funeral with due respect, which excuse led to the repeal of
the obnoxious decree. A good Rabelaisian tale, that must not have
been wide-spread among the Danish topers, whose powers both Saxo and
Shakespeare have celebrated, from actual experience no doubt.

The "Magician's tricks to elude pursuit", so common an incident in
our fairy tales, e.g., Michael Scot's flight, is ascribed here to the
wonder-working and uncanny Finns, who, when pursued, cast behind
them successively three pebbles, which become to their enemies' eyes
mountains, then snow, which appeared like a roaring torrent. But they
could not cast the glamour on Arngrim a third time, and were forced to
submit. The glamour here and in the case of the breaking of Balder's
barrow is akin to that which the Druid puts on the sons of Uisnach.

The tale of the king who shuts up his daughter in an "earth-house" or
underground chamber with treasures (weapons and gold and silver), in
fear of invasion, looks like a bit of folk-tale, such as the "Hind in
the Wood", but it may have a traditional base of some kind here.

A folk-tale, very imperfectly narrated, is the "Clever King's Daughter",
who evidently in the original story had to choose her suitor by his feet
(as the giantess in the prose Edda chooses her husband), and was able to
do so by the device she had practised of sewing up her ring in his leg
sometime before, so that when she touched the flesh she could feel the
hardness of the ring beneath the scar.

Bits of folk-tales are the "Device for escaping threatened death by
putting a log in one's bed" (as in our Jack the Giant-Killer). The
device, as old as David's wife, of dressing up a dummy (here a basket
with a dog inside, covered outside with clothes), while the hero
escapes, is told of Eormenric, the mighty Gothic King of Kings, who,
like Walter of Aquitaine, Theodoric of Varona, Ecgherht, and Arminius,
was an exile in his youth. This traditional escape of the two lads from
the Scyths should be compared with the true story in Paul the Deacon
of his little ancestor's captivity and bold and successful stroke for
freedom.

"Disguise" plays a great part in the folk-tales used by Saxo. Woden
disguises himself in a cowl on his earthly travels, and heroes do the
same; a king disguises himself as a slave at his rival's court, to try
and find occasion of slaying him; a hero wraps himself up in skins, like
Alleleirah.

"Escaped recognition" is accordingly a feature