count for the full value of all its incidents, with scarcely a touch to heighten the importance of any of them. It is the argument of a story, and little more. Even an argument, however, may present some of the vital qualities of a fairy story, as well as of a tragic plot, and the conclusion, especially, of _Guingamor_ is very fine in its own way, through its perfect clearness.

There was a king in Britain, and Guingamor was his nephew. The queen fell in love with him, and was driven to take revenge for his rejection of her; but being less cruel than other queens of similar fortune, she planned nothing worse than to send him into the _lande aventureuse_, a mysterious forest on the other side of the river, to hunt the white boar. This white boar of the adventurous ground had already taken off ten knights, who had gone out to hunt it and had never returned. Guingamor followed the boar with the king's hound. In his wanderings he came on a great palace, with a wall of green marble and a silver shining tower, and open gates, and no one within, to which he was brought back later by a maiden whom he met in the forest. The story of their meeting was evidently, in the original, a story like that of Weland and the swan-maidens, and those of other swan or seal maidens, who are caught by their lovers as Weland caught his bride. But the simplicity of the French story here is in excess of what is required even by the illiterate popular versions of similar incidents.

Guingamor, after two days in the rich palace (where he met the ten knights of the king's court, who had disappeared before), on the third day wished to go back to bring the head of the white boar to the king. His bride told him that he had been there for three hundred years, and that his uncle was dead, with all his retinue, and his cities fallen and destroyed.

But she allowed him to go, and gave him the boar's head and the king's hound; and told him after he had crossed the river into his own country to eat and drink nothing.

He was ferried across the river, and there he met a charcoal-burner and asked for news of the king. The king had been dead for three hundred years, he was told; and the king's nephew had gone hunting in the forest and had never been seen again. Guingamor told him his story, and showed him the boar's head, and turned to go back.

Now it was after nones and turning late. He saw a wild apple-tree and took three apples from it; but as he tasted them he grew old and feeble and fell from his horse.

The charcoal-burner had followed him and was going to help him, when he saw two damsels richly dressed, who came to Guingamor and reproached him for his forgetfulness. They put him gently on a horse and brought him to the river, and ferried him over, along with his hound. The charcoal-burner went back to his own house at nightfall. The boar's head he took to the king of Britain that then was, and told the story of Guingamor, and the king bade turn it into a lay.

The simplicity of all this is no small excellence in a story. If there is anything in this story that can affect the imagination, it is there unimpaired by anything foreign or cumbrous. It is unsupported and undeveloped by any strong poetic art, but it is sound and clear.

In the Dutch romance of _Walewein_, and doubtless in its French original (to show what is gained by the moderation and restriction of the earlier school), another story of fairy adventures has been dressed up to look like chivalry. The story of Walewein is one that appears in collections of popular tales; it is that of Mac Iain Direach in Campbell's _West Highland Tales_ (No. xlvi.), as well as of Grimm's _Golden Bird_. The romance observes the general plot of the popular story; indeed, it is singular among the romances in its close adherence to the order of events as given in the traditional oral forms. Though it contains 11,200 lines, it begins at the beginning and goes on to the end without losing what may be considered the original design. But while the general economy is thus retained, there are large digressions, and there is an enormous change in the character of the hero. While Guingamor in the French poem has little, if anything, to distinguish him from the adventurer of popular fairy stories, the hero in this Dutch romance is Gawain,--Gawain the Courteous, in splendid armour, playing the part of Mac Iain Direach. The discrepancy is very great, and there can be little doubt that the story as told in Gaelic fifty years ago by Angus Campbell, quarryman, is, in respect of the hero's condition and manners, more original than the medieval romance. Both versions are simple enough in their plot, and their plot is one and the same: the story of a quest for something wonderful, leading to another quest and then another, till the several problems are solved and the adventurer returns successful. In each story (as in Grimm's version also) the Fox appears as a helper.

Mac Iain Direach is sent to look for the Blue Falcon; the giant who owns the Falcon sends him to the big Women of the Isle of Jura to ask for their white glaive of light. The Women of Jura ask for the bay filly of the king of Erin; the king of Erin sends him to woo for him the king's daughter of France. Mac Iain Direach wins all for himself, with the help of the Fox.

Gawain has to carry out similar tasks: to find and bring back to King Arthur a magical flying Chessboard that appeared one day through the window and went out again; to bring to King Wonder, the owner of the Chessboard, "the sword of the strange rings"; to win for the owner of the sword the Princess of the Garden of India.

