Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/134

110 from the point of view of old tribal law, inconsistent with their assumed position as insolent intruders, but quite regular according to the customs regulating the constitution of the ancient sept or corporate family. Assuming Odysseus to be dead, and his heir Telemachus out of the way, it would be quite regular that the associated brethren should divide the inheritance, and that one of them should be selected to marry the widow and become ruler of the island.

The poet, then, I venture to suggest, found ready to hand an old Saga which told of the Levirate being enforced on the wife of an absent prince, whom everyone, even his nearest friends, believed to be dead. To add point to the tale, to improve the plot, and to adapt it to a changed condition of things with which his audience would be familiar, he turned these dignified tribal councillors into a gang of insolent bravos.

Further, it is possible, I think, to show that the plot was thus worked up for artistic purposes. Thus, for instance, one of the weightiest charges against the Suitors is that they without due cause assumed the death of Odysseus. But this, according to our present version, was only what his own desponding relatives and friends believed. Telemachus repeatedly states that his father had lost the day of his returning ; that his bones lie wasting in the rain on land, or the billow rolls them in the brine. Penelope says more than once that her lord will never return, and the faithful Eumaius is as confident of this as was Eurymachus himself.