Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/314

 2,02 Journal of American Folk-Lore.

with the Christian literature of both Saxons and Celts. He argues that even in matters of language and style many difficult passages in the Norse poems can be explained only in the light of Anglo-Saxon or Irish, and he discusses such passages with some detail. Thus the Introduction furnishes a convenient exposition of Bugge's method of work, besides being the best statement in short compass of his present opinions on Norse mythology.

The body of the book (the translation of the " Helge-Digtene ") is a study of the sources, history, and literary relations of the lays concerning Helgi Hundingsbani and Helgi the son of Hjorvarth. Bugge comes to the con- clusion that all three were composed in the British Isles by poets who had lived in the Scandinavian court at Dublin, and who were familiar with the epic traditions of both Irish and English. He seeks to show the extent to which foreign saga-material has been worked over in the poems, and on the basis of certain comparisons with Irish he even undertakes to date the composition of the first lay of Helgi Hundingsbani within twenty years of 1020. The second lay (according to the usual title) he would put about half a century earlier. The lay of Hrimgerth (in the poem on Helgi, the son of Hjorvarth) he holds to have been written by the same author as the first lay of Helgi Hundingsbani ; the rest of the story of Helgi and Hjor- varth he attributes to an earlier skald who also lived in Britain.

While it is difficult to feel that Bugge always has evidence enough to support his conclusions, his comparisons are certainly in the highest degree significant. One may be skeptical, for example, about any actual influence of the Irish " Battle of Ross na Rig " on the first Helgi lay, but one cannot fail to be impressed by the similarities Bugge has pointed out, in both saga- material and style of treatment, between the Irish and Norse literatures. The facts that he has collected cannot be explained on any other theory than that of contact and interchange of ideas. In the same way, one may hesitate to follow him at all lengths in his linguistic arguments ; one may be doubtful about constructing a theoretic Anglo-Saxon wiersinga in order to account for a difficult Norse fjorsunga '■; but the evidences he has put together of intercourse between Saxons and Norsemen make such word- borrowing possible, and the comparisons he has drawn between their epic traditions cannot be neglected in any competent study of either literature.

One of the least persuasive chapters in the book is that which deals with the relations of the lay of Hrimgerth and the story of Wolfdietrich and the hag. In the first place, the connection between these two tales them- selves is not by any means obvious, and the explanation of the Wolfdie- trich episode by reference to the classical stories of Scylla, Circe, and Calypso seems very far-fetched. A more likely theory with regard to both the incidents in question has been proposed by Dr. G. H. Maynadier in his Harvard dissertation (soon to be published) on the sources of Chaucer's " Tale of the Wyf of Bathe." Dr. Maynadier tries to bring the adventures of Wolfdietrich and the hag into relation with the stories of the " loathly lady " preserved in several forms in Irish, and best represented in English by the " Tale of the Wyf of Bathe " and the ballad of " King Henry." The lay of Hrimgerth, if connected at all with the .others, he suggests, may come directly from Irish tradition.

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