and Lydgate (primary indebtedness to Chaucer being, of course, taken for granted). The especially interesting material from Lydgate's R. S. is new, as that work was not generally accessible until after this study was begun.

The conclusion as to sources must be that F. L. is decidedly an eclectic composition. Beyond doubt the author's first model was Chaucer; especially in the Prologue to L. G. W., but also at least in C. T., B. D., and P. F. Next in importance is Lydgate, whose R. S., especially, presents more different points of resemblance to F. L., in both diction and idea, than any other one production I have examined. Gower's C. A. and later poems of the Chaucerian school, notably C. N., our author probably knew. As to direct French influence there is more uncertainty, since most of the features that were French in origin had been fairly well domesticated in England before F. L. was written. Thus the setting and the main action of the poem are paralleled in both Chaucer and Lydgate, and the most influential French allegories in which similar setting and action are found had been translated into English. It seems practically certain, however, that our author knew Deschamps' ballades on the Orders of the Flower and the Leaf, and extremely probable that he knew other poems by Deschamps, as well as by Machaut, Froissart, and Christine de Pisan. And behind all other French influence, directly or indirectly, is R. R., which the author of F. L. must have known in the version attributed to Chaucer, and perhaps in the original. GEORGE L. MARSH

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

STRUCTURE AND INTERPRETATION OF WIDSITH

In one of the most charming of the Old Norse sagas there are related the wanderings of the skald Gunnlaug Snake-Tongue, his visits to the princes and chiefs of Norway, Sweden, Ireland, the Scottish Isles, and England. He sailed to London and sought out King Ethelred the Unready, going, as the old tale says, "straight before the king," and telling him that he had come a long distance to see him. He then asked the king's permission to recite a lay which he had composed in his honor. This was graciously granted and the song was sung. "The king thanked him for the lay and gave him as a reward for his skaldship a mantle of scarlet, richly trimmed with costly fur and adorned with gold from top to bottom, and made him his retainer, and Gunnlaug remained with the king through the winter."

There is a striking similarity between the travels of Gunnlaug, y one of the later singers of the Heroic Age, and those of Widsith, told in the earliest account of the life of a Germanic minstrel which has come down to us. According to what is professedly his own narrative, Widsith, like his Scandinavian brother of some five centuries later, wandered from court to court, exhibiting his art for the diversion of kings and princes, taking part in their fortunes, and receiving from them rich gifts in recompense for his services and his skill. The element of love, indeed, is not present in the story-there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart to the beautiful Helga, nor did Widsith engage in combats of the sort which add so much picturesqueness to the career of Gunnlaug. But the traditions of the minstrel profession appear to have been much the same, and there is in the earlier narrative something of the same independence and pride in being a member of that profession which is so conspicuous in the later tale.

It is furthermore interesting to note that the only extant manuscript copy of the poem which has been given Widsith's name was written in England at about the same time that Ethelred was entertaining Gunnlaug. This copy, while probably greatly altered

from the original form of the piece, is nevertheless of inestimable value as testimony to a particularly attractive side of early Germanic life. For whether the adventures of Widsith are wholly fictitious, or in part real, they are at least a faithful reflection of the careers of the men who kept the art of song and entertainment alive through the dark period before the Germanic peoples attained to the fuller culture of the Middle Ages. If not authentic, they are certainly typical.' The value of the piece to the historian of early literature, then, is obvious. Indeed, the importance of what ten Brink has called the "earliest monument of English poetry that remains to us" need hardly be emphasized.

If Widsith is inferior in poetic quality to other pieces of lyric character in Anglo-Saxon, it is by no means wholly lacking in this respect. The passage describing the singer's relations with his lord Eadgils and with Queen Ealhhild (11. 88 ff.) serves to indicate what the general tone of the poem in an earlier form may have been. For, as will be seen, closer study shows that it has been much overlaid and defaced by the addition of inferior material, like a Gothic building rudely modernized with bricks and V mortar. Unfortunately the reminiscences of heroic poetry in its best estate are all too few. It must be admitted that the chief interest of the poem lies in other directions. Perhaps its greatest value to the student of early European civilization is in just these passages of inferior poetic quality, which convey so much information in regard to the peoples and potentates of history and saga. The very features which diminish its æsthetic merit, the long catalogues of nations and rulers whom the singer is supposed to have visited, are valuable testimony to historical conditions during a period the scantiest records of which are priceless. Interesting glimpses of heroic saga are also revealed. Gifica (1. 19) and Guthhere (1. 65) are apparently conceived of at a period earlier than the joining of the historical Burgundian elements to the

1Cf. Rajna, Le origini dell' epopea francese, pp. 39 f.: "Con tutto ciò il fondo risponde certamente a una condizione reale di cose, e se il Vidsidh non sarà forse andato ad Ermanrico accompagnando Ealhhild, moglie del re Eádgil, suo signore, nessun poeta avrebbe finto l'andata, se fatti consimili non occorresser davvero nella vita dei poeti di corte."

2 The figure of Widsith is not without significance for the history of the early drama; cf. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, Vol. I, pp. 28 f.

3 History of English Literature, trans. Kennedy, Vol. I, p. 11.

mythical features of the Nibelungen story. The passage relating how the pride of the Heathobards was humbled at Heorot, and how Ingeld was slain, forms a tragic sequel to the hopes of Hrothgar to secure peace by the marriage of his daughter Freawaru, as told in Beowulf. It is unnecessary, however, to comment on the significance of the list of heroes of the Dark Ages, real and fictitious, who make their appearance in Widsith's narrative.

The fascination of the poem is not lessened by the obscurity which surrounds its origin and growth. Its date, its value as a record of actual experience, the processes by which it has reached its present form, the interpretation of various obscure passages— all these questions and many others have been discussed with considerable fervor for upwards of fifty years. No consensus of opinion, however, has followed the disagreements of the past. The criticisms of ten Brink, Möller, Müllenhoff, Leo, Ettmüller, and others in Germany, and of Sweet, Thorpe, Wright, Brooke, and Earle in England, to mention no other names, are greatly at variance. At the present day, one may well be excused for a feeling of perplexed indecision as to a safe middle course between conflicting theories. A more careful examination of the evidence is likely to involve one still deeper in the briars of criticism. The easiest way out, perhaps, is to call the question insoluble. Körting gives up the problem of date as "unbestimmbar." Professor Saintsbury, after a procession of "ifs," and a thrust of scorn at the critical methods of those who dissect early poetry, holds that the evidence is insufficient to arrive at a conclusion, and refuses to express an opinion. The argument for autobiographical value as against the hypothesis that the story is pure fiction is another important point still undetermined. nett recently returned to the older view that the narrative may be substantially genuine, despite interpolations." Such a cautious statement as Mr. Chambers makes, that Widsith was "an actual or ideal scop," would perhaps find greater favor nowadays.

1 Cf. Beow., 11. 2025 ff. and 2064 ff. with Wids., 11. 45 ff.

2 For bibliography to 1885, cf. Wälker, Grundriss, pp. 318 ff.

3 Grundriss der Gesch. der engl. Litt. (1905), p. 27, note.

A Short History of English Literature, pp. 1 f.

5 Garnett and Gosse, History of Eng. Lit., Vol. I, p. 7.

Dr. Gar