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The Middle English and Old Norse Story of Olive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

H. M. Smyser
H. M. Smyser*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

The lost Middle English romance which we may call Olive and Landres was written before 1286. It was, therefore, one of the earliest English romances of which we know—among extant romances only four are certainly as old as that, and hardly half a dozen others can conceivably be as old. Before it disappeared it was translated into Old Norse prose. A foreword to the translation tells us how, in the winter after the death of the Scottish King Alexander, grandfather of the Maid of Norway (that is, in the winter of 1286), Lord Bjarni Erlingsson of Bjarkey was busy on a political mission to Scotland. There he found this saga written down in the English language. Impressed, ostensibly by its high moral lessons, Lord Bjarni had the saga translated from English into Norse.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1941 , pp. 69 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

Note 1 in page 69 Namely, King Horn, Bevis of Hamtoun, Floris and Blauncheflur, and Havelok.

Note 2 in page 69 See J. E. Wells, Manual of Writings in Middle English (New Haven, 1916), p. 5.

Note 3 in page 69 Bjarni's English title (Lord, Herra) derives from a baronetcy bestowed on him at the Concordat of Tönsberg in 1277. Between that year and his death, in 1313, he performed many important diplomatic missions in Britain. Henry Goddard Leach suggests that Bjarni may have got his romance from the Bruces of Annandale, with whom he was acquainted. See Leach, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia (Harvard Press, 1921), pp. 68–71, 241–245.

Note 4 in page 69 It is so called in the basic manuscript of the printed edition (though not in the edition itself).

Note 5 in page 69 Ed. C. R. Unger, Karlamagnús Saga ok Kappa hans (Christiania, 1860). The Landres þáttr (pp. 50–75) is the second of ten Parts.

Note 6 in page 69 See Unger, p. iii, and Leach, Angevin Britain, p. 238.

6a The first quarter of the Landres þáttr (that is to say, the first 3000-odd words, Chs. 1–4) will appear, as translated by the present writer, in an anthology of Old Norse literature which Henry Goddard Leach of the American-Scandinavian Foundation is now compiling.

Note 7 in page 70 “Ueber die Verknüpfungen einiger französischer Epen u. die Stellung des Doon de Laroche [sic],” Romanische Forschungen, xxxi (1911–12), 303–394.

Note 8 in page 70 In the Introduction to his edition of Doon de la Roche, Soc. des anciens Textes français (Paris, 1921). See especially pp. lxv-ciii.

Note 9 in page 70 Danmarks Gamie Folkeviser (Copenhagen, 1853), i, 199–201. The German translation is Ferdinand Wolf's in “Ueber die Oliva-Sage,” Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften [zu Wien], viii (1857), 263–268. Benary was unfortunate in that Grundtvig's summary is amazingly inaccurate—I count nine errors, great and small, in it. It would be impossible to believe that Grundtvig saw the same version that we know had he not specified his manuscripts, but he did specify them and they are the same two that Unger uses. Grundtvig's worst error consists in putting certain words of Olive into the mouth of a bird. This sets Benary to beating the bushes for other examples of talking birds. See note 50, below.

Note 10 in page 70 See Unger's edition, pp. li–lv. The French translation is Gaston Paris's, in Bibliothèque de l'École des Charles, 5th series, v (1864), 105–111. Huet's basis was far better than Benary's and Huet himself is far more critical than Benary. In fact, Huet's Introduction, except in one respect which I note below, pp. 78f., is as pretty a piece of scholarship as one would hope to find.

Note 11 in page 70 “Ueber die Oliva-Sage” (as above) and Ueber die neuesten Leistungen der Franzosen für die Herausgabe ihrer National-Heldengedichte (Vienna, 1833), pp. 98–123, esp. 121–123.

Note 12 in page 70 Bibliothèque de l'Écoles des Charles (as above); cf. Histoire poétique de Charlemagne (Paris, 1905), p. 414, n. 3.

Note 13 in page 70 English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1882–94), ii, 39 f.

Note 14 in page 70 Angevin Britain (as above).

Note 15 in page 70 Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens (N.Y.U. Press, 1927), pp. 95–98, cf. pp. 123 f.; and Romance in Iceland (Princeton Press, 1934), pp. 182 f. To the list of authorities cited above might be added R. M. Wilson, who touches on the Landres þáttr very briefly in his “More Lost Literature in Old and Middle English,” Leeds Studies in English, v (1936), pp. 23 f.

