charge that he shall put him to death; and this trust is in its turn betrayed, as it is by Harpagos and the messengers of Amulius in the stories of Cyrus and Romulus. When at midnight Grim rises to do Godard's bidding, he sees streaming from the mouth of the child the bright light which, encircling the head of Servius Tullius, betokened the future greatness of the son of the slave Ocresia, and as it gleamed round the head of Asklepios, warned the shepherd Aristhanas that he saw before him a divine child. Havelok is thus recognised by him as the son of king Birkabeyn, and the fisherman, to avoid the wrath of Godard, hastens away from Denmark, and takes up his abode in the town which bears his name in England. But what is Havelok to do in the new land? His His preserver is poor, he himself is meanly clad and without friends, and so, when he reaches Lincoln in search of work, he becomes the scullion-boy in Earl Godric's kitchen. But, as in the Gaelic legend, the Great Fool' is still the one to whom hosts yield, and it is he alone who is destined to be the husband of the young Fairfine, so Havelock alone can win the queenly daughter of Ethelwald.

Thus it comes to pass that at the games held by Earl Godric the kitchen-boy distances all his competitors in a way which renders all thought of coping with Havelok and him impossible. In the victory of the scullion- Goldborough. lad Godric sees an opportunity for humiliating Goldborough. He has promised her father that he will wed her to the strongest man, and he will keep his word. The marriage is accordingly celebrated, and Goldborough finds herself in the hovel of Havelok with a feeling of disgust equal to that of the princess who in the Norse and German stories marries King Thrushbeard or King Hacon Grizzlebeard in their disguise as beggars. But like Grimm, Goldborough sees at night the flame which streams from Havelok's mouth, and she hears an angel say that she 1 Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, lxxiv.

X

is the wife of the man who is to be king of Denmark. Havelok, on waking, says that he, too, has seen a vision, which assured him that he was to sit upon king Birkabeyn's throne; and with his wife and the three sons of Grim he sets sail from England to fight for and to win back his inheritance. In Denmark his might is at once proved by the destruction of sixty-one thieves, who, when they assail the house in which he is sojourning, are all slain by him and the three sons of Grim. The next night Ubbe, his host, sees a great light streaming from his chamber, and going in, he beholds what Grim and Goldborough had beheld before him. The sequel of the story tells us of the discomfiture and death of Godard in Denmark, and the romance ends with a period of repose as profound as that which marks the close of the Odyssey.1

The loves of

Argentile and
Curan.

But the English story of Havelok does not stand by itself. In the French poem, put together probably in the latter half of the twelfth century, the heroine is not Goldborough, but Argentile (a name which looks as mere a translation as the Gaelic Fairfine from the Greek Chryseis), and Havelok has become Havelok Curan. Here, then, we have the story of the loves of Argentile and Curan, one of the narratives in Warner's poem, entitled 'Albion's England,' in which Curan, in order to win Argentile, becomes a scullion in the household of Ethil, who compels her to marry him from the same motives which led Godric to insist that Goldborough should wed Havelok. If we ask what or who is Curan, we are carried to the Danish hero whom the Angles call Anlaf-cwiran, and we are put on a track which ends in the identification of the name Anlaf with that of Havelok, whose story, as furnishing groundwork for the claim of the Danes through him to England, is connected with the myth of Guy of Warwick.2

6

Popular Romances of the Mi dle Ages, Havelok.'

2 The chronicle cited by Sir F. Madden gives to the kings of Denmark and Norway, who bring over Colbrand, the names Anelaphus and Conelaphus. In the metrical romance of Guy of Warwick these names appear in the forms

THE HAMLET OF SHAKESPEARE.

Hamlet.

307

But Havelok further presents a link with the Saga of Beowulf, as bearing a name which is only a modification of that of Higelac, one of the heroes of that myth. Havelok and Whether this name is further to be identified with the Danish Chochilaichus of Gregory of Tours, is a question which has an interest only in so far as it may tend to prove what is disputed by none, that the names of historical persons have found their way into popular legends. But when we find the name Anlaf, Anelaph, Hanelocke, in the Latinised Amlethus, we are brought at once to a name familiar to all English ears; and when Hamlet is seen to stand to Havelok in the relation of cloth to cloak, we are compelled to ask what stories are told of Hamlet besides that which has been told by Shakespeare. On the very face of the Shakespearian play we have the same myth repeated more than once; and it is known that other versions of the drama existed before Shakespeare took the subject in hand. If we look into the incidents of Shakespeare's play we find (apart from the connexion of Denmark with England, which marks the story of Havelok and Grim) that the method of Hamlet's death agrees precisely with that of his father. The latter is poisoned while sleeping in his orchard of an afternoon; and the ghost tells Hamlet that the false report given out to cover his uncle's guilt, is that he had been stung by a serpent. But in either case, whether by accident or otherwise, we have the features common to a thousand mythical stories-the snake which appears in the myths of Eurydike and Arthur, the poison which plays a part in many a story of dawn-maidens, the afternoon slumber into which Endymion sinks in the land of Latmos.

