Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/67

Rh Anglo-Saxon literature, even had its development been unchecked, could not be compared for one moment with Gaelic literature. The stress of the one is on the Christian and modern, of the other on the pre-Christian and archaic, elements. But, as we all know, its development was checked in the eleventh century by the Norman Conquest; and when English literature emerges two and a half centuries later, its connections, such as they are, with mythical romance are with Celtdom rather than with Teutondom.

It would, however, be unfair to measure Anglo-Saxon influence upon English traditional romance solely by its extant literature. The local tradition, noted in Berkshire within the last 200 years, concerning Wayland's smithy most certainly goes back to Anglo-Saxon times, is equally certainly independent of anything in extant Anglo-Saxon literature, and testifies to a considerable mass of legend centering round the primeval smith whose fame was great in all Teutonic lands. It would, in my estimation, be absurd to suppose that Wieland was the only semi-mythical German hero about whom the Anglo-Saxon folk told tales or sang ballads. Despite the meagre space given by Anglo-Saxon literature to the sagas brought from Germany, this one instance of Wayland's smithy amply suffices to show that they flourished, struck root in the new land, and exhibited that strongest mark of legendary vitality—tendency to re-localisation.

The Scandinavian element in our traditional romantic literature remains to be considered. Among the Vikings of the ninth and tenth centuries, both Norsemen and Danes, but especially among the Norsemen, the literary class was powerful, well organised, and had elaborated a rigid and complicated literary convention. Moreover, the subject matter was either entirely traditional or depended for its literary effect upon the intimate knowledge of the tradition among hearers as well as among singers. Skaldic poetry implies not only the Norse mythical and heroic Sagas which have come