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EPIC AND ROMANCE

4§<>>?i^

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

EPIC AND ROMANCE

ESSAYS
ON MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

W. p. KER

FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

LONDON

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1908

.tt-

MAY 1 7 1958

/V«/f Edition (8w) 1896
Second Edition {EversUy Series) 1908

PREFACE

These essays are intended as a general description
of some of the principal forms of narrative literature
in the Middle Ages, and as a review of some of the
more interesting works in each period. It is hardly
necessary to say that the conclusion is one " in which
nothing is concluded," and that whole tracts of
literature have been barely touched on — the English
metrical romances, the Middle High German poems,
the ballads, Northern and Southern — which would
require to be considered in any systematic treatment
of this part of history.

Many serious difficulties have been evaded (in
Finnesburh^ more particularly), and many things
have been taken for granted, too easily. My apology
must be that there seemed to be certain results
available for criticism, apart from the more strict
and scientific procedure which is required to solve
the more difficult problems of Beowulf^ or of the old
Northern or the old French poetry. It is hoped
that something may be gained by a less minute and
exacting consideration of the whole field, and by
an attempt to bring the more distant and dissociated

VI EPIC AND ROMANCE

parts of the subject into relation with one another,
in one view.

Some of these notes have been already used, in a
course of three lectures at the Royal Institution, in
March 1892, on "the Progress of Romance in the
Middle Ages," and in lectures given at University
College and elsewhere. The plot of the Dutch
romance of Walewein was discussed in a paper sub-
mitted to the Folk-Lore Society two years ago, and
published in the journal of the Society {Folk-Lore,
vol. v. p. 121).

I am greatly indebted to my friend Mr. Paget
Toynbee for his help in reading the proofs.

I cannot put out on this venture without acknow-
ledgment of my obligation to two scholars, who have
had nothing to do with my employment of all that
I have borrowed from them, the Oxford editors of
the Old Northern Poetry, Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson
and Mr. York Powell. I have still to learn what
Mr. York Powell thinks of these discourses. What
Gudbrand Vigfusson would have thought I cannot
guess, but I am glad to remember the wise good-will
which he was always ready to give, with so much else
from the resources of his learning and his judgment,
to those who applied to him for advice.

W. P. KER.

London, ^ih Novembet 1896.

POSTSCRIPT

This book is now reprinted without addition or
change, except in a few small details. If it had to
be written over again, many things, no doubt, would
be expressed in a different way. For example, after
some time happily spent in reading the Danish and
other ballads, I am inclined to make rather less of
the interval between the ballads and the earlier heroic
poems, and I have learned (especially from Dr. Axel
Olrik) that the Danish ballads do not belong origin-
ally to simple rustic people, but to the Danish gentry
in the Middle Ages. Also the comparison of Sturla's
Icelandic and Norwegian histories, though it still
seems to me right in the main, is driven a little too
far; it hardly does enough justice to the beauty
of the Life of Hacon {Hdkonar Saga), especially in
the part dealing with the rivalry of the King and his
father-in-law Duke Skule. The critical problems with
regard to the writings of Sturla are more difficult than
I imagined, and I am glad to have this opportunity
of referring, with admiration, to the work of my friend
Dr. Bjorn Magniisson Olsen on the Sturlunga Saga
(in Safn til Sogu Islands^ iii. pp. 193-510, Copen-
vii

viii EPIC AND ROMANCE

hagen, 1897). Though I am unable to go further
into that debatable ground, I must not pass over
Dr. Olsen's argument showing that the life of the
original Sturla of Hvamm (v. inf. pp. 253-256) was
written by Snorri himself; the story of the alarm
and pursuit (p. 255) came from the recollections of
Gudny, Snorri's mother.

In the Chansons de Geste a great discovery has
been made since my essay was written ; the Changun
de Willame^ an earlier and ruder version of the epic
oiAliscans, has been printed by the unknown possessor
of the manuscript, and generously given to a number of
students who have good reason to be grateful to him
for his liberality. There are some notes on the poem
in Romania (vols, xxxii. and xxxiv.) by M. Paul
Meyer and Mr. Raymond Weeks, and it has been
used by Mr. Andrew Lang in illustration of Homer
and his age. It is the sort of thing that the Greeks
willingly let die ; a rough draught of an epic poem,
in many ways more barbarous than the other extant
chanso7ts de geste^ but full of vigour, and notable (like
le Roi Gormond, another of the older epics) for its
refrain and other lyrical passages, very like the
manner of the ballads. The Changun de Willame^ it
may be observed, is not very different from Aliscans
with regard to Rainouart, the humorous gigantic
helper of William of Orange. One would not have
been surprised if it had been otherwise, if Rainouart
had been first introduced by the later composer, with
a view to "comic relief" or some such additional
variety for his tale. But it is not so ; Rainouart, it

POSTSCRIPT IX

appears, has a good right to his place by the side of
WilHam. The grotesque element in French epic is
found very early, e.g. in the Ptlgrtmage of Charlemagne^
and is not to be reckoned among the signs of
decadence.

There ought to be a reference, on p. 298 below,
to M. Joseph B^dier's papers in the Revue Historique
(xcv. and xcvii.) on Raoid de Ca?nbrat. M: B^dier's
Ligendes ipiques^ not yet published at this time of
writing, will soon be in the hands of his expectant
readers.

I am deeply indebted to many friends — first of all
to York Powell — for innumerable good things spoken
and written about these studies. My reviewers, in
spite of all differences of opinion, have put me under
strong obligations to them for their fairness and con-
sideration. Particularly, I have to offer my most
sincere acknowledgments to Dr. Andreas Heusler of
Berlin for the honour he has done my book in his
Lied und Epos (1905), and not less for the help that
he has given, in this and other of his writings,
towards the better understanding of the old poems
and their history.

Oxford, 25//% /«;?. 1908.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

I
The Heroic Age

^/ . PAGE

• Epic and Romance : the two great orders of medieval narra-
tive 3

' Epic, of the "heroic age," preceding Romance of the "age

of chivahy "........ 4

The heroic age represented in three kinds of literature —

Teutonic Epic, French Epic, and the Icelandic Sagas . 6

(« Conditions of Life in an " heroic age " . . , . 7

Homer and the Northern poets ...... 9

Homeric passages in Beowulf ...... 10

and in the Song of Maldon . . . . . .11

Progress of poetry in the heroic age . . . . -13

• Growth of Epic, distinct in character, but generally incom-
plete, among the Teutonic nations .... 14

^ Epic and Romance

The complex nature of Epic ...... 16

No kind or aspect of life that may not be includc*d . . 16

' This freedom due to the dramatic quality of true {eg.

Homeric) Epic ........ 17

as explained by Aristotle • 17

XII EPIC AND ROMANCE

PAGE

Epic does not require a magnificent ideal subject . . 18

such as those of the artificial epic [Aeneid, Gerusalemme
Liberata, Paradise Lost) . . . . . .18

The //tad unlike these poems in its treatment of "ideal"

motives (patriotism, etc.) ...... 19

True Epic begins with a dramatic plot and characters . . 20
The Epic of the Northern heroic age is sound in its dramatic

conception ........ 20

and does not depend on impersonal ideals (with excep-
tions, in the Chanso7is de geste) . . . . .21

The German heroes in history and epic (Ermanaric, Attila,

Theodoric) . . . . . . . .21

Relations of Epic to historical fact 22

The epic poet is free in the conduct of his story ... 23
but his story and personages must belong to his own
people ......... 26

Nature of Epic brought out by contrast with secondary narra-
tive poems, where the subject is not national . . 27
This secondary kind of poem may be excellent, but is always

different in character from native Epic ... 28

Disputes of academic critics about the " Epic Poem" . . 30
^ Tasso's defence of Romance. Pedantic attempts to restrict

the compass of Epic . 30

Bossu on Phaeacia . . . . . . . -31

\ Epic, as the most comprehensive kind of poetry, includes

Romance as one of its elements 32

but needs a strong dramatic imagination to keep Romance
under control -33

III

Romantic Mythology

Mythology not required in the greatest scenes in Homer . 35
Myths and popular fancies may be a hindrance to the epic

poet, but he is compelled to make some use of them . 36
He criticises and selects, and allows the characters of the gods

to be modified in relation to the human characters . 37

CONTENTS XllI

PAGE

Early humanism and reflexion on myth — two pAcesses : (i)
rejection of the grosser myths ; (2) refinement of myth

through poetry ........ 40

Two ways of refining myth in poetry — (1) by turning it into
mere fancy, and the more ludicrous things into comedy ;

(2) by finding an imaginative or an ethical meaning in it 40

Instances in Icelandic WievaXuxc—Lokasenna ... 41

Snorri Sturluson, his ironical method in the Edda . . 42

The old gods rescuetl from clerical persecution ... 43
Imaginative treatment of the graver myths — the death of

Balder ; the Doom of the Gods . . . . -43

Difficulties in the attainment of poetical self-command . . 44

Medieval confusion and distraction ..... 45

Premature "culture" . . . . . . .46

Depreciation of native work in comparison with ancient

literature and with theology ..... 47

An Icelandic gentleman's library ..... 47

The whalebone casket 48

Epic not wholly stifled by " useful knowledge" ... 49

The Three Schools— Teutonic Epic— French Epic —
The Icelandic Histories

Early failure of Epic among the Continental Germans . . 50

/ Old English Epic invaded by Romance (Lives of Saints, etc. ) 50

Old Northern (Icelandic) poetry full of romantic mythology . 51

French Epic and Romance contrasted . . . .51

■'"•**r Feudalism in the old French Epic {Chansons de Geste) not

unlike the prefeudal " heroic age " . . . .52
•^^MqstJBut the Chansons de Geste are in many ways " romantic " . 53
h Comparison of the English Song of Byrhtnoth [Maldon, A.D.

991) with the Chanson de Roland .... 54

Severity and restraint of Byrhtnoth . . . . .55

^ Mystery and pathos of Roland . . . . . -56

Iceland and the German heroic age . , . . -57

The Icelandic paradox — old-fashioned politics together with

clear understanding ....... 58

XIV EPIC AND ROMANCE

PAGE

Icelandic prose l^erature — its subject, the anarchy of the

heroic age ; its methods, clear and positive ... 59

The Icelandic histories, in prose, complete the development

of the early Teutonic Epic poetry .... 60

CHAPTER II
THE TEUTONIC EPIC

The Tragic Conception

Early German poetry .65

One of the first things certain about it is that it knew the

meaning of tragic situations ..... 66

The Death of Ermanaric in Jordanes ..... 66

The story of Alboin in Paulus Diaconus .... 66

Tragic plots in the extant poems ..... 69
The Death of Ermanaric in the "Poetic Edda " {Ham-

'&ismdl) ......... 70

Some of the Northern poems show the tragic conception

modified by romantic motives, yet without loss of the

tragic purport — Nelgi and Sigrun .... 72

Similar harmony of motives in the Waking of Angantyr . 73
Whatever may be wanting, the heroic poetry had no want of

tragic plots — the " fables " are sound .... 74

Value of the abstract plot (Aristotle) 74

Scale of the Poems

List of extant poems and fragments in one or other of
the older Teutonic languages (German, Enghsh, and

Northern) in unrhymed aUiterative verse ... 76

Small amount of the extant poetry ..... 78

Supplemented in various ways ...... 79

I. The Western Group (German and Enghsh) . . 79

CONTENTS XV

PAGli

Amount of story contained in the several poems, and scale

of treatment . . . . . . ^ . '79

Hildebrand, a short story ....... 80

Finnesburh, (i) the Lambeth fragment (Hickes) ; and (2)

the abstract of the story in ^^fltf;^^ . . . .81

Finnesburh, a story of (i) wrong and (2) vengeance, like the

story of the death of Attila, or of the betrayal of Roland 82
Uncertainty as to the compass of the Finnesburh poem

(Lambeth) in its original complete form ... 84
Waldere, two fragments : the story of Walter of Aquitaine

preserved in the Latin Waltharius . . . • 84

Plot of Waltharius 84

Place of the Waldere fragments in the story, and probable

compass of the whole poem 86

I Scale of Maldon ........ 88

and of Beowulf ........ 89

General resemblance in the themes of these poems — unity of

action ......... 89

Development of style, and not neglect of unity nor multipli-
cation of contents, accounts for the difference of length

between earlier and later poems ..... 91
~^^ Progress of Epic in England — unlike the history of Icelandic

poetry ......... 92

2. The Northern Group 93

The contents of the so-called "Elder Edda" {i.e. Codex

Regius 2365, 4to Havn. ) . . . . . -93

to what extent Epic ....... 93

Notes on the contents of the poems, to show their scale ; the

Lay of Weland ....... 94

Different plan in the Lays of Thor, prymskvi^a and Hymis-

kvi^a ..... .... 95

The Helgi Poems — complications of the text • • • 95

Three separate stories — Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun . 95

Helgi Hiorvardsson and Swava ..... 98

Helgi and Kara (lost) ....... 99

The story of the Volsungs — the long Lay of Brynhild . . 100

contains the whole story in abstract .... 100

giving the chief place to the character of Brynhild . . loi

Ttv^ Hell-ride of Brynhild 102

The fragmentary Lay of Brynhild {Brot af Sigurfiarkvifiu) . 103

XVI EPIC AND ROMANCE

PAGE

Poems on the death of Atlila — \he Lay of Atiila [Ai/akviSa),

and the Greenland Poem of Attila {Atlavidl) . . 105
Proportions of the story ....... 105

A third version of the story in the Lament of Oddrun

[Oddriinargrdir) . . . . . . .107

The Death of Ermanaric {HaviSisnidl) .... 109

The Northern idylls of the heroines (Oddrun, Gudrun) — the

Old Lay of Gudrun, or Gudrun' s story to Theodoric . 109
The Lay of Gudrun {Gu'Srtinar^vi(Sa) — Gudrun's sorrow for

Sigurd . . .Ill

The refrain iii

Gndrun's Chain of Woe {Tregrof GiifSrtiuar) . . . m
The Ordeal of Gudrun, a.n episodic \a.y . . . .111

Poems in dialogue, without narrative —

(i) Dialogues in the common epic measure — Balder s
Doom, Dialogues of Sigurd, Angantyr — explanations in
prose, between the dialogues . . . . .112

(2) Dialogues in the gnomic or elegiac measure : (a) vitu-
perative debates — Lokasenna, Harbarzlid^ (in irregular
verse), Atli and Rimgerd . . . . .112

(d) Dialogues implying action — The Wooing of Frey
{Skirnistndl) . . . . . . . .114

Svipdag and Menglad[Gr6galdr, Fidlsvinnsmdl). . .114

The l^olsung disdognes . . . . . . .115

The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect

to their scale . . . . . . . .116

The old English poems {Beowulf, Waldere), m scale, mid-
way between the Northern poems and Homer . . 117
Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the ' ' short

lays" of the agglutinative epic theory ; but this is illusion 117
Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic — (i) episodic, i.e.
representing a single action [Hildebrand, etc. ) ; (2) sum-
mary, i.e» giving the whole of a long story in abstract,
with details of one part of it ( Weland, etc. ). . .118
The second class is unfit for agglutination . . .119

Also the first, when it is looked into . . . .121

The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently

fused into larger masses of narrative . . . .122

CONTENTS XVll

III
Epic and Ballad Foetry

PAGE

Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads X23
Their style is different . . . . . . .124

As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic

subjects ......... 125

The Danish ballads of Ungen Sveidal [Svipdag and

Menglad) ......... 126

and of Sivard {Sigurd and Brynhild) . . . .127

The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and

capable of progress . . . . . . .129

The Style of the Poems

■Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse ..... 133

English and Norse ........ "134

Different besetting temptations in England and the North . 136
English tameness ; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic

poetry) 137

Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North ; unable to com-
pete with the lyrical forms . . . . . .137

Lyrical element in Norse narrative . . . . .138

Fij/oj/a, the greatest of all the Northern poems . . . 139
False heroics ; Krdkumdl {Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrvk) . 140.
A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances . 141

The Progress of Epic

-"-•Various renderings of the same story due (i) to accidents of
tradition and impersonal causes ; (2) to calculation and
selection of motives by poets, and intentional modifica-
tion of traditional matter . . . . , .144
The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni com-
pared— Atlakvi'Sa, Atlanidl, Oddrilnargrdtr . . 147
Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory

of Kriemhild's revenge 149

xvm EPIC AND ROMAJSCE

PAGE

The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakvi^a,
apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two
poems ......... 150

But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its

own which made it impossible to use the original story . 152

Atlamdl, the work of a critical author, maldng his selection

of incidents from heroic tradition . . . -153

the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of
its school ......... 15s

The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments

in poetry and not of casual popular variants . . 156

Beowulf

5?ow«^ claims to be a single complete work . . . 158
Want of unity : a story and a sequel . . -159

More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first

2200 lines form a complete story, not ill composed . 160

Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf. . 162

and Waldere ........ 163

Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf — tragic

significance in some of the allusions . . . .165
The characters in Beowulf abstra^ci types .... 165
The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in

the fight with the dragon . . . . . .168

Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy .... 169

Grendel's mother more romantic . . . .272

Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of

romantic adventures . 173

CHAPTER III

THE ICELANDIC SAGAS
I

Iceland and the Heroic Age

The close of Teutonic Epic — in Germany the old forms were

lost, but not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages . 179

CONTENTS

XIX

England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle

Ages ......... i8o

Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere . . .181
Place of Iceland in the heroic tradition — a new heroic litera-
ture in prose 182

Matter and Form

The Sagas are not pure fiction ...... 184

Difficulty of giving form to genealogical details . . -185

Miscellaneous incidents . . . . . . .186

Literary value of the historical basis — the characters well

known and recognisable . . . . . .187

The coherent Sagas — the tragic motive .... 189

Plan of Njdla 190

oi Laxdcela ......... 191

of Egils Saga ........ 192

Vdpnfir^inga Saga, a story of two generations . . -193
Viga Gltims Saga, a biography without tragedy . . '193

Reykdala Saga . . . . . . , .194

Grettis Saga and Gisla Saga clearly worked out . .195

Passages of romance in these histories . . . .196

Hrafnkels Saga Freysgd^a, a tragic idyll, well proportioned 198
Great differences of scale among the Sagas — analogies with

the heroic poems . . . . . . .198

III

The Heroic Ideal

Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas

Heroic characters

Heroic rhetoric .....

Danger of exaggeration — Kjartan in Laxd(eia
The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal

200
201
203
204
206

EPIC AND ROMANCE

* Tragic Imagination

PAGE

Tragic contradictions in the Sagas — Gisli, NJal . . . 207

Fantasy 208

LaxdcBla, a reduction of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild to

the terms of common life ...... 209

Compare Ibsen's Warriors in Helgelaiid .... 209

The Sagas are a late stage in the progress of heroic Uterature 210
The Northern rationaHsm . . . . . . .212

Self-restraint and irony . 213

The elegiac mood infrequent 215

The story of Howard of Icefirth — ironical pathos . .216

The conventional Viking 218

The harmonies of Njdla 219

and of Laxdcela ........ 222

The two speeches of Gudrun 223

Comedy

The Sagas not bound by solemn conventions . . . 225

Comic humours ........ 226

Bjorn and his wife in Njdla ...... 228

Bandamanna Saga: " The Confederates," a comedy . . 229
Satirical criticism of the " heroic age " . . . .231

Tragic incidents in Bandamanna Saga .... 233

Neither the comedy nor tragedy of the Sagas is monotonous

or abstract ........ 234

The Art of Narrative

Organic unity of the best Sagas 235

Method of representing occvurences as they appear at the

time 236

Instance from Iporgiis Saga 238

CONTENTS XXI

fa(;e
Another method — the death of Kjartan as it appeared to a

churl ......... 240

Psychology (not analytical) ...... 244

Impartiality — justice to the hero's adversaries {FcEreyinga

Saga) 24s

VII

Epic and History

Form of Saga used for contemporary history in the thirteenth

century ......... 246

The historians, Ari (1067-1148) and Snorri (1178-1241) . 248
The Life of King Sverre, by Abbot Karl Jdnsson . . 249
Sturla {c. 12 14-1284), his history of Iceland in his own time

[Islendmga or Sturhmga Saga) .
The matter ready to his hand . . . ,

Biographies incorporated in Sturlunga : Thorgils
Siurlu Saga ......

The midnight raid (a. D. 1171) .

Lives of Bishop Gudmund, Hrafn, and Aron

Sturla' s own work [Islendlinga Saga)

The burning of Flugumyri

Traces of the heroic manner

The character of this history brought out by contrast with

Sturla's other work, the Life of King Hacon of Norway 267
Norwegian and Icelandic politics in the thirteenth century . 267
Norway more fortunate than Iceland — the history less

interesting 267

Sturla and Joinville contemporaries ..... 269
Their methods of narrative compared .... 270

VIII

The Northern Prose Romances

Romantic interpolations in the Sagas — the ornamental

version of Fdstbra^ra Saga ..... 275

The secondary romantic Sagas — Frithiof .... 277
■French romance imported [Strengleikar, Tristram's Saga,

etc.) 278

. 249

250

and Haflidi 252

• 253

• 254

• 256
. 257

• 259
. 264

xxii EPIC AND ROMANCE

PAGE

Romantic Sagas made out of heroic poems ( Volsunga Saga,

etc.) 279

and out of authentic Sagas by repetition of common forms
and motives ........ 280

Romantic conventions in the original Sagas . . .280

Laxdcela and Gunnlaug's Saga — Thorstein the White . .281
Thorstein Staffsmitten ....... 282

Sagas turned into rhyming romances {Rimur) . . . 283
and into ballads in the Faroes ..... 284

CHAPTER IV

THE OLD FRENCH EPIC

, {Chansons de Geste)

Lateness of the extant versions ...... 287

^ Competition of Epic and Romance in the twelfth century . 288
/ Widespread influence of the Chansons de geste — a contrast to

the Sagas . 289

• Narrative style . . 290

I No obscurities of diction . . . . . , .291

1 The " heroic age " imperfectly represented . . . 292

'" — - but not ignored ........ 293

^ Roland — heroic idealism — France and Christendom . . 293

William of Orange — Aliscans ...... 296

Rainoiuirt — exaggeration of heroism ..... 296

Another class of stories in the Chansons de geste, more like

the Sagas ^97^)

Raoul de Cambrai 298

Barbarism of style 299

Garin le Loherain — style clarified 300

Problems of character — Froraont ..... 301

The story of the death of Begon 302

unlike contemporary work of the Romantic School , . 304

The lament for Begon ....... 307

% Raoul 2,ndL. Garin conixzsX^^ \s'\\h. Roland .... ^^

Comedy in French Epic — " humours " in Garm . . 310

in the Coronemenz Loots, etc. 311

CONTENTS xxui

PAGE

Romantic additions to heroic cycles — la Prise (T Orange . 313

Huon de Bordeaux — the original story grave and tragic . 314

converted to Romance ....... 314

CHAPTER V

ROMANCE AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC
SCHOOLS

\ f Romance an element in Epic and Tragedy apart from all

! " romantic schools " ....... 321

I The literary movements of the twelfth century . . . 322

) . A new beginning 323

) The Romantic School unromantic in its methods . . 324

I .Professional Romance ....... 325

i Characteristics of the school — courteous sentiment . . 328
\ Decorative passages — descriptions — pedantry . . . ' 329

Instances from Roman de Troie 330

and from Ider, etc. . . . . . . -331

Romantic adventures — the "matter of Rome" and the

" matter of Britain " ....... 334

Blending of classical and Celtic influences — e.g. in Benoit's

Medea ......... 334

Methods of narrative — simple, as in the Lay of Gxd7igamor ;

overloaded, as in Walewein . . . . -337

Guingamor ......... 338

Walewein, a popular tale disguised as a chivalrous romance 340
The different versions of Libeaux Desconus — one of them is

sophisticated ........ 343

Tristram — the Anglo-Norman poems comparatively simple

and ingenuous ........ 344

'; French Romance and Proven9al Lyric .... 345

; I Ovid in the Middle Ages — the Art of Love . . . 346

' The Heroines ......... 347

; Benoit's Medea again ....... 348

Chrestien of Troyes, his place at the beginning of modern

literature ......... 349

!('• Enlightenment " in the Romantic School . . . 350

f^i

XXIV EPIC AND ROMANCE

PAGE

The sophists of Romance — the rhetoric of sentiment and

passion ......... 351

The progress of Romance from medieval to modern Hterature 352
Chrestien of Troyes, his inconsistencies — nature and con-
vention ......... 352

Departure from conventional romance ; Chrestien's Enid . 355

Chrestien' s C/ig^es — "sensibiUty" ..... 357

Flamenca, a Proven9al story of the thirteenth century — the

author a follower of Chrestien ..... 359

His acquaintance with romantic literature .... 360

and rejection of the " machinery " of adventures . . 360
Flamenca, an appropriation of Ovid — disappearance of

romantic mythology . . . . . . .361

e Lady of Vergi, a short tragic story without false rhetoric 362
f Use of medieval themes by the great poets of the fourteenth

1 century ......... 363

' Boccaccio and Chaucer — the Teseide and the Knight's Tale 364

1 1 Variety of Chaucer's methods ...... 364

• fWant of art in the Man of Law's Tale .... 365

\ The abstract point of honour [Clerk's Tale, Franklin's Tale) 366

I ^^2Sho%\x\.\}Cie Legend of Good Women .... 366

(,, Romantic method perfect in the Knight's Tale . . . 366

,.<4«^/?Va, the abstract form of romance .... 367

( In Troilus and Criseyde the form of medieval romance is

filled out with strong dramatic imagination . . . 367
' Romance obtains the freedom of Epic, without the old local

and national limitations of Epic ..... 368

— Conclusion 370

APPENDIX

Note A— Rhetoric of the Alliterative Poetry . . . 373

Note B— Kjartan and Olaf Tryggvason .... 375

Note C— Eyjolf Karsson 381

Note D — Two Catalogues of Romances .... 384

INDEX . . , 391

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

THE HEROIC AGE

The title of Epic, or of " heroic poem," is claimed by
historians for a number of works belonging to the
earlier Middle Ages, and to the medieval origins of
modern literature. " Epic " is a term freely applied
to the old school of Germanic narrative poetry, which
in different dialects is represented by the poems of
Hildebrand, of Beowulf, of Sigurd and Brynhild.
"Epic" is the name for the body of old French
poems which is headed by the Chanson de Roland.
The rank of Epic is assigned by many to the Nibel-
ungenlied, not to speak of other Middle High
German poems on themes of German tradition.
The title of prose Epic has been claimed for the Sagas
of Iceland.

By an equally common consent the name Romance
is given to a number of kinds of medieval narrative
by which the Epic is succeeded and displaced ; most
notably in France, but also in other countries which
were led, mainly by the example and influence of
France, to give up their own "epic" forms and
subjects in favour of new manners.

This literary classification corresponds in general
history to the difference between the earlier " heroic "

4 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

age and the age of chivalry. The " epics " of Hilde-
brand and Beowulf belong, if not wholly to German
heathendom, at any rate to the earlier and prefeudal
stage of German civilisation. The French epics, in
their extant form, belong for the most part in spirit,
if not always in date, to an order of things un-
modified by the great changes of the twelfth century.
While among the products of the twelfth century one
of the most remarkable is the new school of French
romance, the brilliant and frequently vainglorious
exponent of the modern ideas of that age, and of all
its chivalrous and courtly fashions of thought and
sentiment. The difference of the two orders of
literature is as plain as the difference in the art of
war between the two sides of the battle of Hastings,
which indeed is another form of the same thing ;
for the victory of the Norman knights over the
English axemen has more than a fanciful or super-
ficial analogy to the victory of the new literature of
chivalry over the older forms of heroic narrative.
The history of those two orders of literature, of the
earlier Epic kinds, followed by the various types of
medieval Romance, is parallel to the general political
history of the earlier and the later Middle Ages, and
may do something to illustrate the general progress
of the nations. The passage from the earlier
"heroic" civilisation to the age of chivalry was not
made without some contemporary record of the
" form and pressure " of the times in the changing
fashions of literature, and in successive experiments
of the imagination.

Whatever Epic may mean, it implies some weight
and solidity ; Romance means nothing, if it does not
convey some notion of mystery and fantasy. A
general distinction of this kind, whatever names may
be used to render it, can be shown, in medieval

SECT. I THE HEROIC AGE 5

literature, to hold good of the two large groups of
narrative belonging to the earlier and the later Middle
Ages respectively. Beowulf might stand for the one
side, Lancelot or Gawain for the other. It is a
difference not confined to literature. The two groups
are distinguished from one another, as the respectable
piratical gentleman of the North Sea coast in the ninth
or tenth century differs from one of the companions
of St. Louis. The latter has something fantastic in
his ideas which the other has not. The Crusader
may indeed be natural and brutal enough in most of
his ways, but he has lost the sobriety and simplicity
of the earlier type of rover. If nothing else, his way
of fighting — the undisciplined cavalry charge — would
convict him of extravagance as compared with men of
business, Hke the settlers of Iceland for example.

The two great kinds of narrative literature in the
Middle Ages might be distinguished by their favourite
incidents and commonplaces of adventure. No kind-
of adventure is so common or better told in the
earlier heroic manner, than the defence of a narrow
place against odds. Such are the stories of Hamther
and Sorli in the hall of Ermanaric, of the Niblung
kings in the hall of Attila, of the Fight of Finnesburh,
of Walter at the Wasgenstein, of Byrhtnoth at
Maldon, of Roland in the Pyrenees. Such are some
of the finest passages in the Icelandic Sagas : the
death of Gunnar, the burning of Njal's house, the
burning of Flugumyri (an authentic record), the last
fight of Kjartan in Svinadal, and of Grettir at
Drangey. The story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard in
the English Chronicle may well have come from a
poem in which an attack and defence of this sort
were narrated.

^The favourite adventure of medieval romance is
something different, — a knight riding alone through a

6 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

forest ; another knight ; a shock of lances ; a fight on
foot with swords, "racing, tracing, and foining like
two wild boars " ; then, perhaps, recognition — the
two knights belong to the same household and are
engaged in the same quest.

Et Guivrez vers lui esperone,
De rien nule ne I'areisone,
Ne Erec ne li sona mot.

Erec, 1. 5007.

This collision of blind forces, this tournament at
random, takes the place, in the French romances,
of the older kind of combat. In the older kind the ^
parties have always good reasons of their own for
fighting ; they do not go into it with the same sort
of readiness as the wandering champions of romance^

The change of temper and fashion represented oy
the appearance and the vogue of the medieval French
romances is a change involving the whole world,
and going far beyond the compass of literature and
literary history. It meant the final surrender of the
old ideas, independent of Christendom, which had
been enough for the Germanic nations in their earlier
days ; it was the close of their heroic age. What the
" heroic age " of the modern nations really was, may
be learned from what is left of their heroic literature,
especially from three groups or classes, — the old
Teutonic alliterative poems on native subjects ; the
French Chansons de Gesfe ; and the Icelandic Sagas.

All these three orders, whatever their faults mayC '^
be, do something to represent a society which is
" heroic " as the Greeks in Homer are heroic. There
can be no mistake about the likeness. To compare
the imaginations and the phrases of any of these
barbarous works with the poetry of Homer may be
futile, but their contents may be compared without

SECT. I THE HEROIC AGE 7

reference to their poetical qualities ; and there is no
question that the life depicted has many things in
common with Homeric life, and agrees with Homer in
ignorance of the peculiar ideas of medieval chivalry.

/iThe form of society in an heroic age is aristocratic /r
and magnificent. At the same time, this aristocracy
differs from that of later and more specialised forms
of civilisation. It does not make an insuperable
difference between gentle and simple. There is not
the extreme division of labour that produces the
contempt of the lord for the villain. The nobles have
not yet discovered for themselves any form of occupa-
tion or mode of thought in virtue of which they are /
widely severed from the commons, nor have theyj
invented any such ideal of life or conventional system
of conduct as involves an ignorance or depreciation .of
the common pursuits of those below them. They have
no such elaborate theory of conduct as is found in
the chivalrous society of the Middle Ages. The great
man is the man who is best at the things with which
every one is familiar. The epic hero may despise the
churlish man, may, like Odysseus in the Iliad
(ii. 198), show little sympathy or patience with the
bellowings of the multitude, but he may not ostenta-
tiously refuse all community of ideas with simple
people. His magnificence is not defended by scruples
about everything low. It would not have mattered
to Odysseus if he had been seen travelling in a cart,
like Lancelot ; though for Lancelot it was a great
misfortune and anxiety. The art and pursuits of a
gentleman in the heroic age are different from those
of the churl, but not so far different as to keep them
in different spheres. There is a community of prosaic
interests. The great man is a good judge of cattle ;
he sails his own ship.

A gentleman adventurer on board his own ship,

8 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

following out his own ideas, carrying his men with
him by his own power of mind and temper, and not
by means of any system of naval discipline to which
he as well as they must be subordinate ; surpassing
his men in skill, knowledge, and ambition, but taking
part with them and allowing them to take part in the
enterprise, is a good representative of the heroic ag^
This relation between captain and men may be founa,
accidentally and exceptionally, in later and more
sophisticated forms of society. In the heroic age a
relation between a great man and his followers similar
to that between an Elizabethan captain and his crew
is found to be the most important and fundamental
relation in society. In later times it is only by a
special favour of circumstances, as for example by the
isolation of shipboard from all larger monarchies, that
the heroic relation between the leader and the followers
can be repeated. As society becomes more complex
and conventional, this relation ceases. The homeli-
ness of conversation between Odysseus- and his vassals,
or between Njal and Thord Freedman's son, is
discouraged by the rules of courtly behaviour as
gentlefolk become more idle and ostentatious, and
their vassals more sordid and dependent.^ 'The secrets
also of political intrigue and dexterity made a differ-
ence between noble and villain, in later and more
complex medieval politics, such as is unknown in the
earlier days and the more homely forms of Society.
;?^n heroic age may be full of all kinds of nonsense
and superstition, but its motives of action are mainly
positive and sensible, — cattle, sheep, piracy, abduction,
merchandise, recovery of stolen goods, revenge. The
narrative poetry of an heroic age, whatever dignity it
may obtain either by its dramatic force of imagination,
or by the aid of its mythology, will keep its hold
upon such common matters, simply because it cannot

SECT. I THE HEROIC AGE 9

do without the essential practical interests, and has
nothing to put in their place, if kings and chiefs are
to be represented at all. The heroic ag"e cannot dress
up ideas or sentiments to play the part of characters.
If its characters are not men they are nothing, not
even thoughts or allegories ; they cannot go on
talking unless they have something to do ; and so the
whole business of life comes bodily into the epic poem^'

How much the matter of the Northern heroic
literature resembles the Homeric, may be felt and
recognised at every turn in a survey of the ground.
In both there are the ashen spears \ there are the'
shepherds of the people ; the retainers bound by loyalty
to the prince who gives them meat and drink ; the
great hall with its minstrelsy, its boasting and bicker-
ing ; the battles which are a number of single combats,
while " physiology supplies the author with images " ^
for the same ; the heroic rule of conduct (tojuev) ^ ; the
eminence of the hero, and at the same time his
community of occupation and interest with those who
are less distinguished.

There are other resemblances also, but some of
these are miraculous, and perhaps irrelevant. By
what magic is it that the cry of Odysseus, wounded
and hard bestead in his retreat before the Trojans,
comes over us like the three blasts of the horn of
Roland?

Thrice he shouted, as loud as the head of a man will
bear ; and three times Menelaus heard the sound there-
of, and quickly he turned and spake to Ajax : " Ajax,
there is come about me the cry of Odysseus slow to
yield ; and it is like as though the Trojans had come
hard upon him by himself alone, closing him round in
the battle." 3

^ Johnson on the Epic Poem {Li/e of Milton). * ji xij. 328.
3 //. xi. 462.

lo EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

It is reported as a discovery made by Mephisto-
pheles in Thessaly, in the classical Walpurgis-
nacht^ that the company there was very much like
his old acquaintances on the Brocken. A similar
discovery, in regard to more honourable personages
and other scenes, may be made by other Gothic
travellers in a "south-eastward" journey to heroic
Greece. The classical reader of the Northern heroics
may be frequently disgusted by their failures; he
may also be bribed, if not to applaud, at least to
continue his study, by the glimmerings and " shadowy
recollections," the affinities and correspondences
between the Homeric and the Northern heroic world.

Beowulf and his companions sail across the sea to
Denmark on an errand of deliverance, — to cleanse the
land of monsters. They are welcomed by Hrothgar,
king of the Danes, and by his gentle queen, in a
house less fortunate than the house of Alcinous, for
it is exposed to the attacks of the lumpish ogre that
Beowulf has to kill, but recalling in its splendour, in
the manner of its entertainment, and the bearing of
its gracious lord and lady, the house where Odysseus
told his story. Beowulf, like Odysseus, is assailed
by an envious person with discourteous words.
Hunferth, the Danish courtier, is irritated by
Beowulf's presence ; " he could not endure that
any one should be counted worthier than himself";
he speaks enviously, a biting speech — OvfxoSaKrjs yap
fivOos — and is answered in the tone of Odysseus to
Euryalus.^ Beowulf has a story to tell of his former
perils among the creatures of the sea. It is differently
introduced from that of Odysseus, and has not the
same importance, but it increases the likeness between
the two adventurers.

In the shadowy halls of the Danish king a minstrel

* Od. viii. 165.

SECT. I THE HEROIC AGE II

sings of the famous deeds of men, and his song is
given as an interlude in the main action. It is a
poem on that same tragedy of Finnesburh, which is
the theme of a separate poem in the Old English
heroic cycle ; so Demodocus took his subjects from
the heroic cycle of Achaea. The leisure of the
Danish king's house is filled in the same manner as
the leisure of Phaeacia. In spite of the difference
of the climate, it is impossible to mistake the likeness
between the Greek and the Northern conceptions of
a dignified and reasonable way of life. The magnifi-
cence of the Homeric great man is like the magnifi-
cence of the Northern lord, in so far as both are
equally marked off from the pusillanimity and
cheapness of popular morality on the one hand,
and from the ostentation of Oriental or chivalrous
society on the other. The likeness here is not
purely in the historical details, but much more in the
spirit that informs the poetry. -

If this part of Beowulf is a Northern Odyssey^
there is nothing in the whole range of English
literature so like a scene from the Iliad as the
narrative of Maldon. It is a battle in which the
separate deeds of the fighters are described, with not
quite so much anatomy as in Homer. The fighting
about the body of Byrhtnoth is described as strongly,
as " the Fighting at the Wall " in the twelfth book
of the Iliad^ and essentially in the same way, with
the interchange of blows clearly noted, together with
the speeches and thoughts of the combatants. Even
the most heroic speech in Homer, even the power of
Sarpedon's address to Glaucus in the twelfth book
of the Iliad^ cannot discredit, by comparison, the
heroism and the sublimity of the speech of the " old
companion " at the end oi Maldon. The language is
simple, but it is not less adequate in its own way

12 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

than the simplicity of Sarpedon's argument. It
states, perhaps more clearly and absolutely than
anything in Greek, the Northern principle of resist-
ance to all odds, and defiance of ruin. In the North
the individual spirit asserts itself more absolutely
against the bodily enemies than in Greece; the
defiance is made wholly independent of any vestige
of prudent consideration; the contradiction, " Thought
the harder, Heart the keener. Mood the more, as our
Might lessens," is stated in the most extreme terms.
This does not destroy the resemblance between the
Greek and the Northern ideal, or between the
respective forms of representation.

The creed of Maldon is that of Achilles : ^
" Xanthus, what need is there to prophesy of death ?
Well do I know that it is my doom to perish here,
far from my father and mother; but for all that I
will not turn back, until I give the Trojans their
fill of war." The difference is that in the English
case the strain is greater, the irony deeper, the
antithesis between the spirit and the body more
paradoxical.
——^/Where the centre of Hfe is a great man's house,
and where the most brilliant society is that which is
gathered at his feast, where competitive boasting,
story-telling, and minstrelsy are the principal intel-
lectual amusements, it is inevitable that these should
find their way into a kind of literature which has no
foundation except experience and tradition. Where
fighting is more important than anything else in
active life, and at the same time is carried on without
organisation or skilled combinations,yit is inevitable
that it should be described as it is m the I/iad, the
Song of Maldon and Song of Roland^ and the
Icelandic Sagas, as a series of personal encounters, in

^ //. xix. 420.

SECT. I THE HEROIC AGE 13

,jffiiiich^-£Yery stroke is remembered. From this early
aristocratic form of society, there is derived in one
age the narrative of life at Ithaca or of the naviga-
tion of Odysseus, in another the representation of
the household of Njal or of Olaf the Peacock, and of
the rovings of Olaf Tryggvason and other captains.
There is an affinity between these histories in virtue
of something over and above the likeness in the
conditions of things they describe. There is a
community of literary sense as well as of historical
conditions, in the record of Achilles and Kjartan
Olafsson, of Odysseus and Njal.

The circumstances of an heroic age may be found
in numberless times and places, in the history of the
world. Among its accompaniments will be generally
found some sort of literary record of sentiments and
imaginations ; but to ^nd an heroic literature of the
highest order is not so easy. Many nations instead
of an Iliad or an Odyssey have had to make shift with
conventional repetitions of the praise of chieftains,
without any story; many have had to accept from
their story-tellers all sorts of monstrous adventures
in place of the humanities of debate and argument.
Epic literature is not common ; it is brought to
perfection by a slow process through many genera-
tions. The growth of Epic out of the older and
commoner forms of poetry, hymns, dirges, or
panegyrics, is a progress towards intellectual and
imaginative freedom. Few nations have attained, at
the close of their heroic age, to a form of poetical art
in which men are represented freely in action and
conversation. The labour and meditation of all the
world has not discovered, for the purposes of narrative,
any essential modification of the procedure of Homer.
Those who are considered reformers and discoverers
in later times — Chaucer, Cervantes, Fielding — are

14 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap. I

discoverers merely of the old devices of dramatic
narration which were understood by Homer and
described after him by Aristotle.

The growth of Epic, in the beginning of the history
of the modern nations, has been generally thwarted
and stunted. It cannot be said of many of the
languages of the North and West of Europe that in
them the epic form has come fully to its own, or has
realised its proper nature. Many of them, however,
have at least made a beginning, y^he history of the
older German literature, and of old French, is the
history of a great number of experiments in Epic ; of *
attempts, that is, to represent great actions in narra-
tive, with the personages well defined./ These
experiments are begun in the right way. They are
not merely barbarous nor fantastic. They are
different also from such traditional legends and
romances as may survive among simple people long
after the day of their old glories and their old kings.
The poems of Beowulf and Waldere^ of Roland and
William of Orange^ are intelligible and reasonable
works, determined in the main by the same essential
principles of narrative art, and of dramatic conversa-
tion within the narrative, as are observed in the
practice of Homer. Further, /these are poems in
which, as in the Homeric poems, the ideas of their
time are conveyed and expressed in a noble manner :
they are high-spirited poems. They have got them-
selves clear of the confusion and extravagance of /^ .
early civilisation, and have hit upon a way of telling^
a story clearly and in proportion, and with dignity.
They are epic in virtue of their superiority to the
more fantastic motives of interest, and in virtue of
their study of human character. They are heroic in
the nobility of their temper and their style. If at
any time they indulge in heroic commonplaces of

SECT. I THE HEROIC AGE 1$

sentiment, they do so without insincerity or affecta-
tion, as the expression of the general temper or
opinion of their own time./ They are not separated
widely from the matters of which they treat ; they
are not antiquarian revivals of past forms, nor tradi-
tional vestiges of things utterly remote and separate
from the actual world. What art they may possess
is different from the "rude sweetness" of popular
ballads, and from the unconscious grace of popular
tales. They have in different degrees and manners
the form of epic poetry, in their own right. There
are recognisable qualities that serve to distinguish
even a fragment of heroic poetry from the ballads
and romances of a lower order, however near these
latter forms may approach at times to the epic
dignity.

EPIC AND ROMANCE

It is the nature of epic poetry to be at ease in regard
to its subject matter, to be free from the strain and
excitement of weaker and more abstract forms of
poetry in dealing with heroic subjects. The heroic
ideal of epic is not attained by a process of abstrac-
tion and separation from the meannesses of familiar
things. The magnificence and aristocratic dignity of
epic is conformable to the practical and ethical
standards of the heroic age ; that is to say, it
tolerates a number of things that may be found mean
and trivial by academicians. Epic poetry is one of
the complex and comprehensive kinds of literature, in
which most of the other kinds may be included —
romance, history, comedy; tragical^ comical^ histori-
cal^ pastoral are terms not sufficiently various to
denote the variety of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The "common life" of the Homeric poems may
appeal to modern pedantic theorists, and be used by
them in support of Euripidean or Wordsworthian
receipts for literature. But the comprehensiveness
of the greater kinds of poetry, of Homer and Shake-
speare, is a different thing from the premeditated and
self-assertive realism of the authors who take viciously
to common life by way of protest against the romantic
i6

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 17

extreme. It has its origin, not in a critical theory
about the proper matter of literature, but in dramatic
imagination. 'In an epic poem where the characters
are vividly imagined, it follows naturally that their
various moods and problems involve a variety of
scenery and properties, and so the whole business of
life comes into the story^

The success of epic poetry depends on the author's
power of imagining and representing characters. A
kind of success and a kind of magnificence may be
attained in stories, professing to be epic, in which
there is no dramatic virtue, in which every new scene
and new adventure merely goes to accumulate, in
immortal verse, the proofs of the hero's nullity and
insignificance. This is not the epic poetry of the
heroic ages.

Aristotle, in his discussion of tragedy, chose to layi»
stress upon the plot, the story. On the other hand,
to complete the paradox, in the epjc he makes the
characters all - important, not the story. Without
the tragic plot or fable, the tragedy becomes a series
of moral essays or monologues ; the life of the drama
is derived from the original idea of the fable which is its
subject. AVithout dramatic representation of the char-
acters, epic is mere history or romance ; the variety
and life of epic are to be found in the drama that
springs up at every encounter of the personages.

" Homer is the only poet who knows the right
proportions of epic narrative ; when to narrate, and
when to let the characters speak for themselves.
Other poets for the most part tell their story straight
on, with scanty passages of drama and far between.
Homer, with little prelude, leaves the stage to his
personages, men and women, all with characters of
their own." ^

^ "Ofirjpos d^ dXXa re ttoXXo, &^los iiraiveXadai Kal 8t} Kal 6'ri

1 8 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

Aristotle wrote with very little consideration for
the people who were to come after him, and gives
little countenance to such theories of epic as have
at various times been prevalent among the critics,
in which the dignity of the subject is insisted on.
He does not imagine it the chief duty of an epic
poet to choose a lofty argument for historical
rhetoric. He does not say a word about the national
or the ecumenical importance of the themes of
the epic poet. His analysis of the plot of the
Odyssey^ but for the reference to Poseidon, might
have been the description of a modern realistic story.

"A man is abroad for many years, persecuted by
Poseidon and alone ; meantime the suitors of his wife
are wasting his estate and plotting against his son ;
after many perils by sea he returns to his own
country and discovers himself to his friends. He
falls on his enemies and destrpys them, and so comes
to his own again."

The Iliad has more likeness than the Odyssey to
the common pattern of later sophisticated epics. But
the war of Troy is not the subject of the Iliad in the
same way as the siege of Jerusalem is the subject of
Tasso's poem. The story of the Aeneid can hardly be
told in the simplest form without some reference to
the destiny of Rome, or the story of Paradise Lost
without the feud of heaven and hell. But in the
Iliad^ the assistance of the Olympians, or even the
presence of the whole of Greece, is not in the same
degree essential to the plot of the story of Achilles.
In the form of Aristotle's summary of the Odyssey^

fxdvos tQv TroLr]Tu)v ovK dyvoei 6 dei iroietv aiirdv. ainhv ykp del
rbv xoir]TT]v eXax'-O'Ta Xeyeiu ' oii yap iari Kara ravra /xifXTyr/js.
ol fih odv &X\oi avTol fih di' &Xov dyuvi^ovraL, /JufxauvraL 8e oXLya
iml dXiyoLKiS ' 6 8^ oXiya (ppoifiLaadfievos evOvs eladyei dvSpa ij
yvvaiKa ^ dXXo tl fjdo'i kol ovMv' d-ZjOr} dXX' ^^o'''''* "^^V' — ARIST.
Poet. 1460 a 5.

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 19

reduced to " the cool element of prose," the Iliad may
be proved to be something quite different from the
common fashion of literary epics. It might go in
something like this way : —

" A certain man taking part in a siege is slighted
by the general, and in his resentment withdraws
from the war, though his own side is in great need of
his help. His dearest friend having been killed by
the enemy, he comes back into the action and takes
vengeance for his friend, and allows himself to be
reconciled."

It is the debate among the characters, and not
the onset of Hera and Athena in the chariot of
Heaven, that gives its greatest power to the Iliad,
The Iliad^ with its "machines," its catalogue of the
forces, its funeral games, has contributed more than
the Odyssey to the common pattern of manufactured
epics. But the essence of the poem is not to be
found among the Olympians. Achilles refusing the
embassy or yielding to Priam has no need of the
Olympian background. The poem is in a great
degree independent of " machines " ; its life is in the
drama of the characters. The source of all its variety
is the imagination by which the characters are dis-
tinguished ; the liveliness and variety of the characters
bring with them all the other kinds of variety.

It is impossible for the author who knows his
personages intimately to keep to any one exclusive
mode of sentiment or one kind of scene. He cannot
be merely tragical and heroic, or merely comical and
pastoral; these are points of view to which those
authors are confined who are possessed by one kind
of sentiment or sensibility, and who wish to find
expression for their own prevailing mood. The
author who is interested primarily in his characters
will not allow them to be obliterated by the story or

20 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

by its diffused impersonal sentiment. The action of
an heroic poem must be " of a certain magnitude,"
but the accessories need not be all heroic and
magnificent ; the heroes do not derive their magnifi-
cence from the scenery, the properties, and the
author's rhetoric, but contrariwise : the dramatic
force and self-consistency of the dramatis personae
give poetic value to any accessories of scenery or
sentiment which may be required by the action,
ijhey are not figures " animating " a landscape ; what
^\. the landscape means for the poet's audience is

. ^j^'"^ determined by the character of his personages^
' All the variety of epic is explained by Aristotle's

remark on Homer. Where the characters are true,
and dramatically represented, there can be no
monotony.

In the different kinds of Northern epic literature —
German, English, French, and Norse — belonging to
the Northern heroic ages, there will be found in
different degrees this epic quality of drama. What-
ever magnificence they may possess comes mainly
from the dramatic strength of the heroes, and in a
much less degree from the historic dignity or import-
ance of the issues of the story, or from its mytho-
logical decorations.

^he place of history in the heroic poems belonging
to an heroic age is sometimes misconceived. Early
epic poetry may be concerned with great historic
events. It does not necessarily emphasise — by
^* preference it does not emphasise — the historic
importance or the historic results of the events with
which it deals. Heroic poetry implies an heroic age,
an age of pride and courage, in which there is not
any extreme organisation of politics to hinder the
individual talent and its achievements, nor on the
other hand too much isolation of the hero through

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 21

the absence of any national or popular consciousness.
There must be some unity of sentiment, some
common standard of appreciation, among the people
to whom the heroes belong, if they are to escape
oblivion. But this common sentiment must not be
such as to make the idea of the community and its
life predominant over the individual genius of its
members./ In such a case there may be a Roman
history, but not anything approaching the nature of
the Homeric poems.

In some epic poems belonging to an heroic age,
and not to a time of self-conscious and reflective
literature, there may be found general conceptions
that seem to resemble those of the Aeneid rather
than those of the Iliad. In many of the old French
Cha?isons de Geste^ the war against the infidels is
made the general subject of the story, and the general
idea of the Holy War is expressed as fully as by
Tasso. Here, however, the circumstances are excep-
tional. The French epic with all its Homeric
analogies is not as sincere as Homer. It is exposed
to the touch of influences from another world, and
though many of the French poems, or great part of
many of them, may tell of heroes who would be
content with the simple and positive rules of the
heroic life, this is not allowed them. They are
brought within the sphere of other ideas, of another
civiHsation, and lose their independence.

Most of the old German heroic poetry is clearly to
be traced, as far as its subjects are concerned, to the
most exciting periods in early German history,
between the fourth and the sixth centuries. The
names that seem to have been most commonly known
to the poets are the names that are most important
to the historian — Ermanaric, Attila, Theodoric. In
the wars of the great migration the spirit of each of

22 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

the German families was quickened, and at the same
time the spirit of the whole of Germany, so that each
part sympathised with all the rest, and the fame of
the heroes went abroad beyond the limits of their
own kindred. Ermanaric, Attila, and Theodoric,
Sigfred the Frank, and Gundahari the Burgundian,
are heroes over all the region occupied by all forms
of Teutonic language. But although the most im-
portant period of early German history may be said
to have produced the old German heroic poetry, by
giving a number of heroes to the poets, at the same
time that the imagination was stirred to appreciate
great things and make the most of them, still the
result is nothing like the patriotic epic in twelve
books, the Aeneid or the Lusiad^ which chooses, of
set purpose, the theme of the national glory. Nor is
it like those old French epics in which there often
appears a contradiction between the story of individual
heroes, pursuing their own fortunes, and the idea of
a common cause to which their own fortunes ought
to be, but are not always, subordinate. The great
historical names which appear in the old German
heroic poetry are seldom found there in anything
like their historical character, and not once in their
chief historical aspect as adversaries of the Roman
Empire. Ermanaric, Attila, and Theodoric are all
brought into the same Niblung story, a story widely
known in different forms, though it was never
adequately written out. The true history of the
war between the Burgundians and the Huns in the
fifth century is forgotten. In place of it, there is
associated with the life and death of Gundahari the
Burgundian king a story which may have been
vastly older, and may have passed through many
different forms before it became the story of the
Niblung treasure, of Sigfred and Brynhild. This,

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 23

which has made free with so many great historical
names, the name of Attila, the name of Theodoric,
has Httle to do with history. In this heroic story
coming out of the heroic age, there is not much that
can be traced to historical as distinct from mythical
tradition. The tragedy of the death of Attila, as told
in the AtlakviQa and the Atlamdl, may indeed owe
something to the facts recorded by historians, and
something more to vaguer historical tradition of the
vengeance of Rosamund on Alboin the Lombard.
But, in the main, the story of the Niblungs is
independent of history, in respect of its matter; in
its meaning and effect as a poetical story it is
absolutely free from history. It is a drama of
personal encounters and rivalries. This also, like the
story of Achilles, is fit for a stage in which the char-
acters are left free to declare themselves in their own
way, unhampered by any burden of history, any purpose
or moral apart from the events that are played out
in the dramatic clashing of one will against another.

It is not vanity in an historian to look for the
historical origin of the tale of Troy or of the
vengeance of Gudrun ; but no result in either case
can greatly affect the intrinsic relations of the various
elements within the poems. The relations of Achilles
to his surroundings in the Ilmd^ of Attila and Erman-
aric to theirs, are freely conceived by the several poets,
and are intelligible at once, without reference to any-
thing outside the poems. To require of the poetry
of an heroic age that it shall recognise the historical
meaning and importance of the events in which it
originates, and the persons whose names it uses, is
entirely to mistake the nature of it. Its nature is to
find or make some drama played by kings and heroes,
and to let the historical framework take care of itself.
The connexion of epic poetry with history is real,

24 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

and it is a fitting subject for historical inquiry, but
it lies behind the scene. The epic poem is cut loose
and set free from history, and goes on a way of its
own.

Epic magnificence and the dignity of heroic
poetry may thus be only indirectly derived from such
greatness or magnificence as is known to true prosaic
history. The heroes, even if they can be identified/
as historical, may retain in epic nothing of their/
historical character, except such qualities as fit them)
for great actions. Their conduct in epic poetry may be
very far unlike their actual demeanour in true history ;
their greatest works may be thrust into a corner of
the epic, or barely alluded to, or left out altogether.
Their greatness in epic may be quite a different kind'
of greatness from that of their true history ; an3
where there are many poems belonging to the same
cycle there may be the greatest discrepancy among
the views taken of the same hero by different authors,
and all the views may be alike remote from the prosaic
or scientific view. There is no constant or self-
consistent opinion about the character of Charles the
Emperor in old French poetry : there is one view in
the Chanson de Rolafidj another in the Pelerinage^
another in the Coronemenz Loots : none of the
opinions is anything like an elaborate or detailed
historical judgment. Attila, though he loses his
political importance and most of his historical acqui-
sitions in the Teutonic heroic poems in which he
appears, may retain in some of them his ruthlessness
and strength ; at other times he may be a wise and
peaceful king. All that is constant, or common, in
the different poetical reports of him, is that he was
great. What touches the mind of the poet out of
the depths of the past is nothing but the tradition,
undefined, of something lordly. This vagueness of

SBCT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 25

tradition does not imply that tradition is impotent or
barren ; only that it leaves all the execution, the
growth of detail, to the freedom of the poet. He is
bound to the past, in one way ; it is laid upon him to
tell the stories of the great men of his own race. But
in those stories, as they come to him, what is most
lively is not a set and established series of incidents,
true or false, but something to which the standards of
truth and falsehood are scarcely applicable ; something
stirring him up to admiration, a compulsion or in-
fluence upon him requirii}g him to make the story
again in his own way ; jSot to interpret history, but
to make a drama of his own, filled somehow with
passion and strength of mind. It does not matter in
what particular form it may be represented, so long
as in some form or other the power of the national
glory is allowed to pass into his workv'

This vagueness and generality in' the relation of
heroic poetry to the historical events and persons of
an heroic age is of course quite a different thing from
vagueness in the poetry itself. Gunther and Attila,
Roland and Charlemagne, in poetry, are very vaguely
connected with their antitypes in history; but that
does not prevent them from being characterised
minutely, if it should agree with the poet's taste or
lie within his powers to have it so. The strange
thing is that this vague relation should be so
necessary to heroic poetry; that it should be im-
possible at any stage of literature or in any way by
taking thought to make up for the want of it.

The place of Gunther the Burgundian, Sigfred
the Frank, and Attila the Hun, in the poetical
stories of the Niblung treasure may be in one sense
accidental. The fables of the treasure with a curse
upon it, the killing of the dragon, the sleeping
princess, the wavering flame, are not limited to this

26 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

particular course of tradition, and, further, the tradi-
tional motives of the Niblung story have varied
enormously not only in different countries, but in
one and the same language at the same time. The
story is never told alike by two narrators; what is
common and essential in it is nothing palpable or
fixed, but goes from poet to poet " like a shadow
from dream to dream." And the historical names
are apparently unessential ; yet they remain. To look
for the details of the Niblung story in the sober
history of the Goths and Huns, Burgundians and
Franks, is like the vanity confessed by the author of
the Roman de Ron, when he went on a sentimental
journey to Broceliande, and was disappointed to
find there only the common daylight and nothing
of the Faerie. Nevertheless it is the historical
names, and the vague associations about them,
that give to the Niblung story, not indeed the
whole of its plot, but its temper, its pride and glory,
its heroic and epic character.

Heroic poetry is not, as a rule, greatly indebted
to historical fact for its material. The epic poet
does not keep record of the great victories or the
great disasters. He cannot, however, live without
the ideas and sentiments of heroism that spring up
naturally in periods like those of the Teutonic
migrations. In this sense the historic Gunther and
Attila are necessary to the Niblung story. The wars
and fightings of generation on generation went to
create the heroism, the loftiness of spirit, expressed in
the Teutonic epic verse. The plots of the stories may
be commonplace, the common property of all popular
tales. The temper is such as is not found every-
^ere, but only in historical periods of great energy,
/The names of Ermanaric and Attila correspond to
hardly anything of literal history in the heroic

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 27

poems; but they are the sign of conquests and *^
great exploits that have gone to form character,
though their details are forgotten.^

It may be difficult to appreciate and understand
in detail this vague relation of epic poetry to the
national life and to the renown of the national
heroes, but the general fact is not less positive or
less capable of verification than the date of the
battle of Chilons, or the series of the Gothic vowels.
All that is needed to prove this is to compare the
poetry of a national cycle with the poetry that comes
in its place when the national cycle is deserted for
other heroes.

The secondary or adopted themes may be treated
with so much of the manner of the original poetry
as to keep little of their foreign character. The
rhetoric, the poetical habit, of the original epic may
be retained. As in the Saxon poem on the Gospel
history, the Heliand^ the twelve disciples may be re-
presented as Thanes owing loyalty to their Prince,
in common poetic terms befitting the men of Beowulf
or Byrhtnoth. As in the French poems on Alexander
the Great, Alexander may become a feudal king, and
take over completely all that belongs to such a rank.
There may be no consciousness of any need for a
new vocabulary or a new mode of expression to fit
the foreign themes. In France, it is true, there is a
general distinction of form between the Chansons de
Geste and the romances; though to this there are
exceptions, themes not French, and themes not
purely heroic, being represented in the epic form.
In the early Teutonic poetry there is no distinction
of versification, vocabulary, or rhetoric between the
original and the secondary narrative poems ; the
alliterative verse belongs to both kinds equally. Nor
is it always the case that subjects derived from books

28 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

or from abroad are handled with less firmness than
the original and traditional plots. Though sometimes
a prevailing affection for imported stories, for Celtic
or Oriental legend, may be accompanied by a relaxa-
tion in the style, the superiority of national to foreign
subjects is not always proved by greater strength or
eloquence. Can it be said that the Anglo-Saxon
Judith^ for instance, is less heroic, less strong and
sound, than the somewhat damaged and motley
accoutrements of Beowulf?

The difference is this, tha^4he more original and
native kind of epic has immediate association with all
that the people know about themselves, with all their
customs, all that part of their experience which no
one can account for or refer to any particular source^
A poem like Beowulf can play directly on a thousand
chords of association ; the range of its appeal to the
minds of an audience is almost unlimited; on no
side is the poet debarred from freedom of movement,
if only he remember first of all what is due to the hero.
He has all the life of his people to strengthen him.

A poem like the Heliand is under an obligation
to a literary original, and cannot escape from this
restriction. It makes what use it can of the native
associations, but with whatever perseverance the
author may try to bend his story into harmony with
the laws of his own country, there is an untranslated
residue of foreign ideas.

Whatever the defects or excesses of Beowulf msiy
be, the characters are not distressed by any such
unsolved contradiction as in the Saxon Heliand, or in
the old English Exodus, or Andreas, or the other
poems taken from the Bible or the lives of saints.
They have not, like the personages of the second
order of poems, been translated from one realm of
ideas to another, and made to take up burdens and

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 29

offices not their own. They have grown naturally in
the mind of a poet, out of the poet's knowledge of
human nature, and the traditional ethical judgments
of which he is possessed.

The comparative freedom of Beowulf in its relation
to historical tradition and traditional ethics, and the
comparative limitation of the HUiand^ are not in
themselves conditions of either advantage or inferi-
ority. They simply mark^he difference between two
types of narrative poem, r To be free and comprehen-
sive in relation to history, to summarise and represent
in epic characters the traditional experience of an
heroic age, is not the proper virtue of every kind of
poetry, /though it is proper to the Homeric kind.
The freedom that belongs to the Iliad and the
Odyssey is also shared by many a dismal and inter-
minable poem of the Middle Ages. That foreign or
literary subjects impose certain limitations, and
interfere with the direct use of matter of experience in
poetry, is nothing against them. The Anglo-Saxon
Judith^ which is thus restricted as compared with
Beowtdf may be more like Milton for these restric-
tions, if it be less like Homer. Exemption from them
is not a privilege, except that it gives room for the
attainment of a certain kind of excellence, the
Homeric kind ; as, on the other hand, it excludes the
possibility of the literary art of Virgil or Milton.

The relation of epic poetry to its heroic age is not
to be found in the observance of any strict historical
duty. It lies rather in the/fepic capacity for bringing
together all manner of lively passages from the general
experience of the age, in a story about famous heroic
characters^ The plot of the story gives unity and
harmony to the composition, while the variety of its
matter is permitted and justified by the dramatic
variety of the characters and their interests.

30 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

By its comprehensiveness and the variety of its
substance, which are the signs and products of its
dramatic imagination, epic poetry of the heroic age
is distinguished from the more abstract kinds of
narrative, such as the artificial epic, and from all
kinds of imagination or fancy that are limited in their
scope.

