iries promised him strength,
bravery, success, beauty, and love; after them came Morgan le Fay, whose
gift was that, after a glorious career, Ogier should come to live with her
at her castle of Avalon. When the hero was over a hundred years of age,
Morgan caused him to be wrecked near Avalon. In his wanderings he comes to
an orchard, where he eats an apple. A beautiful lady approaches whom he
mistakes for the Virgin; but she tells him she is Morgan le Fay. She puts a
ring on his finger and he becomes young; she puts a crown on his head, and
he forgets the past. For two hundred years he lives in unearthly delights,
and the years seem to him to be but twenty. He then returns to earth to
champion Christendom; but after triumphing over his foes he returns to
Avalon.[54]

The tale of Ogier was long popular in Denmark--of which country he is the
national hero--and also in France; and the notion of supernatural gifts at
birth has obtained a very wide vogue. But Ogier's story also exhibits
another very popular piece of superstition--that of a journey to or a
sojourn in the supernatural world.[55] Our English parallel to Ogier, as
Professor Child points out,[56] is Thomas of Erceldoune.

This leads us to the consideration of three English metrical Romances,
which in all probability are derived from French sources, containing
accounts of the visits to fairy-land made by Thomas of Erceldoune, Launfal,
and Orfeo. The first and last of these are also known in the form of
ballads; whether these ballads derive directly from the romances, or may be
supposed to have existed side by side with them in the fifteenth century,
is a question which must not delay us here. The romances and the ballads
may all have been known to Shakespeare in book-form or in tradition.

The romance of _Thomas of Erceldoune_ is a poem in three "fyttes" or
sections, which is preserved wholly or in part in five manuscripts, of
which the earliest may be dated about 1435. The poem tells us that Thomas
of Erceldoune's prophetic power was a gift from the queen of Elf-land, with
whom he paid a visit to her realm. The first "fytte" is occupied in
narrating his sojourn;[57] while the other two set forth the predictions
with which the queen supplied him. The romance is probably of Scottish
origin, as the prophecies treat mainly of Scottish history; but the first
"fytte" (which alone concerns us here, and indeed appears to be separate in
origin from the other two) refers