﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 79 



to reach the Greenland colony and the ancient memoranda repeated 

 bv the 1 2th century Landnamabook. There would be plenty of 

 opportunity for that brief Norse record, during- their shipboard life 

 and the fchree Wineland winters. So careful a man as Thorfinn, with 

 such a wife as Gudrid beside him, seeking to plant a colony and 

 show others the way, surely would not have left this important matter 

 to the chances of memory only. Runes would have answered very 

 well, the task being light and easy. The result is the only saga of 

 exploration, with just one other to be doubtfully excepted. 



The residuum of verse * in it may seem odd company for coast- 

 notes and distances, though Thorhall's derision in that form had a 

 very practical turn at the end of an unsatisfying winter ; but verses 

 often appear in Icelandic sagas. Sometimes they are the known pro- 

 ductions of the poet-champions celebrated, or imitation of their 

 work, both kinds being exemplified by the sagas of Cormac and 

 Egil ; sometimes, as in Gretla, they are chiefly foreign interpolations 

 of no taste nor skill ; or again they may be real or supposed relics 

 of older balladry. In the Saga of the Heath-Slayings — that savage, 

 unforgettable epic, which somehow recalls the equally intense and 

 primitive old Scotch border-ballad with the refrain " and my gear's 

 a gone " — the basic tales in verse are not always quoted from, but 

 cited occasionally by the prior author's name. Both plans are largely 

 and about equally adopted in the Eyrbyggja Saga. 



In the Saga of Eric the Red, a not extravagant ingenuity may 

 distinguish the episodes of Thorhall the Huntsman, the Gaelic Run- 

 ners, the Battle at Hop, the Death of Thorvald, the Markland 

 Captives, and the Death of Biarni, each easily separable and individ- 

 ual, as probably single ballads in their original shape. That of the 

 Gaels Haki and Hsekia has been inserted in the wrong place, presum- 

 ably by the final saga-writer, making them find grapes and grain 

 before finding birds' eggs and having an overlapping joint with the 

 context, more instantly obvious than that of the two creation legends 

 in Genesis. This anecdote, if veracious, belongs evidently to the 

 next autumn at earliest. 



The place-names of the saga have been transferred from Iceland, for 

 example, Hop, Straumey, and Kjalarness, just as Oxford of Mary- 

 land or Plymouth of Massachusetts derived their names through 

 English colonists from English towns ; or they are descriptive and of 

 general application where the same conditions prevail, as Markland 



*Prof. Diman's critique of De Costa's "Pre-Columbian Discovery." North 

 American Review.. 1869. vol. 109. p. 269. 