In times when " the Epic Poem " was a more
attractive, if not more perilous theme of debate than
it now is, there was a strong controversy about the
proper place and the proper kind of miraculous
details to be admitted. The question was debated
by Tasso in his critical writings, against the strict and
pedantic imitators of classical models, and with a
strong partiality for Ariosto against Trissino. Tasso
made less of a distinction between romance and epic
than was agreeable to some of his successors in
criticism ; and the controversy went on for genera-
tions, always more or less concerned with the great
Italian heroic poems, Orlando and Jerusalem. Some
record of it will be found in Dr. Kurd's Letters ofi
Chivalry and Romance (1762). If the controversy
has any interest now, it must be because it provided
the most extreme statements of abstract literary
principles, which on account of their thoroughness
are interesting. From the documents it can be ascer-
tained how near some of the critics came to that
worship of the Faultless Hero with which Dryden in
his heroic plays occasionally conformed, while he
guarded himself against misinterpretation in his
prefaces.

The epic poetry of the more austere critics was
devised according to the strictest principles of dignity
and sublimity, with a precise exclusion of everything
"Gothic" and romantic. Davenant's Preface to
Gondibe?-t — "the Author's Preface to his much

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 31

Honour'd friend, Mr Hobs " — may show how the
canon of epic was understood by poets who took
things seriously ; *' for I will yield to their opinion,'
who permit not Ariosto^ no, not Du Barias^ in this
eminent rank of the Heroicks ; rather than to make
way by their admission for Dante, Marino^ and
others."

It is somewhat difficult to find a common measure
for these names, but it is clear that what is most
distasteful to the writer, in theory at any rate, is
variety. Epic is the most solemn, stately, and frigid
of all kinds of composition. , ^ This was the result
attained by the perverse following of precepts
supposed to be classical. The critics of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries were generally right
in distinguishing between Epic and Romance, and
generally wrong in separating the one kind from the
other as opposite and mutually exclusive forms,
instead of seeing with Tasso, in his critical discourses,
that -romance may be included in epic. Against the
manifold perils of the Gothic fantasy they set up the
image of the Abstract Hero, and recited the formulas
of the decorous and symmetrical abstract heroic
poem. yThey were occasionally troubled by the
" Gothic " elements in Homer, of which their adver-
saries were not slow to take advantage.

One of the most orthodox of all the formalists,
who for some reason came to be very much quoted
in England, Bossu, in his discourse on the Epic
Poem, had serious difficulties with the adventures of
Ulysses, and his stories told in Phaeacia. The
episodes of Circe, of the Sirens, and of Polyphemus,
are machines ; they are also not quite easy to under-
stand. " They are necessary to the action, and yet
they are not humanly probable." But see how Homer
gets over the difficulty and brings back these machines

32 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

to the region of human probabiHty. " Hombre les fait
adroitement rentrer dans la Vraisemblance humaine
»par la simplicity de ceux devant qui il fait faire ses
rdcits fabuleux. II dit assez plaisamment que les
Phdaques habitoient dans une Isle eloignee des lieux
oil demeurent les hommes qui ont de I'esprit. ela-ev
5* ev '2y€piTi €Kas dvSpiov aA^^o-rawi/. Ulysses les
avoit connus avant que de se faire connoitre k eux :
et aiant observe qu'ils avoient toutes les qualit^s de
ces faindans qui n'admirent rien avec plus de plaisir
que les aventures Romanesques: il les satisfait par
ces r^cits accommodez k leur humeur. Mais le
Poete n'y a pas oublid les Lecteurs raisonnables. II
leur a donne en ces Fables tout le plaisir que Ton peut
tirer des v^ritez Morales, si agr^ablement ddguis^es
sous ces miraculeuses allegories. C'est ainsi qu'il a
rdduit ces Machines dans la v^rit^ et dans la Vraisem-
blance Poetique." ^

Although the world has fallen away from the severity
of this critic, there is still a meaning at the bottom of
his theory of machines. He has at any rate called
attention to one of the most interesting parts of Epic,
and has found the right word for the episodes of the
Phaeacian story of Odysseus. Romance is the word
for them, and Romance is at the same time one of
the constituent parts and one of the enemies of epic
poetry. , That it was dangerous was seen by the
academical critics. They provided against it, gener-
ally, by treating it with contempt and proscribing it,
as was done by those French critics who were offended
by Ariosto and perplexed by much of the Gothic
machinery of Tasso. They did not readily admit
that epic poetry is as complex as the plays of
Shakespeare, and as incongruous as these in its

1 Traitd du Po'eme £pique, par le R. P. Le Bossu, Chanoine
R^gulier de Sainte Genevieve ; MDCLXXV (t. ii. p. i66).

SECT. II EPIC AND ROMANCE 33

composition, if the different constituents be taken
out separately in the laboratory and then compared.

fe.omance by itself is a kind of literature that does
not allow the full exercise of dramatic imagination ;
a limited and abstract form, as compared with the
fulness and variety of Epic ; though episodes of
romance, and romantic moods and digressions, may
have their place, along with all other human things,
in the epic scheme. ,

The difference between the greater and the lesser
kinds of narrative literature is vital and essential,
whatever names may be assigned to them. In the
one kind, of which Aristotle knew no other examples
than the Iliad and the Odyssey^ \)[i^ personages are
made individual through their dramatic conduct and
their speeches in varying circumstances ; in the other
kind, in place of the moods and sentiments of a
multitude of different people entering into the story
and working it out, there is the sentiment of the
author in his own person; there is one voice, the
voice of the story-teller, and his theory of the
characters is made to do duty for the characters
themselves. There may be every poetic grace,
except that of dramatic variety; and wherever, in
narrative, the independence of the characters is
merged in the sequence of adventures, or in the
beauty of the landscape, or in the effusion of poetic
sentiment, the narrative falls below the highest order,
though the art be the art of Ovid or of Spenser.^

The romance of Odysseus is indeed " brought into
conformity with poetic verisimilitude," but in a
different way from that of Bossu On the Epic Poem.
It is not because the Phaeacians are romantic in their
tastes, but because it belongs to Odysseus, that the
Phaeacian night's entertainment has its place in the
Odyssey, The Odyssey is the story of his home-

34 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

coming, his recovery of his own. The great action
of the drama of Odysseus is in his deaHngs with
Penelope, Eumaeus, Telemachus, the suitors. The
Phaeacian story is indeed episodic; the interest of
those adventures is different from that of the meeting
with Penelope. Nevertheless it is all kept in
harmony with the stronger part of the poem. It is
not pure fantasy and "Faerie," like the voyage of
Maelduin or the vigil in the castle of Busirane.
Odysseus in the house of Alcinous is not different
from Odysseus of the return to Ithaca. The story
is not pure romance, it is a dramatic monologue;
and the character of the speaker has more part than
the wonders of the story in the silence that falls on
the listeners when the story comes to an end.

In all early literature it is hard to keep the story
within limits, to observe the proportion of the Odyssey
between strong drama and romance. The history
of the early heroic literature of the Teutonic tongues,
and of the epics of old France, comes to an end in
the victory of various romantic schools, and of
various restricted and one-sided forms of narrative.
From within and without, from the resources of
native mythology and superstition and from the
fascination of Welsh and Arabian stories, there came
the temptation to forget the study of character, and
to part with an inheritance of tragic fables, for the
sake of vanities, wonders, and splendours among
which character and the tragic motives lost their
pre-eminent interest and their old authority over
poets and audience.

Ill

ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY

Between the dramatic qualities of epic poetry and
the myths and fancies of popular tradition there
must inevitably be a conflict and a discrepancy.
The greatest scenes of the Iliad and the Odyssey
have little to do with myth. Where the characters
are most vividly realised there is no room for the
lighter kinds of fable ; the epic " machines " are
superfluous. Where all the character of Achilles
is displayed in the interview with Priam, all his
generosity, all his passion and unreason, the imagina-
tion refuses to be led away by anything else from
looking on and listening. The presence of Hermes,
Priam's guide, is forgotten. Olympus cannot stand
against the spell of words like those of Priam and
Achilles ; it vanishes like a parched scroll. In the
great scene in the other poem where the disguised
Odysseus talks with Penelope, but will not make
himself known to her for fear of spoiling his plot,
there is just as little opportunity for any intervention of
the Olympians. *' Odysseus pitied his wife as she wept,
but his eyes were firm as horn or steel, unwavering
in his eyelids, and with art he concealed his tears. ^ "

dvfju^ fiev yoSuaav eijv iXiatpe yvvaiKa,
6(p6a\fioi 5' ws el K^pa ^(Tracrav ije (xldijpos
drp^/itts €u jS\e0dpot(ri ' 56\(p 5' 6 ye BaKpva Kevdev.

Od. xix. 209.

36 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

In passages like these the epic poet gets clear away
from the cumbrous inheritance of traditional fancies
and stories. In other places he is inevitably less strong
and self-sustained ; he has to speak of the gods of the
nation, or to work into his large composition some
popular and improbable histories. The result in Homer
is something like the result in Shakespeare, when he
has a more than usually childish or old-fashioned fable
to work upon. A story like that of the Three Caskets
or the Pound of Flesh is perfectly consistent with itself
in its original popular form. It is inconsistent with the
form of elaborate drama, and with the lives of people
who have souls of their own, like Portia or Shylock.
Hence in the drama which uses the popular story
as its ground-plan, the story is never entirely reduced
into conformity with the spirit of the chief characters.
The caskets and the pound of flesh, in despite of
all the author's pains with them, are imperfectly
harmonised ; the primitive and barbarous imagination
in them retains an inconvenient power of asserting
its discordance with the principal parts of the drama.
Their unreason is of no great consequence, yet it
is something ; it is not quite kept out of sight.

The epic poet, at an earlier stage of literature
than Shakespeare, is even more exposed to this
difficulty. Shakespeare was free to take his plots
where he chose, and took these old wives' tales at
his own risk. The epic poet has matter of this sort
forced upon him. In his treatment of it, it will be
found that ingenuity does not fail him, and that the
transition from the unreasonable or old-fashioned part
of his work to the modern and dramatic part is
cunningly worked out. " He gets over the unreason
by the grace and skill of his handling," ^ says Aristotle

^ vw 5k Tois dWoLS iyadoh atftavii^ei i]S6vo}v t6 Atotov.

Aristot. FoeL 1460 b.

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 37

of a critical point in the " machinery " of the Odyssey,
where Odysseus is carried ashore on Ithaca in his
sleep. There is a continual play in the Iliad and
Odyssey between the wonders of mythology and the
spirit of the drama. In this, as in other things, the
Homeric poems observe the mean : the extremes may
be found in the heroic literature of other nations ; the
extreme of marvellous fable in the old Irish heroic
legends, for example ; the extreme of plainness and
" soothfastness " in the old English lay of Maldon.
In some medieval compositions, as in Huon of
Bordeaux^ the two extremes are brought together
clumsily and without harmony. In other medieval
works again it is possible to find something like the
Homeric proportion — the drama of strong characters,
taking up and transforming the fanciful products of
an earlier world, the inventions of minds not deeply
or especially interested in character.

The defining and shaping of myths in epic poetry-
is a process that cannot go on in a wholly simple and
unreflecting society. On the contrary, this process
means that the earlier stages of religious legend have
been succeeded by a time of criticism and selection.
It is hard on the old stories of the gods when men
come to appreciate the characters of Achilles and
Odysseus. The old stories are not all of equal value
and authority; they cannot all be made to fit in
with the human story ; they have to be tested, and
some have to be rejected as inconvenient. The
character of the gods is modified under the influence
of the chief actors in the drama. Agamemnon,
Diomede, Odysseus, Ajax, and Achilles set the
standard by which the gods are judged. The Homeric
view of the gods is already more than half-way to
the view of a modern poet. The gods lose their old
tyranny and their right to the steam of sacrifice as

38 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

they gain their new poetical empire, from which they
need not fear to be banished ; not, at any rate, for
any theological reasons.

In Shakespearean drama, where each man is him-
self, with his own character and his own fortune to
make, there is small scope for any obvious Divine
interposition in the scene. The story of human
actions and characters, the more fully it is developed,
leaves the less opportunity for the gods to interfere in
it. Something of this sort was felt by certain medieval
historians ; they found it necessary to begin with an
apologetic preface explaining the long-suffering of God,
who has given freedom to the will of man to do
good or evil. It was felt to be on the verge of
impiety to think of men as left to themselves and
doing what they pleased. Those who listen to a story
might be tempted to think of the people in it as self-
sufficient and independent powers, trespassing on the
domain of Providence. A pious exculpation was
required to clear the author of blame.^

In the Iliad this scrupulous conscience has less
need to deliver itself. The gods are not far away ;

1 "In the events of this history may be proved the great
long-suffering of God Almighty towards us every day ; and the
freedom of will which He has given to every man, that each may do
what he will, good or evil." — Hrafns Saga, Prologue {Sturlunga
5a^fl Oxford, 1878, II. p. 275).

' 'As all good things are the work of God, so valour is made by
Him and placed in the heart of stout champions, and freedom
therewithal to use it as they will, for good or evil." — Fdstbrcafira
Saga (1852), p. 12 : one of the sophistical additions to the story :
see below p. 275.

The moral is different in the foUovdng passage : —

"And inasmuch as the Providence of God hath ordained, and it
is His pleasure, that the seven planets should have influence on the
world, and bear dominion over man's nature, giving him divers
inclinations to sin and naughtiness of life : nevertheless the Universal
Creator has not taken from him the free will, which, as it is well
governed, may subdue and abolish these temptations by virtuous
living, if men will use discretion." — Tirant lo Blanch (1460), c. i.

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 39

the heroes are not left alone. But the poet has
already done much to reduce the immediate power of
the gods, not by excluding them from the action,
certainly, nor by any attenuation of their characters
into allegory, but by magnifying and developing the
characters of men. In many occasional references it
would seem that an approach was being made to that
condition of mind, at ease concerning the gods, so
common in the North, in Norway and Iceland, in the
last days of heathendom. There is the great speech
of Hector to Polydamas — " we defy augury " ^ — there
is the speech of Apollo himself to Aeneas ^ about
those who stand up for their own side, putting trust
in their own strength. But passages like these do
not touch closely on the relations of gods and
men as they are depicted in the story. As so
depicted, the gods are not shadowy or feeble ab-
stractions and personifications ; yet they are not of the
first value to the poem, they do not set the tone
of it.

They are subsidiary, like some other of the most
beautiful things in the poem ; like the similes of clouds
and winds, like the pictures on the Shield. They are
there because the whole world is included in epic
poetry; the heroes, strong in themselves as they
could be if they were left alone in the common day,
acquire an additional strength and beauty from their
fellowship with the gods. Achilles talking with the
Embassy is great ; he is great in another way when he
stands at the trench with the flame of Athena on his
head. These two scenes belong to two different
kinds of imagination. It is because the first is there
that the second takes effect. It is the hero that gives
meaning and glory to the light of the goddess. It is
of some importance that it is Achilles, and not

^ //. xii. 241. ^ //. xvii. 327.

40 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

another, that here is crowned with the light of heaven
and made terrible to his enemies.

There is a double way of escape for young nations
from their outgrown fables and mythologies. They
start with enormous, monstrous, and inhuman beliefs
and stories. Either they may work their way out of
them, by gradual rejection of the grosser ingredients, to
something more or less positive and rational ; or else
they may take up the myths and transmute them
into poetry.

The two processes are not independent of one
another. Both are found together in the greater
artists of early times, in Homer most notably ; and
also in artists less than Homer; in the poem of
Beowulf^ in the stories of Sigfred and Brynhild.

There are further, under the second mode, two
chief ways of operation by which the fables of the
gods may be brought into poetry.

It is possible to take them in a light-hearted way
and weave them into poetical stories, without much
substance or solemnity ; enchancing the beauty that
may be inherent in any part of the national legend,
and either rejecting the scandalous chronicle of
Olympus or Asgard altogether, or giving it over to
the comic graces of levity and irony, as in the
Phaeacian story of Ares and Aphrodite, wherein the
Phaeacian poet digressed from his tales of war in the
spirit of Ariosto, and with an equally accomplished
and elusive defiance of censure.^

There is another way in which poetry may find
room for fable.

It may treat the myths of the gods as material for

^ The censure is not wanting : —

" L'on doit consid^rer que ce n'est ni le Poete, ni son H^ros,
ni un honn^te homme qui fait ce rdcit : mais que les Ph^aques,
peuples mols et effeminez, se le font chanter pendant lour festin. '
— Bossu, op. cit. p. 152.

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 41

the religious or the ethical imagination, and out of
them create ideal characters, analogous in poetry to
the ideal divine or heroic figures of painting and
sculpture. This is the kind of imagination in virtue
of which modern poets are best able to appropriate
the classical mythology ; but this modern imagina-
tion is already familiar to Homer, and that not only
in direct description, as in the description of the
majesty of Zeus, but also, more subtly, in passages
where the character of the divinity is suggested by
comparison with one of the human personages, as
when Nausicaa is compared to Artemis,^ a comparison
that redounds not less to the honour of the goddess
than of Nausicaa.

In Icelandic literature there are many instances of
the trouble arising from inconsiderate stories of the
gods, in the minds of people who had got beyond the
more barbarous kind of mythology. They took the
boldest and most conclusive way out of the difficulty ;
they made the barbarous stories into comedy. The
Lokasenna, a poem whose author has been called the
Aristophanes of the Western Islands, is a dramatic
piece in which Loki, the Northern Satan, appearing
in the house of the gods, is allowed to bring his
railing accusations against them and remind them of
their doings in the "old days." One of his victims
tells him to " let bygones be bygones." The gods are
the subject of many stories that are here raked up
against them, stories of another order of belief and of
civilisation than those in which Odin appears as the
wise and sleepless counsellor. This poem implies a
great amount of independence in the author of it. It
is not a satire on the gods \ it is pure comedy ; that
is, it belongs to a type of literature which has risen
above prejudices and which has an air of levity

^ Od, vi. 151.

42 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

because it is pure sport — or pure art — and therefore
is freed from bondage to the matter which it handles.
This kind of invention is one that tests the wit of its
audience. A serious-minded heathen of an older
school would no doubt have been shocked by the
levity of the author's manner. Not much otherwise
would the poem have affected a serious adversary of
heathendom, or any one whose education had been
entirely outside of the circle of heathen or mytho-
logical tradition. An Englishman of the tenth
century, familiar with the heroic poetry of his own
tongue, would have thought it indecent. If chance
had brought such an one to hear this Lokasenna
recited at some entertainment in a great house of the
Western Islands, he might very well have conceived
the same opinion of his company and their tastes in
literature as is ascribed by Bossu to Ulysses among
the Phaeacians.

This genius for comedy is shown in other Icelandic
poems. As soon as the monstrosities of the old
traditions were felt to be monstrous, they were over-
come (as Mr. Carlyle has shown) by an appreciation
of the fun of them, and so they ceased to be burden-
some. It is something of this sort that has preserved
old myths, for amusement, in popular tales all over the
world. The Icelandic poets went further, however,
than most people in their elaborate artistic treatment
of their myths. There is with them more art and
more self-consciousness, and they give a satisfactory
and final poetical shape to these things, extracting
pure comedy from them.

The perfection of this ironical method is to be
found in the Edda, a handbook of the Art of Poetry,
written in the thirteenth century by a man of liberal
genius, for whom the ^sir were friends of the imagina-
tion, without any prejudice to the claims of the Church

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 43

or of his religion. In the view of Snorri Sturluson, the
old gods are exempt from any touch of controversy.
Belief has nothing to do with them ; they are free.
It may be remembered that some of the greatest
English writers of the seventeenth century have come
short of this security of view, and have not scrupled to
repeat the calumny of the missionaries and the disput-
ants against the ancient gods, that Jupiter and Apollo
were angels of the bottomless pit, given over to their
own devices for a season, and masking as Olympians.

In this freedom from embarrassing and irrelevant
considerations in dealing with myth, the author of
the Edda follows in his prose the spirit of mytho-
logical poems three centuries older, in which, even
before the change of faith in the North, the gods
were welcomed without fear as sharing in many
humorous adventures.

And at the same time, along with this detached
and ironical way of thinking there is to be found in
the Northern poetry the other, more reverent mode
of shaping the inherited fancies; the mode of
Pindar, rejecting the vain things fabled about the
gods, and holding fast to the more honourable things.
The humours of Thor in the fishing for the serpent
and the winning of the hammer may be fairly
likened to the humours of Hermes in the Greek
hymn. The Lokasenna has some likeness to the
Homeric description of the brawls in heaven. But
in the poems that refer to the death of Balder and
the sorrow of the gods there is another tone ; and
the greatest of them all, the Sibyl's Prophecy, is
comparable, not indeed in volume of sound, but in
loftiness of imagination, to the poems in which
Pindar has taken up the myths of most inexhaustible
value and significance — the Happy Islands, the
Birth of Athena.

44 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

The poet who lives in anything like an heroic or
Homeric age has it in his power to mingle the
elements of mythology and of human story — Phaeacia
and Ithaca — in any proportion he pleases. As a
matter of fact, all varieties of proportion are to be
found in medieval documents. At the one extreme
is the mythological romance and fantasy of Celtic
epic, and at the other extreme the plain narrative of
human encounters, in the old English battle poetry
or the Icelandic family histories. As far as one can
judge from the extant poems, the old English and
old German poetry did not make such brilliant
romance out of mythological legend as was produced
by the Northern poets. These alone, and not the
poets of England or Saxony, seem to have appropriated
for literature, in an Homeric way, the histories of
the gods. Myth is not wanting in old English or
German poetry, but it does not show itself in the
same clear and delightful manner as in the Northern
poems of Thor, or in the wooing of Frey.

Thus in different places there are different modes
in which an inheritance of mythical ideas may be
appreciated and used. It may become a treasury
for self-possessed and sure-handed artists, as in
Greece, and so be preserved long after it has ceased
to be adequate to all the intellectual desires. It may,
by the fascination of its wealth, detain the minds of
poets in its enchanted ground, and prevent them
from ever working their way through from myth to
dramatic imagination, as in Ireland.

The early literature, and therewith the intellectual
character and aptitudes, of a nation may be judged
by their literary use of mythology. They may
neglect it, like the Romans ; they may neglect all
things for the sake of it, like the Celts ; they may
harmonise it, as the Greeks did, in a system of

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 45

imaginative creations where the harmony is such that
myth need never be felt as an encumbrance or an
absurdity, however high or far the reason may go
beyond it in any direction of art or science.

At the beginning of modern Hterature there are
to be found the attempts of Irish and Welsh, of
English and Germans, Danes and Northmen, to give
shape to myth, and make it available for literature.
Together with that, and as part of the same process,
there is found the beginning of historical literature
in an heroic or epic form. The results are various ;
but one thing may be taken as certain, that progress
in literature is most assured when the mythology is so
far under control as to leave room for the drama of epic
characters ; for epic, as distinguished from romance.

Now the fortunes of these people were such as
to make this self-command exceedingly difficult for
them, and to let in an enormous extraneous force,
encouraging the native mythopoetic tendencies, and
unfavourable to the growth of epic. They had to
come to an understanding with themselves about
their own heathen traditions, to bring the extrava-
gances of them into some order, so as to let the epic
heroes have free play. But they were not left to
themselves in this labour of bringing mythology
within bounds ; even before they had fairly escaped
from barbarism, before they had made a fair begin-
ning of civilisation and of reflective literature on their
own account, they were drawn within the Empire,
into Christendom. Before their imaginations had
fully wakened out of the primeval dream, the
cosmogonies and theogonies, gross and monstrous,
of their national infancy, they were asked to have
an opinion about the classical mythology, as re-
presented by the Latin poets ; they were made
acquainted with the miracles of the lives of saints.

46 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

More than all this, even, their minds were charmed
away from the labour of epic invention, by the spell
of the preacher. The task of representing characters
— Waldere or Theodoric or Attila — was forgotten in
the lyrical rapture of devotion, in effusion of pathos.
The fascination of religious symbolism crept over
minds that had hardly yet begun to see and under-
stand things as they are ; and in all their read-
ing the "moral," " anagogical," and " tropological "
significations prevailed against the Hteral sense.

One part of medieval history is concerned with
the progress of the Teutonic nations, in so far as
they were left to themselves, and in so far as
their civilisation is home-made. The Germania of
Tacitus, for instance, is used by historians to in-
terpret the later development of Teutonic institutions.
But this inquiry involves a good deal of abstraction
and an artificial limitation of view. In reality, the
people of Germania were never left to themselves
at all, were never beyond the influence of Southern
ideas ; and the history of the influence of Southern
ideas on the Northern races takes up a larger
field than the isolated history of the North.
Nothing in the world is more fantastic. The logic
of Aristotle and the art of Virgil are recommended
to people whose chief men, barons and earls, are
commonly in their tastes and acquirements not very
different from the suitors in the Odyssey. Gentle-
men much interested in raids and forays, and the
profits of such business, are confronted with a
literature into which the labours of all past centuries
have been distilled. In a society that in its native
elements is closely analogous to Homer's Achaeans,
men are found engaged in the study of Boethius
On the Consolation of Philosophy^ a book that
sums up the whole course of Greek philosophical

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 47

speculation. Ulysses quoting Aristotle is an ana-
chronism ; but King Alfred's translation of Boethius
is almost as much of a paradox. It is not easy to
remain unmoved at the thought of the medieval
industry bestowed on authors like Martianus Capella
de Nuptiis Philologiae^ or Macrobius de Somnio
Scipionis. What is to be said of the solemnity with
which, in their pursuit of authoritative doctrine, they
applied themselves to extract the spiritual meaning
of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and appropriate the didactic
system of the Art of Love ?

In medieval literature, whatever there is of the
Homeric kind has an utterly different relation to
popular standards of appreciation from that of the
Homeric poems in Greece. Here and there some
care may be taken, as by Charlemagne and Alfred,
to preserve the national heroic poetry. But such
regard for it is rare ; and even where it is found,
it comes far short of the honour paid to Homer by
Alexander. English Epic is not first, but one of
the least, among the intellectual and literary interests
of King Alfred. Heroic literature is only one thread
in the weft of medieval literature.

There are some curious documents illustrative of
its comparative value, and of the variety and com-
plexity of medieval literature.

Hauk Erlendsson, an Icelander of distinction in
the fourteenth century, made a collection of treatises
in one volume for his own amusement and behoof.
It contains the Volospd, the most famous of all the
Northern mythical poems, the Sibyl's song of the
doom of the gods ; it contains also the Landndmabdk,
the history of the colonisation of Iceland ; Kristni
Saga, the history of the conversion to Christianity ;
the history of Eric the Red, and Fbstbrce'<Sra Saga,
the story of the two sworn brethren, Thorgeir and

48 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

Thormod the poet. Besides these records of the
history and the family traditions of Iceland and
Greenland, there are some mythical stories of later
date, dealing with old mythical themes, such as the
Hfe of Ragnar Lodbrok. In one of them, the
Heidreks Saga, are embedded some of the most
memorable verses, after Volospd, in the old style of
Northern poetry — the poem of the Wakz?ig of
Angantyr. The other contents of the book are
as follows : geographical, physical, and theological
pieces ; extracts from St. Augustine ; the History of
the Cross ; the Description of Jerusalem ; the Debate
of Body and Soul; Algorismus (by Hauk himself,
who was an arithmetician) ; a version of the Brut
and of Merlin^ s Prophecy, Lucidariuin, the most
popular medieval handbook of popular science.
This is the collection, to which all the ends of the
earth have contributed, and it is in strange and far-
fetched company like this that the Northern documents
are found. In Greece, whatever early transactions
there may have been with the wisdom of Egypt or
Phoenicia, there is no such medley as this.

Another illustration of the literary chaos is
presented, even more vividly than in the contents
of Hauk's book, by the whalebone casket in the
British Museum. Weland the smith (whom Alfred
introduced into his Boethius) is here put side by side
with the Adoration of the Magi \ on another side are
Romulus and Remus; on another, Titus at Jerusalem ;
on the lid of the casket is the defence of a house by
one who is shooting arrows at his assailants; his
name is written over him, and his name is yEgili^ —
Egil the master-bowman, as Weland is the master-
smith, of the Northern mythology. Round the two
companion pictures, Weland on the left and the
Three Kings on the right, side by side, there go

SECT. Ill ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY 49

wandering runes, with some old English verses about
the "whale," or walrus, from which the ivory for
these engravings was obtained. The artist plainly
had no more suspicion than the author of Lycidas
that there was anything incorrect or unnatural in his
combinations. It is under these conditions that the
heroic poetry of Germania has been preserved ; never
as anything more than an accident among an infinity
of miscellaneous notions, the ruins of ancient empires,
out of which the commonplaces of European literature
and popular philosophy have been gradually collected.

The fate of epic poetry was the same as that of
the primitive German forms of society. In both
there was a progress towards independent perfection,
an evolution of the possibilities inherent in them,
independent of foreign influences. But both in
Teutonic society, and in the poetry belonging to it
and reflecting it, this independent course of life is
thwarted and interfered with. Instead of inde-
pendent strong Teutonic national powers, there are
the more or less Romanised and blended nationalities
possessing the lands that had been conquered by
Goths and Burgundians, Lombards and Franks ;
instead of Germania, the Holy Roman Empire ;
instead of Epic, Romance ; not the old-fashioned
romance of native mythology, not the natural spon-
taneous romance of the Irish legends or the Icelandic
stories of gods and giants, but the composite far-
fetched romance of the age of chivalry, imported from
all countries and literatures to satisfy the medieval
appetite for novel and wonderful things.

Nevertheless, the stronger kind of poetry had still
something to show, before all things were overgrown
with imported legend, and before the s^trong enuncia-
tion of the older manner was put out of fashion by
the medieval clerks and rhetoricians.

THE THREE SCHOOLS TEUTONIC EPIC FRENCH

EPIC THE ICELANDIC HISTORIES

The Teutonic heroic poetry was menaced on all
hands from the earliest times ; it was turned aside
from the national heroes by saints and missionaries,
and charmed out of its sterner moods by the spell of
wistful and regretful meditation. In continental
Germany it appears to have been early vanquished.
In England, where the epic poetry was further
developed than on the Continent, it was not less
exposed to the rivalry of the ideas and subjects that
belonged to the Church.

The Anglo-Saxon histories of St. Andrew and St.
Helen are as full of romantic passages as those poems
of the fourteenth century in which the old alliterative
verse is revived to tell the tale of Troy or of the Mort
Arthur. The national subjects themselves are not
proof against the ideas of the Church ; even in the
fragments of Waldere they are to be found ; and the
poem of Beowulf has been filled, like so much of the
old English poetry, with the melancholy of the
preacher, and the sense of the vanity of earthly
things. But the influence of fantasy and pathos
could not dissolve the strength of epic beyond
recovery, or not until it had done something to show
SO

SECT. IV THE THREE SCHOOLS 5 1

what it was worth. Not all the subjects are treated
in the romantic manner of Cynewulf and his imitators.
The poem of Maldon, written at the very end of the
tenth century, is firm and unaffected in its style, and
of its style there can be no question that it is heroic.

The old Norse poetry was beyond the influence of
most of the tendencies and examples that corrupted
the heroic poetry of the Germans, and changed the
course of poetry in England. It was not till the day
of its glory was past that it took to subjects like
those of Cynewulf and his imitators. But it was
hindered in other ways from representing the lives of
heroes in a consistent epic form. If it knew less of
the miracles of saints, it knew more of the old
mythology ; and though it was not, like Enghsh and
German poetry, taken captive by the preachers, it
was stirred and thrilled by the beauty of its own
stories in a way that inclined to the lyrical rather
than the epic tone. Yet here also there are passages
of graver epic, where the tone is more assured and
the composition more stately.

The relation of the French epics to French romance
is on the one side a relation of antagonism, in which
the older form gives way to the newer, because *' the
newer song is sweeter in the ears of men." The
Chansofi de Geste is driven out by poems that differ
from it in almost every possible respect; in the
character of their original subject-matter, in their
verse, their rhetoric, and all their gear of common-
places, and all the devices of their art. But from
another point of view there may be detected in the
Chansons de Geste no small amount of the very
qualities that were fatal to them, when the elements
were compounded anew in the poems of Erec and
Lancelot.

The French epics have many points of likeness

52 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

with the Teutonic poetry of Beowulf or Finnesburh^
or of the Norse heroic songs. They are epic in
substance, having historical traditions at the back of
them, and owing the materials of their picture to no
deliberate study of authorities. They differ from
Beowulf in this respect, among others, that they are
the poems of feudal society, not of the simpler and
earlier communities.^ The difference ought not to be
exaggerated. As far as heroic poetry is concerned,
the difference lies chiefly in the larger frame of the
story. The kingdom of France in the French epics
is wider than the kingdom of Hrothgar or Hygelac.
The scale is nearer that of the Iliad than of the
Odyssey. The " Catalogue of the Armies sent into
the Field" is longer, the mass of fighting-men is
more considerable, than in the epic of the older
school. There is also, frequentlyj a much fuller sense
of the national greatness and the importance of the
defence of the land against its enemies, a conscious-
ness of the dignity of the general history/unlike the
carelessness with which the Teutonic poets fling
themselves into the story of individual lives, and
disregard the historical background. Generally, how-
ever, 4he Teutonic freedom and rebellious spirit is
found as unmistakably in the Chansons de Geste as in
the alliterative poems. Feudalism appears in heroic
poetry, and indeed in prosaic history, as a more
elaborate form of that anarchy which is the necessary
condition of an heroic age. It does not deprive the
poet of his old subjects, his family enmities, and his
adventures of private war. Feudalism did not
invent, neither did it take away, the virtue of loyalty
that has so large a place in all true epic, along with
its counterpart of defiance and rebellion, no less
essential to the story. It intensified the poetical
value of both motives, but they are older than the

SECT. IV THE FRENCH EPIC 53

Iliad. It provided new examples of the "wrath" of
injured or insulted barons ; it glorified to the utmost,
it honoured as martyrs, those who died fighting for
their lord.^

In all this it did nothing to change the essence of
heroic poetry. The details were changed, the scene
was enlarged, and so was the number of the com-
batants. . But the details of feudalism that make a
difference between Beowulf, or the men of Attila, and
the epic paladins of Charlemagne in the French
poems of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, need not
obscure the essential resemblance between one heroic
period and another.

On the other hand, it is plain from the beginning
that French epic had to keep its ground with
some difficulty against the challenge of romantic
skirmishers. In one of the earliest of the poems
about Charlemagne, the Emperor and his paladins
are taken to the East by a poet whom Bossu would
hardly have counted "honest." In the poem of
Huon of Bordeaux, much later, the story of Oberon
and the magic horn has been added to the plot of
a feudal tragedy, which in itself is compact and free
from extravagance. Between those extreme cases
there are countless examples of the mingling of the
graver epic with more or less incongruous strains.
Sometimes there is magic, sometimes the appearance
of a Paynim giant, often the repetition of long
prayers with allusions to the lives of saints and
martyrs, and throughout there is the constant presence
of ideas derived from homilies and the common
teaching of the Church. In some of these respects

* Lor autres mors ont toz en terre mis :
Crois font sor aus, qu'il erent droit martir :
Por lor seignor orent est6 ocis.

Garin le Loherain, torn. ii. p, 88.

54 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

the French epics are in the same case as the old
EngHsh poems which, Hke Beowulf^ show the minghng
of a softer mood with the stronger; of new con-
ventions with old. In some respects they show a
further encroachment of the alien spirit.

The English poem of Maldon has some consider-
able likeness in the matter of its story, and not a little
in its ideal of courage, with the Song of Roland. A
comparison of the two poems, in those respects in
which they are commensurable, will show the English
poem to be wanting in certain elements of mystery
that are potent in the other.

The Song of Maldon and the Song of Roncesvalles
both narrate the history of a lost battle, of a realm
defended against its enemies by a captain whose
pride and self-reliance lead to disaster, by refusing
to take fair advantage of the enemy and put forth
all his available strength. Byrhtnoth, fighting the
Northmen on the shore of the Essex river, allows
them of his own free will to cross the ford and come
to close quarters. " He gave ground too much to
the adversary ; he called across the cold river and
the warriors listened : ' Now is space granted to
you ; come speedily hither and fight ; God alone
can tell who will hold the place of battle.' Then
the wolves of blood, the rovers, waded west over
Panta."

This unnecessary magnanimity has for the battle
of Maldon the effect of Roland's refusal to sound the
horn at the battle of Roncesvalles ; it is the tragic
error or transgression of limit that brings down the
crash and ruin at the end of the day.

In both poems there is a like spirit of indomitable
resistance. The close of the battle of Maldon finds
the loyal companions of Byrhtnoth fighting round his
body, abandoned by the cowards who have run away,

SECT. IV BYRHTNOTH AND ROLAND 55

but themselves convinced of their absolute strength
to resist to the end.

Byrhtvvold spoke and grasped his shield — he was an
old companion — he shook his ashen spear, and taught
courage to them that fought : —

"Thought shall be the harder, heart the keener,
mood shall be the more, as our might lessens. Here
our prince lies low, they have hewn him to death !
Grief and sorrow for ever on the man that leaves this
war-play ! I am old of years, but hence I will not go ;
I think to lay me down by the side of my lord, by the
side of the man I cherished."

The story of Roncesvalles tells of an agony equally
hopeless and equally secure from every touch of fear.

The So?ig of Maldon is a strange poem to have
been written in the reign of Ethelred the Unready.
But for a few phrases it might, as far as the matter is
concerned, have been written before the conversion
of England, and although it is a battle in defence of
the country, and not a mere incident of private war,
the motive chiefly used is not patriotism, but private
loyalty to the captain. Roland is full of the spirit of
militant Christendom, and there is no more constant
thought in the poem than that of the glory of France.
The virtue of the English heroes is the old Teutonic
virtue. The events of the battle are told plainly and
clearly ; nothing adventitious is brought in to disturb
the effect of the plain story ; the poetical value lies
in the contrast between the grey landscape (which is
barely indicated), the severe and restrained descrip-
tion of the fighters, on the one hand, and on the
other the sublimity of the spirit expressed in the last
words of the " old companion." In the narrative of
events there are no extraneous beauties to break the
overwhelming strength of the eloquence in which the

56 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

meaning of the whole thing is concentrated. With
Roland at Roncesvalles the case is different. He is
not shown in the grey light of the Essex battlefield.
The background is more majestic. There is a
mysterious half-lyrical refrain throughout the tale of
the battle : " high are the mountains and dark the
valleys " about the combatants in the pass ; they are
not left to themselves like the warriors of the poem
of Maldon. It is romance, rather than epic or
tragedy, which in this way recognises the impersonal
power of the scene ; the strength of the hills under
which the fight goes on. In the first part of the
Odyssey the spell of the mystery of the sea is all
about the story of Odysseus ; in the later and more
dramatic part the hero loses this, and all the strength
is concentrated in his own character. In the story
of Roland there is a vastness and vagueness through-
out, coming partly from the numbers of the hosts
engaged, partly from the author's sense of the
mystery of the Pyrenean valleys, and, in a very
large measure, from the heavenly aid accorded to
the champion of Christendom. The earth trembles,
there is darkness over all the realm of France even
to the Mount St. Michael :

C'est la dulur pur la mort de Rollant.

St. Gabriel descends to take from the hand of
Roland the glove that he offers with his last con-
fession ; and the three great angels of the Lord are
there to carry his soul to Paradise.

There is nothing like this in the English poem.
The battle is fought in the light of an ordinary day ;
there is nothing to greet the eyes of Byrhtnoth and
his men except the faces of their enemies.

It is not hard to find in old English poetry de-
scriptions less austere than that of Maldon ; there

SECT. IV THE ICELANDIC HISTORIES 57

may be found in the French Chansons de Geste great
spaces in which there is little of the majestic light
and darkness of Roncesvalles. But it is hard to
escape the conviction that the poem of Maldon^ late
as it is, has uttered the spirit and essence of the
Northern heroic literature in its reserved and simple
story, and its invincible profession of heroic faith ;
while the poem of Roncesvalles is equally repre-
sentative of the French epic spirit, and of the French
poems in which the ideas common to every heroic
age are expressed with all the circumstances of the
feudal society of Christendom, immediately before the
intellectual and literary revolutions of the twelfth
century. The French epics are full of omens of the
coming victory of romance, though they have not
yet given way. They still retain, in spite of their
anticipations of the Kingdom of the Grail, an alliance
in spirit with the older Teutonic poetry, and with
those Icelandic histories that are the highest literary
expression of the Northern spirit in its independence
of feudalism.

The heroic age of the ancient Germans may be
said to culminate, and end, in Iceland in the thir-
teenth century. The Icelandic Sagas — the prose
histories of the fortunes of the great Icelandic houses
— are the last and also the finest expression and
record of the spirit and the ideas belonging properly
to the Germanic race in its own right, and not
derived from Rome or Christendom. Those of the
German nations who stayed longest at home had by
several centuries the advantage of the Goths and
Franks, and had time to complete their native educa-
tion before going into foreign subjects. The English
were less exposed to Southern influences than the
continental Germans ; the Scandinavian nations less
than the Angles and Saxons. In Norway particularly,

58 EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

the common German ideas were developed in a way
that produced a code of honour, a consciousness of
duty, and a strength of will, such as had been un-
known in the German nations who were earlier called
upon to match themselves against Rome. Iceland
was colonised by a picked lot of Norwegians ; by
precisely those Norwegians who had this strength of
will in its highest degree.

Political progress in the Middle Ages was by way
of monarchy ; but strong monarchy was contrary to
the traditions of Germania, and in Norway, a country
of great extent and great difficulties of communication,
the ambition of Harold Fairhair was resisted by
numbers of chieftains who had their own local
following and their own family dignity to maintain,
in their firths and dales. Those men found Norway
intolerable through the tyranny of King Harold, and
it was by them that Iceland was colonised through the
earlier colonies in the west — in Scotland, in Ireland,
in Shetland and the other islands.

The ideas that took the Northern colonists to
Iceland were the ideas of Germania, — the love of an
independent life, the ideal of the old-fashioned
Northern gentleman, who was accustomed to con-
sideration and respect from the freemen, his neigh-
bours, who had authority by his birth and fortune to
look after the affairs of his countryside, who would
not make himself the tenant, vassal, or steward of
any king. In the new country these ideas were
intensified and defined. The ideal of the Icelandic
Commonwealth was something more than a vague
motive, it was present to the minds of the first settlers
in a clear and definite form. The most singular
thing in the heroic age of Iceland is that the heroes
knew what they were about. The heroic age of
Iceland begins in a commonwealth founded by a

SECT. IV THE ICELANDIC HISTORIES 59

social contract. The society that is established there
is an association of individuals coming to an agree-
ment with one another to invent a set of laws and
observe them. Thus while Iceland on the one hand
is a reactionary state, founded by men who were
turning their backs on the only possible means of
political progress, cutting themselves off from the
world, and adhering obstinately to forms of life with
no future before them, on the other hand this re-
actionary commonwealth, this fanatical representative
of early Germanic use and wont, is possessed of a
clearness of self-consciousness, a hard and positive
clearness of understanding, such as is to be found
nowhere else in the Middle Ages and very rarely at
all in any polity.

The prose literature of Iceland displays the same
two contradictory characters throughout. The actions
described, and the customs, are those of an early
heroic age, with rather more than the common amount
of enmity and vengeance, and an unequalled power
of resistance and rebellion in the individual wills of
the personages. The record of all this anarchy is a
prose history, rational and unaffected, seeing all
things in a dry light ; a kind of literature that has not
much to learn from any humanism or rationalism, in
regard to its own proper subjects at any rate.

The people of Iceland were not cut off from the
ordinary European learning and its commonplaces.
They read the same books as were read in England or
Germany. They read St. Gregory de Cura Pastorali^
they read Ovidius Epistolarum^ and all the other
popular books of the Middle Ages. In time those
books and the world to which they belonged were
able to obtain a victory over the purity of the Northern
tradition and manners, but not until the Northern
tradition had exhausted itself, and the Icelandic polity

6o EPIC AND ROMANCE chap, i

began to break up. The literature of the maturity of
Iceland just before the fall of the Commonwealth is a
literature belonging wholly and purely to Iceland, in
a style unmodified by Latin syntax and derived from
the colloquial idiom. The matter is the same in kind
as the common matter of heroic poetry. The history
represents the lives of adventurers, the rivalries and
private wars of men who are not ignorant of right
and honour, but who acknowledge little authority
over them, and are given to choose their right and
wrong for themselves, and abide the consequences.
This common matter is presented in a form which
may be judged on its own merits, and there is no
need to ask concessions from any one in respect of
the hard or unfavourable conditions under which this
literature was produced. One at least of the Icelandic
Sagas is one of the great prose works of the world —
the story of Njal and his sons.

The most perfect heroic literature of the Northern
nations is to be found in the country where the heroic
polity and society had most room and leisure ; and in
Iceland the heroic ideals of life had conditions more
favourable than are to be discovered anywhere else in
history. Iceland was a world divided from the rest,
outside the orbit of all the states of Europe ; what
went on there had little more than an ideal relation
to the course of the great world ; it had no influence
on Europe, it was kept separate as much as might be
from the European storms and revolutions. What
went on in Iceland was the progress in seclusion of
the old Germanic life — a life that in the rest of the
world had been blended and immersed in other
floods and currents. Iceland had no need of the
great movements of European history.

They had a humanism of their own, a rationalism
of their own, gained quite apart from the great

SECT. IV THE ICELANDIC HISTORIES 6i

European tumults, and gained prematurely, in com-
parison with the rest of Europe. Without the labour
of the Middle Ages, without the storm and stress of
the reform of learning, they had the faculty of seeing
things clearly and judging their values reasonably,
without superstition. They had to pay the penalty
of their opposition to the forces of the world ; there
was no cohesion in their society, and when once the
balance of power in the island was disturbed, the
Commonwealth broke up. But before that, they
accomplished what had been ineffectually tried by the
poet of Beowulf^ the poet of Roland ; they found an
adequate form of heroic narrative. Also in their use
of this instrument they were led at last to a kind of
work that has been made nowhere else in the world,
for nowhere else does the form of heroic narrative
come to be adapted to contemporary events, as it was
in Iceland, by historians who were themselves par-
takers in the actions they described. Epic, if the
Sagas are epic, here coincides with autobiography.
In the Sturlunga Saga, written by Sturla, Snorri's
nephew, the methods of heroic literature are applied
by an eye-witness to the events of his own time, and
there is no discrepancy or incongruity between form
and matter. The age itself takes voice and speaks in
itj there is no interval between actors and author.
This work is the end of the heroic age, both in
politics and in literature. After the loss of Icelandic
freedom there is no more left of Germania, and the
Sturlunga Saga which tells the story of the last days of
freedom is the last word of the Teutonic heroic age.
It is not a decrepit or imitative or secondary thing ;
it is a masterpiece; and with this true history, this
adaptation of an heroic style to contemporary realities,
the sequence of German heroic tradition comes to
an end.

CHAPTER II
THE TEUTONIC EPIC

THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION

Of the heroic poetry in the Teutonic alHterative
verse, the history must be largely conjectural. The
early stages of it are known merely through casual
references like those of Tacitus. We know that to
the mind of the Emperor Julian, the songs of the
Germans resembled the croaking of noisy birds ; but
this criticism is not satisfactory, though it is interest-
ing. The heroes of the old time before Ermanaric
and Attila were not without their poets, but of what
sort the poems were in which their praises were sung,
we can only vaguely guess. Even of the poems
that actually remain it is difficult to ascertain the
history and the conditions of their production. The
variety of styles discoverable in the extant documents
is enough to prevent the easy conclusion that the
German poetry of the first century was already a
fixed type, repeated by successive generations of
poets down to the extinction of alHterative verse as
a living form.

After the sixth century things become a little
clearer, and it is possible to speak with more certainty.
One thing at any rate of the highest importance may
be regarded as beyond a doubt. The passages in
which Jordanes tells of Suanihilda trampled to death
6s F

66 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

by the horses of Ermanaric, and of the vengeance taken
by her brothers Sarus and Ammius, are enough to
prove that the subjects of heroic poetry had already
in the sixth century, if not earher, formed themselves
compactly in the imagination. If Jordanes knew
a Gothic poem on Ermanaric and the brothers of
Suanihilda, that was doubtless very different from the
Northern poem of Sorli and Hamther, which is a later
version of the same story. But even if the existence
of a Gothic ballad of Swanhild were doubted, — and
the balance of probabilities is against the doubter, —
it follows indisputably from the evidence that in the
time of Jordanes people were accustomed to select and
dwell upon dramatic incidents in what was accepted
as history ; the appreciation of tragedy was there, the
talent to understand a tragic situation, to shape a
tragic plot, to bring out the essential matter in relief
and get rid of irrelevant particulars.

In this respect at any rate, and it is one of the
most important, there is continuity in the ancient
poetry, onward from this early date. The stories of
Alboin in the Lombard history of Paulus Diaconus,
the meaning of which for the history of poetry is
explained so admirably in the Introduction to Corpus
Poeticum Boreale, by Dr. Vigfusson and Mr. York
Powell, are further and more vivid illustrations of the
same thing. In the story of the youth of Alboin,
and the story of his death, there is matter of the
same amount as would suffice for one of the short
epics of the kind we know, — a poem of the same
length as the Northern lay of the death of Ermanaric,
of the same compass as Waltharius^ — or, to take
another standard of measurement, matter for a single
tragedy with the unities preserved. Further, there is
in both of them exactly that resolute comprehension
and exposition of tragic meaning which is the virtue

SECT. I THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION 67

of the short epics. The tragic contradiction in them
could not be outdone by Victor Hugo. It is no
wonder that the story of Rosamond and Albovine
king of the Lombards became a favourite with
dramatists of different schools, from the first essays
of the modern drama in the Rosmunda of Rucellai,
passing by the common way of the novels of Bandello
to the Elizabethan stage. The earlier story of
Alboin's youth, if less valuable for emphatic tragedy,
being without the baleful figure of a Rosamond or a
Clytemnestra, is even more perfect as an example of
tragic complication. Here again is the old sorrow of
Priam; the slayer of the son face to face with the
slain man's father, and not in enmity. In beauty of
original conception the story is not finer than that of
Priam and Achilles ; and it is impossible to compare
the stories in any other respect than that of the
abstract plot. But in one quality of the plot the
Lombard drama excels or exceeds the story of the
last book of the Iliad. The contradiction is strained
with a greater tension ; the point of honour is more
nearly absolute. This does not make it a better
story, but it proves that the man who told the story
could understand the requirements of a tragic plot,
could imagine clearly a strong dramatic situation,
could refrain from wasting or obliterating the outline
of a great story.

The Lombards and the Gepidae were at war.
Alboin, son of the Lombard king Audoin, and
Thurismund, son of the Gepid king Thurisvend, met
in battle, and Alboin killed Thurismund. After the
battle, the Lombards asked King Audoin to knight
his son. But Audoin answered that he would not
break the Lombard custom, according to which it
was necessary for the young man to receive arms
first from the king of some other people. Alboin

68 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

when he heard this set out with forty of the Lombards,
and went to Thurisvend, whose son he had killed, to
ask this honour from him. Thurisvend welcomed
him, and set him down at his right hand in the place
where his son used to sit.

Then follows the critical point of the action. The
contradiction is extreme ; the reconciliation also, the
solution of the case, is perfect. Things are stretched
to the breaking - point before the release comes ;
nothing is spared that can possibly aggravate the
hatred between the two sides, which is kept from
breaking out purely by the honour of the king. The
man from whom an infinite debt of vengeance is
owing, comes of his own will to throw himself on the
generosity of his adversary. This, to begin with, is
hardly fair to simple-minded people like the Gepid
warriors ; they may fairly think that their king is
going too far in his reading of the law of honour :

And it came to pass while the servants were serving
at the tables, that Thurisvend, remembering how his son
had been lately slain, and calling to mind his death, and
beholding his slayer there beside him in his very seat,
began to draw deep sighs, for he could not withhold
himself any longer, and at last his grief burst forth in
words. " Very pleasant to me," quoth he, ** is the seat,
but sad enough it is to see him that is sitting therein." ^

By his confession of his thoughts the king gives
an opening to those who are waiting for it, and it is
taken at once. Insult and rejoinder break out, and
it is within a hair's breadth of the irretrievable plunge
that the king speaks his mind. He is lord in that
house, and his voice allays the tumult ; he takes the
weapons of his son Thurismund, and gives them to
Alboin and sends him back in peace and safety to

1 C.P.B., Introduction, p. lii.

SKCT. I THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION 69

his father's kingdom. It is a great story, even in a
prose abstract, and the strength of its tragic problem
is invincible. It is with strength like that, with a
knowledge not too elaborate or minute, but sound and
clear, of some of the possibilities of mental conflict
and tragic contradiction, that heroic poetry first
reveals itself among the Germans. It is this that
gives strength to the story of the combat between
Hildebrand and his son, of the flight of Walter and
Hildegund, of the death of Brynhild, of Attila and
Gudrun. Some of the heroic poems and plots are
more simple than these. The battle of Maldon is a
fair fight without any such distressful circumstances as
in the case of Hildebrand or of Walter of Aquitaine.
The adventures of Beowulf are simple, also ; there is
suspense when he waits the attack of the monster, but
there is nothing of the deadly crossing of passions that
there is in other stories. Even in Maldon, however,
there is the tragic error ; the fall and defeat of the
English is brought about by the over-confidence and
over-generosity of Byrhtnoth, in allowing the enemy
to come to close quarters. In Beowulf, though the
adventures of the hero are simple, other less simple
stories are referred to by the way. One of these is a
counterpart to the story of the youth of Alboin and
the magnanimity of Thurisvend. One of the most
famous of all the old subjects of heroic poetry was
the vengeance of Ingeld for the death of his father,
King Froda. The form of this story in Beowulf
agrees with that of Saxo Grammaticus in preserving
the same kind of opposition as in the story of Alboin,
only in this case there is a different solution. Here
a deadly feud has been put to rest by a marriage,
and the daughter of Froda's slayer is married to
Froda's son. But as in the Lombard history and in
so many of the stories of Iceland, this reconciliation

70 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

is felt to be intolerable and spurious ; the need of
vengeance is real, and it finds a spokesman in an old
warrior, who cannot forget his dead lord, nor endure
the sight of the new bride's kinsmen going free and
wearing the spoils of their victory. So Ingeld has to
choose between his wife, wedded to him out of his
enemy's house, and his father, whom that enemy has
killed. And so everywhere in the remains, not too
voluminous, of the literature of the heroic age, one
encounters this sort of tragic scheme. One of those
ancient plots, abstracted and written out fair by Saxo,
is the plot of Hamlet.

There is not one of the old Northern heroic poems,
as distinct from the didactic and mythological pieces,
that is without this tragic contradiction ; sometimes
expressed with the extreme of severity, as in the lay
of the death of Ermanaric ; sometimes with lyrical
effusiveness, as in the lament of Gudrun ; sometimes
with a mystery upon it from the under-world and the
kingdom of the dead, as in the poems of Helgi, and
of the daughter of Angantyr.

The poem of the death of Ermanaric is a version
of the story told by Jordanes, which since his time
had come to be attached to the cycle of the
Niblungs.

Swanhild, the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun, was
wedded to Ermanaric, king of the Goths. The king's
counsellor wrought on his mind with calumnies
against the queen, and he ordered her to be trampled
to death under horses' feet, and so she died, though
the horses were afraid of the brightness of her eyes
and held back until her eyes were covered. Gudrun
stirred up her sons, Sorli and Hamther, to go and
avenge their sister. As they set out, they quarrelled
with their base-born brother Erp, and killed him, —
the tragic error in this history, for it was the want of

SECT. I THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION 71

a third man that ruined them, and Erp would have
helped them if they had let him. In the hall of the
Goths they defy their enemy and hew down his men ;
no iron will bite in their armour; they cut off the
hands and feet of Ermanaric. Then, as happens so
often in old stories, they go too far, and a last insult
alters the balance against them, as Odysseus alters it
at the leave-taking with Polyphemus. The last gibe
at Ermanaric stirs him as he lies, and he calls on the
remnant of the Goths to stone the men that neither
sword nor spear nor arrow will bring down. And
that was the end of them.

" We have fought a good fight ; we stand on slain
Goths that have had their fill of war. We have gotten
a good report, though we die to-day or to-morrow. No
man can live over the evening, when the word of the
Fates has gone forth."

There fell Sorli at the gable of the hall, and Hamther
was brought low at the end of the house.

Among the Norse poems it is this one, the Ham'^is-
mdl^ that comes nearest to the severity of the English
Maldon poem. It is wilder and more cruel, but the
end attains to simplicity.

The gap in Codex Regius^ the " Elder "or " Poetic
Edda," has destroyed the poems midway between the
beginning and end of the tragedy of Sigfred and
Brynhild, and among them the poem of their last
meeting. There is nothing but the prose paraphrase
to tell what that was, but the poor substitute brings
out all the more clearly the strength of the original
conception, the tragic problem.

After the gap in the manuscript there are various
poems of Brynhild and Gudrun, in which different
views of the story are taken, and in all of them
contradiction is extreme : in Brynhild's
.0:

72 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

vengeance on Sigurd, in Gudrun's lament for her
husband slain by her brothers, and in the later
fortunes of Gudrun. In some of these poems the
tragedy becomes lyrical, and two kinds of imagination,
epic and elegiac, are found in harmony.

The story of Helgi and Sigrun displays this rivalry
of moods — a tragic story, carried beyond the tragic
stress into the mournful quiet of the shadows.

Helgi is called upon by Sigrun to help her against
Hodbrodd, and save her from a hateful marriage.
Helgi kills Hodbrodd, and wins Sigrun; but he has
also killed Sigrun's father Hogni and her elder
brother. The younger brother Dag takes an oath to
put away enmity, but breaks his oath and kills Helgi.

It is a story like all the others in which there is a
conflict of duties, between friendship and the duty of
vengeance, a plot of the same kind as that of Froda
and Ingeld. Sigrun's brother is tried in the same
way as Ingeld in the story told by Saxo and men-
tioned in Beowulf, But it does not end with the
death of Helgi. Sigrun looks for Helgi to come back
in the hour of the "Assembly of Dreams," and Helgi
comes and calls her, and she follows him : —

" Thy hair is thick with rime, thou art wet with the
dew of death, thy hands are cold and dank.''

" It is thine own doing, Sigrun from Sevafell, that
Helgi is drenched with deadly dew ; thou weepest cruel
tears, thou gold-dight, sunbright lady of the South, before
thou goest to sleep ; every one of them falls with blood,
wet and chill, upon my breast. Yet precious are the
draughts that are poured for us, though we have lost
both love and land, and no man shall sing a song of
lamentation though he see the wounds on my breast, for
kings' daughters have come among the dead."

*' I have made thee a bed, Helgi, a painless bed, thou
son of the Wolfings. I shall sleep in thine arms, O
king, as I should if thou wert alive."

SECT. I THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION 73

This is something different from epic or tragedy,
but it does not interfere with the tragedy of Nvhich it
is the end.

The poem of the Waking of Angantyr is so filled
with mystery and terror that it is hard to find in it
anything else. After the Volospd it is the most
wonderful of all the Northern poems.

Hervor, daughter of Angantyr, is left alone to
avenge her father and her eleven brothers, killed by
Arrow Odd before her birth. In her father's grave
is the sword of the Dwarfs that never is drawn in
vain, and she comes to his grave to find it. The
island where he lies is full of death-fires, and the dead
are astir, but Hervor goes on. She calls on her
father and her brothers to help her :

"Awake, Angantyr! It is Hervor that bids thee
awake. Give me the sword of the Dwarfs ! Hervard !
Hiorvard ! Rani ! Angantyr ! I bid you all awake ! "

Her father answers from the grave ; he will not
give up the sword, for the forgers of it when it was
taken from them put a curse on those who wear it.
But Hervor will not leave him until he has yielded
to her prayers, and at last she receives the sword from
her father's hands.^

Although the poem of Hervor lies in this way
"between the worlds" of Life and Death, — the
phrase is Hervor's own, — although the action is so
strange and so strangely encompassed with unearthly
fire and darkness, its root is not set in the dim border-
land where the dialogue is carried on. The root is
tragic, and not fantastic, nor is there any excess, nor

] This poem has been followed by M. Leconte de Lisle in
VEpee d' Angantyr {Pohnes Barbares). It was among the first of
the Northern poems to be translated into English, in Hickes's
Thesaurtis (1705), i. p. 193. It is also included in Percy's Five
Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763).

74 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

anything strained beyond the Hmit of tragedy, in the
passion of Hervor.

Definite invagination of a tragic plot, and sure
comprehension of the value of dramatic problems, are
not enough in themselves to make a perfect poem.
They may go along with various degrees of imper-
fection in particular respects ; faults of diction, either
tenuity or extravagance of phrasing may accompany
this central imaginative power. Strength of plot is
partly independent of style ; it bears translation, it
can be explained, it is something that can be
abstracted from the body of a poem and still make
itself impressive. The dramatic value of the story of
the death of Alboin is recognisable even when it is
stated in the most general terms, as a mere formula ;
the story of Waltharius retains its life, even in the
Latin hexameters ; the plot of Hamlet is interesting,
even in Saxo ; the story of the Niblungs, even in the
mechanical prose paraphrase. This gift of shaping a
plot and letting it explain itself without encumbrances
is not to be mistaken for the whole secret of the
highest kind of poetry. But, if not the whole, it is
the spring of the whole. All the other gifts may be
there, but without this, though all but the highest
kind of epic or tragic art may be attainable, the very
highest will not be attained.

Aristotle may be referred to again. As he found
it convenient in his description of epic to insist on its
dramatic nature, in his description of tragedy it
pleased him to lay emphasis on that part of the work
which is common to tragedy and epic — the story, the
plot. It may be remarked how well the barbarous
poetry conforms to the pattern laid down in Aristotle's
description. The old German epic, in Hildebrand^
Waldere, Finnesburh^ Byrhtnoth^ besides all the
Northern lays of Sigurd, Brynhild, and Gudrun, is

SECT. I THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION 75

dramatic in its method, letting the persons speak for
themselves as much as may be. So far it complies
with Aristotle's delineation of epic. And further, all
this dramatic bent may be seen clearly to have its
origin in the mere story, — in the dramatic situation,
in fables that might be acted by puppets or in a dumb
show, and yet be tragical. No analytic or psycho-
logical interest in varieties of character — in ijdrj —
could have uttered the passion of Brynhild or of
Gudrun. Aristotle knew that psychological analysis
and moral rhetoric were not the authors of Clytem-
nestra or Oedipus. The barbarian poets are on a
much lower and more archaic level than the poets
with whom Aristotle is concerned, but here, where
comparison is not meaningless nor valueless, their
imaginations are seen to work in the same sound and
productive way as the minds of Aeschylus or
Sophocles, letting the seed — the story in its abstract
form, the mere plot — develop itself and spring
naturally into the fuller presentation of the characters
that are implied in it. It is another kind of art that
studies character in detail, one by one, and then sets
them playing at chance medley, and trusts to luck
that the result will be entertaining.

That Aristotle is confirmed by these barbarian
auxiliaries is of no great importance to Aristotle, but
it is worth arguing that the barbarous German imagina-
tion at an earlier stage, relatively, than the Homeric,
is found already possessed of something Hke the
sanity of judgment, the discrimination of essentials
from accidents, which is commonly indicated by the
term classical. Compared with Homer these German
songs are prentice work ; but they are begun in the
right way, and therefore to compare them with a
masterpiece in which the same way is carried out to
its end is not unjustifiable.

SCALE OF THE POEMS

The following are the extant poems on native heroic
themes, written in one or other of the dialects of
the Teutonic group, and in unrhymed alliterative
measures.

(i) Continental. — The Lay of Hildebrand {c. a.d.
800), a Low German poem, copied by High German
clerks, is the only remnant of the heroic poetry of
the continental Germans in which, together with the
national metre, there is a national theme.

(2) English. — The poems of this order in old
English are Beowulf Finnesburh, Waldere, and
Byrhtnoth^ or the Lay of Maldon. Besides these
there are poems on historical themes preserved in the
Chronicle, of which Brunanburh is the most important,
and two dramatic lyrics, Widsith and Deor^ in which
there are many allusions to the mythical and heroic
cycles.

(3) Scandinavian and Icelandic. — The largest
number of heroic poems in alliterative verse is found
in the old Northern language, and in manuscripts
written in Iceland. The poems themselves may have
come from other places in which the old language of
Norway was spoken, some of them perhaps from
Norway itself, many of them probably from those

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 77

islands round Britain to which a multitude of Nor-
wegian settlers were attracted, — Shetland, the
Orkneys, the Western Islands of Scotland.^

The principal collection is that of the manuscript
in the King's Library at Copenhagen (2365, 4°) gener-
ally referred to as Codex Regius (R) ; it is this book,
discovered in the seventeenth century, that has re-
ceived the inaccurate but convenient names of Elda-
Eddtty or Poetic Edda^ or Edda of Scemund the Wise,
by a series of miscalculations fully described in the
preface to the Corpus Poeticum Boreale. Properly,
the name Edda belongs only to the prose treatise by
Snorri Sturluson.

