Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/430

 410 Reviews,

almost guess that at the end of Sturla's Landnama b6c there were a number of memoranda intended to supplement art, and that the composer is quoting some few of these. ^ Another thing that strikes one is a fact pointed out first in print by Dr. Boer, that there are several doublets among the events narrated, i.e. the same thing told over in different ways with differing details, but evidently really the same, e.g. : Thorir the giant and Hallmund o' the Cave look like repetitions; the Beowulf story is told twice, once of Glam, once of an ogress and her mate. We can hardly fancy the composer of Grettla, as we have it, often deliberately splitting a story into two, though he might do so once, but if an editor came across two stories with the same plot and differing details, he might (like Livy in the same case) set them both down, not recognising their essential identity.

The legal part of the Saga reminds one of Gunnlaug's Saga, the legalia are probably drawn from some collection of legal notes (possibly put together by Sturla), as we have suggested the historical memoranda may have been. There seems no reason to distrust their accuracy. The change of law involving an alteration in the terms on which Iceland accepted Christianity must (one would think) have excited much notice and been remembered ; the dictum as to outlawry is interesting but confusing to the chronologist, and the curious increase in head-money is a thing that would not be quickly forgotten.

The wealth of proverbs, adages, and idiomatic phrases in this Saga is also notable for our purposes. It recalls what was perhaps among its models, the Starcad-Eric Saga that has survived to us only in Saxo's labouring but picturesque Latin. Among the book-stores that must have fallen or passed into the Sturlungs' hands such a Saga may well have had a place. Besides those noted by Morris and Magnusson and postfixed to their translation, I have marked some three score more which I place here for the English reader's convenience arranged in rough alphabetical order by the principal word of each, which seems to be the handiest plan. There are some proverbial phrases, &c., not strictly pro- verbs, among them, as will be seen : —

' From this source may come, directly or by imitation, the curious remarks on the other great Icelandic outlaw, Haurd, in the Saga of the Outlaws of the Stronghold.