Some things in the story, apart from the hero, are different from the popular versions. In _Walewein_ there appears quite plainly what is lost in the Gaelic and the German stories, the character of the strange land in which the quests are carried out. Gawain has to pass through or into a hill to reach the land of King Wonder; it does not belong to the common earth. The three castles to which he comes have all of them water about them; the second of them, Ravensten, is an island in the sea; the third is beyond the water of Purgatory, and is reached by two perilous bridges, the bridge of the sword and the bridge under water, like those in Chrestien's _Lancelot_. There is a distinction here, plain enough, between the human world, to which Arthur and his Court belong, and the other world within the hill, and the castles beyond the waters. But if this may be supposed to belong to an older form of the story not evident in the popular versions, a story of adventures in the land of the Dead, on the other hand the romance has no conception of the meaning of these passages, and gets no poetical result from the chances here offered to it. It has nothing like the vision of Thomas of Erceldoune; the waters about the magic island are tame and shallow; the castle beyond the Bridge of Dread is loaded with the common, cheap, pedantic "hyperboles," like those of the _Pèlerinage_ or of Benoit's _Troy_. Gawain is too heavily armoured, also, and even his horse Gringalet has a reputation of his own; all inconsistent with the lightness of the fairy tale. Gawain in the land of all these dreams is burdened still by the heavy chivalrous conventions. The world for him, even after he has gone through the mountain, is still very much the old world with the old stale business going on; especially tournaments and all their weariness. One natural result of all this is that the Fox's part is very much reduced. In the Gaelic story, Mac Iain Direach and his friend Gille Mairtean (the Lad of March, the Fox) are a pair of equals; they have no character, no position in the world, no station and its duties. They are quite careless, and they move freely. Gawain is slow, and he has to put in a certain amount of the common romantic business. The authors of that romantic school, if ever they talked shop, may have asked one another, "Where do you put your Felon Red Knight? Where do you put your doing away of the Ill Custom? or your tournaments?" and the author of _Walewein_ would have had an answer ready. Everything is there all right: that is to say, all the things that every one else has, all the mechanical business of romance. The Fox is postponed to the third adventure, and there, though he has not quite grown out of his original likeness to the Gille Mairtean, he is evidently constrained. Sir Gawain of the romance, this courteous but rather dull and middle-aged gentleman in armour, is not his old light-hearted companion.

Still, though this story of _Gawain_ is weighed down by the commonplaces of the Romantic School, it shows through all its encumbrances what sort of story it was that impressed the French imagination at the beginning of the School. It may be permitted to believe that the story of _Walewein_ existed once in a simpler and clearer form, like that of _Guingamor_.

The curious sophistication of _Guinglain_ by Renaud de Beaujeu has been fully described and criticised by M. Gaston Paris in one of his essays (_Hist. litt. de la France_, xxx. p. 171). His comparison with the English and Italian versions of the story brings out the indifference of the French poets to their plot, and their readiness to sacrifice the unities of action for the sake of irrelevant sentiment. The story is as simple as that of Walewein; an expedition, this time, to rescue a lady from enchantment. She is bewitched in the form of a serpent, and freed by a kiss (_le fier basier_). There are various adventures on the journey; it has some resemblance to that of Gareth in the _Morte d'Arthur_, and of the Red Cross Knight in Spenser, which is founded upon Malory's _Gareth_.[83] One of the adventures is in the house of a beautiful sorceress, who treats Guinglain with small consideration. Renaud de Beaujeu, in order to get literary credit from his handling of this romantic episode, brings Guinglain back to this enchantress after the real close of the story, in a kind of sentimental show-piece or appendix, by which the story is quite overweighted and thrown off its balance for the sake of a rhetorical demonstration. This of course belongs to the later period of romance, when the simpler methods had been discredited; but the simpler form, much nearer the fashion of popular stories, is still kept more or less by the English and the Italian rhymes of "Sir Lybeaux."

[Footnote 83: Britomart in the House of Busirane has some resemblance to the conclusion of _Libius Disconius_.]

The most remarkable examples of the earlier French romantic methods are presented by the fragments remaining of the old Anglo-Norman poems on Tristram and Yseult, by Béroul and Thomas, especially the latter;[84] most remarkable, because in this case there is the greatest contradiction between the tragic capabilities of the story and the very simple methods of the Norman poets. It is a story that might test the tragic strength and eloquence of any poet in any age of the world; the poetical genius of Thomas is shown in his abstinence from effort. Hardly anything could be simpler. He does very little to fill out or to elaborate the story; he does nothing to vitiate his style; there is little ornament or emphasis. The story itself is there, as if the poet thought it an impertinence to add any harmonies of his own. If it were only extant as a whole, it would be one of the most notable of poems. Where else is there anything like it, for sincerity and for thinness?

[Footnote 84: Fr. Michel: _Tristan._ London, 1835. _Le Roman de Tristan_ (Thomas) ed. Bédier; (Béroul) ed. Muret, _Anc. Textes_, 1902-1905. Cf. Gaston Paris, _Poëmes et Légendes_.]

This poet of _Tristram_ does not represent the prevalent fashion of his time. The eloquence and the passion of the amorous romances are commonly more effusive, and seldom as true. The lost _Tristram_ of Chrestien would probably have made a contrast with the Anglo-Norman poem in this respect. Chrestien of Troyes is at the head of the French Romantic School, and his interest is in the science of love; not in ancient rude and passionate stories, such as the story of Tristram--for it is rude and ancient, even in the French of Thomas--not in the "Celtic magic," except for decorative and incidental purposes, but in psychology and analysis of the emotions, and in the appropriate forms of language for such things.