The chief contents of Codex Regius are a series of
independent poems on the Volsung story, beginning
with the tragedies of Helgi and Swava and Helgi and
Sigrun (originally unconnected with the Volsung
legend), and going on in the order of events.

The series is broken by a gap in which the poems
dealing with some of the most important parts of the
story have been lost. The matter of their contents
is known from the prose paraphrase called Volsunga
Saga. Before the Volsung series comes a number of
poems chiefly mythological : the SibyVs Prophecy^
(Volospa) ; the Wooing of Erey, or the Errand of
Skirnir ; the Elyting of Thor and Woden (Harbarz-
lioS); Thorns Pishing for the Midgarth Serpent
(HymiskviSa) ; the Railing of Loki (Lokasenna) \ the
Winning of Thorns I£a?nmer (PrymskviSa) ; the Lay
of Weland. There are also some didactic poems,
chief among them being the gnomic miscellany under
the title Hdvamdl\ while besides this there are others,
like Vqf\>n?6nismdi, treating of mythical subjects in

^ Cf. G. Vigfusson, Prolegomena to Sturlunga (Oxford, 1878) ;
{Corpus Poeticum Boreale [ibid. 1883) ; Grimm Centenary Papers
1886) ; Sophus Bugge, Helgedigtene (1896 ; trans. Schofield, 1899).

78 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

a more or less didactic and mechanical way. There
are a number of prose passages introducing or linking
the poems. The confusion in some parts of the book
is great.

Codex Regius is not the only source ; other mythic
and heroic poems are found in other manuscripts.
The famous poem of the Doom of Balder (Gray's
" Descent of Odin ") ; the poem of the Rescue of
Menglad, the enchanted princess ; the verses pre-
served in the Hei^reks Saga^ belonging to the story
of Angantyr; besides the poem of the Magic Mill
(Grottasongr) and the Song of the Dart (Gray's " Fatal
Sisters"). There are many fragmentary verses,
among them some from the Biarkamal, a poem with
some curious points of likeness to the EngHsh Lay of
Finnesburh. A Swedish inscription has preserved
four verses of an old poem on Theodoric.

Thus there is some variety in the original docu-
ments now extant out of the host of poems that have
been lost. One conclusion at least is irresistible —
that, in guessing at the amount of epic poetry of this
order which has been lost, one is justified in making
a liberal estimate. Fragments are all that we possess.
The extant poems have escaped the deadliest risks ;
the fire at Copenhagen in 1728, the bombardment in
1807, the fire in the Cotton Library in 1731, in
which Beowulf was scorched but not burned. The
manuscripts of Finnesburh and Maldon have been
mislaid; but for the transcripts taken in time by
Hickes and Hearne they would have been as little
known as the songs that the Sirens sang. The poor
remnants of Waldere were found by Stephens in two
scraps of bookbinders' parchment.

When it is seen what hazards have been escaped
by those bits of wreckage, and at the same time how
distinct in character the several poems are, it is plain

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 79

that one may use some freedom in thinking of the
amount of this old poetry that has perished.

The loss is partly made good in different ways : in
the Latm of the historians, Jordanes, Paulus Diaconus,
and most of all in the paraphrases, prose and verse,
by Saxo Grammaticus ; in Ekkehard's Latin poem of
Waltharius {c. a.d. 930); in the Volsunga Saga,
which has kept the matter of the lost poems of Codex
Regius and something of their spirit ; in the Thidreks
Saga, a prose story made up by a Norwegian in the
thirteenth century from current North German ballads
of the Niblungs ; in the German poems of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, which, in a later form of the
language and in rhyming verse, have preserved at any
rate some matters of tradition, some plots of stories,
if little of the peculiar manner and imagination of the
older poetry.

The casual references to Teutonic heroic subjects
in a vast number of authors have been brought
together in a monumental work, die deutsche Helden-
sage, by Wilhelm Grimm (1829).

The Western Group

Hildebrand, Finnesburh, Waldere, Beowulf,
Byrhtnoth

The Western group of poems includes all those
that are not Scandinavian ; there is only one among
them which is not English, the poem of Hildebrand.
They do not afford any very copious material for
inferences as to the whole course and progress of
poetry in the regions to which they belong. A com-
parison of the fragmentary Hildebrand with the
fragments of Waldere shows a remarkable difference

8o TEUTONIC EPIC

CHAP. II

in compass and fulness ; but, at the same time, the
vocabulary and phrases of Hildebrand declare that
poem unmistakably to belong to the same family as
the more elaborate Waldere. Finneshirh, the frag-
mentary poem of the lost Lambeth MS., seems almost
as far removed as Hildebrand from the more expansive
and leisurely method of Waldere \ while Waldere^
Beowulf, and the poem of Maldon resemble one
another in their greater ease and fluency, as compared
with the brevity and abruptness of Hildebrand or
Finnesbiirh. The documents, as far as they go, bear
out the view that in the Western German tongues, or
at any rate in England, there was a development of
heroic poetry tending to a greater amplitude of
narration. This progress falls a long way short of
the fulness of Homer, not to speak of the extreme
diffuseness of some of the French Chansons de Geste. It
is such, however, as to distinguish the English poems,
Waldere^ Beowulf and Byrhtnoth, very obviously from
the poem of Hildebrand. While, at the same time,
the brevity of Hildebrand is not like the brevity of
the Northern poems. Hildebrand is a poem capable
of expansion. It is easy enough to see in what
manner its outlines might be filled up and brought
into the proportions of Waldere or Beowulf. In the
Northern poems, on the other hand, there is a lyrical
conciseness, and a broken emphatic manner of exposi-
tion, which from first to last prevented any such
increase of volume as seems to have taken place in
the old English poetry ; though there are some poems,
the Atlamdl particularly, which indicate that some of
the Northern poets wished to go to work on a larger
scale than was generally allowed them by their
traditions.

In the Northern group there is a great variety in
respect of the amount of incident that goes to a

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 8i

single poem ; some poems deal with a single adven-
ture, while others give an abstract of a whole heroic
history. In the Western poems this variety is not to
be found. There is a difference in this respect
between Hildebrand and Waldere^ and still more,
at least on the surface, between Hildebrand and
Beoivulf) but nothing like the difference between the
Lay of the Hamfner (PrymskviSa), which is an
episode of Thor, and the Lay of IVeland or the Lay
of Brynhild^ which give in a summary way a whole
history from beginning to end.

Hildebrand tells of the encounter of father and
son, Hildebrand and Hadubrand, with a few refer-
ences to the past of Hildebrand and his relations to
Odoacer and Theodoric. It is one adventure, a
tragedy in one scene.

Finnesburhy being incomplete at the beginning
and end, is not good evidence. What remains of it
presents a single adventure, the fight in the hall
between Danes and Frisians. There is another
version of the story of Finnesbnrh, which, as reported
in Beowulf (^\. 1068-1154) gives a good deal more of
the story than is given in the separate Finnesburh
Lay. This episode in Beowulf where a poem of
Finnesburh is chanted by the Danish minstrel, is not
to be taken as contributing another independent
poem to the scanty stock ; the minstrel's story is
reported, not quoted at full length. It has been
reduced by the poet of Beowulf so as not to take up
too large a place of its own in the composition.
Such as it is, it may very well count as direct evi-
dence of the way in which epic poems were produced
and set before an audience ; and it may prove that it
was possible for an old English epic to deal with
almost the whole of a tragic history in one sitting.
In this case the tragedy is far less complex than the

82 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

tale of the Niblungs, whatever interpretation may
be given to the obscure allusions in which it is pre-
served.

Finn, son of Folcwalda, king of the Frisians,
entertained Hnaef the Dane, along with the Danish
warriors, in the castle of Finnesburh. There, for
reasons of his own, he attacked the Danes ; who kept
the hall against him, losing their own leader Hnaef,
but making a great slaughter of the Frisians.

The Beowulf episode takes up the story at this
point.

Hnaef was slain in the place of blood. His sister
Hildeburg, Finn's wife, had to mourn for brother
and son.

Hengest succeeded Hnaef in command of the
Danes and still kept the hall against the Frisians.
Finn was compelled to make terms with the Danes.
Hengest and his men were to live among the Frisians
with a place of their own, and share alike with Finn's
household in all the gifts of the king. Finn bound
himself by an oath that Hengest and his men should
be free of blame and reproach, and that he would
hold any Frisian guilty who should cast it up against
the Danes that they had followed their lord's slayer.^
Then, after the oaths, was held the funeral of the
Danish and the Frisian prince, brother and son of
Hildeburg the queen.

Then they went home to Friesland, where Hengest
stayed with Finn through the winter. With the
spring he set out, meaning vengeance; but he dis-
sembled and rendered homage, and accepted the
sword the lord gives his liegeman. Death came upon

1 Compare Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the Chronicle (a.d.
755) ; also the outbreak of enmity, through recollection of old
wrongs, in the stories of Alboin, and of the vengeance for Froda
[pipra, pp. 68-70).

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 83

Finn in his house; for the Danes came back and
slew him, and the hall was made red with the
Frisian blood. The Danes took Hildeburg and the
treasure of Finn and carried the queen and the
treasure to Denmark.

The whole story, with the exception of the original
grievance or grudge of the Frisian king, which is not
explained, and the first battle, which is taken as
understood, is given in Beowulf as the contents of
one poem, delivered in one evening by a harper. It
is more complicated than the story of Hildebrand^
more even than Waldere\ and more than either of
the two chief sections of Beowulf taken singly —
"Beowulf in Denmark" and the "Fight with the
Dragon." It is far less than the plot of the long Lay
of Brynhild^ in which the whole Niblung history is
contained. In its distribution of the action, it corre-
sponds very closely to the story of the death of the
Niblungs as given by the Atlakvi^a and the Atlamdl.
The discrepancies between these latter poems need
not be taken into account here. In each of them
and in the Finnesburh story there is a double climax ;
first the wrong, then the vengeance. Finnesburh
might also be compared, as far as the arrangement
goes, with the Song of Roland \ the first part gives
the treacherous attack and the death of the hero ; then
comes a pause between the two centres of interest,
followed in the second part by expiation of the wrong.

The story of Finnesburh is obscure in many
respects ; the tradition of it has failed to preserve
the motive for Finn's attack on his wife's brother,
without which the story loses half its value. Some-
thing remains, nevertheless, and it is possible to
recognise in this episode a greater regard for unity
and symmetry of narrative than is to be found in
Beowtelf tsiken as a whole.

84 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

The Lambeth poem of Fitmesburh most probably
confined itself to the battle in the hall. There is no
absolute proof of this, apart from the intensity of its
tone, in the extant fragment, which would agree best
with a short story limited, like Hildebrand^ to one
adventure. It has all the appearance of a short lay,
a single episode. Such a poem might end with the
truce of Finn and Hengest, and an anticipation of
the Danes' vengeance :

It is marvel an the red blood run not, as the rain
does in the street.

Yet the stress of this adventure is not greater
than that of Roland, which does not end at Ronces-
valles; it may be that the Finnesburh poem went
on to some of the later events, as told in the
Finnesburh abridgment in Beowulf.

The story of Walter of Aquitaine as represented
by the two fragments of old English verse is not
greatly inconsistent with the same story in its Latin
form of Waltharius. The Latin verses of Waltharius
tell the story of the flight of Walter and Hildegund
from the house of Attila, and of the treacherous
attack on Walter by Gunther, king of the Franks,
against the advice, but with the unwilling consent,
of Hagen, his Hegeman and Walter's friend. Hagen,
Hildegund, and Walter were hostages with Attila
from the Franks, Burgundians, and Aquitanians.
They grew up together at the Court of Attila till
Gunther, son of Gibicho, became king of the Franks
and refused tribute to the Huns. Then Hagen escaped
and went home. Walter and Hildegund were lovers,
and they, too, thought of flight, and escaped into the
forests, westward, with a great load of treasure, and
some fowling and fishing gear for the journey.

SECT. II WALTER OF AQUITAINE 85

After they had crossed the Rhine, they were dis-
covered by Hagen ; and Gunther, with twelve of
the Franks, went after them to take the Hunnish
treasure : Hagen followed reluctantly. The pursuers
came up with Walter as he was asleep in a hold
among the hills, a narrow green place with overhang-
ing cliffs all round, and a narrow path leading up to
it. Hildegund awakened Walter, and he went and
looked down at his adversaries. Walter offered
terms, through the mediation of Hagen, but Gunther
would have none of them, and the fight began. The
Latin poem describes with great spirit how one after
another the Franks went up against Walter : Camelo
(11. 664-685), Scaramundus (686-724), Werinhardus
the bowman (725-755), Ekevrid the Saxon (756-780),
who went out jeering at Walter; Hadavartus (781-
845), Patavrid (846-913), Hagen's sister's son, whose
story is embeUished with a diatribe on avarice;
Gerwicus (914-940), fighting to avenge his com-
panions and restore their honour —

Is furit ut caesos mundet vindicta sodales ;

but he, too, fell —

Exitiumque dolens, pulsabat calcibus arvum.

Then there was a breathing-space, before Randolf,
the eighth of them, made trial of Walter's defence
(962-981). After him came Eleuther, whose other
name was Helmnod, with a harpoon and a line, and
the line was held by Trogus, Tanastus, and the king ;
Hagen still keeping aloof, though he had seen his
nephew killed. The harpoon failed ; three Frankish
warriors were added to the slain ; the king and
Hagen were left (1. 1060).

Gunther tried to draw Hagen into the fight.
Hagen refused at first, but gave way at last, on

86 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

account of the slaying of his nephew. He advised a
retreat for the night, and an attack on Walter when he
should have left the fastness. And so the day ended,

Walter and Hildegund took turns to watch,
Hildegund singing to awaken Walter when his turn
came. They left their hold in the morning ; but they
had not gone a mile when Hildegund, looking behind,
saw two men coming down a hill after them. These
were Gunther and Hagen, and they had come for
Walter's life. Walter sent Hildegund with the horse
and its burden into the wood for safety, while he took
his stand on rising ground. Gunther jeered at
him as he came up ; Walter made no answer to
him, but reproached Hagen, his old friend. Hagen
defended himself by reason of the vengeance due for
his nephew ; and so they fought, with more words of
scorn. Hagen lost his eye, and Gunther his leg, and
Walter's right hand was cut off by Hagen ; and " this
was their sharing of the rings of Attila ! " —

Sic, sic, armillas partiti sunt Avarenses (1. 1 404).

Walter and Hildegund were king and queen of
Aquitaine, but of his later wars and victories the tale
has no more to tell.

Of the two old English fragments of this story the
first contains part of a speech of Hildegund^ en-
couraging Walter.

Its place appears to be in the pause of the fight,

when the Prankish champions have been killed, and

Gunther and Hagen are alone. The speech is

rhetorical: "Thou hast the sword Mimming, the

work of Weland, that fails not them that wield it.

Be of good courage, captain of Attila; never didst

thou draw back to thy hold for all the strokes of the

^ Hildegyth, her English name, is unfortunately not pre-
served in either of the fragmentary leaves. It is found (HildigiS)
in the Liber Vitae (Sweet, Oldest English Texts, p. 155).

SECT. II

WALDERE 87

foeman ; nay, my heart was afraid because of thy
rashness. Thou shalt break the boast of Gunther ;
he came on without a cause, he refused the offered
gifts ; he shall return home empty-handed, if he return
at all." That is the purport of it.

The second fragment is a debate between Gunther
and Walter. It begins with the close of a speech of
Gunther (GuShere) in which there are allusions to
other parts of the heroic cycle, such as are common
in Beowulf,

The allusion here is to one of the adventures of
Widia, Weland's son ; how he delivered Theodoric
from captivity, and of Theodoric's gratitude. The
connexion is obscure, but the reference is of great
value as proving the resemblance of narrative method
in Waldere and Beowulf not to speak of the likeness
to the Homeric way of quoting old stories. Waldere
answers, and this is the substance of his argument :
"Lo, now. Lord of the Burgundians, it was thy
thought that Hagena's hand should end my fighting.
Come then and win my corselet, my father's heirloom,
from the shoulders weary of war." ^

The fragment closes with a pious utterance of
submission to heaven, by which the poem is shown to
be of the same order as Beowulf va this respect also,
as well as others, that it is affected by a turn for

1 The resemblance to Hildebrand, I.58, is pointed out by Sophus
Bugge : " Doh maht du nu aodlihho, ibu dir din ellen taoc, In sus
heremo man hrusti giwinnan." (Hildebrand speaks): "Easily
now mayest thou win the spoils of so old a man, if thy strength
avail thee." It is remarkable as evidence of the strong conventional
character of the Teutonic poetry, and of the community of the
different nations in the poetical convention, that two short passages
like Hildebrand a.n6. ^FaA/<?rg should present so many points of like-
ness to other poems, in details of style. Thus the two lines quoted
from Hildebrand as a parallel to Waldere contain also the equivalent
of the Anglo-Saxon phrase, \>onne his ellen deah, a familiar part of
the Teutonic Gradus,

88 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

edification, and cannot stand as anything like a pure
example of the older kind of heroic poetry. The
phrasing here is that of the Anglo-Saxon secondary
poems; the common religious phrasing that came
into vogue and supplemented the old heathen poetical
catch-words.

The style of Waldere makes it probable that the
action of the story was not hurried unduly. If the
author kept the same proportion throughout, his
poem may have been almost as long as Waltharius.
It is probable that the fight among the rocks was
described in detail ; the Maldon poem may show how
such a subject could be managed in old English verse,
and how the matter of Waltharius may have been
expressed in Waldere. Roughly speaking, there is
about as much fighting in the three hundred and
twenty-five lines oi Maldon as in double the number of
hexameters in Waltharius ; but the Maldon poem is
more concise than the extant fragments of Waldere.
Waldere may easily have taken up more than a
thousand lines.

The Latin and the English poems are not in
absolute agreement. The English poet knew that
GuGhere, Guntharius, was Burgundian, not Frank ;
and an expression in the speech of Hildegyth suggests
that the fight in the narrow pass was not so exact a
succession of single combats as in Waltharius.

The poem of Maldon is more nearly related in its
style to Waldere and Beowulf than to the Finnesburh
fragment. The story of the battle has considerable
likeness to the story of the fight at Finnesburh. The
details, however, are given in a fuller and more
capable way, at greater length.

Beowulf has been commonly regarded as excep-
tional, on account of its length and complexity,
among the remains of the old Teutonic poetry. This

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 89

view is hardly consistent with a right reading of
Waldere, or of Maldon either, for that matter. It
is not easy to make any great distinction between
Beoivulf and Waldere in respect of the proportions of
the story. The main action oi Beowulf \& comparable
in extent with the action of Waltharius. The later
adventure of Beowulf has the character of a sequel,
which extends the poem, to the detriment of its
proportions, but without adding any new element of
complexity to the epic form. Almost all the points
in which the manner of Beowulf differs from that of
Finnesburh may be found in Waldere also, and are
common to Waldere and Beowulf \n distinction from
Hildebrand and Finnesburh. The two poems, the
poem of Beowulf 2iV\di the fragments of Waldere^ seem
to be alike in the proportion they allow to dramatic
argument, and in their manner of alluding to heroic
matters outside of their own proper stories, not to
speak of their affinities of ethical tone and sentiment.
The time of the whole action of Beowulf is long.
The poem, however, falls naturally into two main
divisions — Beowulf in Den7nark, and the Death of
Beowulf If it is permissible to consider these for
the present as two separate stories, then it may be
affirmed that in none of the stories preserved in the
old poetic form of England and the German Con-
tinent is there any great length or complexity.
Hildebrand^ a combat ; Finnesburh^ a defence of a
house ; Waldere^ a champion beset by his enemies ;
Beowulf in Denmark^ the hero as a deliverer from
pests ; Beowulf^ s Death in one action ; Maldon the
last battle of an English captain ; these are the
themes, and they are all simple. There is more
complexity in the story of Finnesburh^ as reported in
Beowulf than in all the rest; but even that story
appears to have observed as much as possible the

90 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

unity of action. The epic singer at the court of the
Dane appears to have begun, not with the narrative
of the first contest, but immediately after that,
assuming that part of the story as known, in order to
concentrate attention on the vengeance, on the
penalty exacted from Finn the Frisian for his
treachery to his guests.

Some of the themes may have less in them than
others, but there is no such variety of scale among
them as will be found in the Northern poems.
There seems to be a general agreement of taste
among the Western German poets and audiences,
English and Saxon, as to the right compass of an
heroic lay. When the subject was a foreign one, as
in the Heliand^ in the poems of Genesis and Exodus^
in Andreas^ or Elene, there might be room for the
complexity and variety of the foreign model. The
poem of Judith may be considered as a happy
instance in which the foreign document has of itself,
by a pre-established harmony, conformed to an old
German fashion. In the original story oi Judith the
unities are observed in the very degree that was
suited to the ways of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is
hazardous to speak generally of a body of poetry so
imperfectly represented in extant literature, but it is
at any rate permissible to say that the extant heroic
poems, saved out of the wreck of the Western
Teutonic poetry, show a strong regard for unity of
action, in every case except that of Beowulf; while
in that case there are two stories — a story and a
sequel — each observing a unity within its own limit.

Considered apart from the Northern poems, the
poems of England and Germany give indication of a
progress in style from a more archaic and repressed,
to a more developed and more prolix kind of
narrative. The difference is considerable between

SECT. II SCALE OF THE WESTERN POEMS 91

Ilildebrand and Waldere, between Finnesburfi and
Beowulf.

It is the change and development in style, rather
than any increase in the complexity of the themes,
that accounts for the difference in scale between the
shorter and the longer poems.

For the natural history of poetical forms this point
is of the highest importance. The Teutonic poetry
shows that epic may be developed out of short lays
through a gradual increase of ambition and of elo-
quence in the poets who deal with common themes.
There is no question here of the process of agglutina-
tion and contamination whereby a number of short
lays are supposed to be compounded into an epic
poem. Of that process it may be possible to find
traces in Beowulf and elsewhere. But quite apart
from that, there is the process by which an archaic
stiff manner is replaced by greater freedom, without
any loss of unity in the plot. The story of Walter of
Aquitaine is as simple as the story of Hildebrand.
The difference between Hildebrand and Waldere is
the difference between an archaic and an accom-
plished mode of narrative, and this difference is
made by a change in spirit and imagination, not by
a process of agglutination. To make the epic of
Waldere it was not necessary to cobble together a
number of older lays on separate episodes. It was
possible to keep the original plan of the old story in
its simplest irreducible form, and still give it the
force and magnificence of a lofty and eloquent style.
It was for the attainment of this pitch of style that
the heroic poetry laboured in Waldere and Beowulf
with at least enough success to make these poems
distinct from the rest in this group.

With all the differences among them, the con-
tinental and English poems, Hildebrand^ Waldere^

92 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

and the rest, form a group by themselves, with
certain specific qualities of style distinguishing them
from the Scandinavian heroic poetry. The history of
the Scandinavian poetry is the converse of the
English development. Epic poetry in the North
becomes more and more hopeless as time goes on,
and with some exceptions tends further and further
away from the original type which was common to
all the Germans, and from which those common
forms and phrases have been derived that are found
in the " Poetic Edda " as well as in Beowulf or the
Heliand.

In England before the old poetry died out
altogether there was attained a certain magnitude
and fulness of narrative by which the English poems
are distinguished, and in virtue of which they may
claim the title epic in no transferred or distorted
sense of the term. In the North a different course
is taken. There seems indeed, in the Atlatndl
especially, a poem of exceptional compass and weight
among those of the North, to have been something
like the Western desire for a larger scale of narrative
poem. But the rhetorical expansion of the older
forms into an equable and deliberate narrative was
counteracted by the still stronger affection for lyrical
modes of speech, for impassioned, abrupt, and
heightened utterance. No epic solidity or com-
posure could be obtained in the fiery Northern
verse ; the poets could not bring themselves into the
frame of mind required for long recitals ; they had
no patience for the intervals necessary, in epic as in
dramatic poetry, between the critical moments.
They would have everything equally full of energy,
everything must be emphatic and telling. But with
all this, the Northern heroic poems are in some of
their elements strongly allied to the more equable

SECT. II THE NORTHERN GROUP 93

and duller poems of the West; there is a strong
element of epic in their lyrical dialogues and mono-
logues, and in their composition and arrangement of
plots.

The Northern Group

In comparing the English and the Northern
poems, it should be borne in mind that the docu-
ments of the Northern poetry are hardly sufficient
evidence of the condition of Northern epic at its
best. The English documents are fragmentary,
indeed, but at least they belong to a -time in which
the heroic poetry was attractive and well appreciated ;
as is proved by the wonderful freshness of the
Maldoii poem, late though it is. The Northern
poems seem to have lost their vogue and freshness
before they came to be collected and written down.
They were imperfectly remembered and reported;
the text of them is broken and confused, and the
gaps are made up with prose explanations. The
fortunate preservation of a second copy of Volospd,
in Hauk's book, has further multiplied labours and
perplexities by a palpable demonstration of the
vanity of copiers, and of the casual way in which the
strophes of a poem might be shuffled at random in
different texts ; while the chief manuscript of the
poems itself has in some cases double and incon-
gruous versions of the same passage.^

The Codex Regius contains a number of poems
that can only be called epic in the widest and loosest
sense of the term, and some that are not epic in any
sense at all. The gnomic verses, the mythological

^ Cf. C.P.B., i. p. 375, for double versions of part of Ham^is-
7ndl, and of the Lay of Helgi. On pp. 377-379, parts of the
two texts of VolospA — R and H — are printed side by side for
comparison.

94 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

summaries, may be passed over for the present ;
whatever illustrations they afford of early beliefs
and ideas, they have no evidence to give concerning
the proportions of stories. Other poems in the
collection come under the denomination of epic only
by a rather liberal extension of the term to include
poems which are no more epic than dramatic, and
just as much the one as the other, like the poems of
Frey's Wooing and of the earlier exploits of Sigurd,
which tell their story altogether by means of dialogue,
without any narrative passages at all. The links and
explanations are supplied, in prose, in the manu-
script. Further, among the poems which come
nearer to the English form of narrative poetry there
is the very greatest variety of scale. The amount of
story told in the Northern poems may vary indefi-
nitely within the widest limits. Some poems contain
little more than an idyll of a single scene ; others
may give an abstract of a whole history, as the whole
Volsung story is summarised, for instance, in the
Propliecy of Gripir.

Some of the poems are found in such a confused
and fragmentary form, with interruptions and inter-
polations, that, although it is possible to make out
the story, it is hardly possible to give any confident
judgment about the original proportions of the
poems. This is particularly the case with the poems
in which the hero bears the name of Helgi. The
difficulties of these were partly appreciated, but not
solved, by the original editor.

The differences of scale may be illustrated by the
following summary description, which aims at little
more than a rough measurement of the stories, for
purposes of comparison with Beowtdf zxi^ Waldere.

The Lay of Weland gives a whole mythical
history. How Weland and his brother met with the

SECT. II THE HELGI POEMS 95

swan-maidens, how the swan-brides left them in the
ninth year, how Weland Smith was taken prisoner by
King Nidad, and hamstrung, and set to work for the
king ; and of the vengeance of Weland. There are
one hundred and fifty-nine lines, but in the text there
are many defective places. The Lay is a ballad history,
beginning at the beginning, and ending, not with the
end of the life of Weland, nor with the adventures
of his son Widia, but with the escape of Weland from
the king, his enemy, after he had killed the king's
sons and put shame on the king's daughter Bodvild.

In plan, the Lay of Weland is quite different from
the lays of the adventures of Thor, the '^ryniskvv<Sa
and the HymtskvilSa, the songs of the Hammer and
the Cauldron. These are chapters, episodes, in the
history of Thor, not summaries of the whole matter,
such as is the poem of Weland.

The stories of Helgi Hundingsbane, and of his
namesakes, as has been already remarked, are given
in a more than usually complicated and tangled form.

At first everything is simple enough. A poem of
the life of Helgi begins in a way that promises a
mode of narrative fuller and less abrupt than the
Lay of Weland. It tells of the birth of Helgi, son of
Sigmund ; of the coming of the Norns to make fast
the threads of his destiny ; of the gladness and the
good hopes with which his birth was welcomed.
Then the Lay of Helgi tells, very briefly, how he
slew King Hunding, how the sons of Hunding made
claims for recompense. "But the prince would
make no payment of amends; he bade them look
for no payment, but for the strong storm, for the
grey spears, and for the rage of Odin."^ And the

^ Cf. Maldon, 1. 45 sq., " Hearest thou what this people
answer? They will pay you, for tribute, spears, the deadly point,
the old swords, the weapons of war that profit you not," etc.

96 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

sons of Hunding were slain as their father had
been.

Then the main interest begins, the story of Helgi
and Sigrun.

"A light shone forth from the Mountains of
Flame, and lightnings followed." There appeared to
Helgi, in the air, a company of armed maidens riding
across the field of heaven ; " their armour was
stained with blood, and light went forth from their
spears." Sigrun from among the other " ladies of the
South " answered Helgi, and called on him for help ;
her father Hogni had betrothed her, against her will,
to Hodbrodd, son of Granmar. Helgi summoned
his men to save her from this loathed wedding. The
battle in which Helgi slew his enemies and won the
lady of the air is told very shortly, while dispropor-
tionate length is given to an interlude of vituperative
dialogue between two heroes, Sinfiotli, Helgi's
brother, and Gudmund, son of Granmar, the warden
of the enemy's coast ; this passage of Vetus Comoedia
takes up fifty lines, while only six are given to the
battle, and thirteen to the meeting of Helgi and
Sigrun afterwards. Here ends the poem which is
described in Codex Regius as the Lay of Helgi
{Helgakvr^d). The story is continued in the next
section in a disorderly way, by means of ill-connected
quotations. The original editor, whether rightly or
wrongly, is quite certain that the Lay of Helgi , which
ends with the victory of Helgi over the unamiable
bridegroom, is a different poem from that which he
proceeds to quote as the Old Lay of the Volsungs,
in which the same story is told. In this second
version there is at least one interpolation from a
third ; a stanza from a poem in the " dialogue
measure," which is not the measure in which the rest
of the story is told. It is uncertain what application

SECT. II THE HELGI POEMS 97

was meant to be given to the title Old Lay of the
Volsungs, and whether the editor included under that
title the whole of his second version of Helgi and
Sigrun. For instance, he gives another version of the
railing verses of Sinfiotli, which he may or may not
have regarded as forming an essential part of his Old
Volsung Lay. He distinguishes it at any rate from
the other " Flyting," which he definitely and by name
ascribes to Helgakvi'^a.

It is in this second version of the story of Helgi
that the tragedy is worked out. Helgi slays the
father of Sigrun in his battle against the bridegroom's
kindred : Sigrun's brother takes vengeance. The
space is scant enough for all that is told in it ; scant,
that is to say, in comparison with the space of the
story of Beowulf; though whether the poem loses, as
poetry, by this compression is another matter.

It is here, in connexion with the second version,
that the tragedy is followed by the verses of the grief
of Sigrun, and the return of Helgi from the dead ; the
passage of mystery, the musical close, in which the
tragic idea is changed into something less distinct
than tragedy, yet without detriment to the main
action.

Whatever may be the critical solution of the
textual problems of these Lays^ it is impossible to
get out of the text any form of narrative that shall
resemble the English mode. Even where the story
of Helgi is slowest, it is quicker, more abrupt, and
more lyrical even than the Lay of Ftnnesburh, which
is the quickest in movement of the English poems.

The story of Helgi and Sigrun is intelligible, and
though incomplete, not yet so maimed as to have lost
its proportions altogether. Along with it, however,
in the manuscript there are other, even more difficult
fragments of poems about another Helgi, son of

98 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

Hiorvard, and his love for another Valkyria, Swava.
And yet again there are traces of a third Helgi, with
a history of his own. The editors of Corpus Foeticum
Boreale have accepted the view of the three Helgis
that is indicated by the prose passages of the manu-
script here; namely, that the different stories are
really of the same persons born anew, "to go
through the same life-story, though with varying
incidents." ^ " Helgi and Swava, it is said, were born
again," is the note in the manuscript. " There was a
king named Hogni, and his daughter was Sigrun.
She was a Valkyria and rode over air and sea ; she
was Swava born again" And, after the close of the
story of Sigrun, " it was a belief in the old days that
men were born again, but that is now reckoned old
wives' fables. Helgi and Sigrun, it is reported, were
born anew, and then he was Helgi Haddingjaskati,
and she Kara, Halfdan's daughter, as is told in the
songs of Kara, and she was a Valkyria."

It is still possible to regard the " old wives' fable "
(which is a common element in Celtic legend and
elsewhere) as something unessential in the poems of
Helgi ; as a popular explanation intended to reconcile
different myths attaching to the name. However that
may be, the poems of ITelgz and Swava are so frag-
mentary and confused, and so much has to be eked
out with prose, that it is impossible to say what the
complete form and scale of the poetical story may
have been, and even difficult to be certain that it was
ever anything else than fragments. As they stand, the
remains are like those of the story of Angantyr ; pro-
minent passages quoted by a chronicler, who gives the
less important part of the story in prose, either because
he has forgotten the rest of the poem, or because
the poem was made in that way to begin with.
1 C.P.B., i. p. 130.

SECT. II THE HELGI POEMS 99

Of the poem of Kara^ mentioned in the manu-
script, there is nothing left except what can be
restored by a conjectural transference of some verses,
given under the name of Helgi and Sigrun, to this
third mysterious plot. The conjectures are supported
by the reference to the third story in the manuscript,
and by the fact that certain passages which do not fit
in well to the story of Helgi and Sigrun, where they
are placed by the collector, correspond with prose
passages in the late Icelandic romance of Hromund
Greipsson^ in which Kara is introduced.

The story of Helgi and Swava is one that covers a
large period of time, though the actual remnants of
the story are small. It is a tragedy of the early
Elizabethan type described by Sir Philip Sidney,
which begins with the wooing of the hero's father and
mother. The hero is dumb and nameless from his
birth, until the Valkyria, Swava, meets him and gives
him his name, Helgi ; and tells him of a magic
sword in an island, that will bring him victory.

The tragedy is brought about by a witch who
drives Hedin, the brother of Helgi, to make a foolish
boast, an oath on the Boar's head (like the vows of
the Heron or the Peacock, and the gabs of the
Paladins of France) that he will wed his brother's
bride. Hedin confesses his vanity to Helgi, and is
forgiven, Helgi saying, " Who knows but the oath may
be fulfilled? I am on my way to meet a challenge."

Helgi is wounded mortally, and sends a message
to Swava to come to him, and prays her after his
death to take Hedin for her lord. The poem ends
with two short energetic speeches : of Swava refusing
to have any love but Helgi's ; and of Hedin bidding
farewell to Swava as he goes to make amends, and
avenge his brother.

^ C.P.B., Introduction, p. Ixxviii.

loo TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

These fragments, though their evidence tells little
regarding epic scale or proportions, are, at least,
illustrations of the nature of the stories chosen for
epic narrative. The character of Hedin, his folly and
magnanimity, is in strong contrast to that of Dag, the
brother of Sigrun, who makes mischief in the other
poem. The character of Swava is a fainter repetition
of Sigrun.

Nothing very definite can be made out of any of
the Helgi poems with regard to the conventions of
scale in narrative ; except that the collector of the
poems was himself in difficulties in this part of his
work, and that he knew he had no complete poem to
offer his readers, except perhaps the Helgakvi'^a.

The poem named by the Oxford editors "The
Long Lay of Brunhild" (i. p. 293) is headed in the
manuscript "QviSa SigurJ^ar," Lay of Sigurd^ and
referred to, in the prose gloss of Codex Regius^ as
" The Short Lay of Sigurd." ^ This is one of the
most important of the Northern heroic lays, in every
respect ; and, among other reasons, as an example of
definite artistic calculation and study, a finished
piece of work. It shows the difference between the
Northern and the Western standards of epic measure-
ment. The poem is one that gives the whole of the
tragedy in no longer space than is used in the poem
of Maldon for the adventures of a few hours of battle.
There are 288 lines, not all complete.

There are many various modes of representation in
the poem. The beginning tells the earlier story of
Sigurd and Brynhild in twenty lines : —

It was in the days of old that Sigurd, the young
Volsung, the slayer of Fafni, came to the house of Giuki.
He took the troth-plight of two brothers ; the doughty

1 The " Long Lay of Sigurd " has disappeared. Cf. Heusler,
Die Lieder der Lucke im Codex Regius der Edda, 1902,

SECT. II SIGURD AND BRYNHILD loi

heroes gave oaths one to another. They offered him
the maid Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, and store of
treasure ; they drank and took counsel together many
a day, Child Sigurd and the sons of Giuki ; until they
went to woo Brynhild, and Sigurd the Volsung rode in
their company ; he was to win her if he could get her.
The Southern hero laid a naked sword, a falchion
graven, between them twain ; nor did the Hunnish king
ever kiss her, neither take her into his arms ; he handed
the young maiden over to Giuki's son.

She knew no guilt in her life, nor was any evil found
in her when she died, no blame in deed or thought.
The grim Fates came between.^

" It was the Fates that worked them ill." This
sententious close of the prologue introduces the main
story, chiefly dramatic in form, in which Brynhild
persuades Gunnar to plan the death of Sigurd, and
Gunnar persuades Hogni. It is love for Sigurd, and
jealousy of Gudrun, that form the motive of Brynhild.
Gunnar's conduct is barely intelligible; there is no
explanation of his compliance with Brynhild, except
the mere strength of her importunity. Hogni
is reluctant, and remembers the oaths sworn to
Sigurd. Gothorm, their younger brother, is made
their instrument, — he was " outside the oaths." The
slaying of Sigurd by Gothorm, and Sigurd's dying
stroke that cuts his slayer in two, are told in the brief
manner of the prologue to the poem ; likewise the
grief of Gudrun. Then comes Sigurd's speech to
Gudrun before his death.

The principal part of the poem, from hne ii8
to the end, is filled by the storm in the mind of
Brynhild : her laughter at the grief of Gudrun, her
confession of her own sorrows, and her preparation
for death; the expostulations of Gunnar, the bitter

* From C.P.B., i. pp. 293, 294, with some modifications.

I02 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

speech of Hogni, — " Let no man stay her from her
long journey " ; the stroke of the sword with which
Brynhild gives herself the death-wound; her dying
prophecy. In this last speech of Brynhild, with all
its vehemence, there is manifest care on the part of
the author to bring out clearly his knowledge of the
later fortunes of Gudrun and Gunnar. The prophecy
includes the birth of Swanhild, the marriage of Attila
and Gudrun, the death of Gunnar at the hands of
Attila, by reason of the love between Gudrun and
Oddrun ; the vengeance of Gudrun on Attila, the
third marriage of Gudrun, the death of Swanhild
among the Goths. With all this, and carrying all this
burden of history, there is the passion of Brynhild,
not wholly obscured or quenched by the rhetorical
ingenuity of the poet. For it is plain that the poet
was an artist capable of more than one thing at a time.
He was stirred by the tragic personage of Brynhild ;
he was also pleased, intellectually and dispassionately,
with his design of grouping together in one com-
position all the events of the tragic history.

The poem is followed by the short separate Lay
(forty-four lines) of the Hell-ride of Brynhild^ which
looks as if it might have been composed by the same
or another poet, to supply some of the history wanting
at the beginning of the Lay of Brynhild. Brynhild,
riding Hell-ward with Sigurd, from the funeral pile
where she and Sigurd had been laid by the Giuking
lords, is encountered by a giantess who forbids her to
pass through her " rock-built courts," and cries shame
upon her for her guilt. Brynhild answers with the
story of her evil fate, how she was a Valkyria,
punished by Odin for disobedience, set in the ring of
flame, to be released by none but the slayer of Fafni ;
how she had been beguiled in Gunnar's wooing, and
how Gudrun cast it in her teeth. This supplies the

SECT. II BRYNHILD 1 03

motive for the anger of Brynhild against Sigurd, not
clearly expressed in the Lay^ and also for Gunnar's
compliance with her jealous appeal, and Hogni's
consent to the death of Sigurd. While, in the same
manner as in the Lay^ the formalism and pedantry of
the historical poet are burnt up in the passion of the
heroine. " Sorrow is the portion of the life of all men
and women born : we two, I and Sigurd, shall be
parted no more for ever." The latter part of the
Zoy, the long monologue of Brynhild, is in form like
the Lamentation of Oddrun and the idyll of Gudrun
and Theodoric ; though, unlike those poems, it has a
fuller narrative introduction : the monologue does not
begin until the situation has been explained.

On the same subject, but in strong contrast with
the Lay of Brynhild^ is the poem that has lost its
beginning in the great gap in Codex Regius. It is
commonly referred to in the editions as the Frag-
mentary Lay of Sigurd ("Brot af SigurSarkviSu ") ;
in the Oxford edition it is styled the " Fragment of
a short Brunhild Lay." There are seventy-six lines
(incomplete) beginning with the colloquy of Gunnar
and Hogni. Here also the character of Brynhild is
the inspiration of the poet. But there does not seem
to have been in his mind anything like the historical
anxiety of the other poet to account for every incident,
or at least to show that, if he wished, he could account
for every incident, in the whole story. It is much
stronger in expression, and the conception of Brynhild
is more dramatic and more imaginative, though less
eloquent, than in the longer poem. The phrasing is
short and emphatic : —

Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, stood without, and this
was the first word she spoke : " Where is Sigurd, the
king of men, that my brothers are riding in the van ? "
Hogni made answer to her words ; *' We have hewn

I04 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ir

Sigurd asunder with the sword ; ever the grey horse
droops his head over the dead king."

Then spake Brynhild, Budli's daughter : " Have great
joy of your weapons and hands. Sigurd would have
ruled everything as he chose, if he had kept his life a
little longer. It was not meet that he should so rule
over the host of the Goths and the heritage of Giuki,
who begat five sons that delighted in war and in the
havoc of battle."

Brynhild laughed, the whole house rang : " Have
long joy of your hands and weapons, since ye have slain
the valiant king." ^

The mood of Brynhild is altered later, and she
"weeps at that she had laughed at." She wakens
before the day, chilled by evil dreams. " It was cold
in the hall, and cold in the bed," and she had seen
in her sleep the end of the Niblungs, and woke, and
reproached Gunnar with the treason to his friend.

It is difficult to estimate the original full compass
of this fragmentary poem, but the scale of its narrative
and its drama can be pretty clearly understood from
what remains. It is a poem with nothing superfluous
in it. The death of Sigurd does not seem to have
been given in any detail, except for the commentary
spoken by the eagle and the raven, prophetic of the
doom of the Niblungs. The mystery of Brynhild's
character is curiously recognised by a sort of informal
chorus. It is said that " they were stricken silent as
she spoke, and none could understand her bearing,
that she should weep to speak of that for which she
had besought them laughing." It is one of the
simplest forms in narrative ; but in this case the
simplicity of the rhetoric goes along with some variety
and subtlety of dramatic imagination. The character
of the heroine is rightly imagined and strongly ren-
^ From C.P.B., i. p. 307, with some changes.

SECT. II GUDRUN AND ATLI 105

dered, and her change of mind is impressive, as the
author plainly meant it to be.

The Lay of Attila {Atlakvt^a) and the Greenland
poem oi Attila {Atlamdt) are two poems which have a
common subject and the same amount of story : how
Attila sent for Gunnar and Hogni, the brothers of
Gudrun, and had them put to death, and how Gudrun
took vengeance on Attila.

In \k\% Atlakvi'^a there are 174 lines, and some
broken places ; in Atlamdl there are 384 lines ; its
narrative is more copious than in most of the Norse
Lays. There are some curious discrepancies in the
matter of the two poems, but these hardly affect the
scale of the story. The difference between them in
this respect is fairly represented by the difference in
the number of their lines. The scenes of the history
are kept in similar proportions in both poems.

The story of Gudrun's vengeance has been seen
(p. 83) to correspond, as far as the amount of action
is concerned, pretty closely with the story of Hengest
and Finn. The epic unity is preserved ; and, as in
the Finnesburh story, there is a distribution of interest
between the 7vrong and the vengeance^ — (i) the death
of Hnsef, the death of Gunnar and Hogni ; (2) the
vengeance of Hengest, the vengeance of Gudrun, with
an interval of dissimulation in each case.

The plot of the death of Attila, under all its
manifold variations, is never without a certain natural
fitness for consistent and well-proportioned narrative.

None of the Northern poems take any account of
the theory that the murder of Sigfred was avenged
by his wife upon her brothers. That theory belongs
to the Nibelungenlied \ in some form or other it was
known to Saxo ; it is found in the Danish ballad
of Grimild^s Revenge^ a translation or adaptation from
the German. That other conception of the story

io6 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

may be more full of tragic meaning; the Northern
versions, which agree in making Attila the slayer of
the Niblung kings, have the advantage of greater
concentration. The motive of Attila, which is different
in each of the poems on this subject, is in no case
equal to the tragic motive of Kriemhild in the Nibe-
lungen. On the other hand, the present interest of
the story is not distracted by reference to the long
previous history of Sigfred ; a new start is made when
the Niblungs are invited to Attila's Court. The
situation is intelligible at once, without any long
preliminary explanation.

In the Lay of Attila the hoard of the Niblungs
comes into the story ; its fatal significance is recog-
nised; it is the "metal of discord" that is left in
the Rhine for ever. But the situation can be under-
stood without any long preliminary history of the
Niblung treasure and its fate. Just as the story of
Waldere explains itself at once, — a man defending
his bride and his worldly wealth against a number of
enemies, in a place where he is able to take them one
by one, as they come on, — so the story of Attila can
begin without long preliminaries ; though the pre-
vious history is to be found, in tradition, in common
stories, if any one cares to ask for it. The plot is
intelligible in a moment : the brothers inveigled away
and killed by their sister's husband (for reasons of his
own, as to which the versions do not agree) ; their
sister's vengeance by the sacrifice of her own children
and the death of her husband.

In the Atlai7idl there is very much less recognition
of the previous history than in Atlakvt'Qa. The story
begins at once with the invitation to the Niblung
brothers and with their sister's warning. Attila's
motive is not emphasised ; he has a grudge against
them on account of the death of Brynhild his sister,

SBCT. II ODDRUN 107

but his motive is not very necessary for the story, as
the story is managed here. The present scene and
the present passion are not compHcated with too much
reference to the former history of the personages.
This mode of procedure will be found to have given
some trouble to the author, but the result at any rate
is a complete and rounded work.

There is great difference of treatment between
Atlakvt'Sa and the Greenland poem Atlamdl, a differ-
ence which is worth some further consideration.^
There is, however, no very great difference of scale ;
at any rate, the difference between them becomes
unimportant when they are compared with Beowulf.
Even the more prolix of the two, which in some
respects is the fullest and most elaborate of the
Northern heroic poems, yet comes short of the English
scale. Atlamdl takes up very Httle more than the
space of the English poem of Maldon^ which is a
simple narrative of a battle, with nothing like the
tragic complexity and variety of the story of the
vengeance of Gudrun.

There is yet another version of the death of
Gunnar the Giuking to compare with the two poems
of Attila — the Lament of Oddrun (Oddrunargrdtr)^
which precedes the Atlakvi'Sa in the manuscript.
The form of this, as well as the plot of it, is wonder-
fully different from either of the other two poems.
This is one of the epic or tragic idylls in which a
passage of heroic legend is told dramatically by one
who had a share in it. Here the death of Gunnar is
told by Oddrun his mistress, the sister of Attila.

This form of indirect narration, by giving so great
a dramatic value to the person of the narrator, before
the beginning of her story, of course tends to de-
preciate or to exclude the vivid dramatic scenes that
1 See pp. 150-156 below.

io8 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

are common everywhere else in the Northern poems.
The character of the speaker leaves too little inde-
pendence to the other characters. But in none of the
poems is the tragic plot more strongly drawn out than
in the seventy Hnes of Oddrun's story to Borgny.

The father of Oddrun, Brynhild, and Attila had
destined Oddrun to be the bride of Gunnar, but it
was Brynhild that he married. Then came the anger
of Brynhild against Sigurd, the death of Sigurd, the.
death of Brynhild that is renowned over all the world.
Gunnar sought the hand of Oddrun from her brother
Attila, but Attila would not accept the price of the
bride from the son of Giuki. The love of Oddrun
was given to Gunnar. " I gave my love to Gunnar
as Brynhild should have loved him. We could not
withstand our love : I kept troth with Gunnar."
The lovers were betrayed to Attila, who would not
believe the accusation against his sister ; " yet no
man should pledge his honour fcr the innocence of
another, when it is a matter of love." At last he was
persuaded, and laid a plot to take vengeance on
the Niblungs; Gudrun knew nothing of what was
intended.

The death of Gunnar and Hogni is told in five-
and-twenty lines : —

There was din of the hoofs of gold when the sons of
Giuki rode into the Court. The heart was cut out of
the body of Hogni ; his brother they set in the pit of
snakes. The wise king smote on his harp, for he thought
that I should come to his help. Howbeit I was gone
to the banquet at the house of Geirmund. From Hlessey
I heard how the strings rang loud. I called to my hand-
maidens to rise and go ; I sought to save the life of the
prince ; we sailed across the sound, till we saw the halls
of Attila. But the accursed serpent crept to the heart
of Gunnar, so that I might not save the life of the king.

SECT. II IDYLLS OF THE HEROINES 109

Full oft I wonder how I keep my life after him, for I
thought I loved him like myself.

Thou hast sat and listened while I have told thee
many evils of my lot and theirs. The life of a man is
as his thoughts are.

The Lamentation of Oddrun is finished.

The Bajn^tsmdl, the poem of the death of Erman-
aric, is one that, in its proportions, is not unlike the
Atlakvi^a : the plot has been already described
(pp. 70-71). The poem of 130 lines as it stands has
suffered a good deal. This also is like the story of
Hengest and the story of Gudrun in the way the
action is proportioned. It began with the slaying of
Swanhild, the wrong to Gudrun — this part is lost.
It goes on to the speech of Gudrun to her sons, Sorli
and Hamther, and their expedition to the hall of the
Goth ; it ends with their death. In this case, also,
the action must have begun at once and intelligibly,
as soon as the motive of the Gothic treachery
and cruelty was explained, or even without that
explanation, in the more immediate sense of the
treachery and cruelty, in the story of Swanhild trampled
to death, and of the news brought to Gudrun. Here,
also, there is much less expansion of the story than in
the English poems; everything is surcharged with
meaning.

The Old Lay of Gudrun {Gu'^runarkvi^a in
forna), or the tale of Gudrun to Theodoric, an idyll
like the story of Oddrun, goes quickly over the
event of the killing of Sigurd, and the return of
Grani, masterless. Unlike the Lament of Oddrun,
this monologue of Gudrun introduces dramatic
passages. The meeting of Gudrun and her brother
is not merely told by Gudrun in indirect narration ;
the speeches of Hogni and Gudrun are reported
directly, as they might have been in a poem of the

no TEUTONIC EPIC chap, il

form of Atlakvz'(Sa, or the Lay of Sigurd, or any other
in which the poet tells the story himself, without the
introduction of an imaginary narrator. The main
part of the poem is an account of the way in which
Gudrun's mother, Grimhild, compelled her, by a
potion of forgetfulness, to lose the thought of Sigurd
and of all her woes, and consent to become the wife
of Attila. This part is well prefaced by the quiet
account of the life of Gudrun in her widowhood,
before Grimhild began her schemes ; how Gudrun
lived in the house of Half, with Thora, daughter of
Hakon,in Denmark, and how the ladies spent their time
at the tapestry frame, working pictures of the heroes,
the ships of Sigmund, the ranks of Hunnish warriors.

In the manuscript there are found at the end of
the Old Lay of Gudrun, as if they were part of it,
some verses which have been separated from it by
the editors {C.F.B., i. 347) as a "Fragment of an
Atli Lay." They came from a poem of which the
design, at any rate, was the same as that of the Old
Lay, and Gudrun is the speaker. She tells how,
after the death of Gunnar and Hogni, she was wakened
by Atli, to listen to his evil dreams, foreboding his
doom, and how she interpreted them in a way to
comfort him and put him off his guard.

In English poetry there are instances of stories
introduced dramatically, long before the pilgrimage
to Canterbury. In Beowulf there are various episodes
where a story is told by one of the persons engaged.
Besides the poem of Hengest chanted in Heorot,
there is Beowulf's own narrative of his adventures,
after his return to his own people in the kingdom
of the Gauts, and passages still nearer in form to
the Lament of Oddrun and the Confession of Gudrun
are the last speech of Beowulf before his death
(2426-2537), and the long speech of Wiglaf (2900-

SECT. II IDYLLS OF THE HEROINES m

3027) telling of the enmity of the Gauts and the
Swedes. But those are not filled with dramatic
pathos to the same degree as these Northern Heroides^
the monologues of Oddrun and Gudrun.

The Lay of Gudrun {Gudricnarkvi'6d) which comes
in the manuscript immediately before the Lay of
Sigurd^ is a pure heroic idyll. Unlike most of its
companions, it leaves the details of the Volsung
story very much in neglect, and brings all its force to
bear on the representation of the grief of the queen,
contrasted with the stormy passion of Brynhild. It
is rightly honoured for its pathetic imagination of the
dumb grief of Gudrun, broken up and dissolved when
her sister draws away the covering from the face of
Sigurd. " But fire was kindled in the eyes of Brynhild,
daughter of Budli, when she looked upon his wounds."

The refrain of the poem increases its resemblance
to the form of a Greek idyll. The verse is that of
narrative poetry ; the refrain is not purely Ipical and
does not come in at regular intervals.

The Tregrof Gu'^runar, or Chain of Woe, restored
by the Oxford editors out of the most confused part
of the original text, is pure lamentation, spoken by
Gudrun before her death, recounting all her sorrows :
the bright hair of Swanhild trampled in the mire;
Sigurd slain in his bed, despoiled of victory ; Gunnar
in the court of the serpents ; the heart of Hogni cut
out of his living body — " Saddle thy white steed and
come to me, Sigurd ; remember what we promised to
one another, that thou wouldst come from Hell to seek
me, and I would come to thee from the living world."

The short poem entitled Qvi'^a Gu^ritnar in the
manuscript, the Ordeal of Gudrun in the English
edition, has a simple plot. The subject is the
calumny which was brought against Gudrun by Herkja,
the cast-off mistress of Attila (that "she had seen

112 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

Gudrun and Theodoric together ") and the ordeal of
water by which Gudrun proved her innocence, while
the falsehood was brought home to Herkja, the bond-
woman. The theme is slighter than all the rest, and
this poem, at least, might be reckoned not unfit to be
taken up as a single scene in a long epic.

Some of the Northern poems in the epic measure
are almost wholly made up of dialogue. The story
of BaldeT^s Doom is a dialogue between Odin and the
witch whom he raises from the dead. The earlier
part of the story of Sigurd in the "Elder Edda" is
almost all dialogue, even where the narrative measure
is employed.

There is hardly any mere narrative in the poems
remaining of the cycle of Angantyr. In several other
cases, the writer has only given, perhaps has only
remembered clearly, the dramatic part of the poems
in which he was interested ; the intervals of the story
he fills up with prose. It is difficult to tell where
this want of narrative connexion in the poetry is
original, and where it is due to forgetfulness or
ignorance ; where the prose of the manuscripts is to
be taken as standing in the place of lost narrative
verses, and where it fills a gap that was never intended
to be filled with verse, but was always left to the
reciter, to be supplied in his own way by passages of
story-telling, between his chantings of the poetic
dialogue of Hervor and the Shepherd, for instance,
or of Hervor and Angantyr.

The poems just mentioned are composed in
narrative measure. There are also other dialogue
poems in a measure different from this, and peculiarly
adapted to dialogues, the measure of the gnomic
Hdvamdl and of the didactic mythological poems,
Vaf\rMnismdl^ Alvissmdl, GriinnismdL These pieces
are some distance removed from epic or ballad poetry.

SECT. II DIALOGUES IN GNOMIC VERSE 113

But there are others in this gnomic measure which it
is not easy to keep far apart from such dialogue
poems as Balder s Doom^ though their verse is different.
By their pecuHar verse they are distinguished from
the EngUsh and Saxon heroic poetry ; but they retain,
for all their peculiar metre and their want of direct
narrative, some of the characteristics of Teutonic
epic.

The Lokasenna has a plot, and represents drama-
tically an incident in the history of the gods. The
chief business is Loki's shameless rehearsal of accusa-
tions against the gods, and their helpless rejoinders.
It is a masque of the gods, and not a ballad like the
Winning of Thorns Hammer. It is not, however, a
mere string of " fly tings " without a plot ; there is
some plot and action. It is the absence of Thor
that gives Loki courage to browbeat the gods ; the
return of Thor at the end of the poem avenges the
gods on their accuser.

In the strange poem of the Railing of Thor and
Harbard^ and in a very rough and irregular kind of
verse, there is a similar kind of plot.

The Contention of Atli and Rimgerd the Giantess
is a short comic dialogue, interposed among the frag-
ments of the poem of Helgi Hiorvard's son, and
marked off from them by its use of the dialogue
verse, as well as by its episodic plot.

Helgi Hiorvard's son had killed the giant Hati, and
the giant's daughter comes at night where Helgi's
ships are moored in the firth, and stands on a rock
over them, challenging Helgi and his men. Atli,
keeping watch on deck, answers the giantess, and
there is an exchange of gibes in the old style between
them. Helgi is awakened and joins in the argument.
It is good comedy of its kind, and there is poetry in
the giantess's description of the company of armed

114 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

maidens of the air whom she has seen keeping guard
over Helgi's ships — " three nines of maids, but one
rode foremost, a white maid, enhelmed. Their rear-
ing horses shook dew from their manes into the deep
dales, and hail upon the lofty woods ; thence come
fair seasons among men. But the whole sight was
hateful to me " {C.F.B., i. p. 154).

The giantess is kept there by the gibes of Atli till
the daybreak. " Look eastward, now, Rimgerd ! "
And the giantess is turned into stone, a great harbour
mark, to be laughed at.

In some other poems there is much more action,
and much more need for an interpreter to act as
chorus in the intervals between the dialogues. The
story of the wooing of Gerd is in this form : how
Frey sat in the seat of Odin and saw a fair maid in
Jotunheim, and got great sickness of thought, till his
swain Skirnir found the cause of his languishing, and
went to woo Gerd for him in Gymi's Garth. Another
love-story, and a story not unlike that of Frey and
Gerd, is contained in two poems Grbgaldr and
Fiolsvinnsjndl, that tell of the winning of Menglad by
her destined lover.

These two latter poems are not in Codex Regius^
and it was only gradually that their relation to one
another was worked out, chiefly by means of the
Danish ballad which contains the story of both to-
gether in the right order.

In the first, Svipdag the hero comes to his mother's
grave to call on her for counsel. He has been laid
under a mysterious charge, to go on a quest which he
cannot understand, " to find out Menglad," and
Menglad he has never heard of, and does not know
where she is to be found.

The second poem, also in dialogue, and in the
dialogue measure, gives the coming of Svipdag to the

SECT. II DIALOGUES IN GNOMIC VERSE 115

mysterious castle, and his debate with the giant who
keeps the gate. For Menglad is the princess whose
story is told everywhere, and under a thousand names,
— the lady of a strange country, kept under a spell in
a witch's castle till the deliverer comes. The wooing
of Gerd out of Jotunheim is another version of the
same story, which in different forms is one of the
oldest and most universal everywhere, — the fairy
story of the princess beyond the sea.

The second dialogue is very much encumbered
by the pedantries of the giant who keeps the gate ; it
ends, however, in the recognition of Svipdag and
Menglad. Menglad says : " Long have I sat waiting
for thee, many a day ; but now is that befallen that
I have sought for, and thou art come to my bower.
Great was the sorrow of my waiting ; great was thine,
waiting for the gladness of love. Now it is very truth
for us : the days of our life shall not be sundered."

The same form is used in the older poems of
Sigurd, those that come before the hiatus of the great
manuscript, and have been gathered together in the
Oxford edition under the title of the Old Play of the
Wolsungs. They touch briefly on all the chief points
of the story of the Niblung hoard, from the capture
and ransom of Andvari to the winning of the warrior
maiden Sigrdrifa by Sigurd.

All these last-mentioned dialogue poems, in spite
of their lyric or elegiac measure, are like the narrative
poems in their dependence upon traditional, mythic,
or heroic stories, from which they choose their
themes. They are not like the lyrical heroic poems
of Widsith and Deor in Anglo-Saxon literature, which
survey a large tract of heroic legend from a point of
vantage. Something of this sort is done by some of
the Norse dialogue poems, Vaf\ru'^nismdl^ etc., but
in the poems of Frey and Gerd, of Svipdag and

Ii6 TEUTONIC EPIC

CHAP. II

Menglad, and of the Niblung treasure, though this
reflective and comparative method occasionally makes
itself evident, the interest is that of the story. They
have a story to represent, just as much as the narrative
poems, though they are debarred from the use of
narrative.

It must be confessed that there is an easily
detected ambiguity in the use of the term epic in
application to the poems, whether German, English,
or Northern, here reviewed. That they are heroic
poems cannot be questioned, but that they are epic
in any save the most general sense of the term is not
quite clear. They may be epic in character, in a
general way, but how many of them have a claim to
the title in its eminent and special sense ? Most of
them are short poems; most of them seem to be
wanting in the breadth of treatment, in the amplitude
of substance, that are proper to epic poetry.

Beowulf, it may be admitted, is epic in the sense
that distinguishes between the longer narrative poem
and the shorter ballad. The fragments of Waldere
are the fragments of a poem that is not cramped
for room, and that moves easily and with sufficient
eloquence in the representation of action. The
narrative of the Maldon poem is not pinched nor
meagre in its proportions. Hardly any of the other
poems, however, can be compared with these in this
respect. These are the most liberal in scale of all the
old Teutonic poems ; the largest epic works of which
we know anything directly. These are the fullest in
composition, the least abstract or elliptical ; and they
still want something of the scale of the Iliad. The
poem of Maldon^ for instance, corresponds not to the
Iliad, but to the action of a single book, such as the
twelfth, with which it has been already compared.

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 1 17

If the story of the EngHsh Waldere, when complete,
was not more elaborate than the extant Latin
Waltharius, it must have come far short of the pro-
portions of Homer. It is a story for a single recita-
tion, like the story of Finnesburh in Beowulf. The
poem of Beowulf rmy have more in it than the story
of Walter and Hildegund, but this advantage would
seem to be gained at the expense of the unity of the
poem. It is lengthened out by a sequel, by the
addition of a new adventure which requires the poet
to make a new start. In the poem of Hildebrand
there is a single tragedy contained in a single scene.
It is briefly rendered, .in a style evidently more
primitive, less expansive and eloquent, than the
style of Beowulf or Waldere. Even if it had been
given in a fuller form, the story would still have been
essentially a short one ; it could not well have been
longer than the poem of Sohrab and Rusiuniy where
the theme is almost the same, while the scale is that
of the classical epic.

If the old English epic poetry falls short of the
Homeric magnitude, it almost equally exceeds the
scale of the Northern heroic poems. If Beowulf and
Waldere seem inadequate in size, the defect will not
be made good out of the Northern lays of Helgi or
Sigfred.

The Northern poems are exceedingly varied in
their plan and disposition, but none of them is long,
and many of them are in the form of dramatic lyric^
with no place for pure narrative at all ; such are the
poems of Frefs Wooing^ of Svipdag and Menglad^
and others, in which there is a definite plot worked
out by means of lyric dialogue. None of them is of
anything like the same scale as Beoivulf which is a com-
plex epic poem, or Byrhtnoth^ which is an episodic
poem liberally dealt with and of considerable length.

ii8 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

The Teutonic poetry presents itself, at a first view,
as the complement of Homer. Here are to be
found many of the things that are wanting at the
beginning of Greek literary history. Here are single
epic lays, or clusters of them, in every form. Here,
in place of the two great poems, rounded and com-
plete, there is the nebulous expanse of heroic tradition,
the outline of an heroic cycle, together with a number
of episodic poems taking their origin from one point
or another of the cycle, according as the different
parts of the story happen to catch the imagination of a
poet. Instead of the Homeric scale of epic there are a
number of brief epic tragedies, the plots of which are
chosen from the multitude of stories current in tradition.

