Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/427

 Reviews. 407

Romance of Tristram.i Dr. Boer now points out that the rest of the Spes story is largely coloured by the romantic story of Harold Hardrede and the Byzantine princess." It has been shown that what one might call the enfa?ice of Grettir is purely mythic, taken from a folktale hero whom we in England call Tom Tram and the Highland Scots Mac-a-Rusgaich, whose childish adventures, as well as some of the amatory exploits of his later years, are here ascribed to Grettir. That the humorous and unhappily-lost Grettir foirsla was founded on such older folk-songs and cere- monies as Uolsa fcersla testifies to, was pointed out in C. P. B., ii., though one need not doubt that an actual incident of Grettir's career gave rise to the poem. How the Beowulf story came to attach itself to Grettir one cannot fully explain, but the son of Asmund was like the son of Ecgtheow, a man of gigantic strength, a mighty swimmer, and a man that had to do with uncanny foes, one " whose fate was evil though his fame was good." The exploits of the Icelander recalled the exploits of the older hero, and the older hero's deeds were by some conscious narrator at last applied to him.

But besides using alien written romance and native oral legend, consciously or unconsciously, the composer, who evidently had access to a collection of vernacular MSS., laid under contribution Egla (which is clearly imitated), Fostbraedra (in a better text than we have now), Beorn the Hitdale champion's, and Grim Widows- son's Sagas. He mentions others, notably Bandamanna Saga and the lost story of Bodmod and Grimolf gerpi.

The composer also, judging by internal evidence, supplied some number of the court-metre verses to embellish, as he supposed, the story, while he used one or two old ditties and a few composi- tions (such as the Jeu parti on the black mare Saddlefair, the Hallmund verses, and the Rescue verses, in imitation of Egil's verses) that are, I believe, older than his own work. I believe some of the court metre verses are by Sturla (as Vigfusson supposed), and if they are it will explain the circumstance that they^ contain

' The incident of the gap in the sword causing its recognition is also taken from the Tristram Romance.

^ There is a faint parallel to Ine's story in the way Spes calls on Dromund to repent.

' In Grettir's Brag Song, for instance, as Messrs. Morris and Magnusson have pointed out.