It is impossible (as M. Gaston Paris has shown) to separate the spirit of French romance from the spirit of the Provençal lyric poetry. The romances represent in a narrative form the ideas and the spirit which took shape as lyric poetry in the South; the romances are directly dependent upon the poetry of the South for their principal motives. The courtesy of the Provençal poetry, with its idealism and its pedantry, its psychological formalism, its rhetoric of antithesis and conceits, is to be found again in the narrative poetry of France in the twelfth century, just as, in the thirteenth, all the floods of lyrical idealism are collected in the didactic reservoir of the _Romaunt of the Rose_. The dominant interest in the French romances is the same as in the Provençal lyric poetry and in the _Romaunt of the Rose_; namely, the idealist or courteous science of love. The origins of this mode of thought are difficult to trace fully. The inquiry belongs more immediately to the history of Provence than of France, for the romancers are the pupils of the Provençal school; not independent practitioners of the same craft, but directly indebted to Provence for some of their main ideas and a good deal of their rhetoric. In Provence itself the origins are partly to be found in the natural (_i.e._ inexplicable) development of popular love-poetry, and in the corresponding progress of society and its sentiments; while among the definite influences that can be proved and explained, one of the strongest is that of Latin poetry, particularly of the _Art of Love_. About this there can be no doubt, however great may seem to be the interval between the ideas of Ovid and those of the Provençal lyrists, not to speak of their greater scholars in Italy, Dante and Petrarch. The pedantry of Ovid was taken seriously, for one thing, in an age when everything systematic was valuable just because it was a system; when every doctrine was profitable. For another thing, they found in Ovid the form, at least, of devotion, and again the _Art of Love_ was not their only book. There were other writings of Ovid and works of other poets from whom the Middle Ages learned their lesson of chivalrous service; not for the most part, it must be confessed, from the example of "Paynim Knights," but far more from the classical "Legend of Good Women," from the passion of Dido and the other heroines. It is true that there were some names of ancient heroes that were held in honour; the name of Paris is almost inseparable from the name of Tristram, wherever a medieval poet has occasion to praise the true lovers of old time, and Dante followed the common form when he brought the names together in his fifth canto.

But what made by far the strongest impression on the Middle Ages was not the example of Paris or of Leander, nor yet the passion of Catullus and Propertius, who were then unknown, but the poetry of the loyalty of the heroines, the fourth book of the _Aeneid_, the _Heroides_ of Ovid, and certain parts of the _Metamorphoses_. If anything literary can be said to have taken effect upon the temper of the Middle Ages, so as to produce the manners and sentiments of chivalry, this is the literature to which the largest share of influence must be ascribed. The ladies of Romance all owe allegiance, and some of them are ready to pay it, to the queens of the Latin poets.[85] Virgil's Dido and Ovid's Medea taught the eloquence of love to the French poets, and the first chivalrous lovers are those who have learned to think poorly of the recreant knights of antiquity.

[Footnote 85: A fine passage is quoted from the romance of _Ider_ in the essay cited above, where Guenloïe the queen finds Ider near death and thinks of killing herself, like Phyllis and other ladies of the old time, who will welcome her. It is the "Saints' Legend of Cupid," many generations before Chaucer, in the form of an invocation to Love, the tyrant:--

Bel semblant ço quit me feront Les cheitives qui a toi sont Qui s'ocistrent par druerie D'amor; mout voil lor compainie: D'amor me recomfortera La lasse Deïanira, Qui s'encroast, et Canacé, Eco, Scilla, Fillis, Pronné, Ero, Biblis, Dido, Mirra, Tisbé, la bele Hypermnestra, Et des autres mil et cinc cenz. Amor! por quoi ne te repenz De ces simples lasses destruire? Trop cruelment te voi deduire: Pechié feiz que n'en as pitié; Nuls deus fors toi ne fait pechié! De ço est Tisbé al dessus, Que por lié s'ocist Piramus; Amors, de ço te puet loer Car a ta cort siet o son per; Ero i est o Leander: Si jo i fusse avec Ider, Aise fusse, ço m'est avis, Com alme qu'est en paraïs.]

The French romantic authors were scholars in the poetry of the Provençal School, but they also knew a good deal independently of their Provençal masters, and did not need to be told everything. They read the ancient authors for themselves, and drew their own conclusions from them. They were influenced by the special Provençal rendering of the common ideas of chivalry and courtesy; they were also affected immediately by the authors who influenced the Provençal School.

Few things are more instructive in this part of literature than the story of Medea in the _Roman de Troie_ of Benoit de Sainte More. It might even claim to be the representative French romance, for it contains in an admirable form the two chief elements common to all the dominant school--adventure (here reduced from Ovid to the scale of a common fairy story, as has been seen already) and sentimental eloquence, which in this particular story is very near its original fountain-head.