Among these shorter epic poems, if such they may
be called, there are to be distinguished great varieties
of procedure in regard to the amount of action repre-
sented in the poem.

There is one class of poem that represents a
single action with some detail ; there is another that
represents a long and complex story in a summary
and allusive way. The first kind may be called
episodic in the sense that it takes up about the same
quantity of story as might make an act in a play \ or
perhaps, with a little straining of the term, as much
as might serve for one play in a trilogy.

The second kind is not episodic ; it does not seem
fitted for a place in a larger composition. It is a
kind of short and summary epic, taking as large a
province of history as the Iliad or the Odyssey.

Hildebrand^ the Fight at Finnesburh, Waldere^
Byrhtnoth^ the Winning of the Hammer^ Thor's Fish-
ing, the Death of the Niblungs (in any of the Northern
versions), the Death of Ermanaric, might all be
fairly regarded as belonging to the first kind of story;
while the Lay of Weland and the Lay of Brynhild

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 119

cover a much larger extent of story, though not of
actual space, than any of those.

It is not quite easy to find a common measure for
these and for the Homeric poems. One can tell
perhaps from Mr. Arnold's poem of Sohrab and
Rustum how much is wanting to the Lay of Hilde-
brand, and on what scale the story of Hildebrand
might have been told if it had been told in the
Homeric instead of the archaic German manner. The
story of Walter of Aquitaine in the Latin hexameters
of Waltharius takes up 1456 lines. Although the
author of this Latin poem is something short of
Homer, " a little overparted " by the comparison, still
his work is designed on the scale of classical epic,
and gives approximately the right extent of the story
in classical form. But while those stories are com-
paratively short, even in their most expanded forms,
the story of Weland and the story of Helgi each
contains as much as would sufifice for the plot of an
Odyssey^ or more. The Lay of Brynhild is not an
episodic poem of the vengeance and the passion of
Brynhild, though that is the principal theme. It
begins in a summary manner with Sigurd's coming to
the house of the Niblungs, the wedding of Sigurd and
Gudrun, the wooing of Brynhild for Gunnar ; all these
earlier matters are taken up and touched on before
the story comes to the searchings of heart when the
kings are persuaded to kill Sigurd. Then the death
of Sigurd is told of, and the rest of the poem is filled
with the tragedy of Brynhild and Gudrun ; the future
history of Gudrun is spoken of prophetically by
Brynhild before she throws herself on the funeral
pile. Plainly this cannot be considered in the same
sense " episodic " as the poem of Thor's fishing for the
Midgarth snake. The poems of Thor's fishing and
the recovery of the hammer are distinctly fragments

I20 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

of a legendary cycle. The Lay of Brynhild makes
an attempt to complete the whole Volsung story from
beginning to end, while giving special importance to
one particular incident of it, — the passion of Brynhild
after the death of Sigurd. The poems of Attila
and the Lay of the Death of Ermanaric are more
restricted.

It remains true that the great story of the Niblung
tragedy was never told at length in the poetical
measure used for episodes of it, and for the summary
form of the Lay of Brynhild. It should be remem-
bered, however, that a poem of the scale of the
Nibelungenlied^ taking up the whole matter, must go
as far beyond the Homeric limit as the Lay of
Brynhild falls short of it. From one point of view
the shorter episodic poems are more Homeric in
their plots than either the summary epics which
cover the whole ground, as the Lay of Brynhild
attempts to cover it, or the longer works in prose
that begin at the beginning and go on to the end,
like the Volsunga Saga. The Lliad and the Odyssey
are themselves episodic poems ; neither of them has
the reach of the Nibelungenlied. It should not be
forgotten, either, that Aristotle found the Lliad and
the Odyssey rather long. The Teutonic poems are
not to be despised because they have a narrower
orbit than the Lliad. Those among them that
contain matter enough for a single tragedy, and there
are few that have not as much as this in them, may
be considered not to fall far short of the standard
fixed by Aristotle for the right amount of action to be
contained in an heroic poem. They are too hurried,
they are wanting in the classical breadth and ease of
narrative ; but at any rate they are comprehensible,
they observe an epic unity. They do not, like certain
of the endless French poetical histories, remind one

SECT. II SCALE OF THE POEMS 12 1

of the picture of incomprehensible bulk in Aristotle's
Poetics^ the animal 10,000 stadia long.

Thus, though it is natural at first to imagine that
in the old Teutonic poetry one is possessed of such
separate lays or ballads as might be the original
materials of a larger epic, an epic of the Homeric
scale, this impression will hardly remain long after a
closer criticism of the workmanship of the poems.
Very few of them correspond in the amount of their
story to the episodes of the Homeric poems. Many
of them contain in a short space the matter of stories
more complicated, more tragical, than the story of
Achilles. Most of them by their unity and self-con-
sistency make it difficult to think of them as absorbed
in a longer epic. This is the case not only with
those that take in a whole history, like the Lay of
Brynhild^ but also with those whose plot is compara-
tively simple, like Hildebrand or Waldere. It is
possible to think of the story of Walter and Hildegund
as forming part of a larger story of the fortunes of the
Huns. It has this subordinate place in the Thidreks
Saga. But it is not easy to believe that in such a
case it preserves its value. Thidreks Saga is not an
epic, though it is made by an agglutination of ballads.
In like manner the tragedy of Hildebrand gains by its
isolation from the stories of the other chiefs, Theodoric
and Odoacer. The stories of Walter and of Hildebrand,
like the story of Hamlet the Dane, are too strong in
themselves to form part of a larger composition, with-
out detriment to its unity and harmony. They might
be brought in allusively and in a subordinate way,
like the story of Thebes and other stories in the IIiad\
but that is not the same thing as making an epic
poem out of separate lays. So that on all grounds
the first impression of the Teutonic epic poetry has
to be modified. If ever epic poetry was made by a

122 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

conglomeration of ballads, it must have had other
kinds of material than this. Some of the poems
are episodic; others are rather to be described as
abridgments of epic than as separate epic scenes.
But neither in the one case nor in the other is there
to be found the kind of poetry that is required by the
hypothesis of composite epic. There are short epics
that might conceivably have served as the framework,
or the ground-plan, of a more elaborate work, con-
taining, like the Lay of Helgi or the Lay of Brynhild^
incidents enough and hints of character enough for a
history fully worked out, as large as the Homeric
poems. If it should be asked why there is so Httle
evidence of any Teutonic attempt to weave together
separate lays into an epic work, the answer might be,
first, that the separate lays we know are too much
separate and individual, too strong in themselves, to
be satisfactorily cobbled into a more expansive fabric ;
and, secondly, that it has not yet been proved that
epic poems can be made by process of cobbling. The
need of a comprehensive epic of the Niblungs was not
imperative. Neither was there any demand in Athens,
in the time of Sophocles and Euripides, for a compre-
hensive work — a Tkebaid, a Roman de Thebes — to
include the plots of all the tragedies of the house of
Cadmus. It was not a poet, but a prose journeyman,
who did this sort of work in the North, and it was
not till the old school of poetry had passed away that
the composite prose history of the Volsungs and
Niblungs, of Sigmund and Sinfiotli, Sigurd, Brynhild,
Gudrun, and Atli, was put together out of the old
poems. The old lays. Northern and Western, what-
ever their value, have all strong individual characters
of their own, and do not easily submit to be regarded
as merely the unused materials, waiting for an epic
composer who never was born.

Ill

EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY

The ballads of a later age have many points of like-
ness to such poems as Hildebrand^ Finnesburh^
Maldon, and the poems of the Northern collection.
The two orders of poetry are, however, not to be con-
founded. Their affinity indeed is clear. But the
older poems in alliterative verse have a character not
possessed by the ballads which followed them, and
which often repeated the same stories in the later
Middle Ages. Even the simplest of the older poems,
which is the Lay of Htldebrand, is distinguished by
evident signs of dignity from even the most ambitious
of the rhyming ballads in any of the tongues. Its
rhetoric is of a different order.

This is not a question of preferences, but of dis-
tinction of kinds. The claim of an epic or heroic
rank for the older poems need not be forced into
a denial of all the other excellences of the rhyming
ballads.

Ballad, as the term is commonly used, implies a
certain degree of simplicity, and an absence of high
poetical ambition. Ballads are for the market-place
and the " blind crowder," or for the rustic chorus
that sings the ballad burden. The wonderful poetical
beauty of some of the popular ballads of Scotland and
123

124 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

Denmark, not to speak of other lands, is a kind of
beauty that is never attained by the great poetical
artists ; an unconscious grace. The ballads of the
Scottish Border, from their first invention to the
publication of the Border Minstrelsy^ lie far away from
the great streams of poetical inspiration. They have
little or nothing to do with the triumphs of the poets ;
the " progress of poesy " leaves them untouched ;
they learn neither from Milton nor from Pope, but
keep a life of theirown that has its sources far remote
in the past, in quite another tradition of art than that
to which the great authors and their works belong.

The Teutonic epic poems, the Northern poems at
any rate, are ballads in respect of their management
of the plots. The scale of them is not to be dis-
tinguished from the scale of a ballad : the ballads
have the same way of indicating and alluding to things
and events without direct narrative, without continuity,
going rapidly from critical point to point, in their
survey of the fable.

But there is this great difference, that the style of
the earlier epics is ambitious and self-conscious, an
aristocratic and accomplished style. The ballads of
Clerk Saufiders or Sir Patrick Spens tell about things
that have been generally forgotten, in the great houses
of the country, by the great people who have other
things to think about, and, if they take to literature,
other models of style. The lay of the fight at
Finnesburh, the lays of the death of Attila, were in
their time the poems of the king's or the earl's hall ;
they were at the height of literary accomplishment in
their generation, and their style displays the con-
sciousness of rank. The ballads never had anything
like the honour that was given to the older lays.

The difference between epic and ballad style
comes out most obviously when, as frequently has

SECT. Ill EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY 125

happened, in Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroes, the
poems of the old school have been translated from
their epic verse into the " eights and sixes " or some
other favourite measure of the common ballads. This
has been the case, for instance, with the poem of
Thor's Hammer, and the poem of the journey of
Svipdag in search of Menglad. In other cases, as in
that of the return of Helgi from the dead, it is less
certain, though it is probable, that there is a direct
relation between the two kinds of poetry, between the
old Northern poem of Helgi and the Danish ballad
of Sir Aage which has the same story to tell ; but a
comparison of the two styles, in a case like this, is
none the less possible and justifiable.

The poems in the older form and diction, however
remote they may be from modern fashions, assert
themselves unmistakably to be of an aristocratic and
not a popular tradition. The ballads have many
things in common with the other poems, but they
have lost the grand style, and the pride and solemnity
of language. One thing they have retained almost
invariably. Ballad poetry may be trusted to preserve
the sense of the tragic situation. If some ballads are
less strong than others in their rendering of a tradi-
tional story, their failure is not peculiar to that kind
of composition. Not every ballad-singer, and not
every tragic poet, has the same success in the develop-
ment of his fable. As a rule, however, it holds good
that the ballads are sound in their conception of a
story ; if some are constitutionally weak or unshapely,
and others have suffered from the infirmity of reciters
and transcribers, these accidents are not to be counted
against the class of poetry to which they belong.
Yet, however well the ballads may give the story,
they cannot give it with the power of epic ; and that
this power belongs to the older kind of verse, the

126 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

verse of the Lay of Brynhild^ may be proved with all
the demonstration that this kind of argument allows.
It is open to any one to say that the grand style is
less attractive than the charm of the ballad burdens,
that the airy music of the ballads is more appealing
and more mysterious than all the eloquence of heroic
poetry ; but that does not touch the question. The
rhetoric of the older poems merely claims to be
acknowledged for what it is worth.

The Danish ballad of Ungen Sveidal^ "Child
Sveidal," ^ does not spoil the ancient story which
had been given in the older language and older
verse of Svipdag and Menglad. But there are
different ways of describing how the adventurer
comes to the dark tower to rescue the unknown
maiden. The ballad uses the common ballad forms,
the common easy rhymes and assonances : —

Out they cast their anchor

All on the white sea sand,
And who was that but the Child Sveidal

Was first upon the land ?

His heart is sore with deadly pain

For her that he never saw,
His name is the Child Sveidal ;

So the story goes.

This sort of story need not be despised, and it is
peculiarly valuable when it appears in the middle of
one of the least refreshing seasons of literature, like
this ballad in the age of the Lutheran Reformation in
Denmark. In such an age and among theological
tracts and controversies, the simple ballad measures
may bring relief from oppression and desolation ;
and call for thanks to the Danish ladies by whose
care this ballad and so many others were written

^ Grundtvig, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No. 70, See above,
p. 114.

SECT. Ill EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY 127

down. But gratitude need not conceal the truth,
that the style of the ballad is unlike the style of an
heroic poem. The older poem from which Child
Sveidal is derived may have left many poetical
opportunities unemployed; it comes short in many
things, and makes up for them by mythological
irrelevances. But it is composed in a style of which
it is impossible to mistake the gravity ; it has all the
advantage of established forms that have been tested
and are able to bear the weight of the poetical
matter. There is a vast difference between the
simplicity of the ballad and the stately measure and
rhetorical pomp of the original : —

Svipdag is my name ; Sunbright was my Father's name :
The winds have driven me far, along cold ways ;

No one can gainsay the word of Fate,

Though it be spoken to his own destruction.

The difference is as great as the difference between
the ballad of the Marriage of Gawayne and the same
story as told in the Canterbury Tales \ or the
difference between Homer's way of describing the
recovery of lifted cattle and the ballad oi Jamie Telfer
of the Fair Dodheid.

It happens fortunately that one of the Danish
ballads, Sivard og Brynild, which tells of the death
of Sigurd {Danmarks gamle Folkeviser^ No. 3), is one
of the best of the ballads, in all the virtues of that
style, so that a comparison with the Lay of Brynhild^
one of the best poems of the old collection, is not
unfair to either of them.

The ballad of Sivard^ like the Lay of Brynhild^
includes much more than an episode; it is a
complete tragic poem, indicating all the chief points
of the story. The tragic idea is different from that
of any of the other versions of the Volsung story, but
quite as distinct and strong as any.

128 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

SIVARD

{O the King^s Sons of Denmark I)

Sivard has a horse that is fleet, and he has stolen
Brynild from the Mountain of Glass, all by the light of
day. From the Mountain of Glass he has stolen proud
Brynild, and given her to Hagen, his brother-in-arms.
Brynild and Signild went to the river shore to wash their
silken gowns. " Signild, my sister, where got you the
golden rings on your hand ? " — " The gold rings on my
hand I got from Sivard, my own true love ; they are his
pledge of troth : and you are given to Hagen." When
Brynild heard this she went into the upper room and
lay there sick : there she lay sick and Hagen came to
her. "Tell me, maiden Brynild, my own true love,
what is there in the world to heal you ; tell me, and I
will bring it, though it cost all the world's red gold."
— " Nothing in the world you can bring me, unless you
bring me, into my hands, the head of Sivard." — "And
how shall I bring to your hands the head of Sivard ?
There is not the sword in all the world that will bite upon
him : no sword but his own, and that I cannot get." —
" Go to his room, and bid him lend you his sword, for
his honour, and say, ' I have vowed an adventure for
the sake of my true love.' When first he hands you
over his sword, I pray you remember me, in the
Lord God's name." It is Hagen that has swept his
mantle round him, and goes into the upper room to
Sivard. " Here you sit, Sivard, my foster-brother ;
will you lend me your good sword for your honour?
for I have vowed a vow for the sake of my love." —
"And if I lend you my good sword Adelbring, you
will never come in battle where it will fail you. My
good sword Adelbring you may have, indeed, but
keep you well from the tears of blood that are under
the hilt, keep you from the tears of blood that are so

SECT. Ill EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY 129

red.i If they run down upon your fingers, it will be
your death,"

Hagen got the sword, and it was his own sworn
brother he slew there in the room. He took up the
bloody head under his cloak of furs and brought it to
proud Brynild. " Here you have the head for which
you sought ; for the sake of you I have slain my brother
to my undoing." — " Take away the head and let me not
see it ; nor will I pledge you my troth to make you
glad." — *' Never will I pledge troth to you, and nought is
the gladness ; for the sake of you I have slain my
brother ; sorrow is on me, sore and great." It was
Hagen drew his sword and took the proud Brynild and
hewed her asunder. He set the sword against a stone,
and the point was deadly in the King's son's heart. He
set the sword in the black earth, and the point was death
in the King's son's heart. Ill was the day that maiden
was born. For her were spilt the lives of two King's
sons. (O the King's Sons of Denmark /)

This is a consistent tragic story, and it is well
told. It has the peculiar virtue of the ballad, to
make things impressive by the sudden manner in
which they are spoken of and passed by ; in this
abrupt mode of narrative the ballads, as has been
noted already, are not much different from the earlier
poems. The Lay of Brynhild is not much more
diffuse than the ballad of Sivard in what relates to
the slaying of the hero. Both are alike distinct from
the method of Homer ; compared with Homer both
the lays and the ballads are hurried in their action,
over-emphatic, cramped in a narrow space. But when
the style and temper are considered, apart from the
incidents of the story, then it will appear that the
lay belongs to a totally different order of literature

^ Compare the warning of Angantyx to Hervor when he gives
her the sword Tyrfing — " Keep the sword sheathed, the slayer of
Hialmar ; touch not the edges, there is venom upon them " — and
the magic sword Skofnung in Kormaks Saga.

I30 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

from the ballad. The ballad tells of things dimly
discerned by the poet ; king's sons and daughters are
no more to him than they are to the story-tellers
of the market-place — forms of a shadowy grandeur,
different from ordinary people, swayed by strange
motives, not irrationally, nor altogether in a way
beyond the calculation of simple audiences, yet in
ways for which there is no adequate mode of ex-
planation known to the reciter. The ballad keeps
instinctively a right outline for its tragic story, but
to develop the characters is beyond its power. In
the epic Lay of Brynhild^ on the other hand, the poet
is concerned with passions which he feels himself
able to comprehend and to set forth dramatically ;
so that, while the story of the poem is not very much
larger in scale than that of the ballad, the dramatic
speeches are greatly elaborated. Brynhild in the lay
is not a mere tragic symbol, as in the ballad, but a
tragic character. The ballad has the seed of tragedy
in it, but in the lay the seed has sprung up in the
dramatic eloquence of Brynhild's utterances before
her death. The ballad is tragical, but in an abstract
manner. The plot of the slighted woman and her
vengeance, with the remorse of Hagen, is all true,
and not exaggerated in motive. But while the
motives are appreciated, it is not in the power of the
poet to develop the exposition of them, to make them
dramatically characteristic, as well as right in their
general nature. It is just this dramatic ideal which
is the ambition and inspiration of the other poet;
the character of Brynhild has taken possession of his
imagination, and requires to be expressed in character-
istic speech. A whole poetical world is open to the
poet of Brynhild, and to the other poets of the
Northern heroic cycle. They have taken the first
day's journey into the empire of Homer and Shake-

SECT. Ill EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY 131

speare ; the forms of poetry that they employ are
varied and developed by them so as to express as
fully as possible the poetical conception of different
individual characters. It is not easy to leave them
without the impression that their poetry was capable
of infinitely greater progress in this direction ; that
some at least of the poets of the North were " bearers
of the torch " in their generation, not less than the
poets of Provence or France who came after them
and led the imagination of Christendom into another
way. That is, it is possible to think of the poets of
Sigurd and Brynhild as holding among the Northern
nations of the tenth or eleventh century the place that
is held in every generation by some set of authors
who, for the time, are at the head of intellectual and
literary adventure, who hold authority, from Odin or
the Muses, to teach their contemporaries one particular
kind of song, till the time comes when their vogue is
exhausted, and they are succeeded by other masters
and other schools. This commission has been held
by various kinds of author since the beginning of
history, and manifold are the lessons that have been
recommended to the world by their authority ; now
epic, now courtly and idealist lyric, romantic drama,
pedantic tragedy, funeral orations, analytical novels.
They are not all amusing, and not all their prices
are more than the rate of an old song. But they all
have a value as trophies, as monuments of what was
most important in their time, of the things in which
the generations, wise and foolish, have put their trust
and their whole soul. The ballads have not this kind
of importance ; the ballad poets are remote from
the lists where the great champions overthrow one
another, where poet takes the crown from poet. The
ballads, by their very nature, are secluded and apart
from the great literary enterprises; it is the beauty

132 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

of them that they are exempt from the proclamations
and the arguments, the shouting and the tumult,
the dust and heat, that accompany the great literary
triumphs and make epochs for the historians, as in
the day of Cliopatre^ or the day of Hernani. The
ballad has no weight of responsibility upon it ; it does
not carry the intellectual light of its century; its
authors are easily satisfied. In the various examples
of the Teutonic aUiterative poetry there is recognisable
the effort and anxiety of poets who are not content
with old forms, who have a poetical vocation to go
on and find out new forms, who are on the search
for the " one grace above the rest," by which all the
chief poets are led. The remains of this poetry are
so many experiments, which, in whatever respects they
may have failed, yet show the work and energy of
authors who are proud of their art, as well as the
dignity of men who are familiar with greatness and
great actions : in both which respects they differ from
the ballad poets. The spell of the popular story,
the popular ballad, is not quite the same as theirs.
Theirs is more commanding ; they are nearer to the
strenuous life of the world than are the simple people
who remember, over their fires of peat, the ancient
stories of the wanderings of kings' sons. They have
outgrown the stage of life for which the fables and
old wives' tales are all-sufficient ; they have begun to
make a difference between fable and characters ; they
have entered on a way by which the highest poetical
victories are attainable. The poetry of the old lays
of the Volsungs, as compared with popular ballads
and tales, is "weighty and philosophical" — full of
the results of reflection on character. Nor have they
with all this lost the inexplicable magic of popular
poetry, as the poems of Helgi and Sigrun, and of the
daughter of Angantyr, and others, may easily prove.

THE STYLE OF THE POEMS

The style of the poems, in what concerns their verse
and diction, is not less distinctly noble than their
spirit and temper. The alliterative verse, wherever it
is found, declares itself as belonging to an elaborate
poetical tradition. The alliterative line is rhetorically
capable of a great amount of emphasis ; it lends itself
as readily as the " drumming decasyllabon " of the
Elizabethan style to pompous declamation. Parallel-
ism of phrases, the favourite rhetorical device, espe-
cially with the old English poets, is incompatible
with tenuity of style ; while the weight of the verse,
as a rule, prevents the richness of phrasing from
becoming too extravagant and frivolous.^

The style of alliterative verse is not monotonous.
Without reckoning the forms that deviate from the
common epic measure, such as the Northern lyrical
staves, there may be found in it as many varieties
of style as in English blank verse from the days of
Gorboduc onward.

In its oldest common form it may be supposed
that the verse was not distinctly epic or lyric ; lyric
rather than epic, lyric with such amount of epic as
is proper for psalms of triumph, or for the praise of

^ Examples in Appendix, Note A.
133

134 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

a king, the kind of verse that might be used for any
sort of carmina, such as for marking authorship and
ownership on a sword or a horn, for epitaphs or spells,
or for vituperative epigrams.

In England and the Continent the verse was
early adapted for continuous history. The lyrical and
gnomic usages were not abandoned. The poems of
Widsith and Dear's Lament show how the allusive
and lyrical manner of referring to heroic legend was
kept up in England. The general tendency, however,
seems to have favoured a different kind of poetry.
The common form of old English verse is fitted for
narrative. The ideal of the poets is one that would
have the sense "variously drawn out from one verse
to another." When the verse is lyrical in tone, as
in the Dream of the Rood^ or the Wanderer^ the
lyrical passion is commonly that of mourning or
regret, and the expression is elegiac and diffuse, not
abrupt or varied. The verse, whether narrative or
elegiac, runs in rhythmical periods ; the sense is not
" concluded in the couplet." The lines are mortised
into one another ; by preference, the sentences begin
in the middle of a line. The parallelism of the old
poetry, and its wealth of paraphrase, encourage de-
liberation in the sentences, though they are often
interrupted by a short sentence, generally introduced
to point a moral.

The old Norse poetry, with many likenesses to
the old English, had a different taste in rhetorical
syntax. Instead of the long-drawn phrases of the
English poetry, and an arrangement of sentences by
which the metrical limits of the line were generally
disguised, the Norse alliterative poetry adopted a
mode of speech that allowed the line to ring out
clearly, and gave full force to the natural emphasis
of the rhythm.

SECT. IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS 135

These two opposite rhetorical tendencies are illus-
trated also by the several variations upon the common
rhythm that found favour in one region and the
other. Where an English or a German alliterative
poet wishes to vary from the common metre, he uses
the lengthened line, an expansion of the simple line,
which, from its volume, is less suitable for pointed
expression, and more capable of pathos or solemnity,
than the ordinary form of verse. The long line of
the Saxon and English poets is not used in the Norse
poetry ; there the favourite verse, where the ordinary
narrative line is discarded, is in the form of gnomic
couplets, in which, as in the classical elegiac measure,
a full line is succeeded by a truncated or broken
rhythm, and with the same effect of cHnching the
meaning of the first line as is commonly given by
the Greek or Latin pentameter. Of this favourite
Northern measure there are only one or two casual
and sporadic instances in English poetry ; in the
short dramatic lyric of the Exeter Book, interpreted
so ingeniously by Mr. Bradley and Mr. Gollancz, and
in the gnomic verses of the same collection.

This difference of taste goes very far to explain
the difference between English and Norse epic; to
appreciate the difference of style is to understand the
history of the early poetry. It was natural that the
more equable form of the English and the Continental
German narrative poetry should prove itself fit for
extended and continuous epic narrative; it was in-
evitable that the Norse intolerance of tame expression,
and of everything unimpassioned or unemphatic,
should prevent the growth of any of the larger and
slower kinds of poetry.

The triumphs of alliterative poetry in the first or
English kind are the long swelling passages of
tragic monologue, of which the greatest is in the

136 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, il

Saxon Genesis^ — the speech of Satan after the fall from
heaven. The best of the Northern poetry is all but
lyrical ; the poem of the Sibyl, the poems of Sigrun,
Gudrun, Hervor.

The nature of the two forms of poetry is revealed
in their respective manners of going wrong. The
decline of the old English poetry is shown by an
increase of diffuseness and insipidity. The old
Norse poetry was attacked by an evil of a different
sort, the malady of false wit and over-decoration.
The English poetry, when it loses strength and
self-control, is prone to monotonous lamentation ;
the Norse poetry is tempted to overload itself with
conceits.

In the one there is excess of sentiment, in the
other the contrary vice of frigidity, and a premeditated
and ostentatious use of figurative expressions.

The poem of Beowulf has known the insidious
approach and temptation of diffuse poetic melancholy.
The Northern poems are corrupted by the vanity of
metaphor. To evade the right term for everything
has been the aim of many poetic schools ; it has
seldom been attained more effectually than in the
poetry of the Norwegian tongue.

Periphrastic epithets are part of the original and
common stock of the Teutonic poetry. They form
a large part of the vocabulary of common phrases
which bear witness to the affinity existing among
the remains of this poetry in all the dialects.^

But this common device was differently applied
in the end, by the two literatures, English and
Icelandic, in which the old forms of verse held their

^ Compare the index to Sievers's edition of the Heliand for
illustrations of this community of poetical diction in old Saxon,
English, Norse, and High German ; and J. Grimm, Andreas und
Elene (1840), pp. xxv.-xliv.

SECT. IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS 137

ground longest against the rhyming forms. The
tendency in England was to make use of the well-
worn epithets, to ply the Gradus : the duller kind
of Anglo-Saxon poetry is put together as Latin
verses are made in school, — an old - fashioned
metaphor is all the more esteemed for its age. The
poets, and presumably their hearers, are best content
with familiar phrases. In Iceland, on the other
hand, there was an impatience of the old vocabulary,
and a curiosity and search for new figures, that in
the complexity and absurdity of its results is not
approached by any school of "false wit" in the
whole range of literature.

Already in the older forms of Northern poetry it
is plain that there is a tendency to lyrical emphasis
which is unfavourable to the chances of long
narrative in verse. Very early, also, there are
symptoms of the familiar literary plague, the corrup-
tion of metaphor. Both these tendencies have
for their result the new school of poetry peculiar to
the North and the courts of the Northern kings and
earls, — the Court poetry, or poetry of the Scalds, which
in its rise and progress involved the failure of true epic.
The German and English epic failed by exhaustion
in the competition with Latin and Romance literature,
though not without something to boast of before it
went under. The Northern epic failed, because of
the premature development of lyrical forms, first
of all within itself, and then in the independent and
rival modes of the Scaldic poetry.

The Scaldic poetry, though later in kind than the
poems of Codex Regms^ is at least as old as the
tenth century ; - the latest of the epic poems,
Atlamdl (the Greenland poem of Attila), and others,

^ See Bidrag til den celdste Skaldedigtnings Historic, by Dr.
Sophus Bugge (1894).

138 TEUTONIC EPIC chap. 11

show marks of the influence of Court poetry, and
are considerably later in date than the earliest of
the Scalds.

The Court poetry is lyric, not epic. The aim 01
the Court poets was not the narrative or the dramatic
presentation of the greater heroic legends ; it was
the elaborate decoration of commonplace themes,
such as the praise of a king, by every possible artifice
of rhyme and alliteration, of hard and exact con-
struction of verse, and, above all, of far-sought
metaphorical allusions. In this kind of work, in
the praise of kings alive or dead, the poet was com-
pelled to betake himself to mythology and mythical
history, like the learned poets of other nations with
their mythology of Olympus. In the mythology of
Asgard were contained the stores of precious names
and epithets by means of which the poems might be
made to glitter and blaze. ^ It was for the sake of
poets like these that Snorri wrote his Edda^ and
explained the mythical references available for the
modern poetry of his time, though fortunately his
spirit and talent were not limited to this didactic end,
nor to the pedantries and deadly brilliance of fashion-
able verse. By the time of Snorri the older kind
of poetry had become very much what Chaucer was
to the Elizabethan sonneteers, or Spenser to the
contemporaries of Pope. It was regarded with
some amount of honour, and some condescension,
but it had ceased to be the right kind of poetry
for a " courtly maker."

The Northern poetry appears to have run through
some of the same stages as the poetry of Greece,
though with insufficient results in most of them.
The epic poetry is incomplete, with all its nobility.

1 Compare C.P.B., ii. 447, Excursus on the Figures and
Metaphors of old Northern Poetry.

SECT. IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS 139

The best things of the old poetry are dramatic —
lyrical monologues, ' like the song of the Sibyl, and
Gudrun's story to Theodoric, or dialogues like those
of Helgi and Sigrun, Hervor and Angantyr. Before
any adequate large rendering had been accorded to
those tragic histories, the Northern poetry, in its
impatience of length, had discovered the idyllic mode
of expression and the dramatic monologue, in which
there was no excuse for weakness and tameness,
and, on the contrary, great temptation to excess in
emphatic and figurative language. Instead of taking
a larger scene and a more complex and longer story,
the poets seem to have been drawn more and more
to cut short the story and to intensify the lyrical
passion of their dialogue or monologue. Almost as
if they had known the horror of infinite flatness
that is all about the hterature of the Middle Ages, as
if there had fallen upon them, in that Aleian plain,
the shadow of the enormous beast out of Aristotle's
Poetics^ they chose to renounce all superfluity, and
throw away the make-shift wedges and supports by
which an epic is held up. In this way they did
great things, and Volospd (the Sibyl's Prophecy) is
their reward. To write out in full the story of the
Volsungs and Niblungs was left to the prose
compilers of the Volsunga Saga, and to the Austrian
poet of the Nibelu?igenlied.

The Volospd is as far removed from the courtly
odes and their manner and ingenuity as the Mariiage
Hymn of Catullus from the Coma Berenices. The
Volospd, however, has this in common with the
mechanical odes, that equally with these it stands
apart from epic, that equally with these it fuses epic
material into an alien form. The sublimity of this
great poem of the Doom is not like the majesty
or strength of epic. The voice is not the voice of a

I40 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

teller of stories. And it is here, not in true epic
verse, that the Northern poetry attains its height.

It is no ignoble form of poetry that is represented
by the SibyFs Song and the Lamefit of Gudrun. But
it was not enough for the ambition of the poets.
They preferred the composition of correct and
elaborate poems in honour of great men, with much
expenditure of mythology and without passion ; ^
one of the forms of poetry which may be truly said
to leave nothing to be desired, the most artificial
and mechanical poetry in the world, except possibly
the closely-related kinds in the traditional elaborate
verse of Ireland or of Wales.

It was still possible to use this modern and
difficult rhetoric, occasionally, for subjects like those
of the freer epic ; to choose a subject from heroic
tradition and render it in the fashionable style.
The Death- Song of Ragnar Lodbrok ^ is the chief of
those secondary dramatic idylls. It is marked off by
difference of verse, for one thing, from the Hani^ismdl
and the Atlakvt'6a ; and, besides this, it has the
characteristic of imitative and conventional heroic
literature — the unpersuasive and unconvincing force
of the heroic romance, the rhetoric of Almanzor.
The end of the poem is fine, but it does not ring
quite true : —

The gods will welcome me ; there is nothing to bewail
in death. I am ready to go ; they are calling me home,
the maidens whom Odin has sent to call me. With
gladness will I drink the ale, set high among the gods.
The hours of life are gone over ; laughing will I die.

It is not like the end of the sons of Gudrun ; it
is not of the same kind as the last words of Sorli,

^ These may be found in the second volume of the Corpus
Poeticum Boreale. ^ C.P.B., ii. 339.

SECT. IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS 141

which are simpler, and infinitely more imaginative
and true : —

We have fought ; if we die to-day, if we die to-morrow,
there is little to choose. No man may speak when once
the Fates have spoken {Ham^ismdl^ s.f.).

It is natural that the Song of Ragnar Lodbrok
should be appreciated by modern authors. It is one
of the documents responsible for the conventional
Valkyria and Valhalla of the Romantic School, and
for other stage properties, no longer new. The poem
itself is in spirit rather more nearly related to the
work of Tegn^r or Oehlenschlager than to the Volospd.
It is a secondary and literary version, a "romantic"
version of ideas and images belonging to a past time,
and studied by an antiquarian poet with an eye for
historical subjects.^

The progress of epic was not at an end in the
rise of the new Court poetry that sounded sweeter in
the ears of mortals than the old poems of Sigurd and
Brynhild. The conceits and the hard correctness of
the Scalds did not satisfy all the curiosity or the
imaginative appetite of their patrons. There still re-
mained a desire for epic, or at least for a larger and
freer kind of historical discourse. This was satisfied
by the prose histories of the great men of Iceland, of
the kings of Norway and the lords of the Isles;
histories the nearest to true epic of all that have
ever been spoken without verse. That the chief of
all the masters of this art should have been Snorri
Sturluson, the exponent and practitioner of the
mystery of the Court poets, is among the pleasantest
of historical paradoxes.

The development of the Court poetry to all

^ Translated in Percy's Runic Poetry (1763), p. 27, and often
since.

142 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ir

extremes of " false wit," and of glaring pretence and
artificiality of style, makes the contrast all the more
vivid between its brocaded stiffness and the ease
and freedom of the Sagas. But even apart from the
Court poetry, it is clear that there was little chance
for any development of the Northern heroic poetry
into an Homeric fulness of detail. In the Norse
poetry, as in Greek, the primitive forms of heroic
dirges or hymns give place to narrative poetry ; and
that again is succeeded by a new kind of lyric, in
which the ancient themes of the Lament and the
Song of Praise zxt. adorned with the new ideas and
the new diction of poets who have come to study
novelty, and have entered, though with far other arms
and accoutrements, on the same course as the Greek
lyric authors of dithyrambs and panegyrical odes.
In this progress of poetry from the unknown older
songs, like those of which Tacitus speaks, to the epic
form as it is preserved in the " Elder Edda," and
from the epic form to the lyrical form of the Scalds,
the second stage is incomplete ; the epic form is
uncertain and half-developed. The rise of the Court
poetry is the most obvious explanation of this failure.
The Court poetry, with all its faults, is a completed
form which had its day of glory, and even rather
more than its share of good fortune. It is the
characteristic and successful kind of poetry in
Iceland and Norway, just as other kinds of elaborate
lyric were cultivated, to the depreciation of epic, in
Provence and in Italy. It was to the Court poet
that the prizes were given ; the epic form was put
out of favour, generations before the fragments of it
were gathered together and preserved by the collector
from whose books they have descended to the extant
manuscripts and the editions of the " Elder Edda."
But at the same time it may be represented that

SECT. IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS 143

the Court poetry was as much effect as cause of the
depreciation of epic. The lyrical strain declared
itself in the Northern epic poetry too strongly for
any such epic work as either Beowulf or the Heliand.
The bent was given too early, and there was no
recovery possible. The Court poetry, in its rhetori-
cal brilliance and its allusive phrases, as well as in the
hardness and correctness of its verse, is carrying out
to completion certain tastes and principles whose
influence is manifest throughout the other orders of
old Northern poetry ; and there is no need to go to
the Court poetry to explain the difference between
the history of Northern and of English alliterative
verse, though it is by means of the Court poetry that
this difference may be brought into the strongest
light. The contrast between the English liking for
continuous discourse and the Norse liking for abrupt
emphasis is already to be discerned in the oldest
literary documents of the two nations.

THE PROGRESS OF EPIC
VARIOUS RENDERINGS OF THE SAME STORY

Due (i) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes :

(2) to calculation and selection of motives by the poets,
and intentional modification of traditional matter.

Beowulf^ as the poem stands, is quite a different
sort of thing from the poems in the Copenhagen
manuscript. It is given out by its scribes in all the
glory of a large poem, handsomely furnished with a
prelude, a conclusion, and divisions into several
books. It has the look of a substantial epic poem.
It was evidently regarded as something considerable,
as a work of eminent virtue and respectability. The
Northern poems, treasured and highly valued as they
evidently were, belong to a different fashion. In the
Beowulf of the existing manuscript the fluctuation
and variation of the older epic tradition has been
controlled by editors who have done their best to
establish a text of the poem. The book has an
appearance of authority. There is little of this in
the Icelandic manuscript. The Northern poems
have evidently been taken as they were found.
Imperfections of tradition, which in Beowulf would
have been glossed over by an editorial process, are
144

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 14S

here left staring at the reader. The English poem
pretends to be a literary work of importance — a
book, in short ; while the Icelandic verses are plainly
gathered from all quarters, and in such a condition
as to defy the best intentions of the editor, who did
his best to understand what he heard, but had no
consistent policy of improvement or alteration, to
correct the accidental errors and discrepancies of the
oral communications.

Further, and apart from the accidents of this
particular book, there is in the poems, even when
they are best preserved, a character of fluctuation
and uncertainty, belonging to an older and less
literary fashion of poetry than that of Beowulf.

Beowulf has been regarded by some as a com-
posite epic poem made out of older and shorter
poems. Codex Regius shows that this hypothesis is
dealing with an undoubted vera causa when it talks
of short lays on heroic subjects, and of the variations
of treatment to be found in different lays on one and
the same theme, and of the possibilities of con-
tamination.

Thus, in considering the story of Beowulfs
descent under water, and the difficulties and contra-
dictions of that story as it stands. Ten Brink has
been led to suppose that the present text is made up
of two independent versions, run together by an
editor in a hazardous way without regard to the
differences in points of detail, which still remain to
the annoyance of the careful reader.

There is no great risk in the assumption that
there were different versions of the fight with
Grendel's mother, which may have been carelessly
put together into one version in spite of their con-
tradictions. In the Codex Regius there are three
different versions of the death of the Niblungs, the

146 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

Atlakvi'6a^ Atlamdl^ and the Lament of Oddrun.
The Lament of Oddrun is vitally different from the
other two poems, and these differ from one another,
with regard to the motive of Atli's feud with Gunnar.
It is possible for the human mind to imagine an
editor, a literary man, capable of blending the poems
in order to make a larger book. This would be
something like the process which Ten Brink has
suspected in the composition of this part of Beowulf
It is one thing, however, to detect the possibility of
such misdemeanours ; and quite another thing to
suppose that it is by methods such as these that the
bulk of the larger epic is swollen beyond the size of
common lays or ballads. It is impossible, at any
rate, by any reduction or analysis of Beowulf to get
rid of its stateliness of narrative ; it would be im-
possible by any fusion or aggregation of the Eddie
lays to get rid of their essential brevity. No accumu-
lation of lays can alter the style from its trick of
detached and abrupt suggestions to the slower and
more equable mode.

That there was a growth of epic among the
Teutonic nations is what is proved by all the docu-
ments. This growth was of the same general kind
as the progress of any of the great forms of literature
— the Drama, the Novel. Successive generations of
men, speaking the same or similar forms of language,
made poetical experiments in a common subject-
manner, trying different ways of putting things, and
changing their forms of poetry according to local and
personal variations of taste ; so that the same story
might be told over and over again, in different times,
with different circumstances.

In one region the taste might be all for com-
pression, for increase of the tension, for suppression
of the tamer intervals in the story. In another it

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 147

might run to greater length and ease, and favour a
gradual explication of the plot.

The " Elder Edda " shows that contamination was
possible. It shows that there might be frequent
independent variations on the same theme, and that,
apart from any editorial work, these versions might
occasionally be shuffled and jumbled by mere acci-
dents of recollection.

Thus there is nothing contrary to the evidence in
the theory that a redactor of Beowulf may have had
before him different versions of different parts of the
poem, corresponding to one another, more or less, as
Atlamdl corresponds to the Atlakvi'<Sa, This hypo-
thesis, however, does not account for the difference
in form betv/een the English and the Northern
poems. No handling of the Atlamdl or the Atla-
kvfQa could produce anything like the appearance of
Beowulf, The contaminating editor may be useful
' as an hypothesis in certain particular cases. But the
heroic poetry got on very well without him, generally
speaking. It grew by a free and natural growth into
a variety of forms, through the ambitions and experi-
ments of poets.

Variety is evident in the poems that lie outside
the Northern group ; Finnesburh is of a different
order from Waldere. It is in the Northern collec-
tion, however, that the variety is most evident.
There the independent versions of the same story
are brought together, side by side. The experiments
of the old school are ranged there \ and the fact that
experiments were made, that the old school was not
satisfied with its conventions, is perhaps the most
legitimate inference, and one of the most significant,
to be made by a reader of the poems.

Variations on similar themes are found in all
popular poetry ; here again the poems of the Edda

148 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

present themselves as akin to ballads. Here again
they are distinguished from ballads by their greater
degree of ambition and self-consciousness. For it
will not do to dismiss the Northern poems on the
Volsung story as a mere set of popular variations on
common themes. The more carefully they are
examined, the less will be the part assigned to
chance and imperfect recollection in producing the
variety of the poems. The variation, where there
are different presentations of the same subject, is not
produced by accident or the casual and faulty repeti-
tion of a conventional type of poem, but by a
poetical ambition for new forms. Codex Regius is an
imperfect monument of a time of poetical energy in
which old forms were displaced by new, and old
subjects refashioned by successive poets. As in the
Athenian or the English drama the story of Oedipus
or of Lear might be taken up by one playwright after
another, so in the North the Northern stories were
made to pass through changes in the minds of
different poets.

The analogy to the Greek and the EngHsh drama
need not be forced. Without any straining of com-
parisons, it may be argued that the relation of the
Atlamdl and Atlakvi^a is like the relation of
Euripides to Aeschylus, and not so much like the
variations of ballad tradition, in this respect, that the
Atlamdl is a careful, deliberate, and somewhat con-
ceited attempt to do better in a new way what has
been done before by an older poet. The idylls of
the heroines, Brynhild, Gudrun, Oddrun, are not
random and unskilled variations ; they are consider-
ate and studied poems, expressing new conceptions
and imaginations.

It is true that this poetry is still, in many respects,
in the condition of popular poetry and popular

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 149

traditional stories. The difference of plot in some
versions of the same subject appears to be due to
the ordinary causes that produce the variants of
popular tales, — defective memory, accidental loss of
one point in the story, and change of emphasis in
another. To causes such as these, to the common
impersonal accidents of tradition, may perhaps be
referred one of the strangest of all the alterations in
the bearing of a story — the variation of plot in the
tradition of the Niblungs.

In the " Elder Edda " the death of the Niblungs
is laid to the charge of Attila; their sister Gudrun
does her best to save them ; when she fails in this,
she takes vengeance for them on her husband.

In the German tradition, as in the version known
to Saxo, in the Nibelungenlied^ in the Danish ballad
of Grimild^s Revenge (which is borrowed from the
German), the lines are laid quite differently. There
it is their sister who brings about the death of the
kings ; it is the wife of Sigfred, of Sigfred whom they
have killed, that exacts vengeance from her brothers
Gunther and Hagene. Attila is here put aside.
Gudrun's slaughter of her children is unrecorded;
there is no motive for it when all her anger is turned
against her brothers. This shifting of the centre of
a story is not easy to explain. But, whatever the
explanation may be, it seems probable that it lies
somewhere within the range of popular tradition,
that the change is due to some of the common
causes of the transformation of stories, and not to
a definite and calculated poetical modification. The
tragical complications are so many in the story of
the Niblungs that there could not fail to be variations
in the traditional interpretation of motives, even
without the assistance of the poets and their new
readings of character.

150 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

In some of the literary documents there may be
found two kinds of variation from an original form of
story, — variation due to those popular and indefinite
causes, the variation of failing memory, on the one
hand; and on the other, variation due to the ambi-
tion or conceit of an author with ideas of his own.

A comparison of the Atlakvi'6a^ the Atlamdl^ and
the Lamentation of Oddrun may at first suggest that
we have here to deal with just such variants as are
common wherever stories are handed on by oral
tradition. Further consideration will more and more
reduce the part allotted to oral maltreatment, and
increase the part of intentional and artistic modifica-
tion, in the variations of story to be found in these
poems.

All three poems are agreed in their ignorance of
the variation which makes the wife of Sigfred into
the avenger of his death. In all three it is Attila
who brings about the death of the brothers of
Gudrun.

It seems to have been a constant part of the
traditional story, as known to the authors of these
three poems, that Attila, when he had the brothers
of Gudrun in his power, gave order to cut out the
heart of Hogni, and thereafter to throw Gunnar into
the serpents' den.

The Atlakvi'Qa presents an intelligible explanation
of this ; the other two poems leave this part of the
action rather vague.

In the Atlakvi'6a the motive of Attila's original
hatred is left at first unexplained, but comes out
in the circumstances of the death of the Niblungs.
When the Burgundian kings are seized and bound,
they are called upon to buy themselves off with
gold. It is understood in Gunnar's reply, that the
gold of the Niblung treasure is what is sought for.

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 151

He asks that the heart of Hogni may be brought
to him. They bring him, instead, the heart of
HiaUi, which Gunnar detects at once as the heart
of a coward. Then at last the heart of Hogni is cut
out and brought to Gunnar ; and then he defies the
Huns, and keeps his secret.

Now is the hoard of the Niblungs all in my keeping
alone, for Hogni is dead : there was doubt while we two
lived, but now there is doubt no more. Rhine shall
bear rule over the gold of jealousy, the eager river over
the Niblung's heritage ; the goodly rings shall gleam in
the whirling water, they shall not pass to the children of
the Huns.

Gunnar was thrown among the snakes, and there
he harped upon his harp before his death came on
him. The end of Gunnar is not told explicitly ; the
story goes on to the vengeance of Gudrun.

In the Oddrunargrdtr there is another motive for
Attila's enmity to Gunnar : not the gold of the
Niblungs, but the love that was between Gunnar
and Oddrun (Oddrun was the sister of Attila and
Brynhild). The death of Brynhild is alluded to,
but that is not the chief motive. The gold of the
Niblungs is not mentioned. Still, however, the death
of Hogni precedes the death of Gunnar, — " They cut
out the heart of Hogni, and his brother they set in
the serpents' close." Gunnar played upon his harp
among the serpents, and for a long time escaped
them; but the old serpent came out at last and
crawled to his heart. It is implied that the sound
of his music is a charm for the serpents ; but another
motive is given by Oddrun, as she tells the story :
Gunnar played on his harp for Oddrun, to be heard
by her, so that she could come to help him. But
she came too late.

152 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

It might be inferred from this poem that the
original story of the death of Hogni has been im-
perfectly recollected by the poet who touches lightly
on it and gives no explanation here. It is fairer to
suppose that it was passed over because it was
irrelevant. The poet had chosen for his idyll the love
of Gunnar and Oddrun, a part of the story which is
elsewhere referred to among these poems, namely in the
Long Lay of Brynhild (1. 58). By his choice of this,
and his rendering of it in dramatic monologue, he
debarred himself from any emphatic use of the motive
for Hogni's death. It cannot be inferred from his
explanation of Gunnar's harp-playing that the common
explanation was unknown to him. On the contrary,
it is implied here, just as much as in Atlakvi^a^ that
the serpents are kept from him by the music, until
the old sleepless one gives him his death. But the
poet, while he keeps this incident of the traditional
version, is not particularly interested in it, except as
it affords him a new occasion to return to his main
theme of the love story. Gunnar's music is a message
to Oddrun. This is an imaginative and dramatic
adaptation of old material, not a mere lapse of
memory, not a mere loss of the traditional bearings
of the story.

The third of these poems, the Atlamdl^ is in some
respects the most remarkable of them all. In its
plot it has more than the others, at the first reading,
the appearance of a faulty recollection ; for, while it
makes a good deal of play with the circumstances of
the death of Hogni, it misses, or appears to miss, the
point of the story ; the motive of Gunnar, which is
evident and satisfactory in the Atlakvi'6a, is here
suppressed or dropped. The gold of the Niblungs
is not in the story at all ; the motive of Attila appears
to be anger at the death of his sister Brynhild,

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 153

Gunnar's wife, but his motive is not much dwelt on.
It is as if the author had forgotten the run of events,
like a blundering minstrel.

On the other hand, the poem in its style is further
from all the manners of popular poetry, more affected
and rhetorical, than any of the other pieces in the
book. It is written in the mdlahdttr^ a variety of
the common epic measure, with a monotonous
cadence; the sort of measure that commends itself
to an ambitious and rhetorical poet with a fancy for
correctness and regularity. The poem has its origin
in an admiration for the character of Gudrun, and a
desire to bring out more fully than in the older poems
the tragic thoughts and passion of the heroine.
Gudrun's anxiety for her brothers' safety, and her
warning message to them not to come to the Court
of the Huns, had been part of the old story. In the
Atiakvi^a she sends them a token, a ring with a
wolfs hair twisted round it, which is noticed by
Hogni but not accepted by Gunnar. In the Atlamdl
something more is made of this ; her message here is
written in runes, and these are falsified on the way
by Attila's messenger, so that the warning is at first
unread. But the confusion of the runes is detected
by the wife of Hogni, and so the story opens with
suspense and forebodings of the doom. The death
of Hogni and Gunnar is explained in a new way, and
always with the passion of Gudrun as the chief theme.
In this story the fight of the Niblungs and the Huns
is begun outside the doors of the hall. Gudrun hears
the alarm and rushes out with a welcome to her
brothers, — "that was their last greeting," — and a cry
of lamentation over their neglect of her runes. Then
she tries to make peace, and when she fails in that,
takes up a sword and fights for her brothers. It is
out of rage and spite against Gudrun, and in order

154 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

to tame her spirit, that Attila has the heart of Hogni
cut out of him, and sends Gunnar to the serpents.

All this change in the story is the result of medita-
tion and not of forgetfulness. Right or wrong, the
poet has devised his story in his own way, and his
motives are easily discovered. He felt that the
vengeance of Gudrun required to be more carefully
and fully explained. Her traditional character was
not quite consistent with the horrors of her revenge.
In the Atlamdl the character of Gudrun is so con-
ceived as to explain her revenge, — the killing of
her children follows close upon her fury in the battle,
and the cruelty of Attila is here a direct challenge to
Gudrun, not, as in the Atlakvi'6a, a mere incident in
Attila's search for the Niblung treasure. The cruelty
of the death of Hogni in the Atlakvi'^a is purely a
matter of business ; it is not of Attila's choosing, and
apparently he favours the attempt to save Hogni by
the sacrifice of Hialli the feeble man. In the
Atlamdl it is to save Hogni from Attila that Hialli
the cook is chased into a corner and held under the
knife. This comic interlude is one of the liveliest
passages of the poem. It serves to increase the
strength of Hogni. Hogni begs them to let the
creature go, — " Why should we have to put up with
his squalling ? " It may be observed that in this way
the poet gets out of a difficulty. It is not in his
design to have the coward's heart offered to Gunnar ;
he has dropped that part of the story entirely.
Gunnar is not asked to give up the treasure, and
has no reason to protect his secret by asking for
the death of his brother ; and there would be no
point in keeping the incident for the benefit of Attila.
That Gunnar should first detect the imposture, and
should then recognise the heart of his brother, is a
fine piece of heroic imagination of a primitive kind.

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 155

It would have been wholly inept and spiritless to
transfer this from Gunnar to Attila. The poet of
Atlamdl shows that he understands what he is about.
The more his work is scrutinised, the more evident
becomes the sobriety of his judgment. His dexterity
in the disposing of his incidents is proved in every
particular. While a first reading of the poem and a
first comparison with the story of Atlakvi^a may
suggest the blundering and irresponsible ways of
popular reciters, a very little attention will serve to
bring out the difference and to justify this poet. He
is not an improviser ; his temptations are of another
sort. He is the poet of a second generation, one of
those who make up by energy of intelligence for their
want of original and spontaneous imagination. It is
not that he is cold or dull ; but there is something
wanting in the translation of his thoughts into speech.
His metres are hammered out ; the precision of his
verse is out of keeping with the fury of his tragic
purport. The faults are the faults of overstudy, the
faults of correctness and maturity.

The significance of the Atlamdl is considerable in
the history of the Northern poetry. It may stand
for the furthest mark in one particular direction ; the
epic poetry of the North never got further than this.
If Beowulf or Waldere may perhaps represent the
highest accomplishment of epic in old English verse,
the Atlamdl has, at least, as good a claim in the
other language. The Atlamdl is not the finest of the
old poems. That place belongs, without any question,
to the Volospd^ the Sibyl's Song of the judgment ;
and among the others there are many that surpass
the Atlamdl in beauty. But the Atlamdl is complete ;
it is a work of some compass, diligently planned
and elaborated. Further, although it has many of
the marks of the new rhetoric, these do not change

156 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

its character as a narrative poem. It is a narrative
poem, not a poem of lyrical allusions, not an heroic
ode. It is at once the largest and the most harmonious
in construction of all the poems. It proves that the
change of the Northern poetry, from narrative to the
courtly lyric, was a change not made without fair
opportunity to the older school to show what it was
worth. The variety of the three poems of Attila,
ending in the careful rhetoric of the Atlaindl^ is proof
sufficient of the labour bestowed by different poets in
their use of the epic inheritance. Great part of the
history of the North is misread, unless account is
taken of the artistic study, the invention, the ingenuity,
that went to the making of those poems. This
variety is not the confusion of barbarous tradition,
or the shifts and experiments of improvisers. The
prosody and the rhetorical furniture of the poems
might prevent that misinterpretation. It might be
prevented also by an observation of the way the
matter is dealt with, even apart from the details of
the language and the style. The proof from these
two quarters, from the matter and from the style, is
not easily impugned.

So the first impression is discredited, and so it
appears that the " Elder Edda," for all its appearance
of disorder, haste, and hazard, really contains a number
of specimens of art, not merely a heap of casual and
rudimentary variants. The poems of the Icelandic
manuscript assert themselves as individual and
separate works. They are not the mere makings of
an epic, the mere materials ready to the hand of an
editor. It still remains true that they are defective,
but it is true also that they are the work of artists,
and of a number of artists with different aims and
ideals. The earliest of them is long past the stage of
popular improvisation, and the latest has the qualities

SECT. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC 157

of a school that has learned more art than is good
for it.

The defect of the Northern epic is that it allowed
itself to be too soon restricted in its scope. It
became too minute, too emphatic, too intolerant of
the comfortable dilutions, the level intervals, between
the critical moments.^ It was too much affected by
the vanities of the rival Scaldic poetry ; it was over-
come by rhetoric. But it cannot be said that it went
out tamely.

^ There is a natural affinity to Gray's poetry in the Icelandic
poetry that he translated — compressed, emphatic, incapable of
laxity.

BEOWULF

The poem of Beowulf has been sorely tried ; critics
have long been at work on the body of it, to discover
how it is made. It gives many openings for theories
of agglutination and adulteration. Many things in it
are plainly incongruous. The pedigree of Grendel is
not authentic ; the Christian sentiments and morals
are not in keeping with the heroic or the mythical
substance of the poem ; the conduct of the narrative
is not always clear or easy to follow. These difficulties
and contradictions have to be explained ; the composi-
tion of the poem has to be analysed ; what is old has
to be separated from what is new and adventitious ;
and the various senses and degrees of " old " and
" new " have to be determined, in the criticism of the
poem. With all this, however, the poem continues to
possess at least an apparent and external unity. It
is an extant book, whatever the history of its composi-
tion may have been ; the book of the adventures of
Beowulf, written out fair by two scribes in the tenth
century ; an epic poem, with a prologue at the begin-
ning, and a judgment pronounced on the life of the
hero at the end ; a single book, considered as such
by its transcribers, and making a claim to be so
considered.

Before any process of disintegration is begun, this

158

SECT. VI BEOWULF 159

claim should be taken into account ; the poem
deserves to be appreciated as- it stands. Whatever
may be the secrets of its authorship, it exists as a
single continuous narrative poem; and whatever its
faults may be, it holds a position by itself, and a
place of some honour, as the one extant poem of
considerable length in the group to which it belongs.
It has a meaning and value apart from the questions
of its origin and its mode of production. Its present
value as a poem is not affected by proofs or arguments
regarding the way in which it may have been patched
or edited. The patchwork theory has no power to
make new faults in the poem ; it can only point out
what faults exist, and draw inferences from them. It
does not take away from any dignity the book may
possess in its present form, that it has been subjected
to the same kind of examination as the Iliad. The
poem may be reviewed as it stands, in order to find
out what sort of thing passed for heroic poetry with
the English at the time the present copy of the poem
was written. However the result was obtained,
Beowulf is, at any rate, the specimen by which the
Teutonic epic poetry must be judged. It is the largest
monument extant. There is nothing beyond it, in
that kind, in respect of size and completeness. If the
old Teutonic epic is judged to have failed, it must be
because Beowulf \^ a failure.

Taking the most cursory view of the story of
Beowulf it is easy to recognise that the unity of the
plot is not Hke the unity of the Iliad or the Odyssey.
One is inclined at first to reckon Beowtilf 2i\or\g with
those epics of which Aristotle speaks, the Heracleids
and Theseids, the authors of which "imagined that
because Heracles was one person the story of his life
could not fail to have unity." ^

^ Poet. 145 1 a.

l6o TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

It is impossible to redi.ce the poem of Beowulf
to the scale of Aristotle's Odyssey without revealing
the faults of structure in the English poem : —

A man in want of work goes abroad to the house of
a certain king troubled by Harpies, and having accom-
plished the purification of the house returns home with
honour. Long afterwards, having become king in his
own country, he kills a dragon, but is at the same time
choked by the venom of it. His people lament for him
and build his tomb.

Aristotle made a summary of the Homeric
poem, because he wished to show how simple its
construction really was, apart from the episodes.
It is impossible, by any process of reduction and
simplification, to get rid of the duality in Beowulf.
It has many episodes, quite consistent with a general
unity of action, but there is something more than
episodes, there is a sequel. It is as if to the
Odyssey there had been added some later books
telling in full of the old age of Odysseus, far from the
sea, and his death at the hands of his son Telegonus.
The adventure with the dragon is separate from
the earlier adventures. It is only connected
with them because the same person is involved in
both.

It is plain from Aristotle's words that the Iliad
and the Odyssey were in this, as in all respects, above
and beyond the other Greek epics known to Aristotle.
Homer had not to wait for Beowulf to serve as a foil
to his excellence. That was provided in the other
epic poems of Greece, in the cycle of Troy, in the
epic stories of Theseus and Heracles. It seems
probable that the poem of Beowulf vciz.y be at least
as well knit as the Little Iliads the Greek cyclic poem
of which Aristotle names the principal incidents, con-

SECT. VI BEOWULF i6i

trasting its variety with the simplicity of the Iliad
and Odyssey}

Indeed it is clear that the plan of Beowulf might
easily have been much worse, that is, more lax and
diffuse, than it is. This meagre amount of praise
will be allowed by the most grudging critics, if they
will only think of the masses of French epic, and
imagine the extent to which a French company of
poets might have prolonged the narrative of the hero's
life — the Enfances, the Chevalerie — before reaching
the Death of Beowulf .

At line 2200 in Beowulf cotc^qs the long interval of
time, the fifty years between the adventure at Heorot
and the fight between Beowulf and the dragon. Two
thousand lines are given to the first story, a thousand
to the Death of Beowulf Two thousand lines are
occupied with the narrative of Beowulf's expedition,
his voyage to Denmark, his fight with Grendel and
Grendel's mother, his return to the land of the Gauts
and his report of the whole matter to King Hygelac.
In this part of the poem, taken by itself, there is no
defect of unity. The action is one, with different
parts all easily and naturally included between the
first voyage and the return. It is amplified and com-
plicated with details, but none of these introduce
any new main interests. Beowulf is not like the
Heracleids and Theseids. It transgresses the limits
of the Homeric unity, by adding a sequel ; but for
all that it is not a mere string of adventures, like the
bad epic in Horace's Art of Poetry^ or the innocent
plays described by Sir Philip Sidney and Cervantes.
A third of the whole poem is detached, a separate

^ Toiyapovv ix fxkv 'I\id,5os koI 'Odvaaeias fiia rpa'yifUa iroietrai
CKaripas -^ dOo fiSuat ' e/c 5^ Kvrrpicov iroWai kuI ttjs fUKpai 'IXic£5os
ir\4ov 6kt(S}, olov dirXcjv Kpiffis, '^iXoKT-^rjs, 'NeowroXefios, 'Evpij-
TTvXos, irTCi}X€ia, AaKaivai, 'IXiov iripais, Kal dirdirXovs Kal ^Ivuu
Kal TpydScj (1459 b).

1 62 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

adventure. The first two-thirds taken by themselves
form a complete poem, with a single action ; while,
in the orthodox epic manner, various allusions and
explanations are introduced regarding the past history
of the personages involved, and the history of other
people famous in tradition. The adventure at Heorot,
taken by itself, would pass the scrutiny of Aristotle
or Horace, as far as concerns the lines of its com-
position.

There is variety in it, but the variety is kept in
order and not allowed to interfere or compete with
the main story. The past history is disclosed, and
the subordinate novels are interpolated, as in the
Odyssey^ in the course of an evening's conversation in
hall, or in some other interval in the action. In the
introduction of accessory matter, standing in different
degrees of relevance to the main plot, the practice
of Beowulf is not essentially different from that of
classical epic.

In the Iliad we are allowed to catch something
of the story of the old time before Agamemnon, — the
war of Thebes, Lycurgus, Jason, Heracles, — and even
of things less widely notable, less of a concern to the
world than the voyage of Argo, such as, for instance,
the business of Nestor in his youth. In Beowulf^ in
a similar way, the inexhaustible world outside the
story is partly represented by means of allusions and
digressions. The tragedy of Finnesburh is sung by
the harper, and his song is reported at some length,
not merely referred to in passing. The stories of
Thrytho, of Heremod, of Sigemund the Wselsing and
Fitela his son (Sigmund and Sinfiotli), are introduced
like the stories of Lycurgus or of Jason in Homer.
They are illustrations of the action, taken from other
cycles. The fortunes of the Danish and Gaulish
kings, the fall of Hygelac, the feuds with Sweden^

SECT. VI BEOWULF 163

these matters come into closer relation with the story.
They are not so much illustrations taken in from
without, as points of attachment between the history
oi Beowulf and the untold history all round it, the
history of the persons concerned, along with Beowulf
himself, in the vicissitudes of the Danish and Gaulish
kingdoms.

In the fragments of Waldere, also, there are
allusions to other stories. In Waldere there has been
lost a poem much longer and fuller than the Lay of
Hildebrand^ or any of the poems of the "Elder
Edda " — a poem more like Beowulf than any of those
now extant. The references to Weland, to Widia
Weland's son, to Hama and Theodoric, are of the
same sort as the references in Beowulf to the story
of Froda and Ingeld, or the references in the Iliad
to the adventures of Tydeus.

