es Bil =_ 
‘ 
528 
Hue fulde the horn of wyne, 
Ant dronk to that pelryne. © 
Hue seide, Drync thi felle, 
And seththen thou me telle, 
Yef thou Horn ever seye, 
Under wode-leye, 
Horn drone of horn astqunde, 
Ant thren is ryng to grounde, 
Ant seide, Quene, thou thench 
What y threu in the drench. 
The quene eode to boure, 
Mid hire maidues foure, 
Hue fond that hue wolde, 
The ryng ygraved of golde, 
That Horn of hire hedde, 
Fol sore hyre adredde 
That Horn ded were, 
For his ring was there. 
If this were told in the sweet verse of 
Spenser, nothing in romance would be 
more beautiful. The very play upon 
the name of Horn is affecting. The 
word is played upon ina similar manner 
in the other romance upon the same sub- 
ject, which Mr. Ritson has printed from 
the Auchinleck MS.; and this seems to 
afford some slight presumption that the 
story is not originally French. Indeed, 
none of the names look as uf they had 
been invented for French lips. The 
theta occurs too frequently; a good, 
manly, English sound; the stumbling- 
block, the shibboleth of ovr nasal- 
twanged neighbours. - From the names, 
and from the mention of miming in the 
Auchinleck copy, we suspect the story to 
be of Scandinavian growth. In thefrench 
fragment the names are different; they 
would be changed there to render them 
pronounceable. But there scems, no 
reason why an Englishman should have 
altered them ; supposing the French to 
be the original: nor do we know that 
-any such alteration has been made in 
the numberless tales versified from that 
language. ‘There is yet another cireum- 
stance which may throw some light upon 
the origin of the romance. It is seldom 
that any inference can be drawn trom 
the manners of the poems ; for the man- 
ners of France and England were at 
that time little different. But in Horn 
Childe is a trait of manners certainly of 
northern growth. Rymenild,the king’s 
daughter, serves round the horn, after 
the meat was done, like Rowena, “ for 
that wer lawe of londe.”? Something 
may also be inferred from the geogra- 
phical names Sudenne, Estnesse, West- 
nesse. Sudenne is Britain, and it is said 
of Allof, who reigned there “ king he 
was by west; but if Britain bore 8. or 
, i od ¢ =» iS 
’ POETRY. 
S. W. of the maker of the story, we may 
ascertain in what latitude he made his 
observation. 
It is dangerous to differ from Mr. 
Ritson respecting old English poetry, for 
of all men living he certainly is best ac- 
quainted with the subject. But in the 
present instance he seems to have as- 
sented to Tyrwhitt’s general position, 
“ that we have no English romance 
prior to the age of Chaucer, which is 
not a translation Or imitation of some 
earlier French romance,” and to have 
no other ground for the opinion which 
he has formed. 
These remarks have led us unwittingly 
from the story. Horn makés. his ap- 
pearance with his followers, conquers 
his rival, and celebrates his marriage. 
He then tells Eylmer who he is, and 
how unjustly he had suspected him of 
seducing his daughter; and he bids 
him keep her till he has recovered his 
father’s kingdom : 
<«« Then shall Rymenild the yinge 
Ligg by Horn the kinge. 
Horn succeeds in the expedition. He 
exterminates the Saracens; builds up cha- 
pels and churches, and takes the crown. 
Meantime the traitor Fykenild seizes 
his wife, and secures her in a stron 
castle. Horn returns on the day when 
the forced marriage is to take place: he 
and some of his companions obtain ad- 
mittance as harpers to the marriage 
feast: he slays Fykenild, and thus termi- 
nates his troubles and adventures; living 
thenceforth in true love and godliness