Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/497

 Reviews. 455

saga tale of how Atle won Erca, and the Prankish romance of Hlodowech's winning of Hrodchildis.

The episode of Atli ajtd the birds is compared with the ballads of Rodingar, which preserve the old tale ; Franmar is Ari- dius, Idmundr is Mundiwih, Attila's father. "The Norwegian author " of Hiorward's lay " Avas himself a heathen, but he had heard from Christians the stories of the Frankish kings and saints." Chapter XXII. discusses the Death of Helgi and its relation to the Earl Brand [Hildebrand] and Ribolt and Guldborg ballads, which in original form were composed " by a Dane in Northern England in the early Middle Ages (thirteenth century?)." Ribolt and Guldborg is an offshoot of the Waldere cycle, early known in England. The Ballad of Hjelmer, our '■'■Douglas Tragedy,^'' is also connected with the Helgi-cycle ; and metempsychosis in Scandinavian stories is referred to the older Irish beliefs — the full discussion of which, by Mr. Nutt, Dr. Bugge unfor- tunately does not appear to have used. Hjorward is the O. E. Heoroweard hwaet, the Hjorwardr Ylfingr of Are and Nornagests Thattr; Saxo's tale of Regnerus and Suanhuita is a "parallel to the Eddie lays of Helgi Hjorwardsson." Thorgerd Holga brudr [Helgi's bride], Saxo's Thora, is a remodelling of Swafa, under the influence of the Irish legends of the war goddesses Badb, Nemain, Fea, etc. Irpa (her sister) is like the Morrigan, Thora was the goddess attached to the Haleygir family, who regarded Holge as their eponymous hero. " The story of Thor- gerd Helgi's bride was composed by a Norwegian in imitation of the lays of Heorward and Hrimgerth under the influence of Irish accounts . . . probably in Ireland . . . ca. 1050." Appendices note the relationship between the Helgi-lays and other O. N. poems, and with careful indices complete the book.

It is clear that this is not the place to criticise the numerous suggested readings, etymologies, and observations on minor points that render the book deeply interesting as a contribution to Eddie scholarship. Its main theories and postulates have been men- tioned above. It is clear, too, that the hypothesis of " infection " is pushed to its furthest limits, that connection direct or indirect is taken for granted wherever analogy can be discovered, that the historic nucleus of the Holge cycle is only faintly noticed : and yet the very life of the whole of the poems criticised depends upon this. If Holge had not been a great and famous hero in fact, and left a