In the episodic passages of Beowulf there are,
curiously, the same degrees of relevance as in the
Iliad znd Odyssey.

Some of them are necessary to the proper fulness
of the story, though not essential parts of the plot.
Such are the references to Beowulf's swimming-
match ; and such, in the Odyssey^ is the tale told to
Alcinous.

The allusions to the wars of Hygelac have the
same value as the references in the Iliad and the
Odyssey to such portions of the tale of Troy, and of
the return of the Greek lords, as are not immediately
connected with the anger of Achilles, or the return
of Odysseus. The tale of Finnesburh in Beowulf is
purely an interlude, as much as the ballad of Ares
and Aphrodite in the Odyssey.

Many of the references to other legends in the
Iliad are illustrative and comparative, like the
passages about Heremod or Thrytho in Beowulf

1 64 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

" Ares suffered when Otus and Ephialtes kept him in
a brazen vat, Hera suffered and Hades suffered, and
were shot with the arrows of the son of Amphitryon "
(//. V. 385). The long parenthetical story of Heracles
in a speech of Agamemnon (//. xx. 98) has the same
irrelevance of association, and has incurred the same
critical suspicions, as the contrast of Hygd and
Thrytho, a fairly long passage out of a wholly
different story, introduced in Beowulf on the very
slightest of suggestions.

Thus in Beowulf and in the Homeric poems there
are episodes that are strictly relevant and consistent,
filling up the epic plan, opening out the perspective
of the story ; also episodes that without being strictly
relevant are rightly proportioned and subordinated,
like the interlude of Finnesburh, decoration added to
the structure, but not overloading it, nor interfering
with the design ; and, thirdly, episodes that seem to
be irrelevant, and may possibly be interpolations.
All these kinds have the effect of increasing the mass
as well as the variety of the work, and they give to
Beowulf the character of a poem which, in dealing
with one action out of an heroic cycle, is able, by
the way, to hint at and partially represent a great
number of other stories.

It is not in the episodes alone that Beowulf has
an advantage over the shorter and more summary
poems. The frequent episodes are only part of the
general liberality of the narrative.

The narrative is far more cramped than in Homer ;
but when compared with the short method of the
Northern poems, not to speak of the ballads, it comes
out as itself Homeric by contrast. It succeeds in
representing pretty fully and continuously, not by
mere allusions and implications, certain portions of
heroic life and action.

SECT. VI

BEOWULF 165

The principal actions in Beowulf are curiously
trivial, taken by themselves. All around them are
the rumours of great heroic and tragic events, and
the scene and the personages are heroic and magni-
ficent. But the plot in itself has no very great
poetical value; as compared with the tragic themes
of the Niblung legend, with the tale of Finnesburh,
or even with the historical seriousness of the Maldon
poem, it lacks weight. The largest of the extant
poems of this school has the least important subject-
matter; while things essentially and in the abstract
more important, like the tragedy of Froda and Ingeld,
are thrust away into the corners of the poem.

In the killing of a monster like Grendel, or in
the killing of a dragon, there is nothing particularly
interesting ; no complication to make a fit subject for
epic. Beowulf is defective from the first in respect
of plot.

The story of Grendel and his mother is one that
has been told in myriads of ways ; there is nothing
commoner, except dragons. The killing of dragons
and other monsters is the regular occupation of the
heroes of old wives' tales ; and it is difficult to give
individuality or epic dignity to commonplaces of this
sort. This, however, is accomplished in the poem of
Beowulf Nothing can make the story of Grendel
dramatic like the story of Waldere or of Finnesburh.
But the poet has, at any rate, in connexion with this
simple theme, given a rendering, consistent, adequate,
and well-proportioned, of certain aspects of life and
certain representative characters in an heroic age.

The characters in Beowulf are not much more
than types ; not much more clearly individual than
the persons of a comedy of Terence. In the shorter
Northern poems there are the characters of Brynhild
and Gudrun ; there is nothing in Beowulf to compare

1 66 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

with them, although in Beowulf the personages are
consistent with themselves, and intelligible.

Hrothgar is the generous king whose qualities
were in Northern history transferred to his nephew
Hrothulf (Hrolf Kraki), the type of peaceful strength,
a man of war living quietly in the intervals of war.

Beowulf is like him in magnanimity, but his
character is less uniform. He is not one of the more
cruel adventurers, like Starkad in the myth, or some
of the men of the Icelandic Sagas. But he is an
adventurer with something strange and not altogether
safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of
the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. " They
said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger
like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of
Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of
what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his
farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in the
details of its rhetoric, to the common affection of
Anglo-Saxon poetry for the elegiac mood ; but the
softer passages are not out of keeping with the wilder
moments of Beoiuulf^ and they add greatly to the
interest of his character. He is more variable, more
dramatic, than the king and queen of the Danes, or
any of the secondary personages.

Wealhtheo, the queen, represents the poetical idea
of a noble lady. There is nothing complex or strongly
dramatic in her character.

Hunferth, the envious man, brought in as a foil
to Beowulf, is not caricatured or exaggerated. His
sourness is that of a critic and a politician, disinclined
to accept newcomers on their own valuation. He is
not a figure of envy in a moral allegory.

In the latter part of the poem it is impossible to
find in the character of Wiglaf more than the general
and abstract qualities of the " loyal servitor."

SECT. VI BEOWULF 167

Yet all those abstract and typical characters are
introduced in such a way as to complete and fill up
the picture. The general impression is one of variety
and complexity, though the elements of it are simple
enough.

With a plot like that of Beowulf it might seem
that there was danger of a lapse from the more serious
kind of heroic composition into a more trivial kind.
Certainly there is nothing in the plain story to give
much help to the author; nothing in Grendel to
fascinate or tempt a poet with a story made to his
hand.

The plot of Beowulf is not more serious than that
of a thousand easy-going romances of chivalry, and
of fairy tales beyond all number.

The strength of what may be called an epic
tradition is shown in the superiority of Beowulf to
the temptations of cheap romantic commonplace.
Beowulf, the hero, is, after all, something different
from the giant-killer of popular stories, the dragon-
slayer of the romantic schools. It is the virtue and
the triumph of the poet of Beowulf that when all is
done the characters of the poem remain distinct in
the memory, that the thoughts and sentiments of the
poem are remembered as significant, in a way that is
not the way of the common romance. Although the
incidents that take up the principal part of the scene
of Beowulf are among the commonest in popular
stories, it is impossible to mistake the poem for one
of the ordinary tales of terror and wonder. The
essential part of the poem is the drama of characters ;
though the plot happens to be such that the characters
are never made to undergo a tragic ordeal like that
of so many of the other Teutonic stories. It is not
incorrect to say of the poem of Beowulf that the
main story is really less important to the imagination

t68 teutonic epic chap, ii

than the accessories by which the characters are
defined and distinguished. It is the defect of the
poem this should be so. There is a constitutional
weakness in it.

Although the two stories of Beowulf are both
commonplace, there is a difference between the story
of Grendel and the story of the dragon.

The story of the dragon is more of a commonplace
than the other. Almost every one of any distinction,
and many quite ordinary people in certain periods
of history have killed dragons ; from Hercules and
Bellerophon to Gawain, who, on different occasions,
narrowly escaped the fate of Beowulf; from Harald
Hardrada (who killed two at least) to More of More
Hall who killed the dragon of Wantley.

The latter part of Beowulf is a tissue or common-
places of every kind : the dragon and its treasure ;
the devastation of the land ; the hero against the
dragon ; the defection of his companions ; the loyalty
of one of them ; the fight with the dragon ; the
dragon killed, and the hero dying from the flame and
the venom of it ; these are commonplaces of the story,
and in addition to these there are commonplaces of
sentiment, the old theme of this transitory life that
" fareth as a fantasy," the lament for the glory passed
away ; and the equally common theme of loyalty and
treason in contrast. Everything is commonplace,
while everything is also magnificent in its way, and
set forth in the right epic style, with elegiac passages
here and there. Everything is commonplace except
the allusions to matters of historical tradition, such
as the death of Ongentheow, the death of Hygelac.
With these exceptions, there is nothing in the latter
part of Beowulf \ki2X might not have been taken at
almost any time from the common stock of fables and
appropriate sentiments, familiar to every maker or

SECT. VI BEOWULF 169

hearer of poetry from the days of the English con-
quest of Britain, and long before that. It is not to
be denied that the commonplaces here are handled
with some discretion ; though commonplace, they are
not mean or dull.^

The story of Grendel and his mother is also
common, but not as common as the dragon. The
function of this story is considerably different from
the other, and the class to which it belongs is differ-
ently distributed in literature. Both are stories of
the killing of monsters, both belong naturally to
legends of heroes like Theseus or Hercules. But for
literature there is this difference between them, that
dragons belong more appropriately to the more
fantastic kinds of narrative, while stories of the
deliverance of a house from a pestilent goblin are
much more capable of sober treatment and verisimili-
tude. Dragons are more easily distinguished and
set aside as fabulous monsters than is the family of
Grendel. Thus the story of Grendel is much better
fitted than the dragon story for a composition like
Beowulf^ which includes a considerable amount of
the detail of common experience and ordinary life.
Dragons are easily scared from the neighbourhood of
sober experience ; they have to be looked for in the
mountains and caverns of romance or fable. Whereas
Grendel remains a possibility in the middle of common
life, long after the last dragon has been disposed of.

The people who tell fairy stories like the Well of
the Worlds End, the Knight of the Red Shield, the
Castle East d* the Sun and West <?' the Moon, have

^ It has been shown recently by Dr. Edward Sievers that
Beowulf s dragon corresponds in many points to the dragon killed
by Frotho, father of Haldanus, in Saxo, Book II. The dragon is
not wholly commonplace, but has some particular distinctive traits.
See Berichte der Kbnigl. Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften,
6 Juli 1895.

T70 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

no belief, have neither belief nor disbelief, in the
adventures of them. But the same people have other
stories of which they take a different view, stories of
wonderful things more near to their own experience.
Many a man to whom the Well of the World! s End
is an idea, a fancy, has in his mind a story like that
of Grendel which he believes, which makes him afraid.
The bogle that comes to a house at night and throttles
the goodman is a creature more hardy than the dragon,
and more persevering. Stories like that of Beowulf
and Grendel are to be found along with other popular
stories in collections ; but they are to be distinguished
from them. There are popular heroes of tradition
to this day who are called to do for lonely houses
the service done by Beowulf for the house of Hrothgar.

Peer Gynt (not Ibsen's Peer Gynt, who is sophis-
ticated, but the original Peter) is a lonely deer-stalker
on the fells, who is asked by his neighbour to come
and keep his house for him, which is infested with
trolls. Peer Gynt clears them out,^ and goes back to
his deer-stalking. The story is plainly one that touches
the facts of life more nearly than stories of Short-
shanks or the Blue Belt. The trolls are a possibility.

The story of Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig is
another of the same sort.^ It is not, like the Battle
of the Birds or Cofial Gulban, a thing of pure fantasy.
It is a story that may pass for true when the others
have lost everything but their pure imaginative value
as stories. Here, again, in the West Highlands, the
champion is called upon like Beowulf and Peer Gynt
to save his neighbours from a warlock. And it is
matter of history that Bishop Gudmund Arason of

^ Asbjornsen, Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn, At renske
Huset is the phrase — ' ' to cleanse the house. ' ' Cf. Heorot is gefaelsod,
" Heorot is cleansed," in Beowulf.

2 J. F. Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, ii. p. 99. The
reference to this story in Catriona (p. 174) will be remembered.

SECT. VI BEOWULF 171

Holar in Iceland had to suppress a creature with a
seal's head, Selkolla, that played the game of Grendel.^
There are people, no doubt, for whom Peer Gynt
and the trolls, Uistean Mor and the warlock, even
Selkolla that Bishop Gudmund killed, are as impossible
as the dragon in the end of the poem of Beowulf.
But it is certain that stories like those of Grendel are
commonly believed in many places where dragons are
extinct. The story of Beowulf and Grendel is not
wildly fantastic or improbable; it agrees with the
conditions of real life, as they have been commonly
understood at all times except those of peculiar
enlightenment and rationalism. It is not to be com-
pared with the Phaeacian stories of the adventures of
Odysseus. Those stories in the Odyssey are plainly
and intentionally in a different order of imagination
from the story of the killing of the suitors. They
are pure romance, and if any hearer of the Odyssey
in ancient times was led to go in search of the
island of Calypso, he might come back with the
same confession as the seeker for the wonders of
Broceliande, — fol i alai. But there are other
wonderful things in the Iliad and the Odyssey which
are equally improbable to the modern rationalist and
sceptic ; yet by no means of the same kind of wonder
as Calypso or the Sirens. Probably few of the earliest
hearers of the Odyssey thought of the Sirens or of
Calypso as anywhere near them, while many of them
must have had their grandmothers' testimony for things
like the portents before the death of the suitors.
Grendel in the poem of Beowulf is in the same order
of existence as these portents. If they are supersti-
tions, they are among the most persistent ; and they
are superstitions, rather than creatures of romance.
The fight with Grendel is not of the same kind of
* Biskupa Sogur, i. p. 604.

172 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

adventure as Sigurd at the hedge of flame, or Svipdag
at the enchanted castle. And the episode of Grendel's
mother is further from matter of fact than the story
of Grendel himself. The description of the desolate
water is justly recognised as one of the masterpieces
of the old English poetry ; it deserves all that has
been said of it as a passage of romance in the middle
of epic. Beowulfs descent under the water, his
fight with the warlock's mother, the darkness of that
" sea dingle," the light of the mysterious sword, all
this, if less admirably worked out than the first
description of the dolorous mere, is quite as far from
Heorot and the report of the table-talk of Hrothgar,
Beowulf, and Hunferth. It is also a different sort of
thing from the fight with Grendel. There is more of
supernatural incident, more romantic ornament, less
of that concentration in the struggle which makes the
fight with Grendel almost as good in its way as its
Icelandic counterpart, the wrestling of Grettir and
Glam.

The story of Beowulf, which in the fight with
Grendel has analogies with the plainer kind of goblin
story, rather alters its tone in the fight with Grendel's
mother. There are parallels in Grettis Saga, and
elsewhere, to encounters like this, with a hag or ogress
under water ; stories of this sort have been found no
less credible than stories of haunting warlocks like
Grendel. But this second story is not told in the
same way as the first. It has more of the fashion
and temper of mythical fable or romance, and less of
matter of fact. More particularly, the old sword, the
sword of light, in the possession of Grendel's dam in
her house under the water, makes one think of other
legends of mysterious swords, like that of Helgi, and
the " glaives of light " that are in the keeping of
divers " gyre carlines " in the West Highland Tales.

SECT. VI BEOWULF 173

Further, the whole scheme is a common one in
popular stories, especially in Celtic stories of giants ;
after the giant is killed his mother comes to avenge him.

Nevertheless, the controlling power in the story
of Beowulf is not that of any kind of romance or
fantastic invention; neither the original fantasy of
popular stories nor the literary embellishments of
romantic schools of poetry. There are things in
Beowulf 'Csv2X may be compared to things in the fairy
tales ; and, again, there are passages of high value for
their use of the motive of pure awe and mystery.
But the poem is made what it is by the power with
which the characters are kept in right relation to
their circumstances. The hero is not lost or carried
away in his adventures. The introduction, the arrival
in Heorot, and the conclusion, the return of Beowulf
to his own country, are quite unlike the manner of
pure romance ; and these are the parts of the work
by which it is most accurately to be judged.

The adventure of Grendel is put in its right pro-
portion when it is related by Beowulf to Hygelac.
The repetition of the story, in a shorter form, and in
the mouth of the hero himself, gives strength and
body to a theme that was in danger of appearing
trivial and fantastic. The popular story-teller has
done his work when he has told the adventures of
the giant-killer; the epic poet has failed, if he has
done no more than this.

The character and personage of Beowulf must be
brought out and impressed on the audience ; it is the
poet's hero that they are bound to admire. He
appeals to them, not directly, but with unmistakable
force and emphasis, to say that they have beheld (" as
may unworthiness define ") the nature of the hero, and
to give him their praises.

The beauty and the strength of the poem of

174 TEUTONIC EPIC chap, ii

Beowulf^ as of all true epic, depend mainly upon its
comprehensive power, its inclusion of various aspects,
its faculty of changing the mood of the story. The
fight with Grendel is an adventure of one sort, grim,
unrelieved, touching close upon the springs of mortal
terror, the recollection or the apprehension of real
adversaries possibly to be met with in the darkness.
The fight with Grendel's mother touches on other
motives; the terror is further away from human
habitations, and it is accompanied with a charm and
a beauty, the beauty of the Gorgon, such as is absent
from the first adventure. It would have loosened
the tension and broken the unity of the scene, if any
such irrelevances had been admitted into the story of
the fight with Grendel. The fight with Grendel's
mother is fought under other conditions ; the stress
is not the same \ the hero goes out to conquer, he is
beset by no such apprehension as in the case of the
night attack. The poet is at this point free to make
use of a new set of motives, and here it is rather the
scene than the action that is made vivid to the mind.
But after this excursion the story comes back to its
heroic beginning ; and the conversation of Beowulf
with his hosts in Denmark, and the report that he
gives to his kin in Gautland, are enough to reduce
to its right episodic dimensions the fantasy of the
adventure under the sea. In the latter part of the
poem there is still another distribution of interest.
The conversation of the personages is still to be found
occasionally carried on in the steady tones of people
who have lives of their own, and belong to a world
where the tunes are not all in one key. At the same
time, it cannot be denied that the story of the Death
of Beowulf is inclined to monotony. The epic
variety and independence are obliterated by the too
obviously pathetic intention. The character of this

SECT. VI BEOWULF 175

part of the poem is that of a late school of heroic
poetry attempting, and with some success, to extract
the spirit of an older kind of poetry, and to represent
in one scene an heroic ideal or example, with emphasis
and with concentration of all the available matter.
But while the end of the poem may lose in some
things by comparison with the stronger earlier parts,
it is not so wholly lost in the charms of pathetic
meditation as to forget the martial tone and the more
resolute air altogether. There was a danger that
Beowulf should be transformed into a sort of Amadis,
a mirror of the earlier chivalry ; with a loyal servitor
attending upon his death, and uttering the rhetorical
panegyric of an abstract ideal. But this danger is
avoided, at least in part. Beowulf is still, in his
death, a sharer in the fortunes of the Northern
houses; he keeps his history. The fight with the
dragon is shot through with reminiscences of the
Gautish wars : Wiglaf speaks his sorrow for the
champion of the Gauts ; the virtues of Beowulf are
not those of a fictitious paragon king, but of a man
who would be missed in the day when the enemies
of the Gauts should come upon them.

The epic keeps its hold upon what went before,
and on what is to come. Its construction is solid,
not flat. It is exposed to the attractions of all kinds
of subordinate and partial literature, — the fairy story,
the conventional romance, the pathetic legend, — and
it escapes them all by taking them all up as moments,
as episodes and points of view, governed by the con-
ception, or the comprehension, of some of the possi-
bilities of human character in a certain form of society.
It does not impose any one view on the reader ; it
gives what it is the proper task of the higher kind of
fiction to give — the play of life in different moods and
under different aspects.

CHAPTER III
THE ICELANDIC SAGAS

ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE

The epic poetry of the Germans came to an end in
different ways and at different seasons among the
several nations of that stock. In England and the
Continent it had to compete with the new romantic
subjects and new forms of verse. In Germany the
rhyming measures prevailed very early, but the themes
of German tradition were not surrendered at the
same time. The rhyming verse of Germany, foreign
in its origin, continued to be applied for centuries in
the rendering of German myths and heroic stories,
sometimes in a style with more or less pretence to
courtliness, as in the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun\
sometimes in open parade of the travelling minstrel's
"public manners" and simple appetites. England
had exactly the opposite fortune in regard to verse
and subject-matter. In England the alliterative verse
survived the changes of inflexion and pronunciation
for more than five hundred years after Maldon, and
uttered its last words in a poem written like the Song
of Byrhtnoth on a contemporary battle, — the poem of
Scottish Field}

* Ed. Robson, Chetham Society, 1855, from the Lyme MS. ;
ed. Furnivall and Hales, Percy Folio Manuscript, 1867.

179

i8o THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

There was girding forth of guns, with many great stones ;

Archers uttered out their arrows and eagerly they shotten ;

They proched us with spears and put many over ;

That the blood outbrast at their broken harness.

There was swinging out of swords, and swapping of heads,

We blanked them with bills through all their bright armour,

That all the dale dinned of the derf strokes.

But while this poem of Flodden corresponds in
its subject to the poem of Maldon^ there is no such
Hkeness between any other late aUiterative poem and
the older poems of the older language. The allitera-
tive verse is applied in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries to every kind of subject except those of
Germanic tradition. England, however, has the
advantage over Germany, that while Germany lost the
old verse, England did not lose the English heroic
subjects, though, as it happens, the story of King
Horn and the story of Havelock the Dane are not
told in the verse that was used for King Arthur and
Gawain, for the tale of Troy and the wars of Alexander.
The recent discovery of a fragment of the Song of
Wade is an admonition to be cautious in making the
extant works of Middle English literature into a
standard for all that has ceased to exist. But no
new discovery, even of a Middle English alliterative
poem of Beowulf or of Walter of Aquitaine, would
alter the fact that the alliterative measure of English
poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, like
the ancient themes of the German rhyming poems, is
a survival in an age when the chief honours go to
other kinds of poetry. The author oi Piers Plowman
is a notable writer, and so are the poets of Gawain,
and of the Mort Arthure, and of the Destruction of
Troy \ but Chaucer and not Langland is the poetical
master of that age. The poems of the Nibelungen
and of Kudrun are rightly honoured, but it was to
the author of Parzival, and to the courtly lyrics of

SFXT. I ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE i8i

Walther von der Vogelweide, that the higher rank
was given in the age of the Hohenstaufen, and the
common fame is justified by history, so often as
history chooses to have any concern with such
things.

In the lands of the old Northern speech the old
heroic poetry was displaced by the new Court poetry
of the Scalds. The heroic subjects were not, however,
allowed to pass out of memory. The new poetry
could not do without them, and required, and
obtained, its heroic dictionary in the Edda. The old
subjects hold their own, or something of their own,
with every change of fashion. They were made into
prose stories, when prose was in favour ; they were
the subjects of Rimur, rhyming Icelandic romances,
when that form came later into vogue.^ In Denmark
they were paraphrased, many of them, by Saxo in his
History; many of them became the subjects of
ballads, in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the
Faroes.

In this way some of the inheritance of the old
German world was saved in different countries and
languages, for the most part in ballads and chap-
books, apart from the main roads of literature. But
these heirlooms were not the whole stock of the
heroic age. After the failure and decHne of the old
poetry there remained an unexhausted piece of
ground; and the great imaginative triumph of the
Teutonic heroic age was won in Iceland with the
creation of a new epic tradition, a new form applied
to new subjects.

Iceland did something more than merely preserve
the forms of an antiquated life whose day was over.
It was something more than an island of refuge for
muddled and blundering souls that had found the

^ See below, p. 283.

l82 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

career of the great world too much for them. The
ideas of an old-fashioned society migrated to Iceland,
but they did not remain there unmodified. The
paradox of the history of Iceland is that the unsuc-
cessful old ideas were there maintained by a com-
munity of people who were intensely self-conscious
and exceptionally clear in mind. Their political
ideas were too primitive for the common life of
medieval Christendom. The material life of Iceland
in the Middle Ages was barbarous when compared
with the life of London or Paris, not to speak of
Provence or Italy, in the same centuries. At the
same time, the modes of thought in Iceland, as is
proved by its historical literature, were distinguished
by their freedom from extravagances, — from the ex-
travagance of medieval enthusiasm as well as from
the superstitions of barbarism. The life of an heroic
age — that is, of an older stage of civilisation than the
common European medieval form — was interpreted
and represented by the men of that age themselves
with a clearness of understanding that appears to be
quite unaffected by the common medieval fallacies
and " idolisms." This clear self-consciousness is the
distinction of Icelandic civilisation and literature.
It is not vanity or conceit. It does not make the
Icelandic writers anxious about their own fame or
merits. It is simply clear intelligence, applied under a
dry light to subjects that in themselves are primitive,
such as never before or since have been represented in
the same way. The life is their own life ; the record
is that of a dispassionate observer.

While the life represented in the Sagas is more
primitive, less civilised, than the life of the great
Southern nations in the Middle Ages, the record of
that life is by a still greater interval in advance of all
the common modes of narrative then known to the

SECT. I ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE 183

more fortunate or more luxurious parts of Europe.
The conventional form of the Saga has none of the
common medieval restrictions of view. It is accepted
at once by modern readers without deduction or
apology on the score of antique fashion, because it is
in essentials the form with which modern readers are
acquainted in modern story-telling ; and more especi-
ally because the language is unaffected and idiomatic,
not " quaint " in any way, and because the conversa-
tions are like the talk of living people. The Sagas
are stories of characters who speak for themselves,
and who are interesting on their own merits. There
are good and bad Sagas, and the good ones are not
all equally good throughout. The mistakes and
misuses of the inferior parts of the literature do
not, however, detract from the sufficiency of the
common form, as represented at its best. The
invention of the common form of the Saga is an
achievement which deserves to be judged by the
best in its kind. That kind was not exempt, any
more than the Elizabethan drama or the modern
novel, from the impertinences and superfluities of
trivial authors. Further, there were certain conditions
and circumstances about its origin that sometimes
hindered in one way, while they gave help in another.
The Saga is a compromise between opposite tempta-
tions, and the compromise is not always equitable.

MATTER AND FORM

It is no small part of the force of the Sagas, and at
the same time a difficulty and an embarrassment, that
they have so much of reality behind them. The
element of history in them, and their close relation
to the lives of those for whom they were made, have
given them a substance and solidity beyond anything
else in the imaginative stories of the Middle Ages. It
may be that this advantage is gained rather unfairly.
The art of the Sagas, which is so modern in many
things, and so different from the medieval conventions
in its selection of matter and its development of the
plot, is largely indebted to circumstances outside of
art. In its rudiments it was always held close to the
real and material interests of the people ; it was not
like some other arts which in their beginning are
fanciful, or dependent on myth or legend for their
subject-matter, as in the medieval schools of painting
or sculpture generally, or in the medieval drama. Its
imaginative methods were formed through essays in
the representation of actual life ; its first artists were
impelled by historical motives, and by personal and
local interests. The art of the Sagas was from the
first " immersed in matter " ; it had from the first all
the advantage that is given by interests stronger
and more substantial than those of mere literature ;
184

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM 185

and, conversely, all the hindrance that such irrelevant
interests provide, when " mere literature " attempts to
disengage itself and govern its own course.

The local history, the pedigrees of notable families,
are felt as a hindrance, in a greater or less degree, by
all readers of the Sagas ; as a preliminary obstacle to
clear comprehension. The Sagas differ in value,
according to their use and arrangement of these
matters, in relation to a central or imaginative con-
ception of the main story and the characters engaged
in it. The best Sagas are not always those that give
the least of their space to historical matters, to the
genealogies and family memoirs. From these the
original life of the Sagas is drawn, and when it is
cut off from these the Saga withers into a conven-
tional and insipid romance. Some of the best Sagas
are among those which make most of the history,
and, like Njdla and Laxdcela^ act out their tragedies
in a commanding way that carries along with it the
whole crowd of minor personages, yet so that their
minor and particular existences do not interfere with
the story, but help it and give it substantiality. The
tragedy of Njal^ or of the Lovers of Gudrun^ may
be read and judged, if one chooses, in abstraction
from the common background of Icelandic history,
and in forgetfulness of its bearing upon the common
fortunes of the people of the land ; but these Sagas
are not rightly understood if they are taken only and
exclusively in isolation. The tragedies gain a very
distinct additional quality from the recurrence of
personages familiar to the reader from other Sagas.
The relation of the Sagas to actual past events, and
to the whole range of Icelandic family tradition, was
the initial difficulty in forming an adequate method
of story-telling ; the particulars were too many, and
also too real. But the reality of them was, at the

1 86 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

same time, the initial impulse of the Sagas ; and the
best of the Sagas have found a way of saving the
particulars of the family and local histories, without
injury to the imaginative and poetical order of their
narratives.

The Sagas, with all the differences between them,
have common features, but among these is not to be
reckoned an equal consideration for the unity of
action. The original matter of the oral traditions of
Iceland, out of which the written Sagas were formed,
was naturally very much made up of separate anec-
dotes, loosely strung together by associations with a
district or a family. Some of the stories, no doubt,
must have had by nature a greater unity and com-
pleteness than the rest : — history in the rough has
very often the outlines of tragedy in it ; it presents
its authors with dramatic contrasts ready made
(Richard II. and Bolingbroke, Lewis XL and Charles
the Bold, Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots); it
provides real heroes. But there are many interesting
things which are not well proportioned, and which
have no respect for the unities ; the hero is worth
talking about whether his story is symmetrical or not.
The simplest form of heroic narrative is that which
puts together a number of adventures, such as may
easily be detached and repeated separately, adventures
like that of David and Goliath, Wallace with his
fishing-rod, or Bruce in the robbers' house. Many of
the Sagas are mere loose strings of adventures, of
short stories, or idylls, which may easily be detached
and remembered out of connexion with the rest of
the series. In the case of many of these it is almost
indifferent at what point they may be introduced in
the Saga ; they merely add some particulars without
advancing the plot, if there be any plot. There are
all varieties of texture in the Sagas, from the extreme

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM 187

laxity of those that look like mere collections of the
anecdotes of a country-side {Eyrbyggja\ to the
definite structure of those in which all the particulars
contribute to the main action {Hrafnkels Saga^
Bandamamia^ Gisla Saga).

The loose assemblage of stories current in Iceland
before the Sagas were composed in writing must, of
course, have been capable of all kinds of variation.
The written Sagas gave a check to oral variations and
rearrangements ; but many of them in extant alter-
native versions keep the traces of the original story-
teller's freedom of selection, while all the Sagas
together in a body acknowledge themselves practically
as a selection from traditional report. Each one, the
most complete as well as the most disorderly, is taken
out of a mass of traditional knowledge relating to
certain recognisable persons, of whom any one may
be chosen for a time as the centre of interest, and
any one may become a subordinate character in some
one else's adventures. One Saga plays into the
others, and introduces people incidentally who may
bs the heroes of other stories. As a result of this
selective practice of the Sagas, it sometimes happens
that an important or an interesting part of the record
may be dropped by one Saga and picked up casually
by another. Thus in the written Sagas, one of the
best stories of the two Foster-brothers (or rather
"Brothers by oath," fratres Jurati) Thorgeir and
Thormod the poet, is preserved not by their own
proper history, Fbstbrce'^ra Saga, but in the story of
Grettir the Strong; how they and Grettir lived a
winter through in the same house without quarrelling,
and how their courage was estimated by their host.^

This solidarity and interconnexion of the Sagas

^ "Is it trae, Thorgils, that you have entertained those three
men this winter, that are held to be the most regardless and over-

i88 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

needs no explanation. It could not be otherwise in
a country like Iceland ; a community of neighbours
(in spite of distances and difficulties of travelling)
where there was nothing much to think about or to
know except other people's affairs. The effect in the
written Sagas is to give them something like the
system of the Comidie Humaine. There are new
characters in each, but the old characters reappear.
Sometimes there are discrepancies ; the characters
are not always treated from the same point of view.
On the whole, however, there is agreement. The
character of Gudmund the Great, for example, is
well drawn, with zest, and some irony, in his own
Saga {LJosvetninga) ; he is the prosperous man. the
"rich glutton," fond of praise and of influence, but
not as sound as he looks, and not invulnerable.
His many appearances in other Sagas all go to
strengthen this impression of the full-blown great man
and his ambiguous greatness. So also Snorri the
Priest, whose rise and progress are related in
Eyrbyggja^ appears in many other Sagas, and is re-
cognised whenever he appears with the same certainty
and the same sort of interest as attaches to the name
of Rastignac, when that politician is introduced in
stories not properly his own. Each separate mention
of Snorri the Priest finds its place along with all the
rest j he is never unequal to himself

bearing, and all of them outlaws, and you have handled them so
that none has hurt another?" Yes, it was true, said Thorgils.
Skapti said : ' ' That is something for a man to be proud of ; but
what do you think of the three, and how are they each of them in
courage ? " Thorgils said : ' ' They are all three bold men to the full ;
yet two of them, I think, may tell what fear is like. It is not in
the same way with both ; for Thormod fears God, and Grettir is so
afraid of the dark that after dark he would never stir, if he had his
own way ; but I do not know that Thorgeir, my kinsman, is afraid
of anything." — "You have read them well," says Skapti ; and so
their talk ended {Grettis Saga, c. 51).

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM 1 89

It is in the short story, the episodic chapter, that
the art of Icelandic narrative first defines itself.
This is the original unity ; it is here, in a limited,
easily comprehensible subject-matter, that the lines
are first clearly drawn. The Sagas that are least
regular and connected are made up of definite and
well-shaped single blocks. Many of the Sagas are
much improved by being taken to pieces and regarded,
not as continuous histories, but as collections of
separate short stories. Eyrbyggja^ Vatnsdcela, and
Ljbsvetninga are collections of this sort — "Tales of
the Hall." There is a sort of unity in each of them,
but the place of Snorri in Eyrbyggja^ of Ingimund in
VatnsdcBla^ and of Gudmund the Great in the history
of the House of Ljosavatn, is not that of a tragic or
epic hero who compels the episodes to take their
right subordinate rank in a larger story. These
Sagas break up into separate chapters, losing thereby
none of the minor interests of story-telHng, but doing
without the greater tragic or heroic interest of the
fables that have one predominant motive.

Of more coherent forms of construction there are
several different examples among the Sagas. In each
of these cases it is the tragic conception, the tragic
idea, of the kind long familiar to the Teutonic nations,
that governs the separate passages of the traditional
history.

Tragic situations are to be found all through the
Icelandic literature, only they are not always enough
to make a tragedy. There is Nemesis in the end of
Gudmund the Great, when his murdered enemy
haunts him ; but this is not enough to make his Saga
an organic thing. The tragic problem of Alboin
recurs, as was pointed out by the editors of Corpus
Poeticum Boreale^ in the prelude to Vafnsdcela Saga ;
but it stands by itself as one of the separate chapters

190 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

in that history, which contains the plots of other
tragedies also, without adopting any one of them as
its single and overruling motive. These are instances
of the way in which tragic imagination, or at any rate
the knowledge and partial appreciation of tragic plots,
may come short of fulfilment, and may be employed
in a comparatively futile and wasteful form of litera-
ture. In the greater works, where the idea is fully
reaUsed, there is no one formal type. The Icelandic
Sagas have different forms of success in the greater
works, as well as different degrees of approximation
to success in the more desultory and miscellaneous
histories.

NJdla, which is the greatest of all the Sagas, does
not make its effect by any reduction of the weight
or number of its details. It carries an even greater
burden of particulars than Eyrbyggja ; it has taken
up into itself the whole history of the south country
of Iceland in the heroic age.

The unity of Njdla is certainly not the unity of
a restricted or emaciated heroic play. Yet with all
its complexity it belongs to quite a different order of
work from Eyrbyggja.

It falls into three divisions, each of these a story
by itself, with all three combining to form one story,
apart from which they are incomplete. The first,
the story of Gunnar, which is a tragedy by itself, is
a necessary part of the whole composition ; for it is
also the story of the wisdom of Njal and the dignity
of Bergthora, without which the second part would
be insipid, and the great act of the burning of Njal's
house would lose its depth and significance. The
third part is the payment of a debt to Njal, Bergthora,
and Skarphedinn, for whom vengeance is required ;
but it is also due even more to Flosi their adversary.
The essence of the tragic situation lies in this, that

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM IQI

the good man is in the wrong, and his adversary in
the right. The third part is required to restore the
balance, in order that the original wrong, Skarp-
hedinn's slaughter of the priest of Whiteness, should
not be thought to be avoided in the death of its
author. Njdla is a work of large scale and liberal
design ; the beauty of all which, in the story, is that
it allows time for the characters to assert themselves
and claim their own, as they could not do in a
shorter story, where they would be whirled along by
the plot. The vengeance and reconciliation in the
third part of Njdla are brought about by something
more than a summary poetical justice of fines and
punishments for misdeeds. It is a more leisurely,
as well as a more poetical justice, that allows the
characters to assert themselves for what they really
are; the son of Lambi "filthy still," and Flosi the
Burner not less true in temper than Njal himself.

Njdla and Laxdcela are examples of two different
ways in which inconvenient or distracting particulars of
history or tradition might be reduced to serve the ends
of imagination and the heroic design. Njdla keeps
up, more or less, throughout, a continuous history of a
number of people of importance, but always with a
regard for the principal plot of the story. In
LaxdcBla there is, on the other hand, a gradual
approach to the tragedy of Kjartan, Bolli, and
Gudrun ; an historical prologue of the founding of
Laxdale, and the lives of Kjartan's father and grand-
father, before the chief part of the story begins. In
Njdla the main story opens as soon as Njal appears ;
of prologue there is little more than is needed to prepare
for the mischief of Hallgerda, who is the cause of the
strain between the two houses of Lithend and Berg-
thorsknoll, and thereby the touchstone of the generosity
of Njal. In Laxdcela, although the prologue is not

192 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, in

irrelevant, there is a long delay before the principal
personages are brought together. There is no
mistake about the story when once it begins, and no
question about the unity of the interest ; Gudrun and
Fate may divide it between them, if it be divisible.
It is purely the stronger quality of this part of the
book, in comparison with the earlier, that saves Laxdcela
from the defects of its construction ; by the energy of
the story of Kjartan, the early story of Laxdale is
thrown back and left behind as a mere prelude, in
spite of its length.

The story of Egil Skallagrimsson, the longest of
the biographical Sagas, shows exactly the opposite
proportions to those of Laxdcela. The life of Egil is
prefaced by the history of his grandfather, father, and
uncle, Kveldulf, Skallagrim (Grim the Bald), and
Thorolf. Unhappily for the general effect of the book,
the life of Egil is told with less strength and coherence
than the fate of his uncle. The most commanding
and most tragic part of Egla is that which represents
Skallagrim and Thorolf in their relations to the
tyranny of Harald the king ; how Thorolf s loyalty was
ill paid, and how Skallagrim his brother went in
defiance to speak to King Harald. This, though it is
only a prelude to the story of Egil, is one of the finest
imaginative passages in the whole Hterature. The
Saga has here been able to express, in a dramatic and
imaginative form, that conflict of principles between the
new monarchy and the old liberty which led to the
Icelandic migration. The whole political situation,
it might be said the whole early history of Iceland and
Norway, is here summed up and personified in the
conflict of will between the three characters. Thorolf,
Harald the king, and Skallagrim play the drama of
the Norwegian monarchy, and the founding of the
Icelandic Commonwealth. After this compact and

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM 193

splendid piece of work the adventures of Egil
Skallagrimsson appear rather ineffectual and erratic,
in spite of some brilliant episodes.

What was an author to do when his hero died in
his bed, or survived all his feuds and enmities? or
when a feud could not be wound up in one generation ?

Vdpnfit^inga Saga gives the history of two genera-
tions of feud, with a reconciliation at the end, thus
obtaining a rounded unity, though at some cost of the
personal interest in its transference from fathers to
sons.

Viga-Gh'ims Saga is a story which, with the best
intentions in the world, could not attain to tragedy like
that of Gisli or of Grettir, because every one knew
that Glum was a threatened man who lived long, and
got through without any deadly injury. Glum is well
enough fitted for the part of a tragic hero. He has
the slow growth, the unpromising youth, the silence
and the dangerous laughter, such as are recorded in the
hves of other notable personages in heroic literature : —

Glum turned homeward ; and a fit of laughing came
on him. It took him in this way, that his face grew
pale, and there ran tears from his eyes like hailstones :
it was often so with him afterwards, when bloodshed
was in his mind.

But although there are several feuds in the story
of Glum or several incidents in a feud, somehow
there is no tragedy. Glum dies quietly, aged and
sightless. There is a thread of romantic destiny in
his story ; he keeps his good luck till he parts with
the gifts of his grandfather Vigfus — the cloak, the
spear, and the sword that Vigfus had given him in
Norway. The prayer for Glum's discomfiture, which
one of his early adversaries had offered to Frey, then
takes effect, when the protecting luck has been given

194 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, iii

away. The fall of Glum is, however, nothing incur-
able ; the change in his fortune is merely that he has
to give up the land which he had extorted from his
adversary long before, and that he ceases to be the
greatest man in Eyjafirth, though continuing to be
a man of importance still. His honour and his
family are not hard hit, after all.

The history of Glum, with its biographical unity,
its interest of character, and its want of tragedy, is a
form of story midway between the closer knit texture
of Gisla Saga and the laxity of construction in the
stories without a hero, or with more than one, such
as Ljbsvetninga or Vatnsdcela. It is a biography
with no strong crisis in it ; it might have been ex-
tended indefinitely. And, in fact, the existing form
of the story looks as if it were rather carelessly put
together, or perhaps abridged from a fuller version.
The story in Reykdczla of Viga Skuta, Glum's son-
in-law and enemy, contains a better and fuller account
of their dealings than Ghima^ without any discrepancy,
though the Reykdcela version alludes to divergencies
of tradition in certain points. The curious thing is
that the Reykdcela version supplies information about
Glum's character which supplements what is told
more baldly in his own Saga. Both accounts agree
about Glum's good nature, which is practised on by
Skuta. Glum is constant and trustworthy whenever
he is appealed to for help. The Reykdcela version
gives a pretty confirmation of this view of Glum's
character (c. 24), where Glum protects the old
Gaberlunzie man, with the result that the old man
goes and praises his kindness, and so lets his enemies
know of his movements, and spoils his game for that
time. This episode is related to Gluma^ as the
foster-brother episode of Grettir (c. 51), quoted above,
is related to Fbstbrc^ra Saga.

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM 195

If Gluma is interesting and even fairly compact,
in spite of its want of any great dramatic moment,
on the other hand the tragic ending is not always
enough to save a story from dissipation of interest.
In the story of Glum's antagonist, Viga Skuta, in the
second part of Reykdcela Saga, there is no proportion
or composition ; his adventures follow one upon the
other, without development, a series of hazards and
escapes, till he is brought down at last. In the earlier
part of the same Saga (the story of Vemund, Skuta's
cousin, and Askel, Skuta's father) there is more
continuity in the chronicle of wrongs and revenges,
and, if this story be taken by itself, more form and
definite design. The two rivals are well marked out
and opposed to one another, while the mischief-making
Vemund is well contrasted with his uncle Askel, the
just man and the peacemaker, who at the end is killed
in one of his nephew's feuds, in the fight by the frozen
river from which Vemund escapes, while his enemy is
drowned and his best friend gets a death wound.

There are two Sagas in which a biographical theme
is treated in such a way that the story produces one
single impressive and tragical effect, leaving the mind
with a sense of definite and necessary movement
towards a tragic conclusion, — the story of Grettir the
Strong, and the story of Gisli the Oudaw. These
stories have analogies to one another, though they
are not cast in quite the same manner.

In the life of Grettir there are many detached
episodes, giving room for theories of adulteration
such as are only too inevitable and certain in regard
to the imbecile continuation of the story after Grettir's
death and his brother's vengeance. The episodes in
the main story are, however, not to be dismissed quite
so easily as the unnecessary romance of the Lady
Spes {Grettis Saga, cc. 90-95). While many of the

196 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

episodes do little to advance the story, and some of
them seem to have been borrowed from other Sagas
without sufficient reason (cc. 25-27, from the Foster-
brothers), most of them serve to accentuate the char-
acter of Grettir, or to deepen the sense of the mystery
surrounding his life.

The tragedy of Grettir is one of those which
depend on Accident, interpreted by the author as
Fate. The hero is a doomed man, like Gisli, who
sees things clearly coming on, but is unable to get
out of their way. In both Gisli and Grettir there
is an accompaniment of mystery and fantasy — for
Gisli in the songs of the dream woman, for Grettir
in various touches unlike the common prose of the
Sagas. The hopelessness of his ill fortune is
brought out in a sober way in his dealings with the
chiefs who are unable to protect him, and in the
cheerless courage of his relations with the foster-
brothers, when the three are all together in the house
of Thorgils Arason. It is illustrated in a quite different
and more fantastic way in the scenes of his wanderings
among the mountains, in the mysterious quiet of
Thorisdal, in his alliance with strange deliverers,
outside of the common world and its society, in the
curse of Glam under the moonhght. This last is one
of the few scenes in the Sagas, though not the only
one, when the effect depends on something more
than the persons engaged in it. The moon with the
clouds driving over counts for more than a mere
indication of time or weather ; it is essential to the
story, and lends itself to the malignity of the
adversary in casting the spell of fear upon Grettir's
mind. The solitude of Drangey, in the concluding
chapters of Grettis Saga, the cliffs, the sea and the
storms are all much less exceptional ; they are necessary
parts of the action, more closely and organically

SECT. II MATTER AND FORM 197

related to the destiny of the hero. There, in the
final scenes, although there is witchcraft practised
against Grettir, it is not that, but the common and
natural qualities of the foolishness of the thrall and
the heroism of Grettir and his young brother on
which the story turns. These are the humanities of
Drangey, a strong contrast, in the art of narrative, to
the moonlight spell of Glam. The notable thing is
that the romantic and fantastic passages in Grettir
are not obscurations of the tragedy, not irrelevant,
but rather an expression by the way, and in an
exceptional mood, of the author's own view of the
story and his conviction that it is all one coherent
piece. This certainly is the effect of the romantic
interludes in Gislt, which is perhaps the most tragic
of all the Sagas, or at any rate the most self-conscious
of its tragic aim. In the story of Gisli there is an
introduction and preparation, but there is no very
great expense of historical preliminaries. The dis-
crepancies here between the two extant redactions
of the Saga seem to show that introductory chapters
of this sort were regarded as fair openings for
invention and decoration by editors, who had wits
enough to leave the essential part of the story very
much to itself. Here, when once the action has
begun, it goes on to the end without a fault. The
chief characters are presented at the beginning;
Gisli and Thorkell his brother ; Thorgrim the Priest
and Vestein, their two brothers-in-law. A speech
foretelling their disunion is reported to Gisli, and
leads him to propose the oath of fellowship between
the four ; which proposal, meant to avert the omen,
brings about its fulfilment. And so the story goes
on logically and inevitably to the death of Gisli, who
slew Thorgrim, r.nd the passionate agony of Thordis,
Thorgrim's wife and Gisli's sister.

198 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

Hrafnkels Saga is a tragic idyll, complete and
rounded. It is different in its design from Nj'dla
or Laxdcela^ from the stories of Grettir and Gisli.
It is a short story, well concentrated. For mere
symmetry of design it might compete with any of
the greater Icelandic works, not to speak of any
modern fiction.

Hrafnkel, the proud man, did a cruel thing " for
his oath's sake " ; killed his shepherd Einar for riding
on Freyfaxi, the horse that belonged to Frey the god,
and to Hrafnkel his priest. To the father of Einar
he made offers of compensation which were not
accepted. Then the story, with much admirable
detail (especially in the scenes at the Althing), goes
on to show how Hrafnkel's pride was humbled by
Einar's cousin. All through, however, Hrafnkel is
represented as guilty of tragic terror, not of wicked-
ness ; he is punished more than is due, and in the
end the balance is redressed, and his arrogant
conqueror is made to accept Hrafnkel's terms.
It is a story clearly and symmetrically composed ;
it would be too neat, indeed, if it were not that it
still leaves some accounts outstanding at the end :
the original error is wasteful, and the life of an
innocent man is sacrificed in the clearing of scores
between Hrafnkel and his adversary.

The theory of a conglomerate epic may be applied
to the Icelandic Sagas with some effect. It is plain
on the face of them that they contain short stories
from tradition which may correspond to the short
lays of the epic theory, which do in fact resemble in
many things certain of the lays of the " Elder Edda."
Many of the Sagas, like Eyrbyggja^ Vatnsdcela,
Svarfdcsla, are ill compacted, and easily broken up
into separate short passages. On the other hand,
these broken and variegated Sagas are wanting in

SECT. 11 MATTER AND FORM 199

dignity and impressiveness compared with some
others, while those others have attained their dignity,
not by choosing their episodic chapters merely, but
by forcing their own original and commanding
thought upon all their matter. This is the case,
whether the form be that of the comprehensive,
large, secure, and elaborate NJdla; of Laxdcela^
with its dilatory introduction changing to the eager-
ness and quickness of the story of Gudrun ; of Grettir
and Gisli^ giving shape in their several ways to the
traditional accumulation of a hero's adventures; or,
not less remarkable, the precision of Hrafnkels Saga
and Bandamanna} which appear to have discovered
and fixed for themselves the canons of good
imaginative narrative in short compass, and to have
freed themselves, in a more summary way than Njdla,
from the encumbrances of traditional history, and
the distracting interests of the antiquarian and
the genealogist. These two stories, with that
of Howard of Icefirth^ and some others, might
perhaps be taken as corresponding in Icelandic
prose to the short epic in verse, such as the
Atlakvi'6a. They show, at any rate, that the
difficulties of reluctant subject-matter and of the
manifold deliverances of tradition were not able, in
all cases, to get the better of that sense of form
which was revealed in the older poetic designs.

In their temper also, and in the quality of their
heroic ideal, the Sagas are the inheritors of the older
heroic poetry.

^ See below, pp. 229 sqq. ^ p. 216,

Ill

THE HEROIC IDEAL

In the material conditions ot Icelandic life in the
" Saga Age " there was all the stuff that was required
for heroic narrative. This was recognised by the
story-tellers, and they made the most of it. It
must be admitted that there is some monotony in the
circumstances, but it may be contended that this is
of no account in comparison with the results that
are produced in the best Sagas out of trivial
occasions. "Greatly to find quarrel in a straw" is
the rule of their conduct. /The tempers of the men
are easily stirred; they have a general name^ for
the trial of a man's patience, applied to anything
that puts a strain on him, or encroaches on his
honour. The trial may come from anything — horses,
sheep, hay, women, merchandise. From these
follow any number of secondary or retaliatory insults,
trespasses, and manslaughters.^ Anything almost is
enough to set the play going. What the matter
in dispute may be, is almost indifferent to the author
of the story. Its value depends on the persons ; it
is what they choose to make it.

The Sagas differ from all other "heroic" litera-
tures in the larger proportion that they give to the
* Skapraun, lit test of condition.

SECT. Ill THE HEROIC IDEAL 201

meannesses of reality. Their historical character,
and their attempts to preserve an accurate memory of
the past, though often freely modified by imagination,
yet oblige them to include a number of things, gross,
common, and barbarous, because they are part of the
story. The Sagas differ one from another in this
respect. The characters are not all raised to the
height of Gunnar, Njal, Skarphedinn, Flosi, Bolli,
Kjartan, Gisli. In many of the Sagas, and in many
scenes, the characters are dull and ungainly. At the
same time their perversity, the naughtiness, for
example, of Vemund in Reykdcela^ or of Thorolf the
crank old man in Eyrbyggja, belongs to the same
world as the lives of the more heroic personages.
The Sagas take an interest in misconduct, when there
is nothing better to be had, and the heroic age is
frequently represented by them rather according to
the rules of modern unheroic story-telling than of
Bossu on the Epic Poem. The inequitajple persons
{ujafnd^armenn) in the Sagas are not all of them as
lordly as Agamemnon. For many readers this is an
advantage ; if the Sagas are thereby made inferior to
Homer, they are all the closer to modern stories of
"common life." The people of Iceland seem always
to have been "at the auld work of the marches
again," like Dandie Dinmont and Jock o' Dawston-
cleugh, and many of their grievances and wrongs
might with little change have been turned into sub-
jects for Crabbe or Mr. Hardy. It requires no great
stretch of fancy to see Crabbe at work on the story
of Thorolf Baegifot and his neighbour in Eyrbyggja ;
the old Thorolf, "curst with age," driven frantic by
his homely neighbour's greater skill in the weather,
and taking it out in a vicious trespass on his neigh-
bour's hay; the neighbour's recourse to Thorolf 's
more considerate son Arnkell ; Arnkell's payment of

202 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

the damage, and summary method of putting accounts
square again by seizure of his father's oxen ; with the
consequences of all this, which perhaps are somewhat
too violent to be translated literally into the modem
language of Suffolk or Wessex. Episodes of this
type are common in the Sagas, and it is to them in a
great measure that the Sagas owe their distinction
from the common run of medieval narrative. But no
appreciation of this " common life " in the Sagas can
be just, if it ignores the essentially "heroic" nature
of the moral laws under which the Icelandic narra-
tives are conducted. Whether with good results or
bad, is another question ; but there can be no doubt
that the Sagas were composed under the direction of
an heroic ideal, identical in most respects with that
of the older heroic poetry. This ideal view is
revealed in different ways, as the Sagas have different
ways of bringing their characters before the audience.
In the best passages, of course, which are the most
dramatic, the presuppositions and private opinions of
the author are not immediately disclosed in the
speeches of the characters. But the Sagas are not
without their chorus ; the general judgment of people
about their leaders is often expressed ; and although
the action of the Sagas is generally sufficient to make
its own impression and explain itself, the author's
reading of his characters is frequently added. From
the action and the commentary together, the heroic
ideal comes out clearly, and it is plain that its effect
on the Sagas was not merely an impHcit and uncon-
scious influence. It had risen into the consciousness
of the authors of the Sagas; it was not far from
definite expression in abstract terms. In this lay
the danger. An ideal, defined or described in set
terms, is an ideal without any responsibility and
without any privilege. It may be picked up and

SECT. Ill THE HEROIC IDEAL 203

traded on by any fool or hypocrite. Undefined
and undivulged, it belongs only to those who have
some original strength of imagination or will, and
with them it cannot go wrong. But a definite
ideal, and the terms of its definition, may belong
to any one and be turned to any use. So the
ideal of Petrarch was formulated and abused by the
Petrarchists. The formula of Amadis of Gaul is
derived from generations of older unformulated
heroes, and implies the exhaustion of the heroic
strain, in that line of descent. The Sagas have not
come as far as that, but the latter days, that have
seen Amadis, and the mechanical repetitions of
Amadis, may find in the Sagas some resemblances
and anticipations of the formal hero, though not yet
enough to be dangerous.

In all sound heroic literature there are passages
that bring up the shadow of the sceptic, — passages of
noble sentiment, whose phrases are capable of being
imitated, whose ideas may make the fortune of
imitators and pretenders. In the Teutonic epic
poetry, as in Homer, there are many noble speeches
of this sort, speeches of lofty rhetoric, about which
the spirit of depreciation prompts a suspicion that
perhaps they may be less weighty and more con-
ventional than we think. False heroics are easy, and
unhappily they have borrowed so much of the true,
that the tmth itself is sometimes put out of counten-
ance by the likeness.

In the English and the Icelandic heroic poetry
there is some ground for thinking that the process of
decline and the evolution of the false heroic went to
some length before it was stopped. The older poems
laid emphasis on certain qualities, and made them an
example and an edification. "So ought a man to
do," is a phrase common to the English and the

204 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

Northern schools of epic. The point of honour
comes to be only too well understood — too well, that
is, for the work of the imagination. Possibly the
latter part of Beowulf is more abstract than it ought
to be ; at any rate, there are many of the secondary
Anglo-Saxon poems which, like the old Saxon
Heliand^ show an excessive use of the poetic formulas
of courage and loyalty. The Icelandic poetry had
also its spurious heroic phrases, by which something
is taken away from the force of their more authentic
originals.

In the Sagas, as in the Iliad, in the Song of
Maldon, in the Death of Ermanaric, there is a
rhetorical element by which the ideas of absolute
courage are expressed. Unhappily it is not always
easy to be sure whether the phrases are of the first
or the second growth ; in most cases, the better
opinion perhaps will be that they belong to a time
not wholly unsophisticated, yet not in the stage of
secondary and abstract heroic romance. The rhetoric
of the Sagas, like the rhetoric of the " Poetic Edda,"
was taken too seriously and too greedily by the first
modern discoverers of the old Northern literature.
It is not, any more than the rhetoric of Homer, the
immediate expression of the real life of an heroic
age ; for the good reason that it is literature, and
literature just on the autumnal verge, and plainly
capable of decay. The best of the Sagas were just
in time to escape that touch of over-reflexion and
self-consciousness which checks the dramatic life and
turns it into matter of edification or sentiment. The
best of them also give many indications to show how
near they were to over-elaboration and refinement.

Kjartan, for example, in Laxdcela is represented
in a way that sometimes brings him dangerously near
the ideal hero. The story (like many of the other

SECT. Ill THE HEROIC IDEAL 205

Sagas) plays about between the two extremes, of
strong imagination applied dramatically to the sub-
ject-matter, on the one hand, and abstract ethical
reflexion on the other. In the scene of Kjartan's
encounter with Olaf Tryggvason in Norway ^ there is
a typical example of the two kinds of operation.
The scene and the dialogue are fully adequate to the
author's intention, about which there can be no
mistake. What he wishes to express is there ex-
pressed, in the most lively way, with the least possible
encumbrance of explanation or chorus : the pride of
Kjartan, his respect for his unknown antagonist in
the swimming-match, his anxiety to keep clear of any
submission to the king, with the king's reciprocal
sense of the Icelander's magnanimity ; no stroke in
all this is other than right. While also it may be
perceived that the author has brought into his story
an ingredient of rhetoric. In this place it has its use
and its effect ; and, nevertheless, it is recognisable as
the dangerous essence of all that is most different
from sound narrative or drama.

Then said the king, " It is well seen that Kjartan is
used to put more trust in his own might than in the
help of Thor and Odin."

This rings as true as the noble echo of it in the
modern version of the Lovers of Gudrun : —

If neither Christ nor Odin help, why then
Still at the worst we are the sons of men.

No amount of hacking work can take away the
eloquence of this phrasing. Yet it is beyond ques-
tion, that these phrases, like that speech of Sarpedon
which has been borrowed by many a hero since, are
of a different stuff from pure drama, or any pure

^ Translated in Appendix, Note B.

206 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

imaginative work. By taking thought, they may be
more nearly imitated than is possible in the case of
any strong dramatic scene. The words of the king
about Kjartan are like the words that are used to
Earl Hakon, by Sigmund of the Faroes;^ they are
on their way to become, or they have already become,
an ethical commonplace. In the place where they
are used, in the debate between Kjartan and King
Olaf, they have received the strong life of the indi-
vidual persons between whom they pass, just as an
actor may give life and character to any words that
are put in his mouth. Yet elsewhere the phrase may
occur as a commonplace formula — hann trti'6i d
mdtt Sinn ok megtn (he trusted in his own might and
main) — applied generally to those Northern pagans
who were known to be securi adversus Deos at the
time of the first preaching of Christendom in the
North.

All is well, however, so long as this heroic ideal
is kept in its right relation, as one element in a
complex work, not permitted to walk about by itself
as a personage. This right subordination is observed
in the Sagas, whereby both the heroic characters are
kept out of extravagance (for neither Gunnar, Kari,
nor Kjartan is an abstract creature), and the less
noble or the more complex characters are rightly
estimated. The Sagas, which in many things are
ironical or reticent, do not conceal their standard of
measurement or value, in relation to which characters
and actions are to be appraised. They do not, on
the other hand, allow this ideal to usurp upon the
rights of individual characters. They are imagina-
tive, dealing in actions and characters ; they are not
ethical or sentimental treatises, or mirrors of chivalry.

^ " Tell me what faith you are of," said the earl. " I believe
ill my own strength," said Sigmund (Ftereyinga Saga).

TRAGIC IMAGINATION

In their definite tragical situations and problems, the
Sagas are akin to the older poetry of the Teutonic
race. The tragical cases of the earlier heroic age are
found repeated, with variations, in the Sagas. Some
of the chief of these resemblances have been found
and discussed by the editors of Corpus Poeticum
Boreale. Also in many places where there is no
need to look for any close resemblance in detail,
there is to be seen the same mode of comprehending
the tragical stress and contradiction as is manifested
in the remains of the poetry. As in the older
Germanic stories, so in the Sagas, the plot is often
more than mere contest or adventure. As in Finnes-
burh and Waldere, so in Gisla Saga and Njdla and
many other Icelandic stories, the action turns upon a
debate between opposite motives of loyalty, friend-
ship, kindred. Gisli kills his sister's husband ; it is
his sister who begins the pursuit of Gisli, his sister
who, after Gisli's death, tries to avenge him. Njal
has to stand by his sons, who have killed his friend.
Gunnlaug and Hrafn, Kjartan and Bolli, are friends
estranged by "Fate and their own transgression,"
like Walter and Hagena.

The Sagas, being prose and having an historical
207

2o8 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

tradition to take care of, are unable to reach the
same intensity of passion as some of the heroic
poems, the poems of Helgi and of Sigurd. They are
all the more epic, perhaps, on that account ; more
equable in their course, with this compensation for
their quieter manner, that they have more room and
more variety than the passionate heroic poems.
These histories have also, as a rule, to do without the
fantasies of such poetry as Hervor and Angantyr,
or Helgi and Sigrun. The vision of the Queens
of the Air, the return of Helgi from the dead, the
chantings of Hervor " between the worlds," are too
much for the plain texture of the Sagas. Though,
as has already been seen in Grettir and Gisli^
this element of fantastic beauty is not wholly absent ;
the less substantial graces of mythical romance,
" fainter and flightier " than those of epic, are some-
times to be found even in the historical prose ; the
historical tragedies have their accompaniment of
mystery. More particularly, the story of the Death
of Thidrandi whom the Goddesses slew^ is a prose
counterpart to the poetry of Sigrun and Hervor.^

There are many other incidents in the Sagas
which have the look of romance about them. But
of a number of these the distinction holds good that
has been already put forward in the case of Beowulf:
they are not such wonders as lie outside the bounds
of common experience, according to the estimate of
those for whom the stories were told. Besides some
wonderful passages that still retain the visionary and
fantastic charm of myth and mythical romance, there
are others in which the wonders are more gross and
nearer to common life. Such is the story of the
hauntings at Froda, in Eyrbyggja ; the drowned man

1 It is summarised in Dasent's Njal, i. p. xx., and translated
in Sephton's Olaf Tryggvason (1895), pp. 339-341.

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 209

and his companions coming home night after night
and sitting in their wet clothes till daybreak ; such
is the ghastly story of the funeral of Viga-Styrr in
Hei'6arviga Saga. Things of that sort are no excep-
tions to common experience, according to the
Icelandic judgment, and do not stand out from the
history as something different in kind ; they do not
belong to the same order as the dream-poetry of
Gisli or the vision of Thidrandi.

The self-denial of the Icelandic authors in regard
to myth and pure romance has secured for them, in
exchange, everything that is essential to strong
dramatic stories, independent of mythological or
romantic attractions.

Some of the Sagas are a reduction of heroic fable
to the temper and conditions of modern prose.
Laxdala is an heroic epic, rewritten as a prose
history under the conditions of actual life, and with-
out the help of any supernatural "machinery." It
is a modern prose version of the Niblung tragedy,
with the personages chosen from the life of Iceland
in the heroic age, and from the Icelandic family
traditions. It is not the only work that has reduced
the Niblung story to terms of matter of fact. The
story of Sigurd and Brynhild has been presented
as a drama by Ibsen in his Warriors in Helgeland^
with the names changed, with new circumstances,
and with nothing remaining of the mythical and
legendary lights that play about the fortunes of Sigurd
in the Northern poems. The play relies on the
characters, without the mysteries of Odin and the
Valkyria. An experiment of the same sort had been
made long before. In Laxdcela, Kjartan stands for
Sigurd : Gudrun daughter of Osvifr, wife of Bolli, is
in the place of Brynhild wife of Gunnar, driving her
husband to avenge her on her old lover. That the

2IO THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

authors of the Sagas were conscious at least in some
cases of their relation to the poems is proved by
affinities in the details of their language. In Gisla
Saga^ Thordis, sister of Gisli, has to endure the same
sorrow as the wife of Sigurd in the poems ; her
husband, Uke Sigurd, is killed by her brother. One
of the verses put in the mouth of Gish in the story
contrasts her with Gudrun, daughter of Giuki, who
killed her husband (Attila) to avenge her brothers ;
whereas Thordis was waking up the pursuers of her
brother Gisli to avenge her husband. With this
verse in his head, it is impossible that the writer of
the Saga can have overlooked the resemblance which
is no less striking than the contrast between the two

The relation of the Sagas to the older poetry may
be expressed in this way, perhaps, that they are the
last stage in a progress from the earliest mythical
imagination, and the earliest dirges and encomiums
of the great men of a tribe, to a consistent and orderly
form of narrative literature, attained by the direction
of a critical faculty which kept out absurdities, with-
out impairing the dramatic energy of the story.
The Sagas are the great victory of the Humanities in
the North, at the end of a long process of education.
The Northern nations, like others, had to come to an
understanding with themselves about their inherited
myths, their traditional literary forms. One age after
another helped in different ways to modify their
beliefs, to change their literary taste. Practically,
they had to find out what they were to think of the
gods ; poetically, what they were to put into their songs
and stories. With problems of this sort, when a
beginning has once been made, anything is possible,
and there is no one kind of success. Every nation
that has ever come to anything has had to go to

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 21 1

school in this way. None has ever been successful
right through ; while, on the other hand, success does
not mean the attainment of any definite end. There
is a success for every stage in the progress, and one
nation or literature differs from another, not by reason
of an ultimate victory or defeat, but in the number of
prizes taken by the way.