Note 16 in page 71 Danmarks Folkeviser, i, 199.

16a Cf. King Horn C, ll. 1101 f.: “Hor[n] him зede alone,/also he sprunge of stone” (ed. G. H. McKnight, E.E.T.S., 14, London, 1901). (This reference was supplied by my friend Dr. B. J. Whiting.)

Note 17 in page 72 Unger uses two manuscripts in his edition. It is perhaps notable that while all these fourteen passages appear in the manuscript which Unger uses as a basis for his text, seven of them are abridged or omitted in his collateral manuscript. Presumably they seemed odd and extraneous to the scribe of the latter manuscript, as indeed they are. See Unger's edition, pp. 55, n. 14; 60, n. 12; 61, n. 3; 66, n. 6; 68, n. 12; 69, n. 13; and 75, n. 17.

17a It is interesting to note incidentally that this black man (blámaor—he may be a Moor rather than a negro) speaks the same highflown language that is attributed to non-Caucasians in the literature of so many later centuries. “If any doughty sons of men see me to have much gold, then will they swiftly have me sprinkled with earth” (i.e., interred)—“Ef n$ookkurir dugandi manna synir líta mik hafa gull mikit, þa láta þeir mik skjótt moldu ausa” (Ch. 4).

Note 18 in page 73 It is mentioned in Hammershaimb (as below), p. 280.

Note 19 in page 73 “Ueber die Verknüpfungen,” pp. 326, 328.

Note 20 in page 73 See Huet's Boon, pp. lxvii, lxxvii.

Note 21 in page 73 Pp. 160 f. See also the Arnamagnæan Catalogue (Copenhagen, 1889–94) under Items 1528, 1529, 1601, and 2083 (AM 604b qto, 604o qto; AM 616b qto and 951 qto).

Note 22 in page 74 V. U. Hammershaimb heard the Kvad sung on four islands and in two versions. He published it in the Antiquarisk Tidsskrift for 1846–48 (pp. 279–304) with a preface and a free translation into Danish verse. He considers the ballad very old.

Note 23 in page 74 The “Óluvu Kvæoi” was sung as part of the celebration preceding Yule—see the refrain and Hammershaimb's last paragraph, p. 281. The following may be compared with the Landres þáttr. Hugin's wooing and fetching Óluva home is elaborately described (stanzas 2–48). Óluva actually undergoes three ordeals. The first is water, the second, fire. The third is to dwell in the serpent-house in the woods (98–112). Meantime Mýlint has injured Landrus and accused Óluva of trying to kill the child (105 f.). Landrus first leaves his father's house after striking Málandrus, at play (119–125). Sivja (= Siliven) equips Landrus with clothes; he rides away, is cheated of the clothes, returns, and is given more (126–132). Two pilgrims invite him to eat; meat, drink, and clothing disappear (133–135). Sivja boxes his ears but equips him a third time (136–138). He meets and robs dwarfs, finds his mother (139–154). Landrus goes to Sivja, then brings his mother to her (154–159). He rides off to seek his step-mother (cf. 158). Episode of the disappearing church; simultaneously with the killing of the dragon, the stepmother, who is at home at a Yule feast, falls down dead (160–163). Landrus takes Óluva home, Mýlint is punished, Óluva enters a nunnery—Charlemagne, though mentioned, has no hand in the action (164–178).

Note 24 in page 75 See especially stanzas SS, 70, 84 f., and 156.

Note 25 in page 75 See Histoire poétique, p. 414 n. 3.

Note 26 in page 75 Against it—seemingly—is the fact that a redactor of Doon de Nanteuil speaks of “Olive, sister of Charlemagne, daughter of Pippin.” Paul Meyer thinks that some lost chanson de geste must have made Olive a sister of Charlemagne. Huet shows reason for thinking that the Olive of Doon de Nanteuil is an invention of the redactor. See Huet's edition of Doon de la Roche, pp. xciii f., and cf. p. lxxi. We may add, in support of Paris and Huet, that a similar substitution of Charlemagne for another king (this time not Pippin but Louis le Débonnaire) has evidently taken place in the ninth Part of the Karlamagnús Saga—see Unger, pp. 532–540, and compare Wilhelm Cloetta, Les deux rédactions en vers du Moniage Guillaume, Soc. des anciens Textes français (Paris, 1906, 1911), ii, 101 f.

Note 27 in page 75 Edition of Huet, as cited.

Note 28 in page 75 This work was reprinted by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles (Madrid, 1871). A long summary of it is given by Wolf in his Ueber die neuesten Leistungen, pp. 98–121.

Note 29 in page 75 Huet, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii.

Note 30 in page 75 Wolf, Leistungen, p. 123.

Note 31 in page 75 Benary fancies that he sees one minor parallel, but it is too far-fetched to merit serious attention (“Ueber die Verknüpfungen,” pp. 325 f.).

Note 32 in page 76 This handling of the French and Spanish romances together tends to obscure the fact that there are vast differences between them. Such differences, however, are irrelevant to our discussion.

Note 33 in page 76 Benary deals exhaustively with them. See “Ueber die Verknüpfungen,” pp. 312–327.

Note 34 in page 77 See Huet, Doon, pp. lxxx-lxxxix; Huet relies particularly on the Franco-Italian Macaire and various versions of the Chevalier au Cygne. See also Miss Schlauch's Chaucer's Constance, Chapter ii: “Accused Queens in Folk-Tales.” Cf. Bolte-Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig, 1913–32), ii, 380–394 (to No. 96).

Note 35 in page 77 See Huet, Doon, p. lxxxviii (bibliography on the courtly exile); and Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance, Chapters iii-v: “The Accused Queen in Romance.”

Note 36 in page 77 Pages lxxiii-lxxxix.

Note 37 in page 77 Chaucer's Constance, pp. 95–98. Cf. pp. 123 f.

Note 38 in page 79 Besides the argument already summarized, Huet offers four. The Landres þáttr is more primitive than the Continental romances, he says, because: (1) it represents the queen's accuser as a thwarted lover; (2) it makes the queen's supposed lover a person whom only a depraved woman would tolerate (i.e., a black man); (3) it has the slandered queen languish in a dungeon; and (4) it describes her rescue without embarking first on an “exile” story, a commonplace of late, decadent romances.

Note 39 in page 80 Chaucer's Constance, pp. 97 f. Miss Schlauch finds a second evidence that the Landres þáttr has been contaminated, but it is considerably less impressive. She notes that Ingelbert fights a duel to clear Olive's name (see Ch. 7). This episode, Miss Schlauch thinks, is an importation, not from folklore but from another type of chivalrous story, in which an accused queen, deserted by all her kin, is rescued by a champion from outside. No doubt it is an importation, but the importation was made in the original Olive romance, not in the Landres þáttr—see Doon, ll. 370–384, where Olive's friend Jofroi offers to fight a duel for her. The only real difference between the Landres þáttr and Doon is that, whereas in the former Ingelbert fights a duel and the result is ignored, in the latter Jofroi offers to fight a duel and his offer is ignored. The case is parallel to Olive's offer to undergo an ordeal of fire; in the Landres þáttr (Ch. 6) and Doon (11. 241–278) her request is denied, whereas in Enrrique (pp. 18–20) she is allowed to undergo the ordeal but when she comes out unsinged, that proof of innocence is denied. Such expansions or suppressions in individual romances are not significant.

Note 40 in page 81 In Enrrique, Olive takes temporary refuge in a nunnery after she is cast off by her husband. This may indicate that the ending of the Landres þáttr was in the original—Olive enters a nunnery at the end. But the author of the Landres þáttr (or the author of Olive and Landres) was obviously very pious; so was the Spanish author. Consequently, I do not attach much importance to this similarity.

Note 41 in page 82 Both the Tischlein-deck'-dich and the plague of reptiles are very common motives, of course. It would be surprising if they were found in no chanson de geste.

Note 42 in page 82 I.e., ll. 1797–2000, edition of Patrice Henry, Soc. des anciens Textes français (Paris, 1935).

Note 43 in page 82 These, too, might have been added by Bjarni's translator, though, as I have indicated, I doubt very much that Bjarni's translator made any addition so extensive.

Note 44 in page 82 And perhaps the kind of game itself. See F. P. Magoun, Jr. History of Football (Bockum-Langendreer, 1938), pp. 3 ff., 139 f.

Note 45 in page 83 There is no reason why the detail should have been suppressed in the “ambition romances” of the Continent. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Note 46 in page 83 See H. R. Patch, “Some Elements in Mediæval Descriptions of the Otherworld,” PMLA, xxxiii (1918), 601–643; and Hans Siuts, Jenseitsmotive im deutschen Volksmärchen (Leipzig, 1911).

Note 47 in page 83 Landres climbs a hill before first encountering the dwarfs—see Ch. 13. He crosses a swift stream in Ch. 15.

Note 48 in page 83 Though the tabu is obscure in the Landres þáttr; perhaps Landres has been told not to tarry on his journey—see Ch. 15. In Sir Launfal (for example), the hero loses his horse, armor, and much else when he breaks a tabu by speaking of his Otherworld bride.

Note 49 in page 83 The “wise” horse is usually a gift of, or is stolen from, a woodland wild man—see the story of “Eisenhans,” Grimm No. 136 and Bolte-Polívka, Anmerkungen, iii, 94–114. Cf. Bolte-Polívka, iii, 18–37.

Note 50 in page 83 Enchantment is found in many of the stories of the Accused Queen. See note 34. Sometimes a talking bird figures in these stories. We have seen that Grundtvig erroneously put a talking bird in the Landres þáttr. Various other and later scholars have fancied that they saw a talking bird in the “Óluvu Kvæoi.” In each case, the bird is one which sits in the window of Olive's dungeon. If, in the “Óluvu Kvæoi,” we read stanzas 147–148 without assuming what we know from the Landres þáttr, namely, that Landres's arrow missed the bird and struck his mother, then, indeed, there is a talking bird. But in that case, we must explain why the bird, in stanza 150, calls Landres her son! There is no talking bird in either the Landres þáttr or “Óluvu Kvæoi,” appropriate as one might be from a folklore point of view.

Note 51 in page 83 I suspect that part of the confusion of folklore motives in the Landres þápttr may have come about through the partial substitution of one set of tests for another. In Chapter 15, we have these events (among others):

(A) as we have noted in our plot-outline, Landres, equipped by Siliven and sent out to seek Charlemagne, comes upon a palmer, sitting on the ground eating. The palmer invites Landres to join him. Landres dismounts and sits down. The palmer and his food, and Landres's horse, sword, and armor disappear. Landres returns to Siliven. (B) Siliven tells Landres to let this be a lesson to him; he should never permit a friend or kinsman to go fasting from him (!). She re-equips him and he sets out again. (C) An old man urges Landres to dismount and enter a church. Landres gallops at the church and it disappears. (D) Landres rides into a field full of knights. The knights come toward him. A black knight challenges him. Landres rides against the black knight, who turns into a serpent. Landres's horse kills the serpent.

It will be noted that (B), Siliven's courtesy lesson, is completely irrelevant. If, however, we look at the folklore of tests, we find that a hero is frequently made to prove that he has three of the following characteristics: (1) he will hold to the straight way under all circumstances; (2) he will refuse no man food or drink; (3) he will never be jealous; and (4) he will never fear death. In the Avowynge of Arthur, Sir Baldwin vows “Neuyr to be jelus of my wife, Ne of no birde bryзte; Nere werne nomon my mete, Quen I gode may gete, Ne drede my dethe for no threte, Nauthir of king ner knyзte” (st. ix). Baldwin's companions test him and find that he lives up to all these vows. What interests us is the fact that the second vow (never to refuse food) is akin to Siliven's irrelevant injunction to Landres, and the test for the third vow (never to fear death) is very like Landres's adventure (D): six of Baldwin's companions, apparently in disguise, ride fiercely at him as he is coming over a field; he refuses to be frightened or turn from his way, but instead makes at one of their number (Kay), thus passing the test (sts. xxxviii-xliv). See Edwin A. Greenlaw, “The Vows of Baldwin,” PMLA, xxi (1906), 575–636; and W. A. Clouston, “The Three Precepts,” Folk-Lore, iii (1892), 556–558. The Avowynge is published in Three Early English Metrical Romances, ed. John Robson, Camden Soc. (London, 1842), and in W. H. French and C. B. Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances (New York, 1930), pp. 605–646.