eserved a record of actual events
in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in England, when there
were yet marriages between conquerors and conquered, and the origins of
Angle and Jute and Saxon were not yet forgotten in the pedigrees of the
many petty kings.

One of the most curious proofs of the actual British origin of the
legend is in the statement that the death of Havelok's father occurred
as the result of a British invasion of Denmark for King Arthur, by a
force under a leader with the distinctly Norse name of Hodulf. The claim
for conquest of the north by Arthur is very old, and is repeated by
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and may well have originated in the remembrance of
some successful raid on the Danish coasts by the Norse settlers in the
Gower district of Pembrokeshire, in company with a contingent of their
Welsh neighbours.

This episode does not occur in the English version; but here an attack
on Havelok on his return home to Denmark is made by men led by one
Griffin, and this otherwise unexplainable survival of a Welsh name seems
to connect the two accounts in some way that recalls the ancient legend
at the back of both.

I have therefore treated the Welsh element in the story as deserving a
more prominent place, at least in subsidiary incidents, than it has in
the two old metrical versions. It has been possible to follow neither of
these exactly, as in names and details they are widely apart; but to one
who knows both, the sequence of events will, I think, be clear enough.

I have, for the same reason of the British origin of the legend,
preferred the simple and apposite derivation of the name of "Curan,"
taken by the hero during his servitude, from the Welsh Cwran, "a
wonder," to the Norman explanation of the name as meaning a "scullion,"
which seems to be rather a guess, based on the menial position of the
prince, than a translation.

For the long existence of a Welsh servile population in the lowlands of
Lincolnshire there is evidence enough in the story of Guthlac of
Crowland, and the type may still be found there. There need be little
excuse for claiming some remains of their old Christianity among them,
and the "hermit" who reads the dream for the princess may well have been
a half-forgotten Welsh priest. But the mediaeval poems have
Christianized the ancient legend, until it would seem to stand in
somewhat the same relationship to what it was as the German "Niebelungen
Lied" does to the "Vol