Style._]

The saga prose is straightforward and business-like, the dialogue
short and pithy, with considerable interspersion of proverbial phrase,
but with, except in case of bad texts, very little obscurity. It is,
however, much interspersed also with verses which, like Icelandic
verse in general, are alliterative in prosody, and often of the
extremest euphuism and extravagance in phrase. All who have even a
slight acquaintance with sagas know the extraordinary periphrases for
common objects, for men and maidens, for ships and swords, that
bestrew them. There is, I believe, a theory, not in itself improbable,
that the more elaborate and far-fetched the style of this imagery, the
later and less genuine is likely to be the poem, if not the saga; but
it is certain that the germs of the style are to be found in the
_Havamal_ and the other earliest and most certainly genuine examples.

It is perhaps well to add that very small sagas are called _thaettir_
("scraps"), the same word as "tait" in the Scots phrase "tait of
wool." But it is admitted that it is not particularly easy to draw the
line between the two, and that there is no difference in real
character. In fact short sagas might be called _thaettir_ and _vice
versa_. Also, as hinted before, there is exceedingly little comedy in
the sagas. The roughest horse-play in practical joking, the most
insolent lampoons in verbal satire, form, as a rule, the lighter
element; and pieces like the _Bandamanna Saga_, which with tragic
touches is really comic in the main, are admittedly rare.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Provencal mainly lyric._]

In regard to the second, and contrasted, division of the subject of
the present chapter, it has been already noted that, just as Icelandic
at this period presents to the purview of the comparative literary
historian one main subject, if not one only--the saga--so Provencal
presents one main subject, and almost one only--the formal lyric. The
other products of the Muse in _langue d'oc_, whether verse or prose,
are so scanty, and in comparison[177] so unimportant, that even
special historians of the subject have found but little to say about
them. The earliest monument of all, perhaps the earliest finished
monument of literature in any Romance language, the short poem on
Boethius, in assonanced decasyllabic _laisses_,--even in its present
form probably older than our starting-point, and, it may be, two
centurie