It is to be noted that Benoit is not in the least troubled by the Latin rhetoric when he has to get at the story. Nothing Latin, except the names, and nothing rhetorical remains to show that the story came from Ovid, and not from Blethericus or some other of his fellow-romancers in Wales,[86] so long, that is, as the story is merely concerned with the Golden Fleece, the Dragon, the Bulls, and all the tasks imposed on Jason. But one essential thing is retained by Benoit out of the Latin which is his authority, and that is the way in which the love of Medea for Jason is dwelt upon and described.

[Footnote 86: Blethericus, or Bréri, is the Welsh authority cited by Thomas in his _Tristan_. Cf. Gaston Paris, _Romania_, viii. p. 427.]

This is for medieval poetry one of the chief sources of the psychology in which it took delight,--an original and authoritative representation of the beginning and growth of the passion of love, not yet spoilt by the pedantry which later displayed itself unrestrained in the following generations of amatory poets, and which took its finest form in the poem of Guillaume de Lorris; but yet at the same time giving a starting-point and some encouragement to the later pedants, by its study of the different degrees of the passion, and by the success with which they are explained and made interesting. This is one of the masterpieces and one of the standards of composition in early French romance; and it gives one of the most singular proofs of the dependence of modern on ancient literature, in certain respects. It would not be easy to prove any real connexion between Homer and the Sagas, in order to explain the resemblances of temper, and even of incident, between them; but in the case of the medieval romances there is this direct and real dependence. The Medea of Apollonius Rhodius is at the beginning of medieval poetry, in one line of descent (through Virgil's Dido as well as Ovid's Medea); and it would be hard to overestimate the accumulated debt of all the modern poets whose rhetoric of passion, whether they knew it or not, is derived somehow from the earlier medieval masters of Dante or Chaucer, Boccaccio or Spenser.

The "medieval" character of the work of Chrestien and his contemporaries is plain enough. But "medieval" and other terms of the same sort are too apt to impose themselves on the mind as complete descriptive formulas, and in this case the term "medieval" ought not to obscure the fact that it is modern literature, in one of its chief branches, which has its beginning in the twelfth century. No later change in the forms of fiction is more important than the twelfth-century revolution, from which all the later forms and constitutions of romance and novel are in some degree or other derived. It was this revolution, of which Chrestien was one of the first to take full advantage, that finally put an end to the old local and provincial restrictions upon narrative. The older schools of epic are bound to their own nation or tribe, and to the family traditions. These restrictions are no hindrance to the poetry of Homer, nor to the plots and conversations of the Sagas. Within these local restrictions the highest form of narrative art is possible. Nevertheless the period of these restrictions must come to an end; the heroic age cannot last for ever. The merit of the twelfth-century authors, Benoit, Chrestien, and their followers, is that they faced the new problems and solved them. In their productions it may be seen how the Western world was moving away from the separate national traditions, and beginning the course of modern civilisation with a large stock of ideas, subjects, and forms of expression common to all the nations. The new forms of story might be defective in many ways, thin or formal or extravagant in comparison with some of the older modes; but there was no help for it, there was no progress to be made in any other way.

The first condition of modern progress in novel-writing, as in other more serious branches of learning, was that the author should be free to look about him, to reflect and choose, to pick up his ideas and his matter anyhow. He was turned out of the old limited region of epic tradition. The nations had several centuries to themselves, in the Dark Ages, in which they were at liberty to compose Homeric poems ("if they had a mind"), but by the twelfth century that time was over. The romancers of the twelfth century were in the same position as modern authors in regard to their choice of subjects. Their subjects were not prescribed to them by epic tradition. They were more or less reflective and self-conscious literary men, citizens of the universal world, ready to make the most of their education. They are the sophists of medieval literature; emancipated, enlightened and intelligent persons, with an apparatus of rhetoric, a set of abstract ideas, a repertory of abstract sentiments, which they could apply to any available subject. In this sophistical period, when the serious interest of national epic was lost, and when stories, collected from all the ends of the earth, were made the receptacles of a common, abstract, sentimental pathos, it was of some importance that the rhetoric should be well managed, and that the sentiment should be refined. The great achievement of the French poets, on account of which they are to be remembered as founders and benefactors, is that they went to good masters for instruction. Solid dramatic interpretation of character was beyond them, and they were not able to make much of the openings for dramatic contrast in the stories on which they worked. But they were caught and held by the language of passion, the language of Dido and Medea; language not dramatic so much as lyrical or musical, the expression of universal passion, such as might be repeated without much change in a thousand stories. In this they were happily guided. The greater drama, the stronger characters, appeared in due time; but the dramas and the novels of Europe would not have been what they are, without the medieval elaboration of the simple motives, and the practice of the early romantic schools in executing variations on Love and Jealousy. It may be remarked that there were sources more remote and even more august, above and beyond the Latin poets from whom the medieval authors copied their phrasing; in so far as the Latin poets were affected by Athenian tragedy, directly or indirectly, in their great declamatory passages, which in turn affected the Middle Ages.

The history of this school has no end, for it merges in the history of the romantic schools that are still flourishing, and will be continued by their successors. One of the principal lines of progress may be indicated, to conclude this discourse on Epic Poetry.

