Note 435 — Chapter VI

As to the general accuracy of the early ballads, which has been rashly attacked by several writers, and among others by Sir Walter Scott, see Villemarqué, Chants Populaires, vol. i. pp. xxv.–xxxi., and Talvi's Slavic Nations, p. 150. On the tenacity of oral tradition, compare Niebuhr's History of Rome, 1847, vol. i. p. 230, with Laing's Denmark, pp. 197, 198, 350; Wheaton's Hist. of the Northmen, pp. 38, 39, 57–59. Another curious illustration of this is, that several barbarous nations continue to repeat the old traditions in the old words, for so many generations, that at length the very language becomes unintelligible to the majority of those who recite them. See Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands, vol. i. p. 156, vol. ii. p. 217, and Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i. p. 126.