As far as can be made out, the people of the
Northern tongue got the better of the Western Teutons,
in making far more than they out of the store of
primeval fancies about the gods and the worlds, and
in giving to their heroic poems both an intenser
passion of expression and a more mysterious grace
and charm. The Western Teutons in their heroic
poetry seem, on the other hand, to have been
steadier and less flighty. They took earlier to the
line of reasonable and dignified narrative, reducing
the lyrical element, perhaps increasing the gnomic
or reflective proportions of their work. So they
succeeded in their own way, with whatever success
belongs to Beowulf, Waldere^ Byrhtnoth^ not to speak
of the new essays they made with themes taken from
the Church, in the poems of Andreas^ Judith, and all
the rest. Meanwhile the Northerners were having
their own difficulties and getting over them, or out of
them. They knew far more about the gods, and
made poems about them. They had no patience, so
that they could not dilute and expand their stories in
the Western way. They saw no good in the leisurely
methods ; they must have everything emphatic, every-
thing full of poetical meaning ; hence no large poetry,
but a number of short poems with no slackness in
them. With these they had good reason to be
content, as a good day's work in their day. But
whatever advantage the fiery Northern poems may
have over the slower verse of the Anglo-Saxons, they

212 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

do not correspond to the same intellectual wants, and
they leave out something which seems to have been
attained in the Western poetry. The North had still
to find out what could be done with simpler materials,
and without the magical light of the companions
of Sigrun. The Icelandic prose histories are the
solution of this new problem, a problem which the
English had already tried and solved in their own
manner in the quieter passages of their epic poetry,
and, above all, in the severity of the poem of Mcddon.

The Sagas are pardy indebted to a spirit of
negative criticism and restraint ; a tendency not
purely literary, corresponding, at any rate, to a
similar tendency in practical life. The energy, the
passion, the lamentation of the Northern poetry, the
love of all the wonders of mythology, went along
with practical and intellectual clearness of vision in
matters that required cool judgment. The ironical
correction of sentiment, the tone of the advocatus
diabolic is habitual with many of the Icelandic writers,
and many of their heroes. "To see things as they
really are," so that no incantation could transform
them, was one of the gifts of an Icelandic hero,^ and
appears to have been shared by his countrymen
when they set themselves to compose the Sagas.

The tone of the Sagas is generally kept as near as
may be to that of the recital of true history. Nothing
is allowed any preponderance over the story and the
speeches in it. It is the kind of story furthest
removed from the common pathetic fallacies of the
Middle Ages. The rationaHst mind has cleared
away all the sentimental and most of the superstitious
encumbrances and hindrances of strong narrative.

The history of the early Northern rationalism and
its practical results is part of the general history of

1 HariSar Saga, c. xi.

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 213

religion and politics. In some respects it may have
been premature; in many cases it seems (as might
be expected) to have gone along with hardness and
sterility of mind, and to have left an inheritance of
vacuity behind it. The curious and elaborate hard-
ness of the Icelandic Court poetry may possibly be a
sign of this same temper ; in another way, the prevalent
coolness of Northern piety, even before the Reforma-
tion, is scarcely to be dissociated from the coolness
of the last days of heathendom. The spirited acute-
ness of Snorri the Priest and his contemporaries was
succeeded by a moderate and unenthusiastic fashion
of religion, for the most part equally remote from the
extravagances and the glories of the medieval Church.
But with these things the Sagas have little to do;
where they are in relation to this common rationahst
habit of mind, it is all to their good. The Sagas are
not injured by any scepticism or coolness in the
minds of their authors. The positive habit of mind
in the Icelanders is enough to secure them against a
good deal of the conventional dulness of the Middle
Ages. It made them dissatisfied with anything that
seemed wanting in vividness or immediate force; it
led them to select, in their histories, such things as
were interesting in themselves, and to present them
definitely, without any drawling commonplaces, or
any makeshift rhetorical substitutes for accurate
vision and clear record. It did not hinder, but it
directed and concentrated the imagination. The
self-repression in the Sagas is bracing. It gives
greater clearness, greater resonance ; it does not cut
out or renounce anything that is really worth keeping.
If not the greatest charm of the Sagas, at any rate
that which is perhaps most generally appreciated by
modern readers is their economy of phrasing in the
critical passages, the brevity with which the incidents

214 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

and speeches are conveyed, the restriction of all com-
mentary to the least available compass. Single
phrases in the great scenes of the Sagas are full-
charged with meaning to a degree hardly surpassed
in any literature, certainly not in the literatures of
medieval Europe. Half a dozen words will carry all
the force of the tragedy of the Sagas, or render all the
suspense and terror of their adventurous moments,
with an effect that is like nothing so much as the
effect of some of the short repressed phrases of
Shakespeare in Hamlet or King Lear. The effect is
attained not by study of the central phrase so much
as by the right arrangement and selection of the
antecedents ; that is, by right proportion in the narra-
tive. It is in this way that the killing of Gunnar's
dog, in the attack on Lithend, is made the occasion
for one of the great strokes of narrative. The words
of Gunnar, when he is roused by the dog's howl —
" Sore art thou handled, Sam, my fosterling, and may-
be it is meant that there is not to be long between
thy death and mine ! " — are a perfect dramatic in-
dication of everything the author wishes to express —
the coolness of Gunnar, and his contempt for his
enemies, as well as his pity for his dog. They set
everything in tune for the story of Gunnar's death
which follows. It is in this way that the adventures
of the Sagas are raised above the common form of
mere reported " fightings and fiockings," the common
tedious story of raids and reprisals. This is one of
the kinds of drama to be found in the Sagas, and not
exclusively in the best of them. One of the con-
ditions of this manner of composition and this device
of phrasing is that the author shall be able to keep
himself out of the story, and let things make their
own impression. This is the result of the Icelandic
habit of restraint The intellectual coolness of the

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 215

Sagas is a pride that keeps them from pathetic
effusions ; it does not impede the dramatic passion,
it merely gives a lesson to the sensibilities and
sympathies, to keep them out of the way when they
are not wanted.

This is one notable difference of temper and
rhetoric between the Sagas and the old English
poems. One of the great beauties of the old
English poetry is its understanding of the moods of
lamentation — the mood of Ossian it might be called,
without much error in the name. The transience
and uncertainty of the world, the memory of past good
fortune, and of things lost, — with themes like these
the Anglo-Saxon poets make some of their finest
verse ; and while this fashion of meditation may seem
perhaps to have come too readily, it is not the worst
poets who fall in with it. In the Icelandic poetry
the notes of lamentation are not wanting, and it
cannot be said that the Northern elegies are less
sweet or less thrilling in their grief than those of
England in the kindred forms of verse. It is enough
to think of Gudrufis Lament in the " Elder Edda,"
or of Sonatorrek, Egil Skallagrimsson's elegy on the
death of his two sons. It was not any congenital
dulness or want of sense that made the Sagas gener-
ally averse to elegy. No mere writer of Sagas was
made of stronger temper than Egil, and none of them
need have been ashamed of lamentation after Egil
had lamented. But they saw that it would not do,
that the fabric of the Saga was not made for excessive
decoration of any kind, and least of all for parenthesis
of elegy. The English heroic poetry is more relent-
ing. Beowulf is invaded by pathos in a way that
often brings the old English verse very nearly to the
tone of the great lament for Lancelot at the end of
the Morte d^ Arthur ; which, no doubt, is justification

2i6 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

enough for any lapse from the pure heroic. In the
Sagas the sense of all the vanity of human wishes is
expressed in a different way : the lament is turned
into dramatic action ; the author's sympathy is not
shown in direct effusions, but in his rendering of the
drama. ^ The best instance of this is the story of
Howard of Icefirth.

Howard's son Olaf, a high-spirited and generous
young man, comes under the spite of a domineering
gentleman, all the more because he does some good
offices of his own free will for this tyrannical person.
Olaf is attacked and killed by the bully and his
friends; then the story goes on to tell of the
vengeance of his father and mother. The grief of
the old man is described as a matter of fact ; he was
lame and feeble, and took to his bed for a long time
after his son's death. Then he roused himself, and
he and his wife went to look for help, and finally
were able to bring down their enemy. In all this
there is no reflexion or commentary by the author.
The pathos is turned into narrative ; it is conveyed
by means of the form of the story, the relation of
the incidents to one another. The passion of the old
people turns into resolute action, and is revealed in
the perseverance of Bjargey, Olaf s mother, tracking
out her enemy and coming to her kinsmen to ask for
help. She rows her boat round her enemy's ship and
finds out his plans ; then she goes to her brothers'
houses, one after another, and "borrows" avengers
for her son. The repression and irony of the
Icelandic character are shown in the style of her
address to her brothers. '* I have come to borrow

1 The pathos of Asdis, Grettir's mother, comes nearest to the
tone of the old English laments, or of the Northern elegiac poetry,
and may be taken as a contrast to the demeanour of Bjargey in
Hdvar^ar Saga, and an exception to the general nile of the Sagas
in this respect.

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 217

your nets," she says to one, and " I have come to
borrow your turf-spade," to another ; all which is
interpreted aright by the brothers, who see what her
meaning is. Then she goes home to her husband ;
and here comes in, not merely irony, but an inten-
tional rebuke to sentiment. Her husband is lying
helpless and moaning, and she asks him whether he
has slept. To which he answers in a stave of the
usual form in the Sagas, the purport of which is that
he has never known sleep since the death of Olaf his
son. " ' Verily that is a great lie,' says she, ' that
thou hast never slept once these three years. But
now it is high time to be up and play the man, if
thou wilt have revenge for Olaf thy son ; because
never in thy days will he be avenged, if it be not
this day.' And when he heard his wife's reproof he
sprang out of bed on to the floor, and sang this
other stave," — of which the substance is still lamenta-
tion, but greatly modified in its effect by the action
with which it is accompanied. Howard seems to
throw off his age and feebleness as time goes on, and
the height of his passion is marked by a note of his
cheerfulness and gladness after he has killed his
enemy. This is different from the method of Beowulf^
where the grief of a father for his son is rendered in
an elegy, with some beauty and some irrelevance, as
if the charm of melancholy were too much for the
story-teller.

The hardness of the Sagas is sometimes carried too
far for the taste of some readers, and there is room
for some misgiving that in places the Sagas have been
affected by the contrary vice from that of effusive
pathos, namely, by a pretence of courage and endur-
ance. In some of the Northern poetry, as in Ragnat^s
Death-Song^ there may be detected the same kind of

1 Vide Siipra, p. 140, and infra, p. 295.

2l8 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

insincere and exaggerated heroism as in the modern
romantic imitations of old Northern sentiment, now
fortunately less common than in the great days of
the Northern romantic movement at the beginning
of this century. The old Northern poetry seems to
have become at one stage too self-conscious of the
literary effect of magnanimity, too quick to seize all
the literary profit that was to be made out of the
conventional Viking. The Viking of the modern
romantic poets has been the affliction of many in the
last hundred years ; none of his patrons seem to have
guessed that he had been discovered, and possibly
had begun to be a bore, at a time when the historical
'* Viking Age " had scarcely come to its close. There
is little in the Icelandic Sagas to show any affinity
with his forced and ostentatious bravery ; but it may
be suspected that here and there the Sagas have made
some use of the theatrical Viking, and have thrown
their lights too strongly on their death scenes. Some
of the most impressive passages of the Sagas are those
in which a man receives a death-wound with a quaint
remark, and dies forthwith, like Atli in the story of
Grettir, who was thrust through as he stood at his
door, and said, " Those broad spears are in fashion
now," as he went down. This scene is one of the
best of its kind ; there is no fault to be found with it.
But there are possibly too many scenes and speeches
of the same sort ; enough to raise the suspicion that
the situation and the form of phrase were becoming
a conventional device, like some of the " machines "
in the secondary Sagas, and in the too-much-edited
parts of the better ones. This suspicion is not one
that need be scouted or choked off. The worser
parts and baser parts of the literature are to be
detected by any means and all means. It is well
in criticism, however, to supplement this amputating

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 219

practice by some regard for the valid substances that
have no need of it, and in this present case to look
away from the scenes where there is suspicion of
journey work and mechanical processes to the master-
pieces that set the standard ; more especially to the
story of the burning of Njal, which more than any
other is full of the peculiar strength and quality of
the Sagas.

The beauty of ^'^/<3!, and especially of the chapters
about Njal's death, is the result of a harmony between
two extremes of sentiment, each of which by itself
was dangerous, and both of which have here been
brought to terms with each other and with the whole
design of the work. The ugliness of Skarphedinn's
demeanour might have turned out to be as excessive
as the brutalities of Svarfdcela or Ljbsvetninga Saga ;
the gentleness of Njal has some affinities with the
gentleness of the martyrs. Some few passages have
distinctly the homiletic or legendary tone about
them : —

Then Flosi and his men made a great pile before
each of the doors, and then the women-folk who were
inside began to weep and to wail.

Njal spoke to them, and said : " Keep up your hearts,
nor utter shrieks, for this is but a passing storm, and it
will be long before you have another such ; and put your
faith in God, and believe that He is so merciful that He
will not let us burn both in this world and the next."

Such words of comfort had he for them all, and others
still more strong (c. 128, Dasent's translation).

It is easy to see in what school the style of this
was learned, and of this other passage, about Njal
after his death : —

Then Hjallti said, " I shall speak what I say with all
freedom of speech. The body of Bergthora looks as it

220 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

was likely she would look, and still fair ; but Njal's body
and visage seem to me so bright that I have never seen
any dead man's body so bright as this " (c. 131 ).

At the other extreme are the heathenish manners
of Skarphedinn, who, in the scene at the Althing,
uses all the bad language of the old " flytings " in the
heroic poetry,^ who " grins " at the attempts to make
peace, who might easily, by a little exaggeration and
change of emphasis, have been turned into one of the
types of the false heroic.

Something like this has happened to Egil, in
another Saga, through want of balance, want of
comprehensive imagination in the author. In Njdla^
where no element is left to itself, the picture is
complete and full of variety. The prevailing tone is
neither that of the homily nor that of the robustious
Viking ; it is the tone of a narrative that has com-
mand of itself and its subject, and can play securely
with everything that comes within its scope.

In the death of Njal the author's imagination has
found room for everything, — for the severity and the
nobility of the old Northern life, for the gentleness of
the new religion, for the irony in which the temper
of Skarphedinn is made to complement and illustrate
the temper of Njal.

Then Flosi went to the door and called out to Njal,
and said he would speak with him and Bergthora.

Now Njal does so, and Flosi said : " I will offer
thee, master Njal, leave to go out, for it is unworthy that
thou shouldst burn indoors."

" I will not go out," said Njal, " for I am an old
man, and little fitted to avenge my sons, but I will not
live in shame."

Then Flosi said to Bergthora : " Come thou out,
housewife, for I will for no sake bum thee indoors."

* Pp. 96, 113, above.

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 221

" I was given away to Njal young," said Bergthora,
"and I have promised him this, that we should both
share the same fate."

After that they both went back into the house.

" What counsel shall we now take ? " said Bergthora.

"We will go to our bed," says Njal, "and lay us
down ; I have long been eager for rest."

Then she said to the boy Thord, Kari's son : " Thee
will I take out, and thou shalt not burn in here."

"Thou hast promised me this, grandmother," says
the boy, " that we should never part so long as I wished
to be with thee ; but methinks it is much better to die
with thee and Njal than to live after you."

Then she bore the boy to her bed, and Njal spoke to
his steward and said : —

" Now shalt thou see where we lay us down, and
how I lay us out, for I mean not to stir an inch hence,
whether reek or burning smart me, and so thou wilt be
able to guess where to look for our bones."

He said he would do so.

There had been an ox slaughtered, and the hide lay
there. Njal told the steward to spread the hide over
them, and he did so.

So there they lay down both of them in their bed,
and put the boy between them. Then they signed
themselves and the boy with the cross, and gave over
their souls into God's hand, and that was the last word
that men heard them utter.

Then the steward took the hide and spread it over
them, and went out afterwards. Kettle of the Mark
caught hold of him and dragged him out ; he asked
carefully after his father-in-law Njal, but the steward told
him the whole truth. Then Kettle said : —

" Great grief hath been sent on us, when we have
had to share such ill-luck together."

Skarphedinn saw how his father laid him down and
how he laid himself out, and then he said : —

" Our father goes early to bed, and that is what was
to be looked for, for he is an old man."

222 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, ill

The harmonies of LaxdcBla are somewhat different
from those of the history of Njal, but here again the
elements of grace and strength, of gentleness and
terror, are combined in a variety of ways, and in such
a way as to leave no preponderance to any one exclu-
sively. Sometimes the story may seem to fall into
the exemplary vein of the " antique poet historicall " ;
sometimes the portrait of Kjartan may look as if it
were designed, like the portrait of Amadis or Tirant
the White, " to fashion a gentleman or noble person
in vertuous and gentle discipline." Sometimes the
story is involved in the ordinary business of Icelandic
life, and Kjartan and Bolli, the Sigurd and Gunnar
of the tragedy, are seen engaged in common affairs,
such as make the alloy of heroic narrative in the
Odyssey. The hero is put to the proof in this way,
and made to adapt himself to various circumstances.
Sometimes the story touches on the barbarism and
cruelty, which were part of the reality familiar to the
whole of Iceland in the age of the Sturlungs, of which
there is more in the authentic history of the Sturlungs
than in the freer and more imaginative story of
Kjartan. At one time the story uses the broad and
fluent form of narrative, leaving scene after scene to
speak for itself; at other times it allows itself to be
condensed into a significant phrase. Of these em-
phatic phrases there are two especially, both of them
speeches of Gudrun, and the one is the complement
of the other : the one in the tone of irony, Gudrun's
comment on the death of Kjartan, a repetition of
Brynhild's phrase on the death of Sigurd ; ^ the other
Gudrun's confession to her son at the end of the
whole matter.

1 Then Biynhild laughed till the walls rang again: "Good
luck to your hands and swords that have felled the goodly prince"
{^Brot Sgkv. lo ; cf. p. 103 above).

SECT. IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION 223

Gudrun meets her husband coming back, and says :
" A good day's work and a notable ; I have spun twelve
ells of yarn, and you have slain Kjartan Olaf's son."

BoUi answers : " That mischance would abide with
me, without thy speaking of it"

Said Gudrun : " I reckon not that among mischances ;
it seemed to me thou hadst greater renown that winter
Kjartan was in Norway, than when he came back to
Iceland and trampled thee under foot. But the last is
best, that Hrefna will not go laughing to bed this
night."

Then said Bolli in great wrath : " I know not whether
she will look paler at this news than thou, and I doubt
thou mightest have taken it no worse if we had been
left lying where we fought, and Kjartan had come to
tell of it."

Gudrun saw that Bolli was angry, and said : " Nay,
no need of words like these ; for this work I thank
thee ; there is an earnest in it that thou wilt not thwart
me after."

This is one of the crises of the story, in which
the meaning of Gudrun is brought out in a short
passage of dialogue, at the close of a section of
narrative full of adventure and incident. In all
that precedes, in the relations of Gudrun to Kjartan
before and after her marriage with Bolli, as after the
marriage of Kjartan and Hrefna, the motives are
generally left to be inferred from the events and
actions. Here it was time that Gudrun should speak
her mind, or at least the half of her mind.

Her speech at the end of her life is equally re-
quired, and the two speeches are the complement of
one another. Bolli her son comes to see her and
sits with her.

The story tells that one day Bolli came to Helgafell ;
for Gudrun was always glad when he came to see her.

2 24 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, in

Bolli sat long with his mother, and there was much talk
between them. At last Bolli said : " Mother, will you
tell me one thing ? It has been in my mind to ask you,
who was the man you loved best ? "

Gudrun answers : " Thorkell was a great man and a
lordly ; and no man was goodlier than Bolli, nor of
gentler breeding ; Thord Ingwin's son was the most
discreet of them all, a wise man in the law. Of Thorvald
I make no reckoning."

Then says Bolli : " All this is clear, all the condition
of your husbands as you have told ; but it has not yet
been told whom you loved best. You must not keep it
secret from me longer."

Gudrun answers : " You put me hard to it, my son ;
but if I am to tell any one, I will rather tell you than
another."

Bolli besought her again to tell him. Then said
Gudrun : " I did the worst to him, the man that I loved
the most."

" Now may we believe," says Bolli, " that there is no
more to say."

He said that she had done right in telling him what
he asked.

Gudrun became an old woman, and it is said that
she lost her sight. She died at Helgafell, and there
she rests.

This is one of the passages which it is easy to
quote, and also dangerous. The confession ot
Gudrun loses incalculably when detached from the
whole story, as also her earlier answer fails, by itself,
to represent the meaning and the art of the Saga.
They are the two keys that the author has given ;
neither is of any use by itself, and both together
are of service only in relation to the whole story and
all its fabric of incident and situation and changing
views of life.

COMEDY

The Poetical Justice of Tragedy is observed, and
rightly observed, in many of the Sagas and in the
greater plots. Fate and Retribution preside over
the stories of Njal and his sons, and the Lovers of
Gudrun. The story of Gisli works itself out in
accordance with the original forebodings, yet without
any illicit process in the logic of acts and motives,
or any intervention of the mysterious powers who
accompany the life of Gisli in his dreams. Even in
less consistent stories the same ideas have a part;
the story of Gudmund the Mighty, which is a series
of separate chapters, is brought to an end in the
Nemesis for Gudmund's injustice to Thorkell Hake.
But the Sagas claim exemption from the laws of
Tragedy, when poetical Justice threatens to become
tyrannical. Partly by the nature of their origin, no
doubt, and their initial dependence on historical
recollections of actual events,^ they are driven to
include a number of things that might disappoint
a well-educated gallery of spectators; the drama is
not always worked out, or it may be that the meaning
of a chapter or episode lies precisely in the disappoint-
ment of conventional expectations.

^ Vide supra, p. 193 (the want of tragedy in Viga-Gliims Saga).
225 Q

226 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

There is only one comedy, or at most two, among
the Sagas — the story of the Confederates {Banda-
manna Saga) with an afterpiece, the short story of
Alecap {Olkofra ])dttr). The composition of the
Sagas, however, admits all sorts of comic passages
and undignified characters, and it also quietly un-
ravels many complications that seem to be working
up for a tragic ending. The dissipation of the storm
before it breaks is, indeed, so common an event that
it almost becomes itself a convention of narrative in
the Sagas, by opposition to the common devices of
the feud and vengeance. There is a good instance
of this paradoxical conclusion in Arons Saga (c. 1 2),
an authentic biography, apparently narrating an actual
event. The third chapter of Gluma gives another
instance of threatened trouble passing away. Ivar,
a Norwegian with a strong hatred of Icelanders,
seems likely to quarrel with Eyolf, Glum's father, but
being a gentleman is won over by Eyolf's bearing.
This is a part of the Saga where one need not expect
to meet with any authentic historical tradition. The
story of Eyolf in Norway is probably mere literature,
and shows the working of the common principles of
the Saga, as applied by an author of fiction. The
sojourn of Grettir with the two foster-brothers is
another instance of a dangerous situation going off
without result. The whole action of Vdpnfir^inga
Saga is wound up in a reconciliation, which is a
suflficient close; but, on the other hand, the story
of Glum ends in a mere exhaustion of the rivalries,
a drawn game. One of the later more authentic
histories, the story of Thorgils and Haflidi, dealing
with the matters of the twelfth century and not with
the days of Gunnar, Njal, and Snorri the Priest, is a
story of rivalry passing away, and may help to show
how the composers of the Sagas were influenced by

SECT. V COMEDY 227

their knowledge and observation of things near their
own time in their treatment of matters of tradition.

Even more striking than this evasion of the con-
ventional plot of the blood-feud, is the freedom and
variety in respect of the minor characters, particularly
shown in the way they are made to perplex the
simple-minded spectator. To say that all the char-
acters in the Sagas escape from the limitations of
mere typical humours might be to say too much ; but
it is obvious that simple types are little in favour,
and that the Icelandic authors had ail of them some
conception of the ticklish and dangerous variabiUty of
human dispositions, and knew that hardly any one
was to be trusted to come up to his looks, for good or
evil. Popular imagination has everywhere got at
something of this sort in its views of the lubberly
younger brother, the ash-raker and idler who carries
off the princess. Many of the heroes of the Sagas
are noted to have been slow in their growth and un-
promising, like Glum, but there are many more cases
of change of disposition in the Sagas than can be
summed up under this old formula. There are stories
of the quiet man roused to action, like Thorarin in
Eyrbyggja, where it is plain that the quietness was
strength from the first. A different kind of courage
is shown by Atli, the poor-spirited prosperous man in
Hdvar^ar Saga, who went into hiding to escape
being dragged into the family troubles, but took
heart and played the man later on. One of the
most effective pieces of comedy in the Sagas is the
description of his ill-temper when he is found out,
and his gradual improvement. He comes from his
den half-frozen, with his teeth chattering, and nothing
but bad words for his wife and her inconvenient
brother who wants his help. His wife puts him to
bed, and he comes to think better of himself and the

228 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

world ; the change of his mind being represented in
the unobtrusive manner which the Sagas employ in
their larger scenes.

One of the most humorous and effective contradic-
tions of the popular judgment is that episode in
Njdla^ where Kari has to trust to the talkative
person whose wife has a low opinion of him. It
begins like farce : any one can see that Bjorn has all
the manners of the swaggering captain ; his wife is
a shrew and does not take him at his own valuation.
The comedy of Bjorn is that he proves to be some-
thing different both from his own Bjorn and his wife's
Bjorn. He is the idealist of his own heroism, and
believes in himself as a hero. His wife knows better ;
but the beauty of it all is that his wife is wrong. His
courage, it is true, is not quite certain, but he stands
his ground ; there is a small particle of a hero in
him, enough to save him. His backing of Kari in
the fight is what many have longed to see, who have
found little comfort in the discomfiture of Bobadil
and Parolles, and who will stand to it that the
chronicler has done less than justice to Sir John
Falstaff both at Gadshill and Shrewsbury. Never
before Bjorn of Njdla was there seen on any theatre
the person of the comfortable optimist, with a soul
apparently damned from the first to a comic exposure
and disgrace, but escaping this because his soul has
just enough virtue to keep him steady. The ordeal
of Bjorn contains more of the comic spirit than all
the host of stage cowards from Pyrgopolinices to Bob
Acres, precisely because it introduces something
more than the simple humour, an essence more
spiritual and capricious.

Further, the partnership of Kari and Bjorn, and
Kari's appreciation of his idealist companion, go a
long way to save Kari from a too exclusive and

SECT. V COMEDY 229

limited devotion to the purpose of vengeance. There
is much to be said on behalf of this Bjorn. His re-
lations with Kari prevent the hero of the latter part
of the book from turning into a mere hero. The
humorous character of the squire brings out some-
thing new in the character of the knight, a humorous
response ; all which goes to increase the variety of the
story, and to widen the difference between this story
and all the monotonous and abstract stories of
chivalrous adventures.

The Sagas have comedy in them, comic incidents
and characters, because they have no notion of the
dignity of abstract and limited heroics ; because they
cannot understand the life of Iceland otherwise than
in full, with all its elements together. The one
intentionally comic history, Bandamanna Saga,
" The Confederates," which is exceptional in tone and
plot, is a piece of work in which what may be called
the form or spirit or idea of the heroic Saga is brought
fully within one's comprehension by means of contrast
and parody. Bandamanna Saga is a complete work,
successful in every detail ; as an artistic piece of
composition it will stand comparison with any of the
Sagas. But it is comedy, not tragedy ; it is a mock-
heroic, following the lines of the heroic model, con-
sistently and steadily, and serving as a touchstone
for the vanity of the heroic age. It is worth study,
for Comedy is later and therefore it would seem more
difficult than Tragedy, and this is the first reasonable
and modern comedy in the history of modern Europe.
Further, the method of narrative, and everything in it
except the irony, belong to all the Sagas in common ;
there is nothing particularly new or exceptional in
the style or the arrangement of the scenes ; it is not
so much a parody or a mock-heroic, as an heroic work
inspired with comic irony. It is not a new kind of

230 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, in

Saga, it is the old Saga itself put to the ordeal by the
Comic Muse, and proving its temper under the
severest of all strains.

This is the story of the Confederates. — There was
a man named Ufeig who lived in Mid firth, a free-
handed man, not rich, who had a son named Odd.
The father and son disagreed, and Odd, the son,
went off to make his own fortune, and made it, with-
out taking any further notice of his father. The two
men are contrasted; Ufeig being an unsuccessful
man and a humorist, too generous and too careless
to get on in the world, while Odd, his son, is born
to be a prosperous man. The main plot of the story
is the reconciliation of the respectable son and the
prodigal father, which is brought about in the most
perfect and admirable manner.

Odd got into trouble. He had a lawsuit against
Uspak, a violent person whom he had formerly
trusted, who had presumed too much, had been
disgraced, and finally had killed the best friend of
Odd in one of the ways usual in such business in
the Sagas. In the course of the lawsuit a slight
difficulty arose — one of Odd's jurymen died, and
another had to be called in his place. This was
informal, but no one at first made anything of it;
till it occurred to a certain great man that Odd was
becoming too strong and prosperous, and that it
was time to put him down. Whereupon he went
about and talked to another great man, and half
persuaded him that this view was the right one ; and
then felt himself strong enough to step in and break
down the prosecution by raising the point about the
formation of the jury. Odd went out of the court
without a word as soon as the challenge was made.

While he was thinking it over, and not making
much of it, there appeared an old, bent, ragged man.

SECT. V COMEDY 231

with a flapping hat and a pikestaff; this was Ufeig,
his father, to whom he had never spoken since he
left his house. Ufeig now is the principal personage
in the story. He asks his son about the case and
pretends to be surprised at his failure. " Impossible !
it is not like a gentleman to try to take in an old
man like me ; how could you be beaten ? " Finally,
after Odd had been made to go over all the several
points of his humiliation, he is reduced to trust the
whole thing to his father, who goes away with the
comforting remark that Odd, by leaving the court
when he did, before the case was finished, had made
one good move in the game, though he did not know
it. Ufeig gets a purse full of money from his son ;
goes back to the court, where (as the case is not yet
closed) he makes an eloquent speech on the iniquity
of such a plea as has been raised. " To let a man-
slayer escape, gentlemen ! where are your oaths that
you swore? Will you prefer a paltry legal quibble
to the plain open justice of the case ? " and so on,
impressively and emotionally, in the name of Equity,
while all the time (equity + x) he plays with the purse
under his cloak, and gets the eyes of the judges fixed
upon it. Late in the day. Odd is brought back to
hear the close of the case, and Uspak is outlawed.

Then the jealousy of the great men comes to a
head, and a compact is formed among eight of them
to make an end of Odd's brand-new prosperity.
These eight are the Confederates from whom the Saga
is named, and the story is the story of Ufeig's
ingenuity and malice as applied to these noble Pillars
of Society. To tell it rightly would be to repeat
the Saga. The skill with which the humorist plays
upon the strongest motives, and gets the conspirators
to betray one another, is not less beautifully repre-
sented than the spite which the humorist provokes

232 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

among the subjects of his experiments. The details
are finished to the utmost ; most curiously and subtly
in some of the indications of character and disposition
in the eight persons of quality. The details, however,
are only the last perfection of a work which is organic
from the beginning. Ufeig, the humorist, is the
servant and deputy of the Comic Muse, and there
can be no doubt of the validity of his credentials,
or of the soundness of his procedure. He is the
ironical critic and censor of the heroic age ; his touch
is infallible, as unerring as that of Figaro, in bring-
ing out and making ridiculous the meanness of the
nobility. The decline and fall of the noble houses
is recorded in Sturlunga Saga ; the essence of that
history is preserved in the comedy of the Banded
Men.

But, however the material of the heroic age may
be handled in this comedy, the form of heroic narrative
comes out unscathed. There is nothing for the comic
spirit to fix upon in the form of the Sagas. The
Icelandic heroes may be vulnerable, but Comedy
cannot take advantage of them except by using the
general form of heroic narrative in Iceland, a form
which proves itself equally capable of Tragedy and
Comedy. And as the more serious Icelandic histories
are comprehensive and varied, so also is this comic
history. It is not an artificial comedy, nor a comedy
of humours, nor a purely satirical comedy. It is no
more exclusive or abstract in its contents that Njdla ;
its strict observance of limit and order is not the
same thing as monotony ; its unity of action is con-
sistent with diversities of motive. Along with, and
inseparable from, the satirical criticism of the great
world, as represented by the eight discomfited noble
Confederates, there is the even more satisfactory plot
of the Nemesis of Respectability in the case of Odd ;

SECT. V COMEDY 233

while the successful malice and craft of Ufeig are
inseparable from the humanity, the constancy, and
the imaginative strength, which make him come out
to help his prosaic son, and enable him, the bent and
thriftless old man, to see all round the frontiers of his
son's well-defined and uninteresting character. Also
the variety of the Saga appears in the variety of
incident, and that although the story is a short one.
As the solemn histories admit of comic passages, so
conversely this comic history touches upon the tragic.
The death of Vali, slain by Uspak, is of a piece with
the most heroic scenes in Icelandic literature. Vali
the friend of Odd goes along with him to get satis-
faction out of Uspak the mischief-maker. Vali is all
for peace ; he is killed through his good nature, and
before his death forgives and helps his assailant.

And when with the spring the days of summons came
on. Odd rode out with twenty men, till he came near by
the garth of Svalastead. Then said Vali to Odd : *' Now
you shall stop here, and I will ride on and see Uspak,
and find out if he will agree to settle the case now with-
out more ado." So they stopped, and Vali went up to
the house. There was no one outside ; the doors were
open and Vali went in. It was dark within, and suddenly
there leapt a man out of the side-room and struck between
the shoulders of Vali, so that he fell on the spot. Said
Vali : " Look out for yourself, poor wretch ! for Odd is
coming, hard by, and means to have your life. Send
your wife to him ; let her say that we have made it up ;
and you have agreed to everything, and that I have
gone on about my own gear down the valley I " Then
said Uspak : " This is an ill piece of work ; this was
meant for Odd and not for you."

This short heroic scene in the comedy has an
effect corresponding to that of the comic humours
in the Icelandic tragedies ; it redresses the balance, it

234 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS CH.iii

qualifies and diversifies what would otherwise be
monotonous. Simple and clear in outline as the best
of the short Icelandic stories are, thej^ are not satisfied
unless they have introduced something, if only a
suggestion, of worlds different from their own imme-
diate interests, a touch to show where their proper
story branches out into the history of other characters
and fortunes. This same story of the Confederates is
wound up at the end, after the reconciliation of the
father and son, by a return to the adventures of
Uspak and to the subordinate tragic element in the
comedy. The poetical justice of the story leaves
Uspak, the slayer of Vali, dead in a cave of the hills ;
discovered there, alone, by shepherds going their
autumn rounds.

THE ART OF NARRATIVE

The art of the Sagas will bear to be tested in every
way : not that every Saga or every part of one is
flawless, far from it; but they all have, though in
different measure, the essentials of the fine art of
story-telling. Except analysis, it is hardly possible to
require from a story anything which will not be found
supplied in some form or other in the Sagas. The
best of them have that sort of unity which can hardly
be described, except as a unity of life — the organic
unity that is felt in every particular detail. It is
absurd to take separately the details of a great work
like Njdla^ or of less magnificent but not less perfect
achievements such as the story of Hrafnkel. There
is no story in the world that can surpass the Banda-
fnanna Saga in the liveliness with which each
particular reveals itself as a moment in the whole
story, inseparable from the whole, and yet in its own
proper space appearing to resume and absorb the life
of the whole. Where the work is elaborated in this
way, where every particular is organic, it is not
possible to do much by way of illustration, or to
exhibit piecemeal what only exists as a complete
thing, and can only be understood as such. It is of
some importance in the history of literature that the

236 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

rank and general character of these Icelandic works
should be asserted and understood. It would be
equally laborious and superfluous to follow each of
them with an exposition of the value of each stroke
in the work. There are difficulties enough in the
language, and in the history, without any multiplica-
tion of commentaries on the obvious ; and there is
little in the art of the Sagas that is of doubtful import,
however great may be the lasting miracle that such
things, of such excellence, should have been written
there and then.

There is one general quality or characteristic of
the Sagas which has not yet been noticed, one which
admits of explanation and illustration, while it repre-
sents very well the prevailing mode of imagination
in the Sagas. The imaginative life of the Sagas (in
the best of them) is intensely strong at each critical
point of the story, with the result that all abstract,
makeshift explanations are driven out ; the light is
too strong for them, and the events are made to
appear in the order of their appearance, with their
meaning gradually coming out as the tale rolls on.
No imagination has ever been so consistently intolerant
of anything that might betray the author's knowledge
before the author's chosen time. That everything
should present itself first of all as appearance, before
it becomes appearance with a meaning, is a common
rule of all good story-telling ; but no historians have
followed this rule with so complete and sound an
instinct as the authors of the Sagas. No medieval
writers, and few of the modern, have understood the
point of view as well as the authors of the story of
Njal or of Kjartan. The reserve of the narrator in
the most exciting passages of the Sagas is not dulness
or want of sensibility; it is a consistent mode of
procedure, to allow things to make their own impres-

SECT. VI THE ART OF NARRATIVE 237

sion ; and the result is attained by following the order
of impressions in the mind of one of the actors, or of
a looker-on. "To see things as they are" is an
equivocal formula, which may be claimed as their
own privilege by many schools and many different
degrees of intelligence. "To see things as they
become," the rule of Lessing's Laocoon^ has not found
so many adherents, but it is more certain in meaning,
and more pertinent to the art of narrative. It is a
fair description of the aim of the Icelandic authors
and of their peculiar gift. The story for them is not
a thing finished and done with ; it is a series of
pictures rising in the mind, succeeding, displacing,
and correcting one another ; all under the control of
a steady imagination, which will not be hurried, and
will not tell the bearing of things till the right time
comes. The vivid effect of the Saga, if it be studied
at all closely, will be found to be due to this steadi-
ness of imagination which gives first the blurred and
inaccurate impression, the possibility of danger, the
matter for surmises and suspicions, and then the
clearing up. Stated generally in this way, the rule is
an elementary one, but it is followed in the Sagas
with a singular consistency and success, and with
something more than a compulsory obedience. That
both the narrators and their audience in that country
had their whole lives filled with momentous problems
in the interpretation of appearances may well be
understood. To identify a band of riders in the
distance, or a single man seen hurrying on the other
side of the valley, was a problem which might be a
matter of life or death any day ; but so it has been
in many places where there is nothing hke the narrative
art of Iceland. The Icelandic historian is like no
other in putting into his work the thrill of suspense
at something indistinctly seen going on in the distance

238 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

— a crowd of men moving, not known whether friends
or enemies. So it was in Thorgils Saga (one of the
later more authentic histories, of the Sturlung cycle),
when Thorgils and his men came down to the Althing,
and Bard and Aronwere sent on ahead to find out
if the way was clear from the northern passes across
the plain of the Thing. Bard and Aron, as they
came down past Armannsfell, saw a number of horses
and men on the plain below just where Haflidi, the
enemy, might have been expected to block the way.
They left some of their band to wait behind while
they themselves went on. From that point a chapter
and more is taken up with the confused impression
and report brought back by the scouts to the main
body. They saw Bard and Aron ride on to the
other people, and saw the others get up to meet them,
carrying weapons ; and then Bard and Aron went out
of sight in the crowd, but the bearers of the report
had no doubt that they were prisoners. And further,
they thought they made out a well-known horse,
Dapplecheek, and a gold-mounted spear among the
strangers, both of which had belonged to Thorgils,
and had been given away by him to one of his friends.
From which it is inferred that his friend has been
robbed of the horse and the spear.

The use of all this, which turns out to be all made
up of true eyesight and wrong judgment, is partly
to bring out Thorgils; for his decision, against the
wish of his companions, is to ride on in any event,
so that the author gets a chapter of courage out of
the mistake. Apart from that, there is something
curiously spirited and attractive in the placing of the
different views, with the near view last of all. In the
play between them, between the apprehension of
danger, the first report of an enemy in the way, the
appearance of an indistinct crowd, the false inference,

SECT. VI THE ART OF NARRATIVE 239

and the final truth of the matter, the Saga is faithful
to its vital principle of variety and comprehensiveness ;
no one appearance, not even the truest, must be
allowed too much room to itself.

This indirect description is really the most vivid
of all narrative forms, because it gives the point of
view that is wanting in an ordinary continuous history.
It brings down the story-teller from his abstract and
discursive freedom, and makes him limit himself to
one thing at a time, with the greatest advantage to
himself and all the rest of his story. In that way the
important things of the story may be made to come
with the stroke and flash of present reality, instead of
being prosed away by the historian and his good
grammar.

There is a very remarkable instance of the use of
this method in the Book of Kings. Of Jehoram, son
of Ahab, king of Israel, it is told formally that " he
wrought evil in the sight of the Lord," with the
qualification that his evil was not like that of Ahab
and Jezebel. This is impressive in its formal and
summary way. It is quite another mode of narrative,
and it is one in which the spectator is introduced to
vouch for the matter, that presents the king of Israel,
once for all, in a sublime and tragic protest against
the sentence of the historian himself, among the
horrors of the famine of Samaria.

So we boiled my son, and did eat him : and I said
unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat
hirn ; and she hath hid her son.

And it came to pass, when the king heard the words
of the woman, that he rent his clothes ; and he passed
by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he
had sackcloth within upon his flesh.

No more than this is told of the unavailing penance

240 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

of Jehoram the son of Ahab. There is no prepara-
tion ; all the tragedy lies in this notice of something
casually seen, and left without a commentary, for any
one to make his own story about, if he chooses.
There is perhaps nothing anywhere in narrative quite
so sudden as this. The Northern writers, however,
carry out consistently the same kind of principles,
putting their facts or impressions forward in a right
order and leaving them to take care of themselves ;
while in the presentation of events the spectator within
the story has a good deal given him to do. Naturally,
where the author does not make use of analysis and
where he trusts to the reader's intellect to interpret
things aright, the " facts " must be fairly given ; in a
lucid order, with a progressive clearness, from the
point of view of those who are engaged in the action.
There is another and somewhat different function
of the spectator in the Sagas. In some cases, where
there is no problem, where the action is straight-
forward, the spectator and his evidence are introduced
merely to give breadth and freedom to the present-
ment, to get a foreground for the scene. This is
effected best of all, as it happens, in a passage that
called for nothing less than the best of the author's
power and wit ; namely, the chapter of the death of
Kjartan in Laxdala.

And with this talk of Gudrun, Bolli was made to
magnify his ill-will and his grievance against Kjartan ;
and took his weapons and went along with the others.
They were nine altogether ; five sons of Osvifr, that is
to say, Ospak and Helgi, Vandrad, Torrad, and Thorolf ;
Bolli was the sixth, Gunnlaug the seventh, sister's son
of Osvifr, a comely man ; the other two were Odd and
Stein, sons of Thorhalla the talkative. They rode to
Svinadal and stopped at the gully called Hafragil ; there
they tied their horses and sat down. Bolli was silent

SECT. VI THE ART OF NARRATIVE 241

all the day, and laid him down at the edge of the gully,
above.

Kjartan and his companions had come south over the
pass, and the dale was opening out, when Kjartan said
that it was time for Thorkell and his brother to turn
back. Thorkell said they would ride with him to the
foot of the dale. And when they were come south as
far as the bothies called the North Sheilings, Kjartan
said to the brothers that they were not to ride further.

" Thorolf, the thief, shall not have this to laugh at,
that I was afraid to ride on my way without a host of
men."

Thorkell Whelp makes answer : " We will give in to
you and ride no further ; but sorry shall we be if we are
not there and you are in want of men this day."

Then said Kjartan : " Bolli my kinsman will not try
to have my life, and for the sons of Osvifr, if they lie in
wait for me, it remains to be seen which of us shall tell
the tale afterwards, for all that there may be odds
against me."

After that the brothers and their men rode west again.

Now Kjartan rides southward down the valley, he
and the two others. An the Swart and Thorarinn. At
Hafratindr in Svinadal lived a man called Thorkell.
There is no house there now. He had gone to look
after his horses that day, and his shepherd along with
him. They had a view of both companies ; the sons of
Osvifr lying in wait, and Kjartan's band of three coming
down along the dale. Then said the herd lad that they
should go and meet Kjartan ; it would be great luck if
they could clear away the mischief that was waiting for
them.

" Hold your tongue," said Thorkell ; " does the fool
think he can give life to a man when his doom is set ?
It is but little I grudge them their good pleasure,
though they choose to hurt one another to their hearts'
content. No ! but you and I, we will get to a place
where there will be no risk, where we can see all their

242 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

meeting and have good sport out of their play. They
all say that Kjartan has more fighting in him than any
man ; maybe he will need it all, for you and I can see
that the odds are something."

And so it had to be as Thorkell wished.

The tragic encounter that follows, the last meeting
of the two friends, Kjartan throwing away his weapons
when he sees BoUi coming against him, Bolli's
repentance when he has killed his friend, when he
sits with his knee under Kjartan's head, — all this is
told as well as may be ; it is one of the finest passages
in all the Sagas. But even this passage has some-
thing to gain from the episode of the churl and his
more generous servant who looked on at the fight.
The scene opens out; the spaces of the valley are
shown as they appear to a looker-on ; the story, just
before the critical moment, takes us aside from the
two rival bands and gives us the relation between
them, the gradually-increasing danger as the hero and
his companions come down out of the distance and
nearer to the ambush.

In this piece of composition, also, there goes along
with the pictorial vividness of the right point of view
a further advantage to the narrative in the character
of the spectator. Two of the most notable peculi-
arities of the Icelandic workmanship are thus brought
together, — the habit of presenting actions and events
as they happen, from the point of view of an
immediate witness ; and the habit of correcting the
heroic ideal by the ironical suggestion of the other
side. Nothing is so deeply and essentially part of the
nature of the Icelandic story, as its inability to give
a limited or abstract rendering of life. It is from this
glorious incapacity that there are derived both the
habit of looking at events as appearances, before they
are interpreted, and the habit of checking heroics by

SECT. VI THE ART OF NARRATIVE 243

means of unheroic details, or, as here, by a suggestion
of the way it strikes a vulgar contemporary. Without
this average man and his commentary the story of the
death of Kjartan would lose much. There is first of
all the comic value of the meanness and envy in the
mind of the boor, his complacency at the quarrels
and mutual destruction of the magnificent people.
His intrusion on the scene, his judgment of the
situation, is proof of the variety of the life from which
the Saga is drawn. More than that, there is here a
rather cruel test of the heroics of Laxdcela^ of the
story itself; the notable thing about this spectator
and critic is that his boorish judgment is partly right,
as the judgment of Thersites is partly right — "too
much blood and too little brains." He is vulgar
common sense in the presence of heroism. In his
own way a critic of the heroic ideals, his appearance
in Svinadal as a negative and depreciatory chorus in
the tragedy of Kjartan is a touch of something like
the mood of Bandamanna Saga in its criticism of the
nobles and their rivalries; although the author of
Laxdcela is careful not to let this dangerous spirit
penetrate too far. It is only enough to increase the
sense of the tragic vanity of human wishes in the life
and death of Kjartan Olafsson.

Everything in the Sagas tends to the same end ;
the preservation of the balance and completeness of
the history, as far as it goes ; the impartiality of the
record. The different sides are not represented as
fully as in Clarissa Harlowe or The Ring and the
Booky but they are allowed their chance, according
to the rules, which are not those of analytical
psychology. The Icelandic imagination is content
if the character is briefly indicated in a few dramatic
speeches. The brevity and externality of the Saga
method might easily provoke from admirers of

244 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

Richardson a condemnation like that of Dr. Johnson
on those who know the dial-plate only and not the
works. The psychology of the Sagas, however, brief
and superficial as it may be, is yet of the sort that
may be tested ; the dials keep time, though the works
are not exposed. It may be doubtful at any moment
how Skarphedinn will act, but when his history is
in progress, and when it is finished, the reader knows
that Skarphedinn is rightly rendered, and furthermore
that it is impossible to deal with him except as an
individual character, impressing the mind through a
variety of qualities and circumstances that are in-
expHcably consistent. It is impossible to take his
character to pieces. The rendering is in one sense
superficial, and open to the censures of the moralist
— "from without inwards" — like the characters of
Scott. But as in this latter case, the superficiality
and slightness of the work are deceptive. The
character is given in a few strokes and without
elaboration, but it is given inevitably and indescrib-
ably ; the various appearances of Skarphedinn,
different at different times, are all consistent with
one another in the' unity of imagination, and have no
need of psychological analysis to explain them.

The characters in the best of the Sagas grow upon
the mind with each successive appearance, until they
are known and recognised at a hint. In some cases
it looks almost as if the author's dramatic imagination
were stronger and more just than his deliberate moral
opinions ; as if his characters had taken the matter
into their own hands, against his will. Or is it art,
and art of the subtlest order, which in Kjartan
Olafsson, the glorious hero, still leaves something of
lightness, of fickleness, as compared both with the
intensity of the passion of Gudrun and the dogged
resolution of Bolli ? There is another Saga in which

SECT. VI THE ART OF NARRATIVE 245

a hero of the likeness of Kjartan is contrasted with a
dark, malevolent, not ignoble figure, — the story of the
Faroes, of Sigmund Brestisson and Thrond of Gata.
There, at the end of the story, when Thrond of Gata
has taken vengeance for the murder of his old enemy,
it is not Sigmund, the glorious champion of King
Olaf, who is most thought of, but Thrond the dark
old man, his opponent and avenger. The character
of Thrond is too strong to be suppressed, and breaks
through the praise and blame of the chronicler, as,
in another history, the character of Saul asserts itself
against the party of David. The charge of super-
ficiality or externality falls away to nothing in the
mind of any one who knows by what slight touches
of imagination a character may be brought home to
an audience, if the character is there to begin with.
It is not by elaborate, continuous analysis, but by a
gesture here and a sentence there, that characters are
expressed The Sagas give the look of things and
persons at the critical moments, getting as close as
they can, by all devices, to the vividness of things as
they appear, as they happen; brief and reserved in
their phrasing, but the reverse of abstract or limited
in their regard for the different modes and aspects of
life, impartial in their acknowledgment of the claims
of individual character, and unhesitating in their
rejection of conventional ideals, of the conventional
romantic hero as well as the conventional righteous
man. The Sagas are more solid and more philo-
sophical than any romance or legend.

VII

EPIC AND HISTORY

In the close of the heroic literature of Iceland a
number of general causes are to be found at work.
The period of the Sagas comes to an end partly by a
natural progress, culmination, and exhaustion of a
definite form of literary activity, partly through
external influences by which the decline is hastened.
After the material of the early heroic traditions had
been all used up, after the writers of the thirteenth
century had given their present shapes to the stories
of the tenth and the eleventh centuries, two courses
were open, and both courses were taken. On the
one hand the form of the Saga was applied to historical
matter near the writer's own time, or actually contem-
porary, on the other hand it was turned to pure fiction.
The literature divides into history and romance.
The authentic history, the Sturlung cycle in par-
ticular, is the true heir and successor of the heroic
Saga. The romantic Sagas are less intimately related
to the histories of Njal or Gisli, though those also
are representative of some part of the essence of the
Saga, and continue in a shadowy way something of
its original life. The Northern literatures in the
thirteenth century were invaded from abroad by the
same romantic forces as had put an end to the epic
246

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 247

literature of France ; translations of French romances
became popular, and helped to change the popular
taste in Norway and Iceland. At the same time the
victory of Romance was not entirely due to these
foreigners; they found allies in the more fanciful
parts of the native Hterature. The schools of
Northern prose romance, which took the place of the
older Sagas, were indebted almost as much to the
older native literature as to Tristram or Perceval ;
they are the product of something that had all along
been part, though hardly the most essential part, of
the heroic Sagas. The romantic story of Frithiof and
the others like it have disengaged from the complexity
of the older Sagas an element which contributes not
a little, though by no means everything, to the charm
of Njdla and Laxdcela.

The historical work contained in the Sturlunga
Saga is a more comprehensive and thorough modifi-
cation of the old form. Instead of detaching one of
the elements and using it in separation from the rest,
as was done by the author of Frithiof^ for example,
the historian of the Sturlungs kept everything that
he was not compelled to drop by the exigencies of
his subject. The biographical and historical work
belonging to the Sturlunga Saga falls outside the
order to which Njal and Gisli belong ; it is epic, only
in the sense that a history may be called epic.
Nevertheless it is true that this historical work shows,
even better than the heroic Sagas themselves, what
the nature of the heroic literature really is. In
dealing with a more stubborn and less profitable
subject it brings out the virtues of the Icelandic form
of narrative.

The relation of the Saga to authentic history had
always been close. The first attempt to give shape,
in writing, to the traditions of the heroic age was

248 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

made by Ari Thorgilsson {pb. 1148), especially in his
Landndmabbk^ a history exact and positive, a re-
cord in detail of all the first settlers of the island,
with notes of the substance of the popular stories by
which their fame was transmitted. This exact history,
this positive work, precedes the freer and more
imaginative stories, and supplies some of them with a
good deal of their matter, which they work up in their
own way. The fashion of writing, the example of a
written form of narrative, was set by Ari ; though the
example was not followed closely nor in all points by
the writers of the Sagas : his form is too strict for
them.

It was too strict for his greatest successor in
historical writing in Iceland. Snorri Sturluson is the
author of Lives of the Kings of Norway^ apparently
founded upon Ari's Book of Kings^ which has been
lost as an independent work. Snorri's Lives them-
selves are extant in a shape very far from authentic ;
one has to choose between the abridged and incon-
venient shape of Heimskringla, in which Snorri's work
appears to have been cut down and trimmed, and the
looser form presented by such compilations as the
longer Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, where more of Snorri
appears to have been retained than in Heimskringla^
though it has to be extricated from all sorts of irrelevant
additions and interpolations. But whatever problems
may still remain unsolved, it is certain enough that
Snorri worked on his historical material with no in-
tention of keeping to the positive lines of Ari, and
with the fullest intention of giving to his history of
Norway all the imaginative force of which he was
capable. This was considerable, as is proved by the
stories of the gods in his Edda ; and in the histories
of Olaf Tryggvason and of Saint Olaf, kings of Norway,
he has given companions to the very noblest of the

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 249

Sagas dealing with the Icelandic chiefs. Between
the more scientific work of Ari and the more imagina-
tive work of Snorri comes, half-way, the Life of King
Sverre {pb. 1202), written at the king's own dictation
by the Abbot Karl of Thingeyri.

Ari collected the historical materials, both for
Iceland and Norway, and put them together in the
extant Landndmabbk and the lost Kings' Lives.
Snorri Sturluson treated the Kings' Lives in the spirit
of the greater Icelandic Sagas ; his Lives belong to
heroic literature, if there is any meaning in that name.
The Life of Sverre is not so glorious as the Life of
either Olaf. Abbot Karl had not the same interests
or the same genius as Snorri, and his range was
determined, in most of the work, by the king himself.
King Sverre, though he could quote poetry to good
effect when he liked, was mainly practical in his
ideas.

The Sturlung history, which is the close of the
heroic literature of Iceland, has resemblances to the
work of all three of the historians just named. It
is like Ari in its minuteness and accuracy ; like
Sverris Saga, it has a contemporary subject to treat
of; and it shares with Snorri his spirit of vivid
narrative and his sympathy with the methods of the
greater Sagas of Iceland. If authors were to be
judged by the difficulty of their undertakings, then
Sturla, the writer of the Sturlung history, would
certainly come out as the greatest of them all. For
he was limited by known facts as much, or even
more than Ari ; while he has given to his record of
factions, feuds, and anarchy almost as much spirit
as Snorri gave to his lives of the heroic kings, and
more than Abbot Karl could give to the history of
Sverre and his political success. At the same time,
however, the difficulty of Sturla's work had been a

250 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

good deal reduced in the gradual progress of Icelandic
literature. He had to represent modern history, the
history of his own time, in the form and with the
vividness of the imaginative Sagas. In undertaking
this he was helped by some examples of the same
sort of thing, in Sagas written before his time, and
forming an intermediate stage between the group of
which Njdla is the head, and Sturla's history of his
own family. The biographies of Icelanders in the
twelfth century, like that of Thorgils and Haflidi
quoted above, which form an introduction to the
Sturlung history, are something more authentic than
the heroic Sagas, but not much less spirited. It is
difficult to draw a decided line anywhere between
the different classes ; or, except by the date of its
subject, to mark off the story of the heroic age from
the story of the rather less heroic age that followed it.
There was apparently an accommodation of the Saga
form to modern subjects, effected through a number
of experiments, with a result, complete and admirable,
in Sturla's history of the Sturlung fortunes.

It may be said, also, that something of the work
was done ready to the author's hand ; there was a
natural fitness and correspondence between the
Icelandic reality, even when looked at closely by
contemporary eyes in the broad daylight, and the
Icelandic form of representation. The statue was
already part shapen in the block, and led the hand
of the artist as he worked upon it. It is dangerous,
no doubt, to say after the work has been done, after
the artist has conquered his material and finished off
his subject, that there was a natural affinity between
the subject and the author's mind. In the case of
Iceland, however, this pre-existent harmony is capable
of being proved. The conditions of life in Iceland
were, and still are, such as to exclude a number of the

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 251

things that in other countries prevent the historian
from writing epic. There were none of the large,
abstract considerations and problems that turn the
history into a dissertation on political forces, on
monarchy, on democracy, on diplomacy ; there were
none of the large, vague multitudes of the people
that impose themselves on the historian's attention,
to the detriment of his individual characters. The
public history of Iceland lies all in the lives of private
characters ; it is the life of a municipality, very much
spread out, it is true, but much more like the life of
a country town or a group of country neighbours,
than the society of a complex state of any kind that
has ever existed in Europe. Private interests and
the lives of individual men were what they had to
think about and talk about ; and just in so far as
they were involved in gossip, they were debarred
from the achievements of political history, and
equally inclined to that sort of record in which indi-
vidual lives are everything. If their histories were
to have any life at all, it must be the life of the
drama or the dramatic narrative, and not that of the
philosophical history, or even of those medieval
chronicles, which, however unphilosophical, are still
obliged by the greatness of their subject to dwarf
the individual actors in comparison with the greatness
of Kingdoms, Church, and Empire. Of those great
impersonalities there was little known in Iceland ; and
if the story of Iceland was not to be (what it after-
wards became) a mere string of trivial annals, it must
be by a deepening of the personal interest, by making
the personages act and talk, and by following intently
the various threads of their individual lives.

So far the work was prepared for authors like
Sturla, who had to enliven the contemporary record
of life in Iceland ; it was prepared to this extent,

252 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

that any other kind of work was unpromising or even
hopeless. The present life in Sturla's time was, like
the life of the heroic age, a perpetual conflict of
private wills, with occasional and provisional recon-
ciliations. The mode of narrative that was suitable
for the heroic stories could hardly fail to be the
proper mode for the contemporary factions of chiefs,
heroic more or less, and so it was proved by Sturla.

Sturlunga Saga contains some of the finest
passages of narrative in the whole of Icelandic
literature. The biographical Sagas, with which it is
introduced or supported, are as good as all but the
best of the heroic Sagas, while they are not out
of all comparison even with Njdla or Gisla^ with
Hrafnkels Saga or Bandamanna^ in the qualities
in which these excel.

The story of Thorgils and Haflidi has already been
referred to in illustration of the Icelandic method of
narrative at its best. It is a good story, well told,
with the unities well preserved. The plot is one
that is known to the heroic Sagas — the growth of
mischief and ill-will between two honourable gentle-
men, out of the villainy of a worthless beast who
gets them into his quarrels. Haflidi has an ill-con-
ditioned nephew whom, for his brother's sake, he is
loth to cast off". Thorgils takes up one of many
cases in which this nephew is concerned, and so is
brought into disagreement with Haflidi. The end is
reconciliation, effected by the intervention of Bishop
Thorlak Runolfsson and Ketill the priest, aided by
the good sense of the rivals at a point where the
game may be handsomely drawn, with no dishonour
to either side. The details are given with great
liveliness. One of the best scenes is that which has
already been referred to (p. 238); another may be
quoted of a rather different sort from an earlier year.

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 253

In the year 11 20 at the Althing, Thorgils was with
difficulty dissuaded from breaking the peace as they
stood, both parties, by the door of the Thingvalla
church on St. Peter's Day. Thorgils' friend Bodvar
had to use both arguments and unction to make him
respect the sanctity of the Althing, of the Church,
and of the Saint to whom the day belonged. After-
wards Thorgils said to his friend, "You are more
pious than people think."

Bodvar answered : " I saw that we were penned
between two bands of them at the church door, and that
if it broke into a fight we should be cut to pieces. But
for that I should not have cared though Haflidi had been
killed in spite of the peace of Church and Parliament."

The intervention at the end is very well given,
particularly Ketill the priest's story of his own
enemy.

Sturlu Saga, the story of the founder of the great
Sturlung house, the father of the three great Sturlung
brothers, of whom Snorri the historian was one, is
longer and more important than the story of Thorgils
and Haflidi. The plot is a simple one : the rivalry
between Sturla and Einar, son of Thorgils. The
contest is more deadly and more complicated than
that of Thorgils himself against Haflidi ; that was
mainly a case of the point of honour, and the
opponents were both of them honourable men, while
in this contest Sturla is politic and unscrupulous, and
his adversary " a ruffian by habit and repute." There
is a considerable likeness between the characters of
Sturla and of Snorri the priest, as that is presented
in Eyrbyggja and elsewhere. A comparison of the
rise of Snorri, as told in Eyrbyggja, with the life of
Sturla will bring out the unaltered persistence of the
old ways and the old standards, while the advantage lies

254 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

with the later subject in regard to concentration of
interest. The Life of Star la is not so varied as
Eyrbyggja, but it is a more orderly piece of writing,
and at the same time more lively, through the unity
of its plot. Nor are the details spoiled by any
tameness. Notable is the company of rogues main-
tained by Einar; they and their ways are well
described. There was Geir the thief, son of Thorgerda
the liar ; he was hanged by the priest Helgi. There
was Vidcuth, son of stumpy Lina (these gentry have
no father's name to them) ; he was a short man and
a nimble. The third was Thorir the warlock, a little
man from the North country. This introduction
serves to bring on the story of a moonlight encounter
with the robbers in snow ; and in this sort of thing
the history of Sturla is as good as the best. It is
worth while to look at the account of the last decisive
match with Einar — another snow piece. It may be
discovered there that the closer adhesion to facts, and
the nearer acquaintance with the persons, were no
hindrance to the Icelandic author who knew his
business. It was not the multitude and confusion
of real details that could prevent him from making
a good thing out of his subject, if only his subject
contained some opportunity for passion and conflict,
which it generally did.

In this scene of the midnight raid in which the
position of the two rivals is decided, there is nothing
at all heightened or exaggerated, yet the proportions
are such, the relations of the incidents are given in
such a way, as could not be bettered by any modern
author dealing with a critical point in a drama of
private life. The style is that of the best kind of
subdued and sober narrative in which the excitement
of the situations is not spent in rhetoric.

It fell at Hvamm in the -winter nights (about

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 255

Hallowmass) of the year 11 71 that a man passed
through, an old retainer of Sturla's ; and Sturla did
not Hke his manner. As it turned out, this man
went west to Stadarhol, the house of Sturla's enemy,
and told Einar all the state of Sturla's house, how
there were few men there.

There was dancing at Hvamm that night, and it
was kept up late. The night was still, and every
now and then some would look out and listen, but
they could hear no one stirring.