The twelfth-century romances are in most things the antithesis to Homer, in narrative. They are fanciful, conceited, thin in their drama, affected in their sentiments. They are like the "heroic romances" of the seventeenth century, their descendants, as compared with the strong imagination of Cervantes or Shakespeare, who are the representatives, if not of the Homeric line, at any rate of the Homeric principles, in their intolerance of the formally pathetic or heroic, and who have all the great modern novelists on their side.

But the early romantic schools, though they are generally formal and sentimental, and not dramatic, have here and there the possibilities of a stronger drama and a truer imagination, and seem at times almost to have worked themselves free from their pedantry.

There is sentiment and sentiment: and while the pathos of medieval romance, like some of the effusion of medieval lyric, is often merely formal repetition of phrases, it is sometimes more natural, and sometimes the mechanical fancy seems to quicken into true poetical vision, or at least to make room for a sane appreciation of real life and its incidents. Chrestien of Troyes shows his genius most unmistakably in his occasional surprising intervals of true description and natural feeling, in the middle of his rhetoric; while even his sustained rhetorical dissertations, like those of the _Roman de la Rose_ in the next century, are not absolutely untrue, or uncontrolled by observation of actual manners. Often the rhetorical apparatus interferes in the most annoying way with the clear vision. In the _Chevalier au Lion_, for example, there is a pretty sketch of a family party--a girl reading a romance to her father in a garden, and her mother coming up and listening to the story--from which there is a sudden and annoying change to the common impertinences of the amatory professional novelist. This is the passage, with the two kinds of literature in abrupt opposition:--

Messire Yvain goes into the garden, and his people follow; and he sees a goodly gentleman reclining on a cloth of silk and leaning on his elbow; and a maiden was sitting before him reading out of a romance, I know not whose the story. And to listen to the romance a lady had drawn near; that was her mother, and he was her father, and well might they be glad to look on her and listen to her, for they had no other child. She was not yet sixteen years old, and she was so fair and gentle that the God of Love if he had seen her would have given himself to be her slave, and never would have bestowed the love of her on any other than himself. For her sake, to serve her, he would have made himself man, would have put off his deity, and would have stricken himself with the dart whose wound is never healed, except a disloyal physician tend it. It is not right that any should recover from that wound, unless there be disloyalty in it; and whoever is otherwise healed, he never loved with loyalty. _Of this wound I could talk to you without end_, if it pleased you to listen; but I know that some would say that all my talk was idleness, for the world is fallen away from true love, and men know not any more how to love as they ought, for the very talk of love is a weariness to them! (ll. 5360-5396).

This short passage is representative of Chrestien's work, and indeed of the most successful and influential work of the twelfth-century schools. It is not, like some affected kinds of romance, entirely cut off from reality. But the glimpses of the real world are occasional and short; there is a flash of pure daylight, a breath of fresh air, and then the heavy-laden, enchanted mists of rhetoric and obligatory sentiment come rolling down and shut out the view.

It is possible to trace out in some detail a line of progress in medieval romance, in which there is a victory in the end for the more ingenuous kind of sentiment; in which the rhetorical romantic forms are altered and strengthened to bear the weight of true imagination.

This line of progress is nothing less than the earlier life of all the great modern forms of novel; a part of European history which deserves some study from those who have leisure for it.

The case may be looked at in this way. The romantic schools, following on the earlier heroic literature, generally substituted a more shallow, formal, limited set of characters for the larger and freer portraits of the heroic age, making up for this defect in the personages by extravagance in other respects--in the incidents, the phrasing, the sentimental pathos, the rhetorical conceits. The great advantage of the new school over the old was that it was adapted to modern cosmopolitan civilisation; it left the artist free to choose his subject anywhere, and to deal with it according to the laws of good society, without local or national restrictions. But the earlier work of this modern enlightenment in the Middle Ages was generally very formal, very meagre in imagination. The progress of literature was to fill out the romantic forms, and to gain for the new cosmopolitan schemes of fiction the same sort of substantial contents, the same command of human nature and its variety, as belong (with local or national restrictions) to some at any rate of the earlier epic authors. This being so, one of the interests of the study of medieval romance must be the discovery of those places in which it departs from its own dominant conventions, and seems to aim at something different from its own nature: at the recovery of the fuller life of epic for the benefit of romance. Epic fulness of life within the limits of romantic form--that might be said to be the ideal which is _not_ attained in the Middle Ages, but towards which many medieval writers seem to be making their way.

Chrestien's story of _Geraint and Enid_ (Geraint has to take the name of _Erec_ in the French) is one of his earlier works, but cannot be called immature in comparison with what he wrote afterwards. In Chrestien's _Enid_ there is not a little superfluity of the common sort of adventure. The story of Enid in the _Idylls of the King_ (founded upon the Welsh _Geraint_, as given in Lady Charlotte Guest's _Mabinogion_) has been brought within compass, and a number of quite unnecessary adventures have been cut out. Yet the story here is the same as Chrestien's, and the drama of the story is not the pure invention of the English poet. Chrestien has all the principal motives, and the working out of the problem is the same. In one place, indeed, where the Welsh romance, the immediate source of Tennyson's _Enid_, has shortened the scene of reconciliation between the lovers, the Idyll has restored something like the proportions of the original French. Chrestien makes Erec speak to Enid and renounce all his ill-will, after the scene in which "the brute Earl" is killed; the Welsh story, with no less effect, allows the reconciliation to be taken for granted when Geraint, at this point in the history, with no speech of his reported, lifts Enid on his own horse. The Idyll goes back (apparently without any direct knowledge of Chrestien's version) to the method of Chrestien.

