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The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 1 (of 5)

Note 264 — 30 KING ARTHUR AND KING CORNWALL

Reading edition

The Norwegian version in Karlamagnus Saga ok Kappa hans, ed. Unger, p. 466, the Seventh Part. Both the Swedish and Danish are given in Storm's Sagnkredsene om Karl den Store, etc., Kristiania, 1874, pp. 228-245. For the sources, see p. 160 ff. The whole of the Danish Chronicle of Charlemagne is printed in Brandt's Romantisk Digtning fra Middelalderen, Copenhagen, 1877, the Journey to the Holy Land, p. 146 ff. Brandt does not admit that the Danish chronicle was translated from Swedish: p. 347. The 'Geiplur,' 968 vv, and one version of 'Geipa-táttur,' 340 vv, are included in Koschwitz's Sechs Bearbeitungen, p. 139 ff, p. 174 ff. For a discussion of them see Kölbing in Germania, XX, 233-239, and as to the relations of the several versions, etc., Koschwitz, in Romanische Studien, II, 1 ff, his Ueberlieferung und Sprache der Chanson du Voyage de Charlemagne, and Sechs Bearbeitungen, Einleitung. The Färöe ballad is thought to show traces in some places of Christiern Pedersen's edition of the Danish chronicle, 1584 (Kölbing, as above, 238, 239), or of stall prints founded on that. This does not, however, necessarily put the ballad into the sixteenth century. Might not Pedersen have had ballad authority for such changes and additions as he made? It may well be supposed that he had, and if what is peculiar to Pedersen may have come from ballads, we must hesitate to derive the ballads from Pedersen. It is, moreover, neither strange nor unexampled that popular ballads should be affected by tradition committed to print as well as by tradition still floating in memory. The Färöe copies of 'Greve Genselin,' for example, as Grundtvig remarks, I, 223, note, though undoubtedly original and independent of Danish, evince acquaintance with Vedel's printed text.

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