Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/108

100 The matter used for stuffing out old sagas or manufacturing new ones relating to real persons may be roughly-analysed into:

(a) Folk-tales of varied origin, but in native form, e.g., the "Enfance" tales, of the Tom Tram type, in Grettir's Saga.

(b) Foreign folk-tales, adapted or inserted almost without change. Part of the story of Tristram is used in Grettir's Saga, and Bose's Saga is enriched from a rank fabliau.

(c) Tales of giants, especially common to the pseudo-heroic sagas (with which we are not now dealing), and ultimately copied from older genuine tales.

(d) Tales of ghosts, sometimes native, sometimes apparently drawn from old continental tradition.

(e) Stories of bandits or outlaws, when the scene is often laid in Norway, imitating very possibly in some cases the famous Ingemund tale, inserted rather awkwardly into Landnáma-bóc.

(f) Stories of Bear-Sarks, by which much-abused word the Icelandic audience did not understand Harold Shockhead's historic skinclad champions, but certain fierce and frenzied bullies, who played the same part toward a Norwegian franklin as the giant in the Romances does toward the Soldan, challenging him for his daughter, and meeting well-earned death at the hands of the young stranger guest. These stories are frequent in pseudo-heroic sagas, and Saxo's informants supplied him with them. They occur in Egil's Saga.

(g) Stories of single combats and wagers of battle, especially those that are made to occur abroad. These imitate genuine stories, such as those of Landnáma-bóc, and are very frequent.

(h) Narratives of buccaneering or sea-roving in the Baltic and British seas; rubbish such as chokes parts of Nial's Saga and of many more; matter void of historic basis, and marked by poverty of incident and baldness of phrase.

Such excrescences as these are comparatively easy to recognise and condemn, as are the imitations of good sagas,