The story of Enid in Chrestien is very unlike the other stories of distressed and submissive wives; it has none of the ineradicable falsity of the story of Griselda. How much is due to Chrestien for this can hardly be reckoned, in our ignorance of the materials he used. But taking into account the other passages, like that of the girl reading in the garden, where Chrestien shows a distinct original appreciation of certain aspects of life, it cannot be far wrong to consider Chrestien's picture of Enid as mainly his own; and, in any case, this picture is one of the finest in medieval romance. There is no comparison between Chrestien of Troyes and Homer, but it is not impious to speak of Enid along with Nausicaa, and there are few other ladies of romance who may claim as much as this. The adventure of the Sparrowhawk, one of the finest pieces of pure romance in the poetry of this century, is also one of the finest in the old French, and in many ways very unlike the commonplaces of chivalry, in the simplicity of the household where Enid waits on her father's guest and takes his horse to the stable, in the sincerity and clearness with which Chrestien indicates the gentle breeding and dignity of her father and mother, and the pervading spirit of grace and loyalty in the whole scene.[87]

[Footnote 87: The Welsh version has the advantage here in noting more fully than Chrestien the beauty of age in Enid's mother: "And he thought that there could be no woman fairer than she must have been in the prime of her youth." Chrestien says merely (at the end of his story, l. 6621):--

Bele est Enide et bele doit Estre par reison et par droit, Que bele dame est mout sa mere Bel chevalier a an son pere.]

In the story of Enid, Chrestien has a subject which recommends itself to modern readers. The misunderstanding between Enid and her husband, and the reconciliation, are not peculiarly medieval, though the adventures through which their history is worked out are of the ordinary romantic commonplace.

Indeed the relation of husband and wife in this story is rather exceptionally divergent from the current romantic mode, and from the conventional law that true love between husband and wife was impossible. Afterwards, in his poem of _Lancelot_ (_le Chevalier de la Charrette_), Chrestien took up and worked out this conventional and pedantic theory, and made the love of Lancelot and the Queen into the standard for all courtly lovers. In his _Enid_, however, there is nothing of this. At the same time, the courtly and chivalrous mode gets the better of the central drama in his _Enid_, in so far as he allows himself to be distracted unduly from the pair of lovers by various "hyperboles" of the Romantic School; there are a number of unnecessary jousts and encounters, and a mysterious exploit of Erec in a magic garden, which is quite out of connexion with the rest of the story. The final impression is that Chrestien wanted strength of mind or inclination to concentrate himself on the drama of the two lovers. The story is taken too lightly.

In _Cliges_, his next work, the dramatic situation is much less valuable than in _Enid_, but the workmanship is far more careful and exact, and the result is a story which may claim to be among the earliest of modern novels, if the Greek romances, to which it has a close relation, are not taken into account. The story has very little "machinery"; there are none of the marvels of the Faerie in it. There is a Thessalian witch (the heroine's nurse), who keeps well within the limits of possible witchcraft, and there is the incident of the sleeping-draught (familiar in the ballad of the _Gay Goshawk_), and that is all. The rest is a simple love-story (or rather a double love-story, for there is the history of the hero's father and mother, before his own begins), and the personages are merely true lovers, undistinguished by any such qualities as the sulkiness of Erec or the discretion of Enid. It is all pure sensibility, and as it happens the sensibility is in good keeping--not overdriven into the pedantry of the more quixotic troubadours and minnesingers, and not warped by the conventions against marriage. It is explained at the end that, though Cliges and Fenice are married, they are lovers still:--

De s'amie a feite sa fame, Mais il l'apele amie et dame, Que por ce ne pert ele mie Que il ne l'aint come s'amie, Et ele lui autresi Con l'an doit feire son ami: Et chascun jor lor amors crut, N'onques cil celi ne mescrut, Ne querela de nule chose.

_Cliges_, l. 6753.

This poem of Chrestien's is a collection of the finest specimens of medieval rhetoric on the eternal theme. There is little incident, and sensibility has it all its own way, in monologues by the actors and digressions by the author, on the nature of love. It is rather the sentiment than the passion that is here expressed in the "language of the heart"; but, however that may be, there are both delicacy and eloquence in the language. The pensive Fenice, who debates with herself for nearly two hundred lines in one place (4410-4574), is the ancestress of many later heroines.

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 Provençal 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 Provençal 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 Provençal 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 vanità che par persona_, over and through their graceful inanity, passes the stream of sentiment, the shifting, flickering light which the Provençal 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'eüsse remembrement Des ovres faites d'en arriere: Ço me fait mal à grant manière!

