Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/330

 3o6 Notes on Orcndel and other Stories.

Skinnhufa and Vargeysa ; they had all been bewitched by their stepmother, who had a well occupied life, for she went and became Hjalmter's stepmother after that. She had been left on the rocks, as before described, and she fell into the fire when he came back, like Mac Iain Direach's stepmother also. There is a curious avoiding of the right end in Hjdlmter (both in Saga and Rhniir), for Hjalmter marries one of Hord's sisters, and Hervor is married to Hord. Kolbing notes that this can hardly have been the original conclusion, and it is easy to agree w'ith him.

In many things this story is more like Mac Iain Di reach and Walewein than Svipdag or Kulhwch ; and the crosses and spells reopen, in a very interesting way, the question of the relations of Gaelic and Icelandic literature. Hord takes the place of the fox who in the Gaelic story and in the Dutch romance is a prince bewitched, and recovers his own at the end of the story. But the resemblance to Svip- dag z.nd Kulhzuch is still considerable; and Orendel, to come back to the starting point, is not quite out of it either. In Hjdlmter^ however, though there is a pretence of romantic literary form, that is not enough, any more than in Wale- wein, to conceal the essentially popular character of the story.

The story of the princess over-sea is one that may be taken up by almost any kind of poet or storyteller. In one of its forms it has become a new myth, a myth for all modern poets from Petrarch to Mr. Browning and Mr. Swinburne. The story of Jaufre Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli has been studied by M. Gaston Paris,^ and shown to have its origin in some verses of the Provencal poet which were mis- understood by his biographer, or by the tradition which his biographer wrote down. The story of Jaufre Rudel's last voyage is a myth, growing out of the same common-place romantic fiction which is used by the author of Durmart le

' Revue Historique, vol. liii. p. 225.