dramatists, is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards contents.

The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is

It

is in a high degree probable that this mass of folk-lore surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before pure folk-lore the first Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenae conducted an expedition against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the Charlemagne of medieval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the West.1 Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore. If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events, these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history. The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar

1 I used this argument twenty years ago in qualification of the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W. Cox and others. See my Myths and Myth-Makers, vii., and cf. Freeman on "The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English History," in his Historical Essays, i. 1–39.

customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'Cumhail.1

is not folk

It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs. Here we have quiet and sober narrative, The Saga of not in the least like a fairy-tale, but Eric the Red often much like a ship's log. What- lore ever such narrative may be, it is not folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens to stray into it, the incongruity is as conspicuous as in the case of Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in the Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a likeness between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far astray.

As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the word " saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this particular kind of blunder, - for it is nothing less than a blunder. Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga. Well, between the Iliad and some Icelandic sagas there is a real and strong resem

1 Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, pp. 12, 204, 303; Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 203-311.

sagas

blance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well-marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic Lays, and the Mythical and mythical sagas, such as the Volsunga, historical the stories of Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally different in source, we may for our present purpose group the romantic sagas, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of folk-lore. In the other class come the historical sagas, such as those of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous biographies and annals.1 These writings give us history, and often very good history indeed. " Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it in sober earnest and chop down into " story "when they meant it otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same

1 Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's "Prolegomena " to his edition of Sturlunga Saga, Oxford, 1878, vol. i. pp. ix-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account in Horn's History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.

word to the Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate chronicles, and call them alike " stories."

The western or Hauksof Eric the Red's Saga

bók version

The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The western version is the earlier and in some respects the better. It is found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as Hauks-bók (AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson, between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is the one which has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni.' It is the one to which I have most frequently referred in the present chapter.1

The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the priest Jón Thórdharson, and contained in the famous compilation.

1 It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in Grönlands historiske Mindesmærker, i. 352–443. The most essential part of it may now be found, under its own name, in Vigfusson's Icelandic Prose Reader, pp. 123-140.

or Flateyar

bók version

1

known as the Flateyar-bók, or "Flat Island Book." This priest was editing the saga of The northern King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jón paused, after the manner of medieval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jón's version thus made has generally been printed under the title, Saga of Eric the Red." 2

Now the older version, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, gives an account of things which happened three centuries before it was written. A cautious scholar will, as a rule, be slow to consider any historical narrative as quite satisfactory authority, even when it con

1 It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island, in one of the Iceland fiords.

2 It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the title "Thættir af Eireki Rauda ok Grænlendingum." For a critical account of these versions, see Storm, op. cit. pp. 319-325; I do not, in all respects, follow him in his depreciation of the Flateyarbók version.