The night after that Einar set out. He avoided
Hvamm, but came down on another steading, the
house of Sturla's son-in-law Ingjald, and drove off
the cows and sheep, without any alarm ; it was not
till the morning that one of the women got up and
found the beasts gone. The news was brought at
once to Hvamm. Sturla had risen at daybreak and
was looking to his haystacks ; it was north wind, and
freezing. Ingjald came up, and, " Now he is coming
to ask me to buy his wethers," says Sturla ; for Sturla
had warned him that he was in danger of being
raided, and had tried to get Ingjald to part with his
sheep. Ingjald told him of the robbery. Sturla
said nothing, but went in and took down his axe and
shield. Gudny his wife was wakened, and asked
what the news was. "Nothing so far; only Einar
has driven all Ingjald's beasts." Then Gudny sprang
up and shouted to the men : " Up, lads ! Sturla is
out, and his weapons with him, and Ingjald's gear is
gone ! "

Then follows the pursuit over the snow, and the
fight, in which Ingjald is killed, and Einar wounded
and driven to beg for quarter. After which it was
the common saying that Einar's strength had gone
over to Sturla.

It is a piece of clean and exact description, and

256 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

particularly of the succession of scenes and moods in
life. The revels go on through the calm night with
an accompaniment of suspense and anxiety. There
is no better note in any chronicle of the anxieties of
a lawless time, and the steady flow of common
pleasures in spite of the troubles ; all the manners of
an heroic or a lawless time are summed up in the
account of the dance and its intermittent listening for
the sound of enemies. Sturla in the early light
sees his son-in-law coming to him, and thinks he
knows what his errand is, — the author here, as usual,
putting the mistaken appearance first, and the true
interpretation second. In the beginning of the
pursuit there is the silence and the repression of a
man in a rage, and the vehement call of his wife who
knows what he is about, and finds words for his anger
and his purpose. The weather of the whole story is
just enough to play into the human life — the quiet
night, the north wind, and the frosty, sunless morning.
The snow is not all one surface; the drifts on the
hill-sides, the hanging cornice over a gully, these have
their place in the story, just enough to make the move-
ments clear and intelligible. This is the way history
was written when the themes were later by two
centuries than those of the heroic Sagas. There is
not much difference, except in the " soothfastness " ;
the author is closer to his subject, his imagination is
confronted with something very near reality, and is
not helped, as in the older stories, by traditional
imaginative modifications of his subject.

It is the same kind of excellence that is found in
the other subsidiary parts of Sturlunga^ hardly less than
in the main body of that work. There is no reason for
depressing these histories below the level of any but
the strongest work in the heroic Sagas. The history
of Bishop Gudmund and the separate lives of his two

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 257

friends, Hrafn and Aron, are not less vivid than the
stories of the men of Eyre or the men of Vatzdal.
The wanderings of Aron round Iceland are all but as
thrilling as those of the outlaw Gisli or Grettir, whose
adventures and difficulties are so like his own. It is
not easy to specify any element in the one that is not
in the other, while the handling of the more authentic
stories is not weak or faltering in comparison with
the others. No single incident in any of the Sagas
is much better in its way, and few are more humane
than the scene in which Eyjolf Karsson gets Aron to
save himself, while he, Eyjolf, goes back into danger.^
The Islendlinga or Sturlunga Saga of Sturla
Thordarson, which is the greatest of the pure historical
works, is in some things inferior to stories like those
of the older Sturla, or of Hrafn and Aron. There is
no hero ; perhaps least of all that hero, namely the
nation itself, which gives something like unity to
the Shakespearean plays of the Wars of the Roses.
Historically there is much resemblance between the
Wars of the Roses and the faction fights in Iceland
in which the old constitution went to pieces and the
old spirit was exhausted. But the Icelandic tragedy
had no reconciliation at the end, and there was no
national strength underneath the disorder, fit to be
called out by a peacemaker or a *' saviour of society"
like Henry VI I. There was nothing but the family
interests of the great houses, and the Sturlunga Saga
leaves it impossible to sympathise with either side in
a contest that has no principles and no great reformer
to distinguish it. The anarchy is worse than in the
old days of the Northern rovers ; the men are more
formal and more vain. Yet the history of these
tumults is not without its brightness of character.
The generous and lawless Bishop Gudmund belongs

* Translated in Appendix, Note C.

258 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

to the story ; so do his champions Eyjolf, Hrafn, and
Aron. The figure of Snorri Sturluson is there,
though he is rather disappointing in his nephew's
view of him. His enemy, Gizur the earl, is a strong
man, whose strength is felt in the course of the
history ; and there are others.

The beauty of Siurlunga is that it gives a more
detailed and more rational account than is to be
found elsewhere in the world of the heroic age going
to the bad, without a hero. The kind of thing
represented may be found in countless other places,
but not Froissart has rendered it so fully or with
such truth, nor the Paston Letters with more intimate
knowledge and experience. It is a history and not
an epic ; the title of epic which may be claimed for
Njdla and Laxdcela, and even in a sense transferred to
the later biographies, does not rightly belong to
Sturla's history of Iceland. It is a record from year
to year ; it covers two generations ; there is nothing
in it but faction. But it is descended from the epic
school ; it has the gift of narrative and of vision. It
represents, as no prosaic historian can, the suspense
and the shock of events, the alarm in the night, the
confusion of a house attacked, the encounter of
enemies in the open, the demeanour of men going
to their death. The scenes are epic at least, though
the work as a whole is merely historical.

There is a return in this to the original nature of
the Saga, in some respects. It was in the telling of
adventures that the Sagas began, separate adventures
attaching to great names of the early days. The
separate adventures of Gisli were known and were
told about before his history was brought into the
form and unity which it now possesses, where the
end is foreknown from the beginning. Many of the

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 259

heroic Sagas have remained in what must be very
like their old oral form — a string of episodes.
Eyrbyggia, Vatnsdcela, Flbamanna^ SvarfdcBla, are of
this sort. Sturlunga^ has not more unity than
Eyrbyggja, perhaps not as much, unless the rise of
Gizur may be reckoned to do for it what is done for
the older story by the rise of Snorri the Priest. But
while the scenes thus fall apart in Sturlunga, they
are more vivid than in any other Icelandic book.
In no other is the art of description so nearly perfect.

The scenes of Sturlunga come into rivalry with
the best of those in the heroic Sagas. No one will
ever be able to say, much less to convince any one
else, whether the burning of Njal's house or the
burning of Flugumyri is the better told or the more
impressive. There is no comparison between the
personages in the two stories. But in pure art of
language and in the certainty of its effect the story
of Flugumyri is not less notable than the story of
Bergthorsknoll. It may be repeated here, to stand
as the last words of the great Icelandic school ; the
school which went out and had no successor till all
its methods were invented again, independently, by
the great novelists, after ages of fumbling and helpless
experiments, after all the weariness of pedantic
chronicles and the inflation of heroic romance.

Sturla had given his daughter Ingibjorg in
marriage to Hall, son of Gizur, and had come to
the wedding at Flugumyri, Gizur's house at the foot
of the hills of Skagafjord, with steep slopes behind
and the broad open valley in front, a place with no
exceptional defences, no fortress. It was here, just
after the bridal, and after the bride's father had gone
away, that Gizur's enemy, Eyjolf, came upon him, as
he had threatened openly in men's hearing. Sturla,
who had left the house just before, tells the story with

26o THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

the details that came to him from the eye-witnesses,
with exact particular descriptions. But there is no
drag in the story, and nothing mean in the style,
whatever may have been the brutal reality. It is,
once again, the great scene of Epic poetry repeated,
the defence of a man's life and of his own people
against surrounding enemies ; it is the drama of
Gunnar or of Njal played out again at the very end
of the Northern heroic age, and the prose history is
quick to recognise the claims upon it.

This is the end of the wedding at Flugumyri, in
October of the year 1253, as told by Sturla : —

THE BURNING OF FLUGUMYRI

Eyjolf saw that the attack was beginning to flag, and
grew afraid that the countryside might be raised upon
them ; so they brought up the fire. John of Bakki had
a tar-pin with him ; they took the sheepskins from the
frames that stood outside there, and tarred them and set
them on fire. Some took hay and stuffed it into the
windows and put fire to it ; and soon there was a great
smoke in the house and a choking heat. Gizur lay down
in the hall by one of the rows of pillars, and kept his
nose on the floor. Groa his wife was near him.
Thorbjom Neb was lying there too, and he and Gizur
had their heads close together. Thorbjora could hear
Gizur praying to God in many ways and fervently, and
thought he had never before heard praying like it. As
for himself, he could not have opened his mouth for the
smoke. After that Gizur stood up and Groa supported
him, and he went to the south porch. He was much
distressed by the smoke and heat, and thought to make
his way out rather than be choked inside. Gizur Glad
was standing at the door, talking to Kolbein Gron, and
Kolbein was offering him quarter, for there was a pact
between them, that if ever it came to that, they should

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 261

give quarter to one another, whichever of them had it in
his power. Gizur stood behind Gizur Glad, his name-
sake while they were talking, and got some coolness the
while. Gizur Glad said to Kolbein, " I will take quarter
for myself, if I may bring out another man along with
me." Kolbein agreed to this at once, excepting only
Gizur and his sons.

Then Ingibjorg, Sturla's daughter, came to Groa
at the door ; she was in her nightgown, and barefoot.
She was then in her fourteenth year, and tall and
comely to see. Her silver belt had tangled round
her feet as she came from her bedroom. There was
on it a purse with many gold rings of hers in it ; she
had it there with her. Groa was very glad to see her,
and said that there should be one lot for both of them,
whatever might befall.

When Gizur had got himself cooled a little, he gave
up his thought of dashing out of the house. He was
in linen clothes, with a mail-coat over them, and a steel
cap on his head, and his sword Corselet-biter in his
hand. Groa was in her nightgown only. Gizur went
to Groa and took two gold rings out of his girdle-pocket
and put them into her hand, because he thought that
she would live through it, but not he himself. One
ring had belonged to Bishop Magnus his uncle, and the
other to his father Thorvald.

" I wish my friends to have the good of these," he
says, " if things go as I would have them."

Gizur saw that Groa took their parting much to heart.

Then he felt his way through the house, and vnth
him went Gudmund the Headstrong, his kinsman, who
did not wish to lose sight of him. They came to the
doors of the ladies' room ; and Gizur was going to
make his way out there. Then he heard outside the
voices of men cursing and swearing, and turned back
from there.

Now in the meantime Groa and Ingibjorg had gone
to the door. Groa asked for freedom for Ingibjorg.
Kolbein heard that, her kinsman, and asked Ingibjorg

262 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

to come out to him. She would not, unless she got
leave to take some one out along with her. Kolbein said
that was too much to ask. Groa besought her to go.

" I have to look after the lad Thorlak, my sister's
son," says she.

Thorlak was a boy of ten, the son of Thorleif the
Noisy. He had jumped out of the house before this,
and his linen clothes were all ablaze when he came
down to the ground : he got safe to the church. Some
men say that Thorstein Genja pushed Groa back into
the fire ; she was found in the porch afterwards.
Kolbein dashed into the fire for Ingibjorg, and carried
her out to the church.

Then the house began to blaze up. A little after.
Hall Gizur's son [the bridegroom] came to the south
door, and Arni the Bitter, his henchman, with him.
They were both very hard put to it, and distressed by
the heat. There was a board across the doorway, half-
way up. Hall did not stop to look, but jumped straight
out over the hatch. He had a sword in one hand, and
no weapon besides. Einar Thorgrimsson was posted
near where he leapt out, and hewed at his head with
a sword, and that was his death-wound. As he fell,
another man cut at his right leg below the knee and
slashed it nearly off. Thorleif the monk from Thverd,
the brewer, had got out before, and was in the yard ;
he took a sheepskin and put it under Hall when Einar
and the others went away ; then he rolled all together,
Hall and the sheepskin, along to the church when they
were not looking. Hall was lightly clad, and the cold
struck deep into his wounds. The monk was barefoot,
and his feet were frostbitten, but he brought himself and
Hall to the church at last.

Arni leapt out straight after Hall ; he struck his
foot on the hatch (he was turning old) and fell as he
came out. They asked who that might be, coming in
such a hurry.

" Arni the Bitter is here," says he ; " and I will not
ask for quarter. I see one lying not far away makes

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 263

me like it well enough if I travel the same road with
him."

Then said Kolbein : "Is there no man here re-
members Snorri Sturluson ? " ^

They both had a stroke at him, Kolbein and Ari
Ingimund's son, and more of them besides hewed at him,
and he came by his death there.

Then the hall fell in, beginning from the north side
into the loft above the hall. Now all the buildings
began to flare up, except that the guest-house did not
burn, nor the ladies' room, nor the dairy.

Now to go back to Gizur : he made his way through
the house to the dairy, with Gudmund, his kinsman,
after him. Gizur asked him to go away, and said that
one man might find a way of escape, if fate would have
it so, that would not do for two. Then Parson
John Haldorsson came up ; and Gizur asked them both
to leave him. He took off his coat of mail and his
morion, but kept his sword in his hand. Parson John and
Gudmund made their way from the dairy to the south
door, and got quarter. Gizur went into the dairy and
found a curd-tub standing on stocks ; there he thrust the
sword into the curds down over the hilts. He saw close
by a vat sunk in the earth with whey in it, and the
curd-tub stood over it and nearly hid the sunken vat
altogether. There was room for Gizur to get into it, and
he sat down in the whey in his linen clothes and
nothing else, and the whey came up to his breast It
was cold in the whey. He had not been long there
when he heard voices, and their talk went thus, that
three men were meant to have the hewing of him ; each
man his stroke, and no hurry about it, so as to see how he
took it. The three appointed were Hrani and Kolbein
and Ari. And now they came into the dairy with a light,
and searched about everywhere. They came to the vat

^ Ami Beiskr (the Bitter) in company with Gizur murdered
Snorri Sturluson the historian at his house of Reykholt, 22nd
September 1241.

264 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

that Gizur was in, and thrust into it three or four times with
spears. Then there was a wrangle among them ; some
said there was something in the vat, and others said no.
Gizur kept his hand over his belly, moving gently, so
that they might be as long as possible in finding out that
there was anything there. He had grazes on his hands,
and all down to his knees skin wounds, little and many.
Gizur said afterwards that before they came in he was
shaking with cold, so that it rippled in the vat, but after
they came in he did not shiver at all. They made two
searches through the dairy, and the second time was
like the first. After that they went out and made ready
to ride away. Those men that still had life in them were
spared, to wit, Gudmund Falkason, Thord the Deacon,
and Olaf, who was afterwards called Guest, whose life
Einar Thorgrimsson had attempted before. By that
time it was dawn.

There is one passage in the story of Flugumyri,
before the scene of the burning, in which the narrative
is heightened a little, as if the author were conscious
that his subject was related to the matter of heroic
poetry, or as if it had at once, like the battle of Maldon,
begun to be magnified by the popular memory into
the likeness of heroic battles. It is in the descrip-
tion of the defence of the hall {skdli) at Flugumyri,
before the assailants were driven back and had to
take to fire, as is told above.

Eyjolf and his companions made a hard assault on the
hall. Now was there battle joined, and sharp onset,
for the defence was of the stoutest. They kept at it
far into the night, and struck so hard (say the men who
were there) that fire flew, as it seemed, when the
weapons came together. Thorstein Gudmund's son
said afterwards that he had never been where men made
a braver stand ; and all are agreed to praise the defence
of Flugumyri, both friends and enemies.

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 265

The fire of the swords which is here referred to
by the way, and with something Hke an apology for
exaggeration, is in the poem of Fhinesburh brought
out with emphasis, as a proper part of the com-
position : —

swurdl^oma st6d,
Swylce eall Finnesburh fyrenu wsere.

The sword-light rose, as though all Finnsburgh were
aflame.
It is characteristic of the Icelandic work that it
should frequently seem to reflect the incidents of
epic poetry in a modified way. The Sagas follow
the outlines of heroic poetry, but they have to reduce
the epic magnificence, or rather it would be truer to
say that they present in plain language, and without
extravagance, some of the favourite passages of
experience that have been at different times selected
and magnified by epic poets. Thus the death of
Skarphedinn is like a prose rendering of the death of
Roland ; instead of the last stroke of the hero in his
agony, cleaving the rock with Durendal, it is noted
simply that Skarphedinn had driven his axe into the
beam before him, in the place where he was penned
in, and there the axe was found when they came to
look for him after the burning. The moderation of
the language here does not conceal the intention of
the writer that Skarphedinn's last stroke is to be
remembered. It is by touches such as these that
the heroic nature of the Sagas is revealed. In spite
of the common details and the prose statement, it
is impossible to mistake their essential character.
They are something loftier than history, and their
authors knew it. When history came to be written
as it was written by Sturla, it still retained this
distinction. It is history governed by an heroic
spirit ; and while it is closely bound to the facts, it is

266 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

at the same time controlled and directed by the forms
of an imaginative literature that had grown up in
greater freedom and at a greater distance from its
historical matter. Sturla uses, for contemporary
history, a kind of narrative created and perfected for
another purpose, namely for the imaginative recon-
struction and representation of tradition, in the
stories of Njal, Grettir, and Gisli.

There is no distortion or perversion in this choice
and use of his instrument, any more than in Fielding's
adaptation of the method of Joseph Andrews to the
matter of the Voyage to Lisbon. In the first place,
the imaginative form of narrative obliges the author
to take his subject seriously and treat it with dignity ;
he cannot leave it crude and unformed. In the
second place, there is a real affinity, in Iceland,
between the subject-matters of the true history and
the heroic Saga; the events are of the same kind,
the personages are not unlike.

The imaginative treatment of the stories of Njal
and Gisli had been founded on real knowledge of
life; in Sturlunga the history of real life is repaid
for its loan. In Sturla's book, the contemporary
alarms and excursions, the midnight raids, the perils
and escapes, the death of the strong man, the painful
ending of the poor-spirited, all the shocks and
accidents of his own time, are comprehended by the
author in the light of the traditional heroics, and of
similar situations in the imaginative Sagas ; and so
these matters of real life, and of the writer's own
experience, or near it, come to be co-ordinated,
represented, and made intelligible through imagina-
tion. Sturlunga is something more than a bare diary,
or a series of pieces of evidence. It has an author,
and the author understands and appreciates the
matter in hand, because it is illuminated for him by

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 267

the example of the heroic literature. He carries an
imaginative narrative design in his head, and things
as they happen fall into the general scheme of his
story as if he had invented them.

How much this imaginative kind of true history is
bound and indebted to its native land, how little
capable of transportation, is proved in a very striking
and interesting way by Sturla's other work, his essay
in foreign history, the Life of King Hacon of Norway,
The Hdkonar Saga^ as compared with Sturlunga, is
thin, grey, and abstract- It is a masterly book in its
own kind; fluent and clear, and written in the
inimitable Icelandic prose. The story is parallel to
the history of Iceland, contemporary with Sturlunga.
It tells of the agonies of Norway, a confusion no less
violent and cruel than the anarchy of Iceland in the
same sixty years; while the Norwegian history has
the advantage that it comes to an end in remedy, not
in exhaustion. There was no one in Iceland like
King Hacon to break the heads of the disorderly
great men, and thus make peace in an effective way.
Sturlunga^ in Iceland, is made up of mere anarchy ;
Hdkonar Saga is the counterpart of Sturlunga, ex-
hibiting the cure of anarchy in Norway under an
active king. But while the political import of Sturia's
Hacon is thus greater, the literary force is much less,
in comparison with the strong work of Sturlunga.
There is great dexterity in the management of the
narrative, great lucidity; but the vivid imagination
shown in the story of Flugumyri, and hardly less in
other passages of Sturlunga, is replaced in the life of
Hacon by a methodical exposition of facts, good
enough as history, but seldom giving any hint of the
author's reserve of imaginative force. It is not that
Sturla does not understand his subject. The tragedy
of Duke Skule does not escape him ; he recognises

268 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

the contradiction in the Hfe of Hacon's greatest rival,
between Skule's own nobihty and generosity of temper,
and the hopelessness of the old scrambling misrule of
which he is the representative. But the tragedy of
the Rival Kings (Kongsemnerne) is left for Ibsen to
work out in full ; the portraits of Skule and Hacon
are only given in outline. In the part describing
Hacon's childhood among the veterans of the Old
Guard (Sverre's men, the " ancient Birchlegs "), and
in a few other places, there is a lapse into the proper
Icelandic manner. Elsewhere, and in the more
important parts of the history especially, it would
seem as if the author had gone out of his way to
find a sober and colourless pattern of work, instead
of the full and vivid sort of story that came natural
to him.

After Sturla, and after the fall of the Common-
wealth of Iceland, although there were still some
interesting biographies to be written — the Life of
Bishop Arne^ the Life of Bishop Laurence — it may
be reckoned that the heroic strain is exhausted.
After that, it is a new world for Iceland, or rather
it is the common medieval world, and not the peculiar
Icelandic version of an heroic age. After the four-
teenth century the historical schools die out into
meagre annals ; and even the glorious figure of J6n
Arason, and the tragic end of the Catholic bishop,
the poet, the ruler, who along with his sons was
beheaded in the interests of the Reformed Religion
and its adherents, must go without the honours
that were freely paid in the thirteenth century to
bishops and lords no more heroic, no more vehement
and self-willed. The history of J6n Arason has to
be made out and put together from documents ;
his Saga was left unwritten, though the facts of
his life and death may seem to prove that the

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 269

old spirit lived long after the failure of the old
literature.

The thirteenth century, the century of Snorri
Sturluson and of Sturla his nephew, is also the age
of Villehardouin and Joinville. That is to say, the
finished historical work of the Icelandic School is
contemporary with the splendid improvisations and
first essays of French historical prose. The fates of
the two languages are an instance of "the way that
things are shared " in this world, and may raise some
grudges against the dispensing fortune that has
ordered the Life of St, Louis to be praised, not
beyond its deserts, by century after century, while
the Northern masterpieces are left pretty much to
their own island and to the antiquarian students of
the Northern tongues. This, however, is a considera-
tion which does not touch the merits of either side.
It is part of the fate of Icelandic literature that it
should not be influential in the great world, that it
should fall out of time, and be neglected, in the
march of the great nations. It is in this seclusion
that its perfection is acquired, and there is nothing
to complain of.

A comparison of the two contemporaries, Sturla
and Joinville, brings out the difference between two
admirable varieties of history, dealing with like
subjects. The scenery of the Life of St. Louis is
different from that of Sturlunga^ but there is some
resemblance in parts of their themes, in so far as
both narrate the adventures of brave men in difificult
places, and both are told by authors who were on
the spot themselves, and saw with their own eyes,
or heard directly from those who had seen. As a
subject for literature there is not much to choose
between St. Louis in Egypt in 1250 and the burning

270 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

of Flugumyri three years later, though the one
adventure had all the eyes of the world upon it, and
the other was of no more practical interest to the
world than floods or landslips or the grinding of
rocks and stones in an undiscovered valley. Nor
is there much to choose between the results of the
two methods ; neither Sturla nor Joinville has any-
thing to fear from a comparison between them.

Sometimes, in details, there is a very close
approximation of the French and the Icelandic
methods. Joinville's story, for example, of the
moonlight adventure of the clerk of Paris and the
three robbers might go straight into Icelandic. Only,
the seneschal's opening of the story is too personal,
and does not agree with the Icelandic manner of
telling a story : —

As I went along I met with a wagon carrying three
dead men that a clerk had slain, and I was told they
were being brought for the king to see. When I heard
this I sent my squire after them, to know how it had
fallen out.

The difference between the two kinds is that
Joinville, being mainly experimental and without
much regard for the older precedents and models of
historical writing, tells his story in his own way, as
memoirs, in the order of events as they come within
his view, revealing his own sentiments and policy,
and keeping a distinction between the things he
himself saw and the things he did not see. Whereas
Sturla goes on the lines that had been laid down
before him, and does not require to invent his own
narrative scheme ; and further, the scheme he receives
from his masters is the opposite of Joinville's personal
memories. Though Sturla in great part of his work
is as near the reality as Joinville, he is obliged by

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 271

the Icelandic custom to keep himself out of the story,
except when he is necessary; and then he only
appears in the third person on the same terms as the
other actors, with nothing except perhaps a greater
particularity in description to show that the author is
there himself in the thick of it. To let the story
take care of itself is the first rule of the Icelandic
authors. If they have any emotion or sentiment of
their own, it must go into the story impersonally ; it
must inform or enliven the characters and their
speeches ; it must quicken the style unobtrusively, or
else it must be suppressed. The parts of the Sagas
that are most touching, such as the death of Njal,
and the parting of Grettir and his mother, though
they give evidence of the author's sensibility, never
allow him a word for himself. The method is the
method of Homer — 86X(^ 8' o yc SdKpva KevOev — " he
would not confess that he wept."

In Joinville, on the contrary, all the epic matter
of the story is surveyed and represented not as a
drama for any one to come and look at, and make
his own judgment about it, but as the life of him-
self, the Sire de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne,
known and interpreted to himself first of all. It is
barely possible to conceive the Ztfe of St. Louis
transposed into the mood of the Odyssey or of Njdla.
It is hard to see who would be a gainer thereby —
certainly not St. Louis himself. He would be de-
prived, for instance, of what is at once the most
heroic and the most trifling of all the passages in
his story, which belongs altogether to Joinville, and
is worth nothing except as he tells it, and because
he tells it. The story of Joinville's misunderstand-
ing of the king, and the king's way of taking it, on
occasion of the Council at Acre and the question
whether to return or to stay and recover the

272 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

prisoners from the Saracens, is not only the whole
Life of St, Louis summed up and put into one
chapter, but it is also one of those rarest passages of
true history in which a character whom we thought
we knew is presented with all his qualities intensified
in a momentary act or speech. It is as if the dulness
of custom were magically broken, and the famihar
character stood out, not different from himself, but
with a new expression. In this great scene the Barons
were for returning home, and put forward Guy
Malvoisin their foreman to state their opinion.
Joinville took the other side, remembering the warning
of a kinsman of his own not to return in a hurry and
forget the Lord's poor servants {le peuple menu Nostre
Signour). There was no one there but had friends in
prison among the Saracens, " so they did not rebuke
me," says Joinville ; but only two ventured to speak
on his side, and one of these was shouted at {mout
f clones sement) by his uncle, the good knight Sir Jehan
de Beaumont, for so doing. The king adjourned
the Council for a week. What follows is a kind of
narrative impossible under the Homeric or the
Icelandic conditions — no impersonal story, but a
record of Joinville's own changes of mind as he was
played upon by the mind of the king; an heroic
incident, but represented in a way quite different from
any epic manner. Joinville describes the breaking
up of the Council, and how he was baited by them
all : " The king is a fool. Sire de Joinville, if he does
not take your advice against all the council of the
realm of France"; how he sat beside the king at
dinner, but the king did not speak to him ; how he,
Joinville, thought the king was displeased ; and how
he got up when the king was hearing grace, and went
to a window in a recess and stuck his arms out
through the bars, and leant there gazing out and

SECT. VII EPIC AND HISTORY 273

brooding over the whole matter, making up his mind
to stay, whatever happened to all the rest ; till some
one came behind him and put his hands on his head
at the window and held him there, and Joinville
thought it was one of the other side beginning to
bother him again {et je cuidai que ce fust mes sires
Phelippes d^Anemos^ qui trop d^ ennui m'avoitfait lejour
pour le consoil que je li avoie donnei), till as he was
trying to get free he saw, by a ring on the hand, that
it was the king. Then the king asked him how it
was that he, a young man, had been bold enough to
set his opinion against all the wisdom of France ; and
before their talk ended, let him see that he was of the
same mind as Joinville.

This personal kind of story, in which an heroic
scene is rendered through its effect on one particular
mind, is quite contrary to the principles of the Ice-
landic history, except that both kinds are heroic, and
both are alive.

Joinville gives the succession of his own emotions ;
the Icelandic narrators give the succession of events,
either as they might appear to an impartial spectator,
or (on occasion) as they are viewed by some one in
the story, but never as they merely affect the writer
himself, though he may be as important a personage
as Sturla was in the events of which he wrote the
Chronicle. The subject-matter of the Icelandic
historian (whether his own experience or not) is
displayed as something in which he is not more
nearly concerned than other people ; his business is
to render the successive moments of the history so
that any one may form a judgment about them such
as he might have formed if he had been there.
Joinville, while giving his own changes of mind very
clearly, is not as careful as the Icelandic writers are
about the proper order of events. Thus an Icelander

274 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

would not have written, as Joinville does, " the king
came and put his hands on my head"; he would
have said, "John found that his head was being
held " ; and the discovery by means of the ring would
have been the first direct intimation who it was.
The story as told by Joinville, though it is so much
more intimate than any of the Sagas, is not as true to
the natural order of impressions. He follows out his
own train of sentiment ; he is less careful of the order
of perception, which the Icelanders generally observe,
and sometimes with extraordinary effect.

Joinville's history is not one of a class, and there is
nothing equal to it; but some of the quaUties of
his history are characteristic of the second medieval
period, the age of romance. His prose, as com-
pared with that of Iceland, is unstudied and simple,
an apparently unreserved confession. The Icelandic
prose, with its richness of contents and its capability
of different moods, is by comparison resolute, secure,
and impartial ; its authors are among those who do
not give their own opinion about their stories.
Joinville, for all his exceptional genius in narrative, is
yet like all the host of medieval writers except the
Icelandic school, in his readiness to give his opinion,
to improve the occasion, and to add to his plain
story something like the intonation of the preacher.
Inimitable as he is, to come from the Icelandic
books to Joinville is to discover that he is " medieval "
in a sense that does not apply to those ; that his
work, with all its sobriety and solidity, has also the
incalculable and elusive touch of fantasy, of exaltation,
that seems to claim in a special way the name of
Romance.

VIII

THE NORTHERN PROSE ROMANCES

The history of the Sturlungs is the last great work
of the classical age of Icelandic literature, and after
it the end comes pretty sharply, as far as master-
pieces are concerned. There is, however, a con-
tinuation of the old literature in a lower degree and
in degenerate forms, which if not intrinsically
valuable, are yet significant, as bringing out by
exaggeration some of the features and qualities of the
older school, and also as showing in a peculiar way
the encroachments of new "romantic" ideas and
formulas.

One of the extant versions of the Foster-brother^
Story is remarkable for its patches of euphuistic
rhetoric, which often appear suddenly in the course
of plain, straightforward narrative. These ornamental
additions are not all of the same kind. Some of
them are of the alliterative antithetical kind which is
frequently found in the old Northern ecclesiastical
prose,^ and which has an English counterpart in the

1 Fdstbr. (1852) p. 8 : Pvf at ekki var hjartahans seen f6am f
fugli : ekki var ])at bl6Sfullt svd at \zX skylfi af hraezlu, heldr var fat
herdt af enum haesta hofuSsmiS i oUum hvatleik." { ' ' His heart was
not fashioned like the crop in a fowl : it was not gorged with blood
that it should flutter with fear, but was tempered by the High
Headsmith in all alacrity.")

275

276 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

alliterative prose of ^Ifric. Others are more
unusual; they are borrowed not from the Latin
ecclesiastical school of prose, but from the terms of
the Northern poetry, and their effect is often very
curious. For instance, on page 13 there is a
sudden break from the common, unemphatic narrative
of a storm at sea (" they were drenched through,
and their clothes froze on them") into the incon-
gruous statement that "the daughters of Ran (the
sea-goddess) came and wooed them and offered them
rest in their embraces," — a conceit which might
possibly be mistaken by a modern reader for the
fancy of Hans Andersen, but which is really some-
thing quite different, not " pathetic fallacy," but an
irruption of metaphorical rhetoric from the poetical
dictionary. There is another metaphorical flare-up
on the next page, equally amazing, in its plain
context : —

She gave orders to take their clothes and have them
thawed. After that they had supper and were shown to
bed. They were not long in falling asleep. Snow and
frost held all the night through ; all that night the Dog
{devourer) of the elder-tree howled with unwearying
jaws and worried the earth with grim fangs of cold.
And when it began to grow light towards daybreak, a
man got up to look out, and when he came in Thorgeir
asked what sort of weather it was outside ;

and so on in the ordinary sober way. It is not
surprising that an editor should have been found to
touch up the plain text of a Saga with a few
ornamental phrases here and there. Considering
the amount of bad taste and false wit in the con-
temporary poetry, the wonder is that there should be
such a consistent exclusion of all such things from
the prose of the Sagas. The Fdstbrce'6ra variations

SECT. VIII THE NORTHERN PROSE ROMANCES 277

show the beginning of a process of decay, in which
the Hnes of separation between prose and poetry are
cut through.

Except, however, as an indication of a general
decHne of taste, these diversions in Fostbra'^ra Saga
do not represent the later and secondary schools of
Icelandic narrative. They remain as exceptional
results of a common degeneracy of literature ; the
prevailing forms are not exactly of this special kind.
Instead of embroidering poetical diction over the
plain text of the old Sagas, the later authors preferred
to invent new stories of their own, and to use in
them the machinery and vocabulary of the old Sagas.
Hence arose various orders of romantic Saga, cut off
from the original sources of vitality, and imitating
the old forms very much as a modern romanticist
might intimate them. One of the best, and one of
the most famous, of these romantic Sagas is the
story of Frithiof the Bold, which was chosen by
Tegn^r as the ground-work of his elegant romantic
poem, a brilliant example of one particular kind of
modern medievalism. The significance of Tegn^r's
choice is that he went for his story to the secondary
order of Sagas. The original Frithiof is almost as
remote as Tegn^r himself from the true heroic
tradition ; and, like Tegner's poem, makes up for this
want of a pedigree by a study and imitation of the
great manner, and by a selection and combination
of heroic traits from the older authentic literature.
Hence Tegndr's work, an ingenious rhetorical adapta-
tion of all the old heroic motives, is already half
done for him by the earlier romanticist; the
original prose Frithiof is the same romantic hero as
in the Swedish poem, and no more like the men of
the Icelandic histories than Raoul de Bragelonne is
like D'Artagnan. At the same time, it is easy to

278 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

see how the authentic histories have supplied materials
for the romance ; as has been shown already, there
are passages in the older Sagas that contain some
suggestions for the later kind of stories, and the
fictitious hero is put together out of reminiscences of
Gunnar and Kjartan.

The "romantic movement" in the old Northern
literature was greatly helped by foreign encourage-
ment from the thirteenth century onward, and par-
ticularly by a change of literary taste at the Court of
Norway. King Sverre at the end of the twelfth cen-
tury quotes from the old Volsung poem ; he perhaps
kept the Faroese memory for that kind of poetry
from the days of his youth in the islands. Hakon
Hakonsson, two generations later, had a different taste
in Hterature and was fond of French romances. It
was in his day that the work of translation from the
French began ; the results of which are still extant in
Strengleikar (the Lays of Marie de France), in Karla-
magnus Saga, in the Norwegian versions of Tristram,
Perceval, Iwain, and other books of chivalry.^ These
cargoes of foreign romance found a ready market in
the North ; first of all in Norway, but in Iceland also.
They came to Iceland just at the time when the native
literature, or the highest form of it at any rate, was
failing ; the failure of the native literature let in these
foreign competitors. The Norwegian translations of
French romances are not the chief agents in the
creation of the secondary Icelandic School, though
they help. The foreigners have contributed some-
thing to the story of Frithiof and the story of Viglund.

1 " The first romantic Sagas " — i.e. Sagas derived from French
romance — "date from the reign of King Hakon Hakonsson (1217-
1263), when the longest and best were composed, and they appear
to cease at the death of King Hakon the Fifth (1319), who, we are
expressly told, commanded many translations to be made"(G.
Vigfusson, Prol. § 25).

SECT. VIII THE NORTHERN PROSE ROMANCES 279

The phrase ndttura amorsins ( = natura anioris) in
the latter work shows the intrusion even of the
Romance vocabulary here, as under similar condi-
tions in Germany and England. But while the old
Northern literature in its decline is affected by the
vogue of French romance, it still retains some inde-
pendence. It went to the bad in its own way ; and
the later kinds of story in the old Northern tongue
are not wholly spurious and surreptitious. They have
some claim upon Njdla and Laxdcela; there is a strain
in them that distinguishes them from the ordinary
professional medieval romance in French, English,
or German.

When the Icelandic prose began to fail, and the
slighter forms of Romance rose up in the place of
Epic history, there were two modes in which the
older literature might be turned to profit. For one
thing, there was plenty of romantic stuff in the old
heroic poetry, without going to the French books.
For another thing, the prose stories of the old
tradition had in them all kinds of romantic motives
which were fit to be used again. So there came into
existence the highly-interesting series of Mythical
Romances on the themes of the old Northern mythical
and heroic poetry, and another series besides, which
worked up in its own way a number of themes and
conventional motives from the older prose books.

Mythical sagas had their beginning in the classical
age of the North. Snorri, with his stories of the
adventures of the gods, is the leader in the work of
getting pure romance, for pure amusement, out of
what once was religious or heroic myth, mythological
or heroic poetry. Even Ari the Wise, his great
predecessor, had done something of the same sort, if
the Ynglinga Saga be his, an historical abstract of
Northern mythical history ; though his aim, like that

28o THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

of Saxo Grammaticus, is more purely scientific than is
the case with Snorri. The later mythical romances
are of different kinds. The Volsunga Saga is the
best known on account of its subject. The story of
Heidrek, instead of paraphrasing throughout like the
Volsung book, inserts the poems of Hervor and
Angantyr, and of their descendants, in a consecutive
prose narrative. Halfs Saga follows the same
method. The story of Hrolf Kraki^ full of interest
from its connexion with the matter oi Beowulf 2>.wA of
Saxo Grammaticus, is more like Volsunga Saga in its
procedure.^

The other class - contains the Sagas of Frithiof
and Viglund^ and all the fictitious stories which copy
the style of the proper Icelandic Sagas. Their
matter is taken from the adventures of the heroic
age ; their personages are idealised romantic heroes ;
romantic formulas, without substance.

Among the original Sagas there are some that
show the beginning of the process by which the
substance was eliminated, and the romantic eidolon
left to walk about by itself. The introductions of
many of the older Sagas, of Gisli and Grettir for
example, giving the adventures of the hero's ancestors,
are made up in this way ; and the best Sagas have
many conventional passages — Viking exploits, dis-
comfiture of berserkers, etc. — which the reader learns
to take for granted, like the tournaments in the French
books, and which have no more effect than simple
adjectives to say that the hero is brave or strong.
Besides these stock incidents, there are ethical passages
(as has already been seen) in which the hero is in

* The Mythical Sagas are described and discussed by Vigfusson,
Prol. § 34.

^ Ibid. § II, "Spurious Icelandic Sagas" l^Skrok- Sogur). For
Frithiof, see § 34.

SECT. VIII THE NORTHERN PROSE ROMANCES 281

some danger of turning into a figure of romance.
Grettir, Gisli, Kjartan, Gunnlaug the Wormtongue,
Gunnar of Lithend, are all in some degree and at
some point or other in danger of romantic exaggera-
tion, while Kari has to thank his humorous squire,
more than anything in himself, for his preservation.
Also in the original Sagas there are conventions of
the main plot, as well as of the episodes, such as are
repeated with more deliberation and less skill in the
romantic Sagas.

The love-adventures of Viglund are like those of
Frithiof, and they have a common likeness, except
in their conclusion, to the adventures of Kormak and
Steingerd in Kormaks Saga. Kormak was too rude
and natural for romance, and the romancers had to
make their heroes better-looking, and to provide a
happy ending. But the story of the poet's unfortunate
love had become a commonplace.

The plot of Laxdcela, the story of the Lovers of
Gudrun, which is the Volsung story born again,
became a commonplace of the same sort. It cer-
tainly had a good right to the favour it received. The
plot of Laxdcela is repeated in the story of Gunnlaug
and Helga, even to a repetition of the course of
events by which Kjartan is defrauded. The true
lover is left in Norway and comes back too late ; the
second lover, the dull, persistent man, contrasted with
a more brilliant but less single-minded hero, keeps
to his wooing and spreads false reports, and wins
his bride without her goodwill. Compared with the
story of Kjartan and Gudrun, the story of Gunnlaug
and Helga is shallow and sentimental ; the likeness
to Frithiof is considerable.

The device of a false report, in order to carry off
the bride of a man absent in Norway, is used again
in the story of Thorstein the White, where the result

282 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

is more summary and more in accordance with
poetical justice than in Laxdcela or Gunnlaug. This
is one of the best of the Icelandic short stories, firmly
drawn, with plenty of life and variety in it. It is
only in its use of what seems like a stock device for
producing agony that it resembles the more pretentious
romantic Sagas.

Another short story of the same class and the
same family tradition (Vopnafjord), the story of
Thorstein Staffsmitten, looks like a clever working-
up of a stock theme — the quiet man roused.^ The
combat in it is less like the ordinary Icelandic fighting
than the combats in the French poems, more especially
that of Roland and Oliver in Girart de Viane ; and
on the whole there is no particular reason, except its
use of well-known East-country names, to reckon this
among the family histories rather than the romances.

Romantic Sagas of different kinds have been com-
posed in Iceland, century after century, in a more or
less mechanical way, by the repetition of old adven-
tures, situations, phrases, characters, or pretences of
character. What the worst of them are like may be
seen by a reference to Mr. Ward's Catalogue of MS.
Romances in the British Museum, which contains a
number of specimens. There is fortunately no need
to say anything more of them here. They are among
the dreariest things ever made by human fancy.
But the first and freshest of the romantic Sagas have
still some reason in them and some beauty ; they
are at least the reflection of something living, either
of the romance of the old mythology, or of the
romantic grace by which the epic strength of Njal
and Gisli is accompanied.

^ Translated by Mr. William Morris and Mr. E. Magnusson,
in the same volume as Gunnlaug, Frithiof, and Viglund ( Three
Northern Love Stories, etc., 1875).

SECT. VIII THE NORTHERN PROSE ROMANCES 283

There are some other romantic transformations of
the old heroic matters to be noticed, before turning
away from the Northern world and its "twilight of
the gods" to the countries in which the course of
modern literature first began to define itself as some-
thing distinct from the older unsuccessful fashions,
Teutonic or Celtic.

The fictitious Sagas were not the most popular
kind of literature in Iceland in the later Middle Ages.
The successors of the old Sagas, as far as popularity
goes, are to be found in the Rimiir^ narrative poems,
of any length, in rhyming verse ; not the ballad
measures of Denmark, nor the short couplets of the
French School such as were used in Denmark and
Sweden, in England, and in High and Low Germany,
but rhyming verse derived from the medieval Latin
rhymes of the type best known from the works of
Bishop Golias.^ This rhyming poetry was very in-
dustrious, and turned out all kinds of stories; the
native Sagas went through the mill in company with
the more popular romances of chivalry.

They were transformed also in another way. The
Icelandic Sagas went along with other books to feed
the imagination of the ballad-singers of the Faroes.
Those islands, where the singing of ballads has
always had a larger share of importance among the
literary and intellectual tastes of the people than
anywhere else in the world, have relied compara-
tively little on their own traditions or inventions for
their ballad themes. Natural and popular as it is, the
ballad poetry of the Faroes is derived from Icelandic
literary traditions. Even Sigmund Brestisson, the
hero of the islands, might have been forgotten but

^ Vigfusson, Prol. p. cxxxviii. C.P.B., ii. 392. The forms of
verse used in the Rimur are analysed in the preface to Riddara
Rimur, by Theodor Wis^n (1881).

284 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS chap, hi

for the Fareyinga Saga-, and Icelandic books, pos-
sibly near relations of Codex Regius^ have provided
the islanders with what they sing of the exploits of
Sigurd and his horse Grani, as other writings brought
them the story of Roncesvalles. From Iceland also
there passed to the Faroes, along with the older
legends, the stories of Gunnar and of Kjartan ; they
have been turned into ballad measures, together with
Roland and Tristram^ in that refuge of the old songs
of the world.

CHAPTER IV
THE OLD FRENCH EPIC

THE OLD FRENCH EPIC

(Chansons de Geste)

It appears to be generally the case in all old epic
literature, and it is not surprising, that the existing
specimens come from the end of the period of its
greatest excellence, and generally represent the epic
fashion, not quite at its freshest and best, but after
it has passed its culmination, and is already on the
verge of decline. This condition of things is ex-
emplified in Beowulf \ and the Sagas also, here and
there, show signs of over-refinement and exhaustion.
In the extant mass of old French epic this condition
is enormously exaggerated. The Song of Roland
itself, even in its earliest extant form, is compara-
tively late and unoriginal ; while the remainder of
French epic poetry, in all its variety, is much less
authentic than Roland^ sensibly later, and getting
rapidly and luxuriantly worse through all the stages
of lethargy.

It is the misfortune of French epic that so much
should have been preserved of its " dotages," so little
of the same date and order as the Song of Roland,
and nothing at all of the still earlier epic — the more
original Roland of a previous generation. The
exuberance, however, of the later stages of French
epic, and its long persistence in living beyond its
287

288 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

due time, are proof of a certain kind of vitality.
The French epic in the twelfth century, long after
its best days were over, came into the keenest and
closest rivalry with the younger romantic schools in
their first vigour. Fortune has to some extent made
up for the loss of the older French poems by the
preservation of endless later versions belonging in
date to the exciting times of the great romantic
revolution in literature. Feeble and drowsy as they
often are, the late -born hosts of the French epic
are nevertheless in the thick of a great European
contest, matched not dishonourably against the forces
of Romance. They were not the strongest possible
champions of the heroic age, but they were there^
in the field, and in view of all spectators. At this
distance of time, we can see how much more fully
the drift of the old Teutonic world was caught and
rendered by the imagination of Iceland ; how much
more there is in Grettir or Skarphedinn than in Ogier
the Dane, or Raoul de Cambrai, or even Roland and
Oliver. But the Icelandic work lay outside of the
consciousness of Europe, and the French epic was
known everywhere. There are no such masterpieces
in the French epic as in the Icelandic prose. The
French epic, to make up for that, has an exciting
history ; it lived by antagonism, and one may look
on and see how the chansons de geste were fighting
for their life against the newer forms of narrative
poetry. In all this there is the interest of watching
one of the main currents of history, for it was nothing
less than the whole future imaginative life of Europe
that was involved in the debate between the stubborn
old epic fashion and the new romantic adventurers.

The chansons de geste stand in a real, positive,
ancestral relation to all modern literature; there is
something of them in all the poetry of Europe. The

IV CHANSONS DE GESTE 289

Icelandic histories can make no such claim. Their
relation to modern life is slighter, in one sense ; more
spiritual, in another. They are not widely known,
they have had no share in establishing the forms or
giving vogue to the commonplaces of modern litera-
ture. Now that they are published and accessible to
modern readers, their immediate and present worth,
for the friends of Skarphedinn and Gunnar, is out of
all proportion to their past historical influence. They
have anticipated some of the literary methods which
hardly became the common property of Europe till
the nineteenth century ; even now, when all the world
reads and writes prose stories, their virtue is unex-
hausted and unimpaired. But this spiritual affinity
with modern imaginations and conversations, across
the interval of medieval romance and rhetoric, is not
due to any direct or overt relation. The Sagas have
had no influence; that is the plain historical fact
about them.

The historical influence and importance of the
chansons de geste, on the other hand, is equally plain
and evident. Partly by their opposition to the new
modes of fiction, and partly by compliance with their
adversaries, they belong to tiie history of those great
schools of literature in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies from which all modern imaginations in prose and
rhyme are descended. The "dolorous rout" of Ronces-
valles, and not the tragedy of the Niblungs, still less
the history of Gunnar or of Njal, is the heroic origin
of modern poetry ; it is remembered and renowned,
TTttcrt fxeX-ovcra, among the poets who have given shape
to modern imaginative literature, while the older
heroics of the Teutonic migration are forgotten, and
the things of Iceland are utterly unknown.

French epic has some great advantages in com-
parison with the epic experiments of Teutonic verse.

290 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

For one thing, it exists in great quantity ; there is no
want of specimens, though they are not all of the
best sort or the best period. Further, it has no
difficulty, only too much ease, in keeping a long
regular course of narrative. Even ^^^^ze;?/^ appears to
have attained to its epic proportions by a succession of
eiiforts, and with difficulty ; it labours rather heavily
over the longer epic course. Maldon is a poem that
runs freely, but here the course is shorter, and it
carries much less weight. The Northern poems of the
" Elder Edda " never attain the right epic scale at all ;
their abrupt and lyrical manner is the opposite of the
epic mode of narration. It is true that the chansons
de geste are far from the perfect continuity of the
Homeric narrative. Roland is described by M.
Gaston Paris in terms not unlike those that are
applied by Ten Brink in his criticism oi Beowulf \ —
On peut dire que la Chanson de Roland (ainsi que
toutes nos plus anciennes chansons de geste) se
developpe non pas, comma les po^mes homdriques, par
un courant large et ininterrompu, non pas, comme le
Nibelungenlied^ par des battements d'ailes egaux et lents,
mais par un suite d'explosions successives, toujours
arretees court et toujours reprenant avec soudainet^"
i^Liti.fr. au moyen dge, p. 59).

Roland is a succession of separate scenes, with
no gradation or transition between them. It still
bears traces of the lyrical origins of epic. But
the narrative, though broken, is neither stinted nor
laboured ; it does not, Hke Beowulf give the impres-
sion that it has been expanded beyond the convenient
limits, and that the author is scant of breath. And
none of the later chansons de geste are so restricted
and reserved in their design 2^% Roland \ most of them
are diffiise and long. The French and the Teutonic
epics are at opposite extremes of style.

IV STYLE 291

The French epics are addressed to the largest
conceivable audience.^ They are plain and simple,
as different as possible from the allusive brevity
of the Northern poems. Even the plainest of the
old English poems, even Maldon^ has to employ the
poetical diction, the unprosaic terms and figures
of the Teutonic School. The alliterative poetry
down to its last days has a vocabulary different from
that of prose, and much richer. The French epic
language is not distinguished and made difficult in
this way; it is "not prismatic but diaphanous."
Those who could understand anything could under-
stand it, and the chansons de geste easily found
currency in the market-place, when they were driven
by the new romances from their old place of honour
in " bower and hall." The Teutonic poetry, even at
its simplest, must have required more attention in its
hearers than the French, through the strangeness and
the greater variety of its vocabulary. It is less
familiar, less popular. Whatever dignity may be
acquired by the French epic is not due to any special
or elaborate convention of phrase. Where it is weak,
its poverty is not disguised, as in the weaker portions
of Teutonic poetry, by the ornaments and synonyms
of the Gradus. The commonplaces of French epic
are not imposing.^ With this difference between the
French and the Teutonic conventions, there is all
the more interest in a comparison of the two kinds,
where they come into comparison through any resem-
blance of their subjects or their thought, as in
Byrhtnoth and Roland.

1 G. Paris, Preface to Histoire de la littirature fran^aise, edited
by L. Petit de Julleville.

2 See the preface to Raoul de Cambrai, ed. Paul Meyer (Anc.
Textes), for examples of such chevilles \ and also Aimeri de Nar-
bonne, p. civ.

292 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

The French epics have generally a larger political
field, more numerous armies, and more magnificent
kings, than the Teutonic. In the same degree, their
heroism is different from that of the earlier heroic age.
The general motives of patriotism and religion, France
and Christendom, prevent the free use of the simpler
and older motives of individual heroism. The hero
of the older sort is still there, but his game is hindered
by the larger and more complex political conditions
of France ; or if these are evaded, still the mere size
of the country and numbers of the fighting-men tell
against his importance; he is dwarfed by his
surroundings. The limitation of the scenes in the
poems of Beowulf^ Ermanaric^ and Attila throws out
the figures in strong relief. The mere extent of the
stage and the number of the supernumeraries required
for the action of most of the French stories appear to
have told against the definiteness of their characters ;
as, on the other hand, the personages in Beowulf^ with-
out much individual character of their own, seem to
gain in precision and strength from the smallness of
the scene in which they act. There is less strict
economy in the chansons de geste.

Apart from this, there is real and essential vague-
ness in their characters ; their drama is rudimentary.
The simplicity of the French epic style, which is
addressed to a large audience and easily intelligible,
is not capable of much dramatic subtlety. It can be
made to express a variety of actions and a variety of
moods, but these are generally rendered by means of
common formulas, without much dramatic insight or
intention. While the fragments of Teutonic epic seem
to give evidence of a growing dramatic imagination,
and the Northern poems, especially, of a series of
experiments in character, the French epic imagination
appears to have remained content with its established

IV ROLAND 293

and abstract formulas for different modes of sentiment
and passion. It would not be easy to find anything
in French epic that gives the same impression of dis-
covery and innovation, of the search for dramatic
form, of the absorption of the poet's mind in the
pursuit of an imaginary character, as is given, again
and again, by the Northern poems of the Volsung
cycle. Yet the chansons de geste are often true and
effective in their outlines of character, and include a
quantity of "humours and observation," though their
authors seem to have been unable to give solidity to
their sketches.

The weakness of the drama in the French epics,
even more than their compliance with foreign romance
in the choice of incidents or machinery, is against
their claim to be reckoned in the higher order of
heroic narrative. They are romantic by the com-
parative levity of their imagination ; the story, with
them, is too much for the personages. But it is still
the problem of heroic character that engages them,
however feebly or conventionally they may deal with
it. They rely, like the Teutonic epic and the Sagas,
on situations that test the force of character, and they
find those situations in the common conditions of an
heroic age, subject of course to the modifications of
the comparatively late period and late form of society
to which they belong. Roland is a variation on the
one perpetual heroic theme ; it has a grander setting,
a grander accompaniment, than Byrhtnoth or Waldere^
but it is essentially the old story of the heroic age, —
no knight-errantry, but the last resistance of a man
driven into a corner.

The greatness of the poem of Roland is that of an
author who knows his own mind, who has a certain
mood of the heroic imagination to express, and is at
no loss for his instrument or for the lines of his work.

294 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

The poem, as has been already noted, has a
general likeness in its plan to the story of Finnesburh
as told in Beowulf, and to the poems of the death of
Attila. The plot falls into two parts, the second part
being the vengeance and expiation.

Although the story is thus not absolutely simple,
like the adventures of Beowulf, no epic has a more
magnificent simpUcity of effect. The other person-
ages, Charlemagne, Ganelon, Oliver, King Marsile,
have to Roland nothing like the importance of
Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomede, or Hector, as compared
with Achilles in the Iliad. The poem is almost wholly
devoted to the praise and glorification of a single
hero ; it retains very much of the old manners of the
earlier stages of epic poetry, before it ceased to be
lyric. It is a poem in honour of a chieftain.

At the same time, this lyrical tone in Roland and
this pathetic concentration of the interest on one
personage do not interfere with the epic plan of the
narrative, or disturb the lines of the composition.
The central part of the poem is on the Homeric
scale ; the fighting, the separate combats, are rendered
in an Homeric way. Byrhtnoth and Roland are the
works that have given the best medieval counterpart
to the battles of Homer. There is more of a crisis
and a climax in Roland than in the several battles of
the Iliad, and a different sort of climax from that of
Byrhtnoth. Everything leads to the agony and heroic
death of Roland, and to his glory as the unyielding
champion of France and Christendom. It is not as
in the Iliad, where different heroes have their day, or
as at Maldon, where the fall of the captain leads to
the more desperate defence and the more exalted
heroism of his companions. Roland is the absolute
master of the Song of Roland. No other heroic
poetry conveys the same effect of pre-eminent sim-

IV ROLAND 295

plicity and grandeur. There is hardly anything in
the poem except the single mood; its simplicity is
overpowering, a type of heroic resistance for all the
later poets of Europe. This impressive effect is
aided, it is true, by an infusion of the lyrical tone and
by playing on the pathetic emotions. Roland is ideal
and universal, and the story of his defeat, of the blast
of his horn, and the last stroke of Durendal, is a kind
of funeral march or " heroic symphony " into which a
meaning may be read for every new hero, to the end
of the world ; for any one in any age whose Mood is
the more as the Might lessens. Yet although Roland
has this universal or symbolical or musical meaning —
unlike the more individual personages in the Sagas,
who would resent being made into allegories — the
total effect is mainly due to legitimate epic means.
There is no stinting of the epic proportions or sup-
pression of the epic devices. The Song of Roland is
narrative poetry, a model of narrative design, with the
proper epic spaces well proportioned, well considered,
and filled with action. It may be contrasted with
the Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok^ which is an
attempt to get the same sort of moral effect by a pro-
cess of lyrical distillation from heroic poetry ; putting
all the strongest heroic motives into the most intense
and emphatic form. There is something lyrical in
Roland, but the poem is not governed by lyrical
principles ; it requires the deliberation and the
freedom of epic; it must have room to move in
before it can come up to the height of its argument.
The abruptness of its periods is not really an interrup-
tion of its even flight ; it is an abruptness of detail,
like a broken sea with a larger wave moving under
it ; it does not impair or disguise the grandeur of the
movement as a whole.

There are other poems among the chansons de

296 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

geste which admit of comparison with Roland^ though
Roland is supreme \ other epics in which the simple
motives of heroism and loyalty are treated in a simple
and noble way, without any very strong individual
character among the personages. Of these rather
abstract expositions of the heroic ideal, some of the
finest are to be found in the cycle of William of
Orange, more especially in the poems relating the
exploits of William and his nephew Vivian, and the
death of Vivian in the battle against the Moors —

En icel jor que la dolor fu grans
Et la bataille orible en Aliscans.

Like Roland^ the poem of Aliscans is rather
lyrical in its effect, reiterating and reinforcing the
heroic motives, making an impression by repetition
of one and the same mood ; a poem of the glorifica-
tion of France. It shows, at the same time, how this
motive might be degraded by exaggeration and
amplification. There are too many Moors in it (as
also in Roland), and the sequel is reckless and
extravagant, where William of Orange rides to the
king's court for help and discovers an ally in the
enormous scullion of the king's kitchen, Rainouart,
the Morgante of French epic. Rainouart, along with
William of Orange, was seen by Dante in Paradise.
In his gigantic and discourteous way he was one of
the champions of Christendom, and his manners are
interesting as a variation from the conventional heroic
standards. But he takes up too much room ; he was
not invented by the wide and comprehensive epic
imagination which finds a place for many varieties of
mankind in its story, but by some one who felt that
the old epic forms were growing thin and unsatis-
factory, and that there was need of some violent
diversion to keep the audiences awake. This new

IV HEROIC ANARCHY 297

device is not abandoned till Rainouart has been sent
to Avalon — the epic form and spirit losing themselves
in a misappropriation of Romance. These excursions
are of course not to be ascribed to the central authors
of the cycle of William of Orange ; but already even
in the most heroic parts of the cycle there are indica-
tions of the flagging imagination, the failure of the
old motives, which gave an opening to these wild
auxiliary forces. Where the epic came to trust too
much to the mere heroic sentiment, to the moral of
Roland^ to the contrast of knight and infidel, there
was nothing for it but either to have recourse to the
formal heroics of Camoens or Tasso, — for which the
time had not yet come, — or to be dissolved altogether
in a medley of adventures, and to pass from its old
station in the front of hterature to those audiences. of
the market-place that even now, in some parts of the
world, have a welcome for Charlemagne and his
peers. ^

Those of the French epics in which the motives
of Roland are in some form or other repeated, in
which the defence of Christendom is the burden, are
rightly considered the best representatives of the
whole body. But there are others in which with less
dignity of theme there is more freedom, and in which
an older epic type, more akin to the Teutonic, nearer
in many ways to the Icelandic Sagas, is preserved,
and for a long time maintains itself distinct from all
the forms of romance and the romantic schools. It
is not in Roland or in Aliscans that the epic interest
in character is most pronounced and most effective.
Those among the chansons de gesfe which make least
of the adventures in comparison with the personages,
which think more of the tragic situation than of rapid

^ Historia Verdadera de Carlo Magna y los doce Pares de Francia :
Madrid, 410 (1891), a chap-book of thirty- two pages.

298 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

changes of scene and incident, are generally those
which represent the feuds and quarrels between the
king and his vassals, or among the great houses
themselves ; the anarchy, in fact, which belongs to
an heroic age and passes from experience into heroic
literature. There is hardly any of the chansons de
geste in which this element of heroic anarchy is not
to be found in a greater or less degree. In Roland^
for example, though the main action is between the
French and the Moors, it is jealousy and rivalry that
bring about the catastrophe, through the treason of
Ganelon. This sort of jealousy, which is subordinate
in Roland^ forms the chief motive of some of the other
epics. These depend for their chief interest on the
vicissitudes of family quarrels almost as completely
as the Sagas. These are the French counterparts of
Eyrbyggj\ and of the stories of Glum or Gisli. In
France, as in Iceland, the effect of the story is pro-
duced as much by the energy of the characters as by
the interest of adventures. Only in the French epic,
while they play for larger stakes, the heroes are incom-
parably less impressive. The imagination which
represents them is different in kind from the Icelandic,
and puts up with a very indefinite and general way
of denoting character. Though the extant poems are
late, some of them have preserved a very elementary
psychology and a very simple sort of ethics, the artistic
formulas and devices of a rudimentary stage which
has nothing to correspond to it in the extant Icelandic
prose.

Raoul de Camhrai in its existing form is a late
poem ; it has gone through the process of translation
from assonance into rhyme, and like Huon of Bor-
deaux^ though by a different method, it has been
fitted with a romantic continuation. But the first
part of the poem apparently keeps the lines of an

IV RAOUL DE CAMBRAI 299

older and more original version. The story is not
one of the later cyclic fabrications ; it has an
historical basis and is derived from the genuine epic
tradition of that tenth-century school which unfortun-
ately is only known through its descendants and its
influence. Raoul de Cambrai, though in an altered
verse and later style, may be taken as presenting an
old story still recognisable in most of its original
features, especially in its moral.

Raoul de Cambrai, a child at his father's death, is
deprived of his inheritance. To make up for this he
is promised, later, the first fief that falls vacant, and
asserts his claim in a way that brings him into
continual trouble, — a story with great opportunities
for heroic contrasts and complications. The situation
is well chosen ; it is better than that of the story of
Glum, which is rather like it^ — the right is not all
on one side. Raoul has a just cause, but cannot
make it good ; he is driven to be unjust in order
to come by his own. Violence and excess in a just
cause will make a tragic history; there is no fault
to be found with the general scheme or principle in
this case. It is in the details that the barbarous
simplicity of the author comes out. For example, in
the invasion of the lands on which he has a claim,
Raoul attacks and burns a nunnery, and in it the
mother of his best friend and former squire, Bernier.
The injured man, his friend, is represented as taking
it all in a helpless dull expostulatory way. The author
has no language to express any imaginative passion ;
he can only repeat, in a muffled professional voice,
that it was really a very painful and discreditable affair.
The violent passions here are those of the heroic
age in its most barbarous form ; more sudden and
uncontrolled even than the anger of Achilles. But

^ Glum, like Raoul, is a widow's son deprived of his rights.

300 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

with all their vehemence and violence there is no real
tragic force, and when the hero is killed by his friend,
and the friend is sorry afterwards, there is nothing
but the mere formal and abstract identity of the situa-
tion to recall to mind the tragedy of Kjartan and Bolli.

Garin le Loherain is a story with a similar plot, —
the estrangement and enmity of old friends, " sworn
companions." Though no earlier than Raoul de
Cainbrai^ though belonging in date to the flourishing
period of romance, it is a story of the older heroic age,
and its contents are epic. Its heroes are unsophisti-
cated, and the incidents, sentiments, and motives are
primitive and not of the romantic school. The story
is much superior to Raoul de Cambrai in speed and
lightness ; it does not drag at the critical moments ;
it has some humour and some grace. Among other
things, its gnomic passages represent very fairly the
dominant heroic ideas of courage and good temper ;
it may be appealed to for the humanities of the
chansons de geste, expressed in a more fluent and less
emphatic shape than Roland. The characters are
taken very lightly, but at least they are not obtuse
and awkward. If there is not much dramatic subtlety,
there is a recognition and appreciation of different
aspects of the same character. The story proceeds
like an Icelandic Saga, through different phases of a
long family quarrel, springing from a well-marked
origin ; foreshadowed and accompanied, as in many
of the Sagas, by the hereditary felonious character of
the one party, which yet is not blackened too much
nor wholly unrelieved.

As in many of the Icelandic stories, there is a
stronger dramatic interest in the adversary, the wrong
side, than in the heroes. As with Kari and Flosi in
NJdla, as with Kjartan and Bolli in Laxdcela^ and
with Sigmund and Thrond of Gata in Fcereyinga

IV GARIN LE LOHERAIN 301

Saga, so in the story of Garin it is Fromont the enemy
whose case is followed with most attention, because
it is less simple than that of the heroes, Garin of
Lorraine and Begon his brother. The character of
Fromont shows the true observation, as well as the
inadequate and sketchy handling, of the French epic
school. Fromont is in the wrong ; all the trouble
follows from his original misconduct, when he refused
to stand by Garin in a war of defence against the
Moors : —

Iluec comence li grans borroflemens.

