in many of these simple
but artistic plots. A son is not known by his mother in the story of
Hrolf.

Other "Devices" are exemplified, such as the "booby-trap" loaded with
a millstone, which slays a hateful and despised tyrant, imposed by
a foreign conqueror; evasion by secret passages, and concealment in
underground vaults or earth-houses. The feigning of madness to escape
death occurs, as well as in the better-known Hamlet story. These
stratagems are universal in folk-history.

To Eric, the clever and quick of speech, is ascribed an excellent
sailor's smuggling trick to hide slaughtered cattle, by sinking them
till the search is over.

The "Hero's Mighty Childhood" (like David's) of course occurs when
he binds a bear with his girdle. Sciold is full grown at fifteen, and
Hadding is full grown in extreme youth. The hero in his boyhood slays a
full-grown man and champion. The cinder-biting, lazy stage of a mighty
youth is exemplified.

The "fierce eyes" of the hero or heroine, which can daunt an assassin as
could the piercing glance of Marius, are the "falcon eyes" of the Eddic
Lays.

The shining, effulgent, "illuminating hair" of the hero, which gives
light in the darkness, is noticed here, as it obtains in Cuaran's
thirteenth century English legend.

The wide-spread tale of the "City founded on a site marked out by a hide
cut into finest thongs", occurs, told of Hella and Iwarus exactly as our
Kentishmen told it of Hengist, and as it is also told of Dido.

The incidents of the "hero sleeping by a rill", of the guarded king's
daughter, with her thirty attendants, the king's son keeping sheep, are
part of the regular stock incidents in European folk-tales. So are the
Nausicaa incident of the "king's daughter going a washing", the hero
disguising himself as a woman and winding wool (like a second Heracles).

There are a certain number of stories, which only occur in Saxo and in
our other Northern sources with attributions, though they are of course
legendary; such are:

The "Everlasting Battle" between Hedhin and Hogne, a legend connected
with the great Brisinga-men story, and paralleled by the Cordelia-tale
among the Britons.

The story of the "Children preserved" is not very clearly told, and
Saxo seems to have euhemerized. It is evidently of the same type as the
Lionel-Lancelot story in the Arthurian cycle. Two children, ordered to
be killed, are saved by the slaying of other children in their place;
and