quoted in another part of the letter from the preface to the Kæmpe Viser: " Although," says the editor of 1695," the personages of this tale are foreigners, yet have I admitted it into this collection of Danish ballads, because it is old, and still popular among us. I have also heard it sung with the name of the king of Denmark. We have, besides, many other Danish ballads concerning foreigners with whom we formerly had intercourse."-P. 86. The historical presumption, from the settlement of the Danes in Britain, that the course of the derivation was as Mr Jamieson supposes, seems sufficiently balanced by the consideration, that the subsequent intercourse of the two nations opened a sufficient channel for the communication of a few ballads in either direction. The only seeming traces with which I am acquainted of a Scandinavian origin in Scottish poetry, is in the list of romances and ballads in the Complaynt of Scotland. Two of these, Skail Gillenderson, and the

Three Futtit Dog of Norroway, are judged by Mr Leyden to be Norwegian tales, on the evidence of their names. This, however, is very unsatisfactory reasoning; and even granting his assumption, that Skail Gillenderson is a corruption of Skald Gillenderson, it by no means follows, that because the hero was northern, the tale concerning him should be of northern origin. Indeed, to justify our ascribing the invention of these to the poets of the north, it should be shown that they possessed some characteristic at least of their race; but this cannot possibly now be done, as not a line of either is known to exist. The tale of The Wolf of the Warldis End, mentioned in the same list, was probably some wild story connected with Fenris the wolf; who, according to the sublime mythology of the Edda, is to burst his chains at the general conflagration, the twilight of the gods, and to devour Odin. But this tale, as well as the others,

has entirely perished, and the resemblance I have traced may be merely fanciful.

2. That there is no necessity (unless from future positive evidence) for believing in an immediate communication of tales, while the natural probability that both nations derived them from a third is strengthened by the certainty we possess, that the minstrels of both did draw copiously from the Norman romance; and it is a singular fact, that the tale which, being common to the two countries, is brought forward by Mr Jamieson in proof of his theory, is to be found among the yet extant specimens of those very Norman romances. It is the Lai le Frêne above mentioned.

3. That, under all the circumstances of doubt which appear to hang over the theory, there should be some presumptive evidence of the priority of the Danish songs. To clear it from all uncertainty, there should be evidence of an antiquity reaching to the period of the invasion

of Britain by the Northmen. But it seems improbable that this can be attempted for the collection of the Kæmpe Viser. The Scandic scholars, we know, lay claim to an extravagant antiquity for their Edda, &c.; and some of their historical songs are, perhaps, contemporary with the events they record. But their chief antiquarian rejects with contempt the Kampe Viser as a work of no authority, because it is of such modern invention. He has made some observations respecting the ancient manners of the north, and continues," Cui assertioni probandæ non erit opus recurrere ad putidissimas et triviales cantilenas quas Kæmpe Viser vulgò vocant, omni prorsus luce indignas, cùm ne instar quidem antiquitatis præ se ferant, ad colos aniles heri aut nudiustertius infelici venâ composita; cum ex purissimo antiquitatis fonte ipsis artificiosissimis veterum Scal

* See Pontoppidan's work Gesta et Vestig. Danorum extra Daniam, passim. The collection he quotes is that of Vellejus.

dorum carminibus, quibus nihil sacratiùs, illud ipsum abundè constet.”—BARTHOLINI Antiq. Danic. Hafniæ, 1689. p. 543. I will not dissemble, that the antiquity of the Kampe Viser has been asserted by Cleffel in his Antiquitates Germanicæ præcipue Septentrionales; in the preface to which he observes," Multa (carmina) etiam per traditionem conservata pervenerunt et a viris doctis edita sunt, ut a Dn. Petro Syv, et alio quodam ante eum cujus nomen jam non occurrit, (sc. Lafrenson) sed hoc in Septentrione, in Germania non item, ubi per innumera bella diu interierunt egregii illi vetustatis labores, adeo ut pauca in hanc rem supersint." This, it will be observed, is simply the opinion of a foreigner; and indeed, in another passage, at p. 130. in which he resumes the subject, it is plain, that he confouuds the popular traditionary ballads with the Skaldic remains, preserved in the Edda and elsewhere; the high antiquity of which, although very doubtful, I feel no inclination at present to dis