But Fremont's demeanour afterwards is not that of
a traitor and a felon, such as his father was. He
belongs to a felonious house ; he is the son of Hardr^,
one of the notorious traitors of French epic tradition ;
but he is less than half-hearted in his own cause,
always lamentable, perplexed, and peevish, always
trying to be just, and always dragged further into
iniquity by the mischief-makers among his friends.
This idea of a distracted character is worked out as
well as was possible for a poet of that school, in a
passage of narrative which represents more than one
of the good qualities of French epic poetry, — the story
of the death of Begon, and the vengeance exacted for
him by his brother Garin. This episode shows how
the French poets could deal with matter like that of
the Sagas. The story is well told, fluently and clearly ;
it contains some fine expressions of heroic sentiment,
and a good fight, as well as the ineffectual sorrows
and good intentions of the anti-hero Fromont, with
all the usual tissue of violence which goes along with
a feud in heroic narrative, when the feud is regarded
as something impersonal and fatal, outside the wishes
of the agents in it.

It may be said here that although the story of

302 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

Garin and of the feud between the house of Lorraine
and their enemies is long drawn out and copious in
details, it is not confused, but falls into a few definite
episodes of warfare, with intervals of truce and
apparent reconciliation. Of these separate acts in the
tragedy, the Death of Begon is the most complete in
itself; the most varied, as well as the most compact.
The previous action is for a modern taste too much
occupied with the commonplaces of epic warfare,
Homeric combats in the field, such as need the heroic
motives of Maldon or Roncesvalles to make them in-
teresting. In the story of the Death of Begon there
is a change of scene from the common epic battlefield ;
the incidents are not taken from the common stock
of battle-poetry, and the Homeric supernumeraries
are dismissed.

This episode ^ begins after an interval in the feud,
and tells how Begon one day thought of his brother
Garin whom he had not seen for seven years and
more (the business of the feud having been slack for
so long), and how he set out for the East country to
pay his brother a visit, with the chance of a big boar-
hunt on the way. The opening passage is a very
complete and lively selection from the experience and
the sentiments of the heroic age ; it represents the
old heroic temper and the heroic standard of value,
with, at the same time, a good deal of the gentler
humanities.

One day Begon was in his castle of Belin ; at his
side was the Duchess Beatrice, and he kissed her on the
mouth : he saw his two sons coming through the hall
(so the story runs). The elder was named Gerin and
the younger Hernaudin ; the one was twelve and the

^ Garin le Loherain, ed. Pavilin Paris (1833-35), vol, ii, pp.
217-272.

IV GARIN LE LOHERAIN 303

other was ten years old, and with them went six noble
youths, running and leaping with one another, playing
and laughing and taking their sport.

The Duke saw them and began to sigh, and his lady
questioned him : —

" Ah, my Lord Duke, why do you ponder thus ? Gold
and silver you have in your coffers ; falcons on their
perch, and furs of the vair and the grey, and mules
and palfreys ; and well have you trodden down your
enemies : for six days' journey round you have no neigh-
bour so stout but he will come to your levy."

Said the Duke : " Madame, you have spoken true,
save in one thing. Riches are not in the vair and the
grey, nor in money, nor in mules and horses, but riches
are in kinsmen and friends : the heart of a man is worth
all the gold in the land. Do you not remember how
I was assailed and beset at our home-coming ? and but
for my friends how great had been my shame that day !
Pepin has set me in these marches where I have none
of my near friends save Rigaut and Hervi his father ; I
have no brother but one, Garin the Lothering, and full
seven years are past and gone that I have not seen him,
and for that I am grieved and vexed and ill at ease.
Now I will set off to see my brother Garin, and the
child Girbert his son that I have never seen. Of the
woods of Vicogne and of St. Bertin I hear news that
there is a boar there ; I will run him down, please the
Lord, and will bring the head to Garin, a wonder to look
upon, for of its like never man heard tell."

Begon's combined motives are all alike honest,
and his rhetoric is as sound as that of Sarpedon or of
Gunnar. Nor is there any reason to suppose, any
more than in the case of Byrhtnoth, that what is
striking in the poem is due to its comparative late-
ness, and to its opportunities of borrowing from new
discoveries in literature. If that were so, then we
might find similar things among the newer fashions of

304 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

the contemporary twelfth-century Hterature ; but in
fact one does not find in the works of the romantic
school the same kind of humanity as in this scene.
The melancholy of Begon at the thought of his
isolation — " Bare is back without brother behind it "
— is an adaptation of a common old heroic motive
which is obscured by other more showy ideas in the
romances. The conditions of life are here essentially
those of the heroic age, an age which has no
particular ideas of its own, which lives merely on such
ideas as are struck out in the collision of lawless heavy
bodies, in that heroic strife which is the parent of all
things, and, among the rest, of the ideas of loyalty,
fellowship, fair dealing, and so on. There is nothing
romantic or idealist in Begon ; he is merely an honest
country gentleman, rather short of work.

He continues in the same strain, after the duchess
has tried to dissuade him. She points out to him
the risk he runs by going to hunt on his enemy's
marches, —

C'est en la marche Fromont le poesti,

— and tells him of her foreboding that he will never
return alive. His answer is like that of Hector to
Polydamas : —

Diex ! dist il, dame, merveilles avez dit :
Ja mar croiroie sorciere ne devin ;
Par aventure vient li biens el pais,
Je ne lairoie, por tot I'or que Diex fist,
Que je n'i voise, que talens m'en est prins.

The hunting of the boar is as good as anything of
its kind in history, and it is impossible to read it
without wishing that it had been printed a few years
earlier to be read by Sir Walter Scott. He would
have applauded as no one else can this story of the
chase and of the hunter separated from his com-

IV GARIN LE LOHERAIN 305

panions in the forest. There is one line especially
in the lament for Begon after his death which is
enough by itself to prove the soundness of the French
poet's judgment, and his right to a welcome at
Abbotsford : " This was a true man ; his dogs loved
him " :—

Gentis hons fu, moult ramoient si chien.

Begon came by his death in the greenwood. The
forester found him there and reported him to
Fromont's seneschal, who called out six of his men to
go and take the poacher ; and along with them went
Thibaut, Fromont's nephew, an old rival of Begon.
Begon set his back to an aspen tree and killed four of
the churls and beat off the rest, but was killed him-
self at last with an arrow.

The four dead men were brought home and
Begon's horse was led away : —

En une estable menerent le destrier
Fronce et hennit et si grate des pies
Que nus de char ne li ouse aprochier.

Begon was left lying where he fell and his three
dogs came back to him : —

Seul ont Begon en la forest laissi^ :
Et jouste lui revindrent si trois chien,
Hulent et braient com fuissent enragi^.

This most spirited passage of action and adventure
shows the poet at his best; it is the sort of thing
that he understands, and he carries it through with-
out a mistake. It is followed by an attempt at
another theme where something more is required of
the author, and his success is not so perfect. He is
drawn into the field of tragic emotion. Here, though
his means are hardly sufficient for elaborate work, he
sketches well. The character of Fromont when the

3o6 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

news of his opponent's death is brought to him comes
out as something of a different value from the sheer
barbarism of Raoul de Cambrai. The narrative is
Hght and wanting in depth, but there is no untruth
and no dulness in the conception, and the author's
meaning is perfectly clear. Fromont is different
from the felons of his own household. Fromont is
the adversary, but he is a gentleman. Even when
he knows no more of the event than that a trespasser
has been killed in the forest, he sends his men to
bring in the body ; —

Frans hons de I'autre doient avoir piti^

— and when he sees who it is {^if tot viu^ mort le
reconnut bien) he breaks out into strong language
against the churls who have killed the most courteous
knight that ever bore arms. Mingled with this
sentiment is the thought of all the trouble to come
from the revival of the feud, but his vexation does not
spring from mere self-interest. Fromondin his son is
also angry with Thibaut his cousin ; Thibaut ought
to be flayed alive for his foul stroke. But while
Fromondin is thinking of the shame of the murder
which will be laid to the account of his father's house,
Fromont's thought is more generous, a thought of
respect and regret for his enemy. The tragedy of
the feud continues after this ; as before, Fromont is
involved by his irrepressible kinsmen, and nothing
comes of his good thoughts and intentions.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run,

Our thoughts are ours, the ends none of our own.

This moral axiom is understood by the French

author, and in an imaginative, not a didactic way,

though his imagination is not strong enough to make
much of it.

IV GARIN LE LOHERAIN 307

In this free, rapid, and unforced narrative, that
nothing might be wanting of the humanities of the
French heroic poetry, there is added the lament for
Begon, by his brother and his wife. Garin's lament
is what the French epic can show in comparison
with the famous lament for Lancelot at the end of
the Mort ^Arthur : —

Ha ! sire Begues, li Loherains a dit
Frans chevaliers, corajeus et hardis !
Fel et angris centre vos anemis
Et dols et simples a trestoz vos amis 1
Tant mar i fustes, biaus fr^res, biaus amis !

Here the advantage is with the English romantic
author, who has command of a more subtle and
various eloquence. On the other hand, the scene of
the grief of the Duchess Beatrice, when Begon is
brought to his own land, and his wife and his sons
come out to meet him, shows a different point of view
from romance altogether, and a different dramatic
sense. The whole scene of the conversation between
Beatrice and Garin is written with a steady hand ; it
needs no commentary to bring out the pathos or the
dramatic truth of the consolation offered by Garin.

She falls fainting, she cannot help herself; and when
she awakens her lamenting is redoubled. She mourns
over her sons, Hernaudin and Gerin : " Children, you
are orphans ; dead is he that begot you, dead is he that
was your stay ! " — " Peace, madame," said Garin the
Duke, " this is a foolish speech and a craven. You, for
the sake of the land that is in your keeping, for your
lineage and your lordly friends — some gentle knight will
take you to wife and cherish you ; but it falls to me to
have long sorrow. The more I have of silver and fine
gold, the more will be my grief and vexation of spirit.
Hernaudin and Gerin are my nephews ; it will be mine
to suffer many a war for them, to watch late, and to

3o8 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

rise up early." — " Thank you, uncle," said Hemaudin :
" Lord ! why have I not a little habergeon of my own ?
I would help you against your enemies ! " The Duke
hears him, and takes him in his arms and kisses the
child. " By God, fair nephew, you are stout and brave,
and like my brother in face and mouth, the rich Duke,
on whom God have mercy ! " When this was said, they
go to bury the Duke in the chapel beyond Belin ; the
pilgrims see it to this day, as they come back from
Galicia, from St. James. ^

Rolandy Raoul de Cambrai, and Garin le Loherain
represent three kinds of French heroic poetry.
Roland is the more purely heroic kind, in which
the interest is concentrated on the passion of the
hero, and the hero is glorified by every possible
means of patriotism, religion, and the traditional
ethics of battle, with the scenery and the accom-
paniments all chosen so as to bring him into relief
and give him an ideal or symbolical value, like that
of the statues of the gods. Raoul and Garin^
contrasted with Roland^ are two varieties of another
species ; namely, of the heroic poetry which (like the
Odyssey and the Icelandic stories) represents the
common life of an heroic age, without employing
the ideal motives of great causes, religious or
patriotic, and without giving to the personages

^ One of the frequent morals of French epic (repeated also by
French romance) is the vanity of overmuch sorrow for the dead.

dXXd XP"^ "^^v yjkv KaTaddirreiv 6s Ke ddvjrjffiv

(Odysseus speaking) //. xix. 228.

" Laissiez ester," li quens Guillaumes dit ;

• * Tout avenra ce que doit avenir ;
Li mort as mors, li vif voissent as vis ;
Duel sor dolor et joie sor joir
Ja nus frans hons nel devroit maintenir."
Les cors enportent, les ont en terre mis.

Garin, i. p. 262.

IV THE HEROIC AGE 309

any great representative or symbolical import. The
subjects of Raoul and Garin belong to the same
order. The difference between them is that the
author of the first is only half awake to the chances
offered by his theme. The theme is well chosen,
not disabled, like so many romantic plots, by an
inherent fallacy of ethics or imagination ; a story
that shapes itself naturally, if the author has the wit
to see it. The author of Raoul de Cambrai^ un-
happily, has "no more wit than a Christian or an
ordinary man," and leaves his work encumbered
with his dulness of perception; an evidence of the
fertility of the heroic age in good subjects, and of
the incompetence of some of the artists. Garin^
on the other hand, shows how the common subject-
matter might be worked up by a man of intelligence,
rather discursive than imaginative, but alive to the
meaning of his story, and before everything a con-
tinuous narrator, with the gift of natural sequence in
his adventures. He relates as if he were following
the course of events in his own memory, with simplicity
and lucidity, qualities which were not beyond the
compass of the old French verse and diction. He
does not stop to elaborate his characters ; he takes
them perhaps too easily. But his lightness of spirit
saves him from the untruth oi Raoul de Cambrai', and
while his ethics are the commonplaces of the heroic
age, these commonplaces are not mere formulas or
cant ; they are vividly realised.

There is no need to multiply examples in order
to prove the capacity of French epic for the same
kind of subjects as those of the Sagas ; that is, for
the representation of strenuous and unruly life in a
comprehensive and liberal narrative, noble in spirit
and not much hampered by conventional nobility or
dignity.

3IO THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

Roland is the great achievement of French epic,
and there are other poems, also, not far removed
from the severity of Roland and inspired by
the same patriotic and rehgious ardour. But the
poem of Garin of Lorraine (which begins with the
defence of France against the infidels, but very soon
passes to the business of the great feud — its proper
theme), though it is lacking in the political motives,
not to speak of the symbolical imagination of Roland^
is significant in another way, because though much
later in date, though written at a time when Romance
was prevalent, it is both archaic in its subject and
also comprehensive in its treatment. It has some-
thing like the freedom of movement and the ease
which in the Icelandic Sagas go along with similar
antique subjects. The French epic poetry is not
all of it made sublime by the ideas of Roland ; there
is still scope for the free representation of life in
different moods, with character as the dominant
interest.

It should not be forgotten that the French epic has
room for comedy, not merely in the shape of " comic
relief," though that unhappily is sometimes favoured
by the chansons de geste^ and by the romances as
well, but in the "humours" inseparable from all
large and unpedantic fiction.

A good deal of credit on this account may be
claimed for Galopin, the reckless humorist of the
party of Garin of Lorraine, and something rather less
for Rigaut the Villain Unwashed, another of Garin's
friends. This latter appears to be one of the same
family as Hreidar the Simple, in the Saga of Harald
Hardrada ; a figure of popular comedy, one of the
lubbers who turn out something different from their
promise. Clumsy strength and good-nature make
one of the most elementary compounds, and may

IV COMEDY 311

easily be misused (as in Rainouart) where the
author has few scruples and no dramatic consistency.
Galopin is a more singular humorist, a ribald and a
prodigal, yet of gentle birth, and capable of good
service when he can be got away from the tavern.

There are several passages in the chansons de geste
where, as with Rainouart^ the fun is of a grotesque
and gigantic kind, like the fun to be got out of the
giants in the Northern mythology, and the trolls in
the Northern popular tales. The heathen champion
Corsolt in the Coronemenz Lodis makes good comedy
of this sort, when he accosts the Pope : " Little
man ! why is your head shaved ? " and explains to him
his objection to the Pope's religion : " You are not
well advised to talk to me of God : he has done
me more wrong than any other man in the world,"
and so on.^

Also, in a less exaggerated way, there is some
appreciation of the humour to be found in the con-

^ Respont li reis : " N'ids pas bien enseigniez.
Qui devant mei oses de Deu plaidier ;
C'est rom el mont qui plus m'a fait irier :
Mon pere ocist une foldre del ciel :
Tot i fu ars, ne li pot Ten aidier.
Quant Deus I'ot mort, si fist que enseigniez ;
El ciel monta, 9a ne volt repairier ;
Ge nel poeie sivre ne enchalcier,
Mais de ses omes me sui ge puis vengiez ;
De eels qui furent lev6 et baptisi^
Ai fait destruire plus de trente millers , ,
Ardeir en feu et en eve neier ;
Quant ge la sus ne puis Deu gfuerreier,
Nul de ses omes ne vueil 9a jus laissier,
Et mei et Deu n'avons mais que plaidier :
Meie est la terre et siens sera li ciels.

I.e., L 522.

The last verse expresses the same sentiment as the answer of the
Emperor Henry when he was told to beware of God's vengeance :
"Celumceli Domino, terram autem dedit filiis hominum " (Otton.
Prising. Gesta Frid. i. 11).

312 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

trast between the churl and the knight, and their
different points of view ; as in the passage of the
Charroi de Nismes where William of Orange questions
the countryman about the condition of the city
under its Saracen masters, and is answered with
information about the city tolls and the price of
bread.^ It must be admitted, however, that this
slight passage of comedy is far outdone by the
conversation in the romance of Aucassin and Nicolette^
between Aucassin and the countryman, where the
author of that story seems to get altogether beyond
the conventions of his own time into the region of
Chaucer, or even somewhere near the forest of
Arden. The comedy of the chansons de geste is
easily satisfied with plain and robust practical jokes.
Yet it counts for something in the picture, and it
might be possible, in a detailed criticism of the epics,
to distinguish between the comic incidents that have
an artistic value and intention, and those that are
due merely to the rudeness of those common minstrels
who are accused (by their rivals in epic poetry) of
corrupting and debasing the texts.

There were many ways in which the French epic
was degraded at the close of its course — by dilution

^ Li cuens Guillaumes li comen9a i dire :
— Diva, vilain, par la loi dont tu vives
Fus-tu a Nymes, la fort cit6 garnie ?
— Oil. voir, sire, le paaige me quistrent ;
Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie.
II me less^rent por mes enfanz qu'il virent.
— Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile.
Et cil respont : — Ce vos sai-ge bien dire
Por un denier . ii. granz pains i v^ismes ;
La dener^e vaut .iii. en autre vile :
Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empiric.
— Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie,
M6s des paiens chevaliers de la vile,
Del rei Otrant et de sa compaignie.

Lct 11. 903-916.

IV COMEDY 313

and expansion, by the growth of a kind of dull
parasitic, sapless language over the old stocks, by the
general failure of interest, and the transference of
favour to other kinds of literature. Reading came
into fashion, and the minstrels lost their welcome in
the castles, and had to betake themselves to more
vulgar society for their livelihood. At the same
time, epic made a stand against the new modes
and a partial compliance with them ; and the chansons
de geste were not wholly left to the vagrant reciters,
but were sometimes copied out fair in handsome
books, and held their own with the romances.

The compromise between epic and romance in old
French hterature is most interesting where romance
has invaded a story of the simpler kind like Raoul
de Cambrai. Stories of war against the infidel,
stories like those of William of Orange, were easily
made romantic. The poem of the Prise d'Orange,
for example, an addition to this cycle, is a pure
romance of adventure, and a good one, though it
has nothing of the more solid epic in it. Where the
action is carried on between the knights of France
and the Moors, one is prepared for a certain amount
of wonder ; the palaces and dungeons of the Moors
are the right places for strange things to happen, and
the epic of the defence of France goes easily off
into night excursions and disguises : the Moorish
princess also is there, to be won by the hero. All
this is natural ; but it is rather more paradoxical to
find the epic of family feuds, originally sober, grave,
and business-like, turning more and more extravagant,
as it does in the Four Sons of Aymon, which in its
original form, no doubt, was something like the more
serious parts of Raoul de Cambrai or of the Lorrains^
but which in the extant version is expanded and made
wonderful, a story of wild adventures, yet with traces

314 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

still of its origin among the realities of the heroic
age, the common matters of practical interest to
heroes.

The case of Huon of Bordeaux is more curious,
for there the original sober story has been preserved,
and it is one of the best and most coherent of them
all,^ till it is suddenly changed by the sound of
Oberon's horn and passes out of the real world
altogether.

The lines of the earlier part of the story are worth
following, for there is no better story among the
French poems that represent the ruder heroic age —
a simple story of feudal rivalries and jealousies, sur-
viving in this strange way as an introduction to the
romance of Oberon.

The Emperor Charlemagne, one hundred and
twenty-five years old, but not particularly reverend,
holds a court at Paris one Whitsuntide and asks to
be relieved of his kingdom. His son Chariot is to
succeed him. Chariot is worthless, the companion of
traitors and disorderly persons ; he has made enough
trouble already in embroiling Ogier the Dane with
the Emperor. Charlemagne is infatuated and will
have his son made king : —

Si m'ait Diex, tu auras si franc fief
Com Damediex qui tot puet justicier
Tient Paradis de regne droiturier !

Then the traitor Amaury de la Tor de Rivier gets
up and brings forward the case of Bordeaux, which
has rendered no service for seven years, since the
two brothers, Huon and Gerard, were left orphans.
Amaury proposes that the orphans should be dis-
possessed. Charlemagne agrees at once, and with-

1 Cf. Auguste Longnon, "L'^l^ment historique de Huon de
Bordeaux," Romania, viii.

IV HUON DE BORDEAUX 315

draws his assent again (a painful spectacle !) when it
is suggested to him that Huon and his brother have
omitted their duties in pure innocence, and that their
father Sewin was always loyal.

Messengers are sent to bring Huon and Gerard to
Paris, and every chance is to be given them of proving
their good faith to the Emperor.

This is not what Amaury the traitor wants; he
goes to Chariot and proposes an ambuscade to lie
in wait for the two boys and get rid of them ; his
real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well
as of Huon of Bordeaux.

The two boys set out, and on the way fall in
with the Abbot of Clugni, their father's cousin, a
strong-minded prelate, who accompanies them. Out-
side Paris they come to the ambush, and the king's
son is despatched by Amaury to encounter them.
What follows is an admirable piece of narrative.
Gerard rides up to address Chariot ; Chariot rides at
him as he is turning back to report to Huon and the
Abbot, and Gerard who is unarmed falls severely
wounded. Then Huon, also unarmed, rides at Chariot,
though his brother calls out to him : "I see helmets
flashing there among the bushes." With his scarlet
mantle rolled round his arm he meets the lance of
Chariot safely, and with his sword, as he passes, cuts
through the helmet and head of his adversary.

This is good enough for Amaury, and he lets
Huon and his party ride on to the city, while he
takes up the body of Chariot on a shield and follows
after.

Huon comes before the Emperor and tells his
story as far as he knows it; he does not know
that the felon he has killed is the Emperor's son.
Charlemagne gives solemn absolution to Huon.
Then appears Amaury with a false story, making

3i6 THE OLD FRENCH EPIC chap.

Huon the aggressor. Charlemagne forgets all about
the absolution and snatches up a knife, and is with
difficulty calmed by his wise men.

The ordeal of battle has to decide between the
two parties; there are elaborate preparations and
preliminaries, obviously of the most vivid interest to
the audience. The demeanour of the Abbot of
Clugni ought not to be passed over: he vows that
if Heaven permits any mischance to come upon Huon,
he, the Abbot, will make it good on St. Peter himself,
and batter his holy shrine till the gold flies.

In the combat Huon is victorious ; but unhappily
a last treacherous effort of his enemy, after he has
yielded and confessed, makes Huon cut off his head
in too great a hurry before the confession is heard by
the Emperor or any witnesses : —

Le teste fist voler ens el larris :
Hues le voit, mais ce fii sans jehir.

The head went flying over the lea, but it had no more
words to speak.

Huon is not forgiven by the Emperor; the
Emperor spares his life, indeed, but sends him on a
hopeless expedition.

And there the first part of the story ends. The
present version is dated in the early part of the reign
of St. Louis ; it is contemporary with Snorri Sturluson
and Sturla his nephew, and exhibits, though not quite
in the Icelandic manner, the principal motives of early
unruly society, without much fanciful addition, and
with a very strong hold upon the tragic situation, and
upon the types of character. As in Raoulde Cambrai^
right and wrong are mixed ; the Emperor has a real
grievance against Huon, and Huon, with little fault
of his own, is put apparently in the wrong. The
interests involved are of the strongest possible. There

IV HUON DE BORDEA UX 317

was not a single lord among those to whom the
minstrel repeated his story who did not know that he
might have to look out for encroachments and
injustice — interference at any rate — from the king,
and treachery from his neighbours. No one hoped
to leave his castles and lands in peace to his son,
who did not also fear that his son might be left
defenceless and his lands exposed to competition ; a
fear most touchingly expressed in the lament of
William of Poitiers, when he set out on the first
Crusade.^

Whatever general influences of law or politics or
social economy are supposed to be at work in the
story of Huon of Bordeaux^ — and all this earlier part
of it is a story of feudal politics and legal problems, —
these influences were also present in the real world
in which the maker and the hearers of the poem
had their life. It is plain and serious dealing with
matter of fact.

But after the ordeal of battle in which Huon kills
the traitor, the tone changes with great abruptness
and a new story begins.

The commission laid upon Huon by the implacable
and doting Emperor is nothing less than that which
afterwards was made a byword for all impossible
enterprises — " to take the Great Turk by the beard."
He is to go to Babylon and, literally, to beard the
Admiral there, and carry off" the Admiral's daughter.
The audience is led away into the wide world of
Romance. Huon goes to the East by way of Rome
and Brindisi — naturally enough — but the real world
ends at Brindisi ; beyond that everything is magical.

1 " Pos dechantax m'es pres talens : " — Raynouard, Choix des
podsies des Troubadours, iv. p. 83 ; Bartsch, Chrestomathie proven f ale.

CHAPTER V

ROMANCE

AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS

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 thp clouds, winds, and mountain-waters in
the Hiad. 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
321 Y

322 ROMANCE CHAP.

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 ; particu-
larly '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 Proven9al 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
-^e 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

V THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS 323

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 Provencal 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 character-
istic 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

324 ROMANCE chap.

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 litera-
ture, and the French romances of that age are the
original authorities for most of the "Gothic" orna-
ments 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 Ugende des Siedes. 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 ;

V THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS 325

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, ^ure
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 de-
votion 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

326 ROMANCE chap.

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 opportuni-
ties, 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 distri-
buted 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

V THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS 327

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 ArnaldoSy in the Konigs kinder \ 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 quint-
essence 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

328 ROMANCE CHAP.

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.

i[n 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 chival-
rous 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

V ORNAMENTAL WORK 329

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 Hterature; 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 unquahfied
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.^ 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 de-
scriptions of riches and splendours. ^, The story of

^ 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 treasvires are, and every man shall have for his own
what falls to his hand " {Fornmanna Sogur, vi. p. 171).

330 ROMANCE chap.

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 (1. 14,553) Hector is brought home
wounded to a room which is described in 300 lines,
with particulars of its remarkable decorations, especi-
ally its four magical images. The tomb of Penthesilea
(1. 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 :
For 90 si m'en dei gie bien taire :
N'en dirai plus, que n'oseroie ;
Trop halte chose envairoie.

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 descrip-
tion 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 nigroraancy, of the skin of
the beast Dindialos^ which is hunted in the shadow-
less 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, 90 set Ton
Se c'est vrais que nos en lison.

Calchas had a tent which had belonged to
Pharaoh : —

/„

PEDANTRY 331

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 Cresstda on the ultimate authority
(when it comes to be looked into) of Benoit de
Sainte More.^

A quotation by M. Gaston Paris {Hist. litt. de la
France^ xxx. p. 210), from the unpublished rqmance
of Ider (Edeyrn, son of Nudd), shows how thi/fashion
of rich description and allusion had been overdone,
and how it was necessary, in time, to make a protest
against it. y 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,

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

1. 12.207.

332 ROMANCE CHAP.

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 beautify-
ing their work, but this is all dreaming and waste of
words ; I will have no such hyperbole. {Hyperbole means
L, 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'^ in
this place, secures an ornamental word with which
he consoles himself for his abstinence in other re-
spects. 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

1 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. 1. 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.

V ROMANTIC ADVENTURES 333

of taste and judgment when, instead of Oriental work,
he gives Enid an ivory saddle carved with the story
of Aeneas and Dido {Erec^ 1. 5337) ; or when, in the
same book, Erec's coronation mantle, though it is
fairy work, bears no embroidered designs of Broce-
liande 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 literajy 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
Euphuesy is bestowed in making pedantry look
attractive. /

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 un-
necessary 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 common-
places 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

334 ROMANCE chap.

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 imagina-
tive readings. As Chaucer's Troilus in our own time
has inspired a new rendering of the Life and Death
ofjasoriy 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 re-
duced 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 conse-
quence, as will be seen, was kept by Benoit from his

▼ CELTIC STORIES 335

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 com-
parison 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 cul-
mination of the whole thing is attained when Chres-
tien 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 Mart 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

33^ ROMANCE CHAP.

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 imagina-
tion 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

V CELTIC STORIES 337

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 chival-
rous 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 ; ^ 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 {Carduzno\
as has been done by M. Gaston Paris ; or the Conte
du Graal of Chrestien with the English Sir Perceval
of Galles.

Gutngamor is one of the best of the simpler kind

* Not included in the editions of her works (Roquefort, Wamke) ;
edited by M. Gaston Paris in the eighth volume oi Romania along
with the lays of Doon, Tidorel, and Tiolet.

33^ ROMANCE CHAP.

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

V GUINGAMOR 339

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. Guin-
gamor 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

340 ROMANCE chap.

a story. If there is anything in this story that can
affect the imagination, it is there unimpaired by any-
thing 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 olDserves 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 Uttle, 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

V WALEWEIN 341

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 Chess-
board 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

342 ROMANCE chap.

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 Ftlerinage 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 tourna-
ments 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 111 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

V WALEWEIN 343

courteous but rather dull and middle-aged gentle-
man in armour, is not his old light-hearted com-
panion.

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. 1 7 1). His comparison with the English
and Italian versions of the story brings out the indiffer-
ence of the French poets to their plot, and their readi-
ness 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} One of the adven-
tures 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 demon-
stration. This of course belongs to the later period

^ Britomart in the Hoiise of Biisirane has some resemblance to
the conclusion of Libius Disconuis.

344 ROMANCE chap.

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
Ly beaux."

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 Beroul and Thomas,
especially the latter;^ 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 ?

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 Chres-
tien 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

1 Fr. Michel : Tristan. London, 1835. Le Roman de
Tristan (Thomas) ed. B^dier ; (Beroul) ed. Muret, Anc. Textes^
1902-1905. Cf. Gaston Paris, Poemes et Ligendes.

V THE ART OF LOVE 345

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.

'at is impossible (as M. Gaston Paris has shown)
to separate the spirit of French romance from the
spirit of the Provengal 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 Provengal 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 Provencal
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 Provengal 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

346 ROMANCE

CHAP.

to be the interval between the ideas of Ovid and
those of the Proven gal 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,
/feut 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
X Aeneidy 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.^

^ A fine passage is quoted from the romance of Ider in the essay
cited above, where Guenloie the queen finds Ider near death and

V ROMANCE IN OVID 347

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.

The French romantic authors were scholars in the
poetry of the Provencal School, but they also knew a
good deal independently of their Provengal 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 Provengal rendering of the common
ideas of chivalry and courtesy ; they were also affected
immediately by the authors who influenced the Pro-
vengal School.

Few things are more instructive in this part of

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 90 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 Deianira,

Qui s'encroast, et Canac^,

Eco, Scilla, Fillis. Pronn6,

Ero, Biblis, Dido, Mirra,

Tisbe, la bele Hypermnestra,

Et des autres mil et cine cenz.

Amor ! por quoi ne te repenz

De ces simples lasses destruire ?

Trop cruelment te voi deduire :

Pechid feiz que n'en as piti6 ;

Nuls deus fors toi ne fait pechi6 !

De 90 est Tisbd al dessus,

Que por li6 s'ocist Piramus ;

Amors, de fo te puet loer

Car a ta cort siet o son per ;

Ero i est o Leander :

Si jo i fusse avec Ider,

Aise fusse, 50 m'est avis,

Com alrae qu'est en parais.

348 ROMANCE chap.

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 con-
tains 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
stoi:y, 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, ^ so long, that
is, as the story is merely concerned with the Golden
Fleece, the Dragon, the Bulls, and all the tasks im-
posed 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.

.y^his 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

^ Blethericus, or Brdri, is the Welsh authority cited by Thomas
in his Tristan. Cf. Gaston Paris, Romania, viii. p. 427.

V THE ROMANTIC REVOLUTION 349

in early French romance/ and it gives one of the
most singular proofs of tWe 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 " medi-
eval " and other terms of the same sort are too apt to
impose themselves on the mind as complete descrip-
tive formulas, and in this case the term " medieval "
ought not to obscure the fact that it is modern litera-
ture, 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 y
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 conver-
sations of the Sagas. Within these local restrictions
the highest form of narrative art is possible. Never-
theless the period of these restrictions must come to

3SO ROMANCE CHAP.

an end; the heroic age cannot last for ever. The
merit of the twelfth -century authors, Benoit, Chres-
tien, 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 senti-
ments, 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

V THE SOPHISTS OF ROMANCE 351

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 interpreta-
tion of character was beyond them, and they were not
able to make much of the openings for dramatic con-
trast 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 suc-
cessors. One of the principal lines of progress may
be indicated, to conclude this discourse on Epic
Po^ry.

/-The twelfth-century romances are in most things
the antithesis to Homer, in narrative. They are

352 ROMANCE CHAP.

fanciful, conceited, thin in their drama, affected in
their sentiments. They are like the "heroic
romances " of the seventeenth century, their descend-
ants, as compared with the strong imagination of
Cervantes or Shakespeare, who are the representa-
tives, 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.

V CHRESTIEN OF TROYES 353

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
iady 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 be-
stowed 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 dis-
loyalty in it ; and whoever is otherwise healed, he never
loved with loyalty. Of this wound I could talk to you with-
out 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 ! (11. 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 day-
light, 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.y

It is possible to trace out in some detail a line of

2 A

354 ROMANCE chap.

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 senti-
mental 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 domi-
nant 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

V ENID 355

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 recon-
ciliation 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

3S6 ROMANCE

CHAP.

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.^

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.

1 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, 1. 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.

V CLIGES 357

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
impossiblcv Afterwards, in his poem of Lancelot
{ie 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 workman-
ship 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

35^ ROMANCE chap.

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 I'apele amie et dame,
Que por ce ne pert ele mie
Que il ne Taint come s'amie,
Et ele lui autresi
Con I'an doit feire son ami ;
Et chascun jor lor amors crut,
N'onques cil celi ne mescrut,
Ne querela de nule chose.

Cliges, 1. 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, how-
ever that may be, there are both delicacy and elo-
quence 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, 1. 4339.

an the later works of Chrestien, in Yvain, Lancelot^
and Perceval^ there are new developments of romance.

V FLAMENCA 359

more particularly in the story of Lancelot and Guine-
vere. .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 clever-
est pupils wrote the Provengal story of Flamenca^
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 con-
temporary with the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume
de Lorris. Its inspiring ideas are the same, and
though its influence on succeeding authors is indis-
^ Ed. Paul Meyer, 1865, and, again, 1901.

36o ROMANCE

CHAP.

cernible, where that of the Roman de la Rose is wide-
spread 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, witlv'the
indispensable three characters — the husband, the
lady, and the lover.,. The scene of the story is princi-
pally 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

V FLAMENCA 3^1

Mass. Flamenca is really the triumph of Ovid, with
the Art of Love, over all his Gothic competitors out
of the fairy tales. The Proven 9al 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
Provgngal follower.

/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 h^oine
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 vanita che
par persona^ over and through their graceful inanity,
passes the stream of sentiment, the shifting, flicker-
ing light which the Provencal author has borrowed
from Ovid and transferred for his own purposes to his
own time. It is perhaps the first complete modem
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

362 ROMANCE CHAP.

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 Hnes 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'^ (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 senti-
ment 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 command-
ment is transgressed.

There was a knight who was the lover of the
Chastelaine de Vergi, unknown to all the world.

1 Ed. G. Raynaud, Romania, xxi. p. 145.

V LA CHASTELAINE DE VERGI 3^3

Their love was discovered by the jealous machina-
tions 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 con-
tinued by many of the most notable writers of the
period which no longer can be called medieval, in
which modern Hterature 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
Easily 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

364 ROMANCE CHAP.

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 opera-
tions. 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 ? " Every-
thing 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 Knighfs 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

V BOCCACCIO AND CHAUCER 365

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 Knighfs 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. /?^he Knighfs Tale is a complete and perfect
version of a medieval romance, worked out with all
the ~reSUITrces of Chaucer's literary study and re-
flexion ; 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 Knighfs 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 High-
land 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 adven-
ture 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, stnyy jg that of the" old
wives' tales when tne old wives are drowsy. All the

366 ROMANCE

CHAP.

^^incipal situations occur twice, ^y^r j twice the
"Eeroine 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
Knighfs 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
Knighfs Tale he seems to have deHberately 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

V CHAUCER 367

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 dehcate 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, Hke 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 ou|- of its hmitations 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 y
and what Fielding did was done first by Chaucer ;

368 ROMANCE CHAP.

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 unsub-
stantial like all the work of that School, but graceful,
and not untrue. It is all summed up in the mono-
logue of Briseide at the end of her story (1. 20,308) : —

▼ CONCLUSION 369

Dex donge bien a Troylus !
Quant nel puis amer ne il mei
A cestui 1 me done et otrei.
Molt voldreie aveir eel talent
Que n'elisse remembrement
Des ovres faites d'en arriere :
Co me fait mal a grant mani^re !

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-y it is one of his best works. He did not
make it into an epic poem ; the Filostrato^ Boccaccio's
Troilus and Cresstda, 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, grace-
ful 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 behindy^
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

^ i.e. Diomede.

2 B

370 ROMANCE chap, v

Cressida is represented with an understanding of the
subtlety and the tragic meaning of that Ufe 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 difiference between the *' con-
tinuous" and the "discrete" — the Western and the
Northern — modes of the alliterative verse. It may be
convenient to select some passages here for reference.

(i) 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 1. 2041 sq. ; see above, p. 70) : —

]7onne cwi5 set beore se Se beah gesyhtJ,
eald sescwiga, se Se call geman
garcwealm gumena (him biS grim sefa)
onginnetJ geomormod geongum cempan
jjurh hreSra gehygd higes cunnian,
wigbealu weccean, ond j^set word acwyS:
** Meaht ?Ju, min wine, mece gecnawan,
]?one ]7in faeder to gefeohte baer
under heregriman, hindeman siSe,
dyre iren, ]?aer hine Dene slogon,
weoldon wselstowe, sySSan WiSergyld la^
sefter haele})a hryre, hwate Scyldingas ?
Nu her J?ara banena byre nathwylces,
fraetwum hremig, on flet gseS,
mordres gylpeS ond ]?one ma^um byreS
]?one Jje ]?u mid rihte raedan sceoldest ! "

373

374 EPIC AND ROMANCE

(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 recon-
ciliation 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
oi Helgi and Sigrun {C.P.B., i. p. 143 ; see p. 72 above
— "Yet precious are the draughts," etc.) : —

Vel skolom drekka d;^rar veigai
]76tt misst hafim munar ok landa :
skal engi maSr angr-lioS kveSa,
Jjott mer a briosti benjar liti.
Nu ero bruSir byrgtJar i haugi,
lofSa dfsir, hja oss liSnom.

The figure of Anadiplosis (or the " Redouble," as it
is called in the Arte of English Poesze) is characteristic
of a certain group of Northern poems. See the note on

APPENDIX 375

this, with references, in C.P.B.y 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) : —

and {ibid.y

svarar sifjar, svarna eiSa,
eiSa svarna, unnar trygSir ;

hann vas fyr utan eiSa svarna,
eiSa svarna, unnar trygSir ;

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

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

There are other figures which have the same effect : —

Gott es at raSa Rfnar malrai,
ok unandi auSi styra,
ok sitjandi sselo niota.

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

Note B (p. 205)

The Meeting of Kjartan and King Olaf Tryggvason
{Laxdcsla Saga, c. 40)

Kjartan rode with his father east from Hjardarholt,
and they parted in Northwaterdale ; Kjartan rode on to

376 EPIC AND ROMANCE

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 Thor-
grimsson ; 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

APPENDIX 377

the place who was far the best swimmer. Kjartan says
to Bolli :

"Will you try your swimming against this towns-
man ? "

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

378 EPIC AND ROMANCE

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 Ice-
landers' 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 ? "

APPENDIX 379

" 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 ; " bum
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
bum me in my house ? "

Then says Kjartan : *' You think that he will not

38o EPIC AND ROMANCE

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 earnest hither. Go now
all in peace and liberty whither you will from this meet-
ing ; 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.

APPENDIX 381

Note C (p. 257)

Eyjolf Karsson: an Episode in the History of Bishop
Gudmund Arason, A.D. 1222 (from Arons Saga
Hjorleifssonar^ c. 8, printed in Biskupa Sogur^ 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 whethei
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 Eyjolfs
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."

382 EPIC AND ROMANCE

"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 beheve 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 boaj ; 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.

APPENDIX 383

" 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.

384 EPIC AND ROMANCE

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 (i 549).

I. Flamenca (11. 609-701)

Qui vole ausir diverses comtes
De reis, de marques e de comtes,
Auzir ne poc tan can si vole ;
Anc null' aurella non lai cole,
Quar I'us comtet de Priamus,
E I'autre diz de Piramus ;
L'us contet de la bell'Elena
Com Paris I'enquer, pois I'anmena ;
L'autres comtava d'Ulixes,
L'autre d'Eetor et d'Aehilles ;
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 I'auzor caire ;
L'us contet d'ApoUonices
De Tideu e d'Etidiocles ;
L'autre comtava d'ApoUoine
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 ;

APPENDIX 385

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 mirel j

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 I'yras trobet a I'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 ;

386 EPIC AND ROMANCE

L'autre comtava de Mordret ;
L'us retrais lo comte Buret
Com fo per los Ventres faiditz
E per Rei Pescador grazits ;
L'us comtet Tastre d'Ermeli,
L'autre dis com fan I'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 I'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'lcams
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, 1. 8807, sq.), Polynices, Tydeus,
and Eteocles ; ApoUonius of Tyre ; Alexander ; Hero
and Leander ; Cadmus of Thebes ; Jason and the sleep-
less 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 " ^ ) ;

1 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.

APPENDIX 387

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 Charreite ("how
the herald found the red shield at the entry," an allusion
explained by M. Gaston Paris, in Ro?na?iia, xvi. p. 10 1),
Guiflet, Calobrenan, Kay punished for his railing accusa-
tions ; Mordred ; how the Count Buret 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.

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) j the Four
Sons of Aymon have become what they were afterwards

388 EPIC AND ROMANCE

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 Flatnenca
reference to Oliver), and the Siege of Milan (see English
Charlemag7ie Roma?tces, 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 Flatnenca 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. Ixxiii.-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 scheip-
hirdis 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

APPENDIX 389

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 foUouis : the tayhs of
cantirberrye, Robert le dyabil due 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 coll5ear, 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 lupiter 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 Cen-
tenary Papers (1886), p. 47

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

Aeneid, 18, 22, 334, 340

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

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

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

Alvissmdl, in ' Elder Edda,' 112

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

Ammius (O.N. HamOer) : see
Ham15ismdl

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

Andvari, 115

Angantyr, the Waking of, poem in

Hervarar Saga, 48, 70, 73, 78, 112,

129 n
Apollonius of Tyre, in Anglo-Saxon,

329
An Thorgilsson, called the Wise

(Ari FrdtSi, A.D. 1067- 1 148), his

Landndmaidk and Konunga jEfi,

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, •s'^-
Amaldos, romance del Conde,

Spanish ballad, 327
Ami, Bishop of Skalholt {pb. 1298),

his Life (Ama Sa^a), 268
Ami Beiskr (the Bitter), murderer

of Snorri Sturluson, his death at

Flugumyri, 263

Aron Hjorleifsson {Arons Saga), a

friend of Bishop Gudmund, 225, 257,

381 sq.
Asbjornsen, P. Chr., 170 n
Asdis, Grettir's mother, 216 n
Askel : see Reykdezla Saga
AtlakviGa, the Lay ofAttila, 146 sq :

see A ttila
Atlamdl, the Greenland Poem 0/

Attila, 92, 137, 146-156 : sceAttila
Atli and Riingerd, Contention of,

in ' Elder Edda,' 11^ sq.
Atli in Grettis Saga, his dying speech,
218

in Hd7}ayQar Saga, 227
Attila (O.E. iEtla, 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.,

no, 137, 149 sq.
Aucassin et Nicolette, 312, 327
Audoin the Lombard (O.E. Eadwic

father of Alboin, 67
Ayvton, Four Sons of i.e. Renausde

Montauban (^chanson de gcste),

313. 387

Balder, death of, 43, 78, 112

Bandainanna Saga, ' "The Confeder-
ates,' 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, ^.v.

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

Beowulf, 69, 88 sq., no, 136, 145,
158-17S, 290
and the Odyssey, 10

I wine),

392

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Beowulf Sixxd. the HHiand, 28
Bergthora, Njal's wife, 190, 220 sq.
Bernier : see Raoul de Camhrai
B<iroul : see Tristram
Bevis, Sir, 388
Biarkamdl, 78

Bjargey : see Hdvartiar Saga
Bjorn, in Njdla, 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 Philo-
sophy, a favourite book, 46
Bolli, Gudrun's husband (^Laxdcela

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 B ok, 135

(Academy, March 24, 1888, p. 198)
Br^ri, 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 .

Brj'nhild, sister of Attila, wife of
Gunnar the Niblung, passim
long La^ of, in the 'Elder Edda '
{al. Sigut^arkinHa inSkajnmn),
83, 100 sq.
Hell-ride of, 102
short Lay ^(fragment), 103, 256
lost poem concerning, paraphrased

in 1/olsunga Saga, 71
Danish ballad of : see Sivard
Bugge, Dr. Sophus, sometime Pro-
fessor 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 Huo7i.
de Bordeaux, 314 sq. ; history of,
in Norwegian {Karlamagnus

Saga), 278 ; in Spanish (chap-book),

297 n : see Pelerinage de Charle-

tnagne
Chariot : 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 i'^. ; Conte du Graali^Perce-
zal), 327 ; Cliges, 333, 357 sq.,
387 ; Cluvalier de la Charrette
{^Lancelot), 341, 357, 387 ; Yvain
(Che7ialier 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, 'iJu Elder'
ComMie Iluinaitie, la, 188
Connla (the stor>' of the fairy-bride) :

see Guingamor
Contract, Social, in Iceland, 59
Coronemenz Loots, chanson de geste

of the cycle of William of Orange,

quoted, 311
Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. G.

Vigfusson and F. York Powell,

Oxford, iZZ^, passim
Corsolt, a pagan, 311
Cressida, m Roman de Troie, 330;

the story treated in different ways

by Boccaccio and Chaucer, q.v.
Cynewulf, the poet, 51
Cyneivulf 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 {DarratSarlidti,
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, T34
Drangey, island in Ej'jafirth, north

of Iceland, Grettir's refuge, 196
Dryden and the heroic ideal, 30
Du Bartas, 31

Edda, a handbook of the Art of

INDEX

393

Poetry, by Snorri Sturluson, 42,

138, 181
•Edda,' 'the Elder,' 'the Poetic,'

'of Sasmund the Wise' (Codex

Regius), 77, 93, I <i6 passim
Egil the Bowman, Weland's brother,

represented on the Franks casket

(i«gili), 48 .
Egil Skallagrimsson, 102, 215, 220
Einar Thorgilsson : see Sturla of

Hvafiun
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 C/trestien de Troyes
Erec: see Chresfien de Troyes
Eric the Red, his Saga in Hauk's

book, 47
Ermanaric (O.E. Eormenn'c, O.N.

iormunrekr), 22 ; killed by the
rothers of Suanihilda, 66 : see
HatnlSismdl
Erp : see HainHistttdl
Exodus, old English poem of, 28,

90 I

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

Fcereyinga Saga, the story of the
men of the Faroes (Thrond of Gata
and Sigmund Brestis.son), 206, 245

Faroese ballad.s, 181, 283

Fielding, Henry, 266

Fierabras, 388

Finn : see Finncsbtirh

Finneshurh, old English poem (frag-
ment), published by Hickes from
a Lambeth MS., now mislaid,
%x sq., 265
episode in Beowulf, giving more of
the story, 81 sq.

Fidlsvinnsindl : see Svipdag

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

Fldaf/ianna Sagu, the story of the
people of Floi, 259

Flares et Blancheficur, romance, re-
ferred to in Flatnenca, 361 ; trans-
lated by Boccaccio {Filocolo), 364

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

Flugumyri, a homestead in Northern
Iceland (SkagaQord), Earl Gizur's

house, burned October 1253, the
story as given by Sturla, 259-264

Fdsibre^ra Saga (the story of the
two sworn brethren, Thorgeir and
Thormod) 38 n, 47 ; in Hauk's book,
187, 194, 196 ; euphuistic interpola-
tions in, 275 sq.

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

Frit hiof the Bold, a romantic Saga,
247, 277, 280 sq.

Froda (FroOA), homestead in Olafsvi'k,
near the end of Snaefellsnes, Western
Iceland, a haunted house, Eyr-
h'ZgJ'^ Saga^ 208

Froda (Frotho m 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 stoi-y
of Garin le Loherain, 310

Gareth, in Ma\ory's Morle d" Arthur,
original of the Red Cross Knight
in the Faery Queene, 343

Garin le Loherain {citanson de geste),
53 n, 300-.309

Gawain killed dragons, 168 : see
Waleivein

Gawain and tJie Green Knight, al-
literative 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

GlslaSaga, the story of Gisli the Out-
law, 187, 196 sq., 207, 225 ; its rela-
tions 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
FlugumjTi, 258, 259-264

G\a.m(Grettis Saga), 172, 196

Glum (Vlga-Glums Saga), 193 sq.,
225
and Raoul de Cambrai, 299

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

Gothorm, loi

Gray, his translations from the Ice-
landic, 78, 157 n

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

Grendel, 165 : see Beo-iwlf

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

394

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Grimhild, mother of Gudrun, no
Gritnild's Revenge, Danish ballad

{Grimilds Hcevn), 105, 149
Grimm, 136 n ; story of the Golden
Bird, 340

Wilhelm, Deutsche Heldensage, 79
Grtmnisindl, in 'Elder Edda,' 112
Gripir, Prophecy of (Gripisspd) in the

' Elder Edda,' a summary of the

Volsung story, 94
Groa, wife of Earl Gizur, q.v.
Grdgaldr : see Svipdag
Grottasongr (Song of the Magic

Mill), 90
Gudmund Arason, Bishop of Holar,

170, 256, 381
Gudmund, son of Granmar : see

Sinfiotli
Gudmund the Mighty (GuOmundr inn

Riki), in Lj6svelninga and other

Sagas, 188, 225

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

Gudrun (O.N. GutJrun), daughter of

Giuki, sister of Gunnar and

Hogni, wife of Sigurd, 23, 71,

loi, 149 J^.

and Theodoric, the Old Lay 0/
Gudrun {GutSnUtarkviGa in
fomd), 103, 109

Lay 0/ (Guf5runa)kvitSa), m

Lament of, or Chain of Woe
{Trcgrof Gutiriinar), rii, 215

Ordeal of, in

daughter of Osvifr (J^axdala
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 Bur-

gundian (O.E. GuOhere, O.N.

Gunnarr ; Gunther in the Nibel-

ungenlied, etc.), 22 : see Gunnar,

Gunther
Gunnar of Lithend (HliCarendi), in

Njdls Saga, 190 ; his death, 214
Gunnar, son of Giuki, brother of

Gudrun, loi sq., 168 sq. : see

Gundaharius, Gunther
Gunnlaug the Poet, called Worm-
tongue, his story {Gunnlaugs Saga

Ormstungu), 207, 281
Gunther (Gunthaiius, son of Gibicho)

in IValtharius, 84 sq. ; in Waldere,

loo : see Gundaharius, Gunnar

Hacon, King of Norway (a.d. 1217-
1263) : see Hdkonar Saga ; his
taste for French romances, 278
Hadubrand, son of Hildebrand, 81
Hagen (Bagano), in IValtharius, 84 |
sq. I

Hagen, in Waldere (^ZL^^nz), 86, 239
in Sivard, q.v. : see Hogni

Hdkonar Saga, the Life of Hacon,
Hacon's son, King of Norway {pb.
1263), written by Sturla, con-
trasted with his history of Iceland,
267 sq.

Halfs Saga, 280

Hall, son of Earl Gizur, 259

Hama, 163

Ha7nlet in Saxo, 70

HaniGismdl ('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

Harbarzlidd: see T^tor

Har^ar Saga ok HoUm>erja, the
story of Hord and the men of the
island, 212 n

Hank's Book, an Icelandic gentle-
man's select library in the four-
teenth century, 47 sq. {Hauksbdk,
ed. Finnur Jonsson, 1892-1896)

Hdvamdl in ^Poetic Edda,' a gnomic
miscellany, 77

HdvayQar Saga Is/irfSings, the stcry
of Howard of Icefirth, 199, 216 sq.,
227

Hearne, Thomas, 78

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

HeiQarvIga Saga, the story of the
battle on the Heath (connected
with Eyrbyggja Saga), 209 : see
P'{ga-Styrr

HeitSreks Saga : see Hervarar
Saga

Hcimskringla, Snorri's Li7>es of the
Kings of Nonvay, abridged, 248

Helgi and Kara, 98

Helgi, Hiorvard's son, and Swava,
97 j$r., 113 ^

Helgi Hundlngsbane and Sigrun,

72, 93 n. 95 sq., 239

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

Hengest : see Finnesburh

Heremod, 162

Herkja, in

Hermes, in the Homeric hymn, 43

Hervarar Saga ok HeitSreks Kon-
ungs {HeiEreks Saga), one of
the romantic mythical Sagas in
Hauk's book, 48 ; contains the
poems of the cycle of Angantyr, 78,
280

INDEX

395

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

Waiter
Hnaef : 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,

lor, 151 sq. : see Hagen
Homeric analogies in medieval litera-
ture, 9 sq.
Hrain Sveinbjamarson, a friend of

Bishop Gudmund, 257 ; Hrafns

Sas;a quoted, 38 n
Hrafn : see Gunnlaug
Hrufnkels Saga Frevsgo'6a, the story

of Hrafnkel, Frey s Priest, 187, 198
Hrefna, Kjartan's wife, 223
Hreidar the Simple, an unpromising

hero, in Haralds Saga Har^rdtSa,

310
Hrolf Kraki (HroSulf in Beowulf),

166, 280
HronundGreipsson, Saga of, 99
Hrothg.ir, to, 166
Hunding, 95
Hunferth, 10, 166
Huon de Bordeaux {chanson de

^esic), epic and romance combined

martistically in, 37, 53, 314-317
Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and

Romance, 30
Hygelac, 161 sq. : see Bec-Mulf
Hymiskvida : see Thor

Ibsen, Henrik, his Heerma:ndene paa
Helgeland {Warriors in Helge-
latui), a drama founded on the
Volsung story, its relation to
Laxdala Saga, 209
his Kongsenineme {Rival Kings,
Hacon and Skule), 268
Ider, romance, 331 sq., 347 n
Iliad, II sq.t 18, 38 sq., 52, xd-zsq.,

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 Li/e 0/ St. Louis
compared with Icelandic prose
history, 269 sq.

Jon Arason the poet, Bishop of
Hdlar, 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 Erman-
aric, its relation to HattiGistndl, 65

Judith, old English poem of, 28, 29,
99

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

Kara, 98 sq.

Kari, in Njdla, 206

and Bjorn, 228-229
Karl Jonsson, Abbot of ThingeyTi in

Iceland, author of Sverris Saga,

249
Kjartan, son of Olaf the Peacock
{Laxdccla Saga), 13, 191, 204,

207, 375
s death.

his death, 240 s^.
Konigskinder, die, German ballad

327
Kormaks Saga, 129 n, 281

Lancelot, the French prose romance,

335
Landndsnaldk, in Hank's book, 47
Laurence, Bishop of Hoiar {od. 1331),

his Li/e {Laurentius Saga), 268
LaxdcelaSaga, the story of Laxdale

{the Lovers 0/ tJie Gudrun), 185,

190, 240 sq., 375 ; a new version of

the Niblung story, 209 sq., 222 sq.,

281
Leconte de Lisle, L'Ej>ie cPAn-

gantyr, 73 n
Lessing's Laocoon, 237
Libeaux Dcsccnus, romance in
different versions — French, by
Renaud de Beaujcu {Gninglain),

337. 343 fl; 387; English, 337,
343 ; Italian (Car^Mww), 337, 343

^^^ sq.,y^

Italian (C<

Ljdsvetninga Saga, story of the

House of Ljosavatn, 188 sq.
Lokasenna (the Railing of Lokl), 41,

I 77. "3

I Longnon, Auguste, 314 n
I Louis IX., king of France (St. Louis) :
I 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.

396

EPIC AND ROMANCE

991), 69, 88, 95 n, 134, 205, 244;
compared with the Iliad, 11 ; com-
pared with Roland, 51, 54 sq., 294
Malory, Sir Thomas, his Morte

(T Arthur, 215, 307
Mantrible, Bridge of the, 388
Marie de France, her Lays translated
into Norwegian {Strengleikar),
278 ; Guittgamor cniicisi^d, 337-340
Marino, 31

Martianus Capella, de Nuptiis Philo-
logiae, 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 Arthttre, alliterative poem, 180
Mort Artus, French prose romance,

335
Morte d" Arthur : s^t. Malory

Nibelungcnlied, 105, 120, 149, 179

Niblung story, its relation to histori-
cal fact, 22 sq. : see Gunnar,
Ho ni, Gudrun, Laxdcela Saga

Nidad, 95

Njal, story of (JVj'dla), 8, 13, 60, 185,
207, 219-221

Oberon : see Nuan de Bordeaux
Odd, Arrow (Orvar-Oddr), 73
Oddrun, sister of Brynhild and Attila,
102

Lament of {Oddn'inargrdtr), in the

* Elder Edda,' 103, 107 sq., 151 sq.

Odd Ufeigsson : see Bandamanna

Saga
Odoacer, referred to in Lay of HiUie-

brand, 81
Odysseus, 7, 9, 32 sq., 35, 71
Odyssey, the, 10, 163, 171 ; Aristotle's

summary of, 18 ; romance in, 32 sq.
Olaf Tryggvason, lung of Norway,

205. 375 sq.
Olkofra pdttr, the story of Alecap,

related to Bandatnanna Saga, 226
Ossian, in the land of youth : see

Guingatnor
Ovid in the Middle Ages, 47, 346,

^1-2', Ovidius Epistolary /u 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

Pilerinage de Charlemagne {chanson
degeste), 24, 53,329

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

Phaeacia, Odysseus in, Bossu's criti-
cism, 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 a" Orange, chanson de geste of
the cycle of William of Orange,
in substance a romance of adven-
ture, 313

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

Ragnar Lodbrok, his Death -Song

{Krdkumdl), 140, 217, 295
Rainouart, the gigantically of William

of Orange, 296, 311; their names

associated by Dante (Par. xviii.

46), ibid.
Raoul de Cambrai {chanson de

geste), zgi n, 298-300, 309
Rastignac, Eugene de, 188
Reykdala 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
Rfmur, Icelandic rhyming romances,

181, 283
Roland, CJtanson dc, 9, 2^, 83, 287,

293-295. 308 ; compared with Byrht-

noth {Maldon), 54 sq. ; with an

incident in Njdila, 265
Roman de la Rose, of Guillaume de

Lorris, 345, 348, 352, 350
Rood, Dream of the, old English

poem, 134
Rosamund and Alboin in the Lombard

history, 23, 67
Rosmtmda, a tragedy, by Rucellai,

67
Rou, Roman de, the author's visit to

Broceliande, 26

Sam (Sdmr), Gunnar 's dog, 214
Sarpedon's address to Glaucus, 9, 11
Sarus and Ammius (Sorli and Ham-
ther), brothers of Suanihilda (Jor-
danes), 66 : see HantQismnl
Saxo Grammaticus, 69, 79, 105, 149,
181, 37+

INDEX

397

Scotland^ Coviplaynt of, romances
named in, 387-385

Scottish Field, alliterative poem on
Flodden, 179 sq.

Shakespeare, his treatment of popular
tales, 36 sq.

Sibyfs rropliecy : see Volospd

Sidney, Sir Philip, 99, 368

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

Sigmund Brestisson, in Fcereyinga
Saga, 206, 24s, 283

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

Signild : see Sivard

Sigrdrifa, 115

Sigrun : see Helgi

Sigurd, the Volsung (O.N. SigurtJr),
22, 71, icosq., 129, 133
fragmentary Lay of{Brot afSigur-

15arkvit5u), 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

Skaiphedinn, son of Njal, 190, •i.iosq.,
244. 265

Skirnir : see Prey

Skule, Duke, the rival of Hacon, 267

Skuta : see Reykdtela 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 Flugu-
myri, 263

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

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

Sorli : see HamlSismdl

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 Stur-
lungs, his life {Sturlu Saga) 253-
256

Sturla (c. A.D. 1214-1284), son of
Thord, and grajidson of Hvamm-
Sturla, nephew of Snorri, author
of Sturlunga Saga ig.v.) and of
Hdkonar Saga (g.zi.) 61, 251, 259

Sturlunga Saga (more accurately Is-
lendinga 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

Svarfdcela Saga, the story of the
men of Swarfdale {Svarfa^ardalr),
219

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

Sverre, king of Norway {pb. 1202),
his Life (Sverris Saga) written by
Abbot Karl Jdnsson 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 HantGismdl

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

Tegn(5r, Esaias, 141 ; his Frithiofs
Saga, 277

Tennyson, Enid, 355

Theodoric (O.N. pi<50rekr), a hero of
Teutonic epic in different dialects,
22, 81, 87 ; fragment of Swedish
poem on, inscription on stone at
R6k, 78 : see Gudrun

Thersites, 243

Thidrandi, whom the goddesses slew,
208

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

Thomas : see Tnstratn

Thor, in old Northern literature,
his Fishing for the World Serpent
(HymiskvitSa), 43, 77, 95 ; the
Winning of the Hammer {^ryms-
kvitSa), 43, 77, 81, 95
Danish ballad of, 125
the contention of, and Odin {Har-
barzlidS), 77, 113

Thorarin, in Eyrbyggja, the quiet
man, 227

Thorgils and Haflidi (porgils Saga
ok Hafli'Ga), 226, 238, 252 sq.

ThorkellHake, in Ljdsvetinga Saga,
225

Thorolf Baegifot : see Eyrbyggja

Thorolf, Kveldulf s son : see Skalla-
grim

"porsteins Saga Hvita, the story of
Thorstein the White, points of re-
semblance to Laxdala and Gunn-
laugs Sao a, 281

\orsteins Sa^a Stangarhoggs (Thor-
stein Staffsmitten), a short story,
282

398

EPIC AND ROMANCE

Thrond of Gata {Fareyinga Saga),
245

\rymsJevitia : 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 oi Italia liberata dai
Goti, a correct epic poem, 30

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

Troilus, 368 sq.

Destruction

Troy,
poem

180

of, alliterative

Ufeig : see Bandamanna Sa^a
Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig,

170
Uspak : see Bandaiitanna Saga

VaffrHGnistndl, mythological poem

in ' Elder Edda,' 77, 112, 115
Vali : see Bandatnanna Saga
Vdpnfif^inga Saga, the story of

Vopnafjord, 193, 226
Vatnsdcela Saga, story of the House

of Vatnsdal, 189
Vemund : see Reykdcela Saga
Vergi, la Chastelaine de, a short

tragic story, 362 sg.
Viga-Glums Saga, 193 : see Glu7n
Vfga-Styrr : see HciGar7'fga Saga

N.B.—The storv referred to in the text
is preserved in Jon Olafsson's recollection
of the leaves of the M S. whicli were lost in
the fire of 1728 (IsUttding^a SSfur, 1847, ii.
p. 2916). It is not given in Mr. ^VilIiam
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
Volospd (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 o/the, 96

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

Waldere, old English poem (frag-
ment), 78, 86 sq., 116, 163 : see
Walter 0/ Aqttitaine

Wale7vein, 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

Walt/tarius, Latin poem by Ekke-
hard, 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, 04

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 Loots,
Charroi de Nismes, Prise
d' Orange, Aliscans, Rainouart',
cf. J. Bidier, Les Le^endes ij>iques
(1908)

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