[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):--

þonne cwið æt beore se ðe beah gesyhð, eald æscwiga, se ðe eall geman garcwealm gumena (him bið grim sefa) onginneð geomormod geongum cempan þurh hreðra gehygd higes cunnian, wigbealu weccean, ond þæt word acwyð: "Meaht ðu, min wine, mece gecnawan, þone þin fæder to gefeohte bær under heregriman, hindeman siðe, dyre iren, þær hine Dene slogon, weoldon wælstowe, syððan Wiðergyld læg æfter hæleþa hryre, hwate Scyldingas? Nu her þara banena byre nathwylces, frætwum hremig, on flet gæð, mordres gylpeð ond þone maðþum byreð þone þe þu mid rihte rædan 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 dýrar veigar þótt misst hafim munar ok landa: skal engi maðr angr-lióð kveða, þótt mer á briósti benjar líti. Nú ero brúðir byrgðar í haugi, lofða dísir, hjá oss liðnom.

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):--

svárar sifjar, svarna eiða, eiða svarna, unnar trygðir;

and (_ibid._)--

hann vas fyr utan eiða svarna, eiða svarna, unnar trygðir;

and in the _Old Lay of Gudrun_ (_C.P.B._, i. p. 319)--

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

There are other figures which have the same effect:--

Gott es at ráða Rínar malmi, ok unandi auði styra, ok sitjandi sælo nióta.

_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_ (_Laxdæla 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 Hjörleifssonar_, c. 8, printed in _Biskupa Sögur_, 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. Ælfwine, 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

_Alvíssmál_, in 'Elder Edda,' 112

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

Ammius (O.N. Hamðer): see _Hamðismál_

_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 Fróði, A.D. 1067-1148), his _Landnámabók_ and _Konunga Æfi_, 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 Hjörleifsson (_Arons Saga_), a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 225, 257, 381 _sq._

Asbjörnsen, P. Chr., 170 n

Asdis, Grettir's mother, 216 n

Askel: see _Reykdæla Saga_

_Atlakviða_, the _Lay of Attila_, 146 _sq._: see _Attila_

_Atlamál_, 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 _Hávarðar Saga_, 227

Attila (O.E. Ætla, 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 _Hêliand_, 28

Bergthora, Njal's wife, 190, 220 _sq._

Bernier: see _Raoul de Cambrai_

Béroul: see _Tristram_

_Bevis, Sir_, 388

_Biarkamál_, 78

Bjargey: see _Hávarðar Saga_

Bjorn, in _Njála_, 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 (_Laxdæla 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)

Bréri, 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. Sigurðarkviða 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 _Pèlerinage 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_'

_Comédie Humaine, la_, 188

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

Contract, Social, in Iceland, 59

_Coronemenz Looïs_, _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_ (_Darraðarlióð_, 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 Sæmund the Wise' (_Codex Regius_), 77, 93, 156 _passim_

Egil the Bowman, Weland's brother, represented on the Franks casket (Ægili), 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. Eormenríc, O.N. Jörmunrekr), 22; killed by the brothers of Suanihilda, 66: see _Hamðismál_

Erp: see _Hamðismál_

_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

_Færeyinga 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._

_Fiölsvinnsmál_ see _Svipdag_

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

_Flóamanna 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 _Njála_, 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

_Fóstbræðra 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 (_Skirnismál_), in the 'Poetic Edda,' 77, 94, 114

_Frithiof the Bold_, a romantic Saga, 247, 277, 280 _sq._

Froda (Fróðá), homestead in Olafsvík, near the end of Snæfellsnes, 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

_Gísla 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 (_Víga-Glúms 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 Hævn_), 105, 149

Grimm, 136 n; story of the _Golden Bird_, 340 Wilhelm, _Deutsche Heldensage_, 79

_Grímnismál_, in 'Elder Edda,' 112

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

Groa, wife of Earl Gizur, _q.v._

_Grógaldr_: see _Svipdag_

_Grottasöngr_ (Song of the Magic Mill), 90

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

Gudmund, son of Granmar: see _Sinfiotli_

Gudmund the Mighty (Guðmundr inn Riki), in _Ljósvetninga_ and other Sagas, 188, 225

Gudny, wife of Sturla of Hvamm, _q.v._

Gudrun (O.N. Guðrún), daughter of Giuki, sister of Gunnar and Hogni, wife of Sigurd, 23, 71, 101, 149 _sq._ and Theodoric, the _Old Lay of Gudrun_ (_Guðrúnarkviða in forna_), 103, 109 _Lay of_ (_Guðrúnarkviða_), 111 _Lament of_, or _Chain of Woe_ (_Tregrof Guðrúnar_), 111, 215 _Ordeal of_, 111 daughter of Osvifr (_Laxdæla 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. Gúðhere, O.N. Gunnarr; Gunther in the _Nibelungenlied_, etc.), 22: see _Gunnar_, _Gunther_

Gunnar of Lithend (Hlíðarendi), in _Njáls 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 _Hákonar 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_

_Hákonar 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

_Hamðismál_ ('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

_Harbarzlióð_: see _Thor_

_Harðar 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._ (_Hauksbók_, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 1892-1896)

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

_Hávarðar Saga Isfirðings_, the story of Howard of Icefirth, 199, 216 _sq._, 227

Hearne, Thomas, 78

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

_Heiðarvíga Saga_, the story of the battle on the Heath (connected with _Eyrbyggja Saga_), 209: see _Víga-Styrr_

_Heiðreks 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

_Hêliand_, 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 Heiðreks Konungs_ (_Heiðreks 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_

Hnæf: 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 Freysgoða_, the story of Hrafnkel, Frey's Priest, 187, 198

Hrefna, Kjartan's wife, 223

Hreidar the Simple, an unpromising hero, in _Haralds Saga Harðráða_, 310

Hrolf Kraki (Hroðulf 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_

_Hymiskviða_: see _Thor_

Ibsen, Henrik, his _Hærmændene paa Helgeland_ (_Warriors in Helgeland_), a drama founded on the Volsung story, its relation to _Laxdæla 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._

Jón Arason the poet, Bishop of Hólar, 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 _Hamðismál_, 65

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

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

Kara, 98 _sq._

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

Karl Jónsson, Abbot of Thingeyri in Iceland, author of _Sverris Saga_, 249

Kjartan, son of Olaf the Peacock (_Laxdæla Saga_), 13, 191, 204, 207, 375 his death, 240 _sq._

_Königskinder, die_, German ballad, 327

_Kormaks Saga_, 129 n, 281

_Lancelot_, the French prose romance, 335

_Landnámabók_, in Hauk's book, 47

Laurence, Bishop of Hólar (_ob._ 1331), his _Life_ (_Laurentius Saga_), 268

_Laxdæla 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'Epée 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

_Ljósvetninga Saga_, story of the House of Ljósavatn, 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_, _Laxdæla Saga_

Nidad, 95

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

Oberon; see _Huon de Bordeaux_

Odd, Arrow (Örvar-Oddr), 73

Oddrun, sister of Brynhild and Attila, 102 _Lament of_ (_Oddrúnargrátr_), 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 Þáttr_, 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

_Pèlerinage 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 (_Krákumál_), 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, Eugène de, 188

_Reykdæla 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_

_Rímur_, 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 _Njála_, 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 (Sámr), Gunnar's dog, 214

Sarpedon's address to Glaucus, 9, 11

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

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 _Volospá_

Sidney, Sir Philip, 99, 368

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

Sigmund Brestisson, in _Færeyinga 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. Sigurðr), 22, 71, 100 _sq._, 129, 133 fragmentary _Lay of_ (_Brot af Sigurðarkviðu_), 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 _Reykdæla 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 Goði), in _Eyrbyggja_ and other Sagas, 188, 213, 253

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

Sorli: see _Hamðismál_

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 _Hákonar 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_

_Svarfdæla Saga_, the story of the men of Swarfdale (_Svarfaðardalr_), 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 Jónsson 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 _Hamðismál_

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

Tegnér, Esaias, 141; his _Frithiofs Saga_, 277

Tennyson, _Enid_, 355

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

Thersites, 243

Thidrandi, whom the goddesses slew, 208

_Þidreks 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 (_Hymiskviða_), 43, 77, 95; the Winning of the Hammer (_Þrymskviða_), 43, 77, 81, 95 Danish ballad of, 125 the contention of, and Odin (_Harbarzlióð_), 77, 113

Thorarin, in _Eyrbyggja_, the quiet man, 227

Thorgils and Haflidi (_Þorgils Saga ok Hafliða_), 226, 238, 252 _sq._

Thorkell Hake, in _Ljósvetinga Saga_, 225

Thorolf Bægifot: see _Eyrbyggja_

Thorolf, Kveldulf's son: see _Skallagrim_

_Þorsteins Saga Hvíta_, the story of Thorstein the White, points of resemblance to _Laxdæla_ and _Gunnlaugs Saga_, 281

_Þorsteins Saga Stangarhöggs_ (Thorstein Staffsmitten), a short story, 282

Thrond of Gata (_Færeyinga Saga_), 245

_Þrymskviða_: 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 Béroul 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_

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

Vali: see _Bandamanna Saga_

_Vápnfirðinga Saga_, the story of Vopnafjord, 193, 226

_Vatnsdæla Saga_, story of the House of Vatnsdal, 189

Vemund: see _Reykdæla Saga_

_Vergi, la Chastelaine de_, a short tragic story, 362 _sq._

_Víga-Glúms Saga_, 193: see _Glum_

Víga-Styrr: see _Heiðarvíga Saga_

_N.B._--The story referred to in the text is preserved in Jón Olafsson's recollection of the leaves of the MS. which were lost in the fire of 1728 (_Islendinga Sögur_, 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

_Volospá_ (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 Looïs_, _Charroi de Nismes_, _Prise d'Orange_, _Aliscans_, _Rainouart_; cf. J. Bédier, _Les Légendes épiques_ (1908)

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