h
Elfleda was substituted for her young mistress, the artifice by
which Athelwold obtained the hand of Elfrida, the detection of
that artifice, the hunting party, and the vengeance of the
amorous king, are things about which there is no more doubt than
about the execution of Anne Boleyn, or the slitting of Sir John
Coventry's nose. But when we turn to William of Malmesbury, we
find that Hume, in his eagerness to relate these pleasant fables,
has overlooked one very important circumstance. William does
indeed tell both the stories; but he gives us distinct notice
that he does not warrant their truth, and that they rest on no
better authority than that of ballads.

Such is the way in which these two well-known tales have been
handed down. They originally appeared in a poetical form. They
found their way from ballads into an old chronicle. The ballads
perished; the chronicle remained. A great historian, some
centuries after the ballads had been altogether forgotten,
consulted the chronicle. He was struck by the lively coloring of
these ancient fictions: he transferred them to his pages; and
thus we find inserted, as unquestionable facts, in a narrative
which is likely to last as long as the English tongue, the
inventions of some minstrel whose works were probably never
committed to writing, whose name is buried in oblivion, and whose
dialect has become obsolete. It must, then, be admitted to be
possible, or rather highly probable, that the stories of Romulus
and Remus, and of the Horatii and Curiatti, may have had a
similar origin.

Castilian literature will furnish us with another parallel case.
Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, tells the story of the
ill-starred marriage which the King Don Alonso brought about
between the heirs of Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid.
The Cid bestowed a princely dower on the sons-in-law. But the
young men were base and proud, cowardly and cruel. They were
tried in danger, and found wanting. They fled before the Moors,
and once, when a lion broke out of his den, they ran and crouched
in an unseemly hiding-place. They knew that they were despised,
and took counsel how they might be avenged. They parted from
their father-in-law with many signs of love, and set forth on a
journey with Dona Elvira and Dona Sol. In a solitary place the
bridegrooms seized their brides, stripped them, scourged them,
and departed, leaving them for dead. But one of the House of
Bivar, suspecting