When we go further back in the mythical genealogy of Hamlet, we find ourselves amongst a crowd of beings whose names are as transparent as those of Asterodia, Asteropaios, Hanelocke and Conelocke, while the MS. English chronicle Harl. 63, referred to by Sir F. Madden, speaks of the Danes who had claimed before, by the title of King Havelocke that wedded Goldesburghe, the king's daughter of Northumbr.'

Narkissos, Aëthlios, Selênê, Chryseis, or Fairfine.

of Hamlet.

We

may take the story of his father Orendil, or Aurentil, who The genealogy reappears in the Gudrun Lay as Hjarrandi, the being who, like Orpheus, Amphion, Hermes, or Pan, can charm all men with his sweet sounds, and whose name probably denotes nothing more than the hearing ear (ohr, auris), But Orendil is one of the three sons of Oygel, king of Treves, who with a slight change of name appears as Eigil, a counterpart of Tell, the shooting god, and is possibly the same as the Higelac of Beowulf. Like his son Havelok, Orendil can wed but one woman in the world, and she is queen of Jerusalem; but when he sets sail in search of her, the fleet is held windbound for three years in the Klebermeer, another Aulis, until the Virgin hears his prayers and lets them go, as Artemis at last sent a breeze to waft the Achaians to Ilion. The sequel of the story is a strange jumble of many myths. The fleet is wrecked when within sight of the Holy Sepulchre, and none escape but Orendil who, becoming servant to a fisherman, catches a whale, in the body of which is a grey coat. Although he wishes earnestly to possess this coat, and it is offered for sale at a very low price, he cannot meet the cost; but when anyone else tries to put it on, the garment splits. When Orendil dons it, it not only becomes as good as new, but makes him invulnerable-a myth which recalls not only the stories of Medeia and Nessos, but more especially those of Arthur, Balin, Lancelot, Tristram, and Galahad. The coat which will suffer only one man to put it on is but the sword which will yield only to one man's touch; and the scabbard of Arthur's Excalibur possesses precisely the power of the grey coat of making its owner invulnerable. Henceforth Orendil bears the name Graurock, the man with the grey or gleaming robe. In a tournament, in which

The word grey denotes strictly not subdued but dazzling light. It is the Glaukos of the Sarpêdôn myth, and Athênê is Glaukôpis, the maiden with the flashing face.

HAVELOK AND BEOWULF.

309

He is mira

he next takes part, he has to borrow a horse. culously provided with golden spurs, and he is, of course, the conqueror. The betrothal of Orendil with Queen Bride is followed by a war for the conquest of Jerusalem in which he outdoes Grettir, Herakles, or Rustem, by slaying singlehanded sixteen thousand men, and by other exploits scarcely less marvellous. At length an angel forewarns Orendil and his wife of the hour in which they must die, and when that time has come, they are borne away to heaven. The grey frock becomes, it is scarcely necessary to say, the holy coat of Treves, where Orendil's father had been king.1

2

XIv. The Saga

Through Higelac, the Wægmunding, the romance of Beowulf is connected with that of Havelok, as through the myth of Sceaf it is connected with that of Arthur.3 The saga itself is pre-eminent among the le- of Beowulf. gends which describe the struggle of light with darkness. Grendel is the gloomy demon in one of his most awful forms; and we see in him the monstrous sphinx who strikes terror into the citizens of Thebes, the robber Cacus who breathes fire from his nostrils, the giant Ravana who steals away the beautiful Sita, or any other of the fearful beings who find their prototype in the thievish Panis and the throttling snake Ahi. When Grendel is killed, his fearful mother, the devil's dam, comes to avenge his death; but the second struggle, in which Beowulf is conqueror, is but a reflexion of the first, while both are repeated in the later

1 For these remarks on Hamlet I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Latham; and I acknowledge my debt with the more gratitude, inasmuch as his inquiries have been instituted for purely historical purposes. It has been his object to ascertain how far Hamlet belongs to a family which existed in history; and the result of his search is that almost every name with which he is connected is the subject of myths of which it is impossible not to see the identity with the myths of other branches of the Aryan race.

2 Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, 189.

3 A further point of connexion is furnished by the name of King Birkabeyn, who is here the father of Havelok, and in the French poem is the father of Havelok Curan. Latham, Havelok the Dane,' Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. viii. new series.