Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/325

Rh the Kulhwch variety—that the bride has to be won from her father against his will, is wanting here.

It is quite possible that the resemblances between Orendel on the one hand, and Tochmarc Emer, Kulhwch, Svipdag, Alf, Walewein, Conall Gulban, &c., on the other, may be mere coincidence, such as appears to be the case in Durmart le Gallois. The medieval romancer works with a few commonplace properties, and it is nothing to be wondered at if they fall into similar patterns at different times. There may be nothing more in Orendel (in this part of it, that is) than the repetition of mechanical stock devices.

If there is anything more than this, if there is an old story at the foundation of this romance, what are its bearings on mythology? And is there any room for Aurvendill, Earendel?

Mr. Rhys (Hibbert Lectures) takes Tochmarc Emer together with Kulhwch and Olwen as stories belonging to the Sun-god and compares them with Frey and Gerd in the "Elder Edda." If Frey and Gerd be admitted in this comparison, there can be no good reason for excluding Svipdag and Menglad, the resemblance of which to Kulhwch is pointed out, and not exaggerated, by Grundtvig.

It may be that Aurvendill is really the hero of the German romance of Orendel—that is, it may be that the Svipdag story was sometimes told with Aurvendill as the name of the hero, a different story from that of Aurvendill in the basket, and his frost-bitten toe. Aurvendill, whose solar character seems to be proved by the Old English connotation of Earendel, then comes in for the solar interpretation along with Cuchulainn, Kulhwch, Frey and Svipdag, and helps to corroborate that interpretation for the other names and the stories to which they belong. This is possible; but "it is out of my welkin."

Whatever the solution may be, the older, more mythological, or apparently mythological, stories of the quest