Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/315

 Notes on Orendel and other Stories. 291

to hand for any professional story-teller to pick up, just as the ordinary machinery of the romance of chivalry might be used again and again without infringing any copyright. This second view is represented in Dr. Heinzel's treatise. Of the first party, regarding Orendel as an ancient German hero with a right to his name, and possibly even to high honour as a Sun-god, there are different advocates, the most thorough-going representative of this view being Miillenhoff, who is followed by Berger in his edition of the story. Another view, but one which at the same time recognises a line of native old tradition in Orendel, is given by Rydberg.i Grimm puts together the Aurvendill-Earendel- Orendel references without trying to reconcile the evidence, still taking the name Orendel in its mythological bearings. He calls attention also to the things resembling the Odyssey in the shipwreck of Orendel.

These are some of the incidents of the story : — King Ougel of Trier had three sons ; the youngest was Orendel. It was on St. Stephen's day that he was knighted; he asked his father to find him a wife. His father told him that he knew of no match for him but one, who was a queen over sea, wise and glorious — Bride, the Queen of the Holy

Sepulchre :

Si ist ein edel kiinigin here Und ist gesezzen vil ferre tjber des wilden sewes fluot, Si ist ein edele kiinigin guot.

Orendel set out on the voyage with seventy-two keels. They were driven into the Klebermere — more correctly Lebermere, the sticky or curdled sea [la ?ner betee), which, according to some, lies over the drowned island of Atlantis.^ Orendel's ships were kept there for three years. They got

' Teutonic Mythology (Engl, tr.), p. 566 sqq. Orendel is equated with Svipdag, and the princess with Freyja, according to Rydberg's interpretation of the Svipdag myth, which has been summarised by Mr. York-Powell, intro- duction to Saxo, p. cxvii. sqq. (F. L. S. 1894).

2 Image du Monde, quoted by F. Michel, Fergus, 1841, p. 287.

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