Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/70

58 to protect it from the rays of the sun while he performed his task. But the spire of the palace inclined before the child, and the shadow appeared to fly. This prodigy put the king upon enquiry, and he identified his son by means of the ring and mantle which he had given to the lady, and which had been found with the child. In the old English metrical romance of Havelok the Dane, the hero is identified by means of a royal mark, "a croiz ful gent," shining brighter than gold on his right shoulder.

The romance in which the incident is found is a literary version of the local tradition of Grimsby, still commemorated in the seal of the corporation. The poem dates from the end of the thirteenth century. There are two French versions which I have not seen. Prof. Skeat has epitomized the longer in the preface to his edition of the English romance. In it a flame issues from Havelok's mouth when he sleeps. This is a personal peculiarity, also found in the English lay. His heirship to the throne of Denmark is determined by his ability to blow a horn which none but the true heir could sound. Thus we are brought back to the succession by divination from which we started, and of which the simple diagnosis of royal descent is a corruption and a weakening. It is preserved here, we know not by what cause, after its true meaning had been forgotten. Adopted first of all into tradition from living custom, when the custom was superseded by other means of determining the succession it survived as a tradition until, its true intent being gradually lost, while the hereditary principle was strengthened and fenced about with sanctity, the incident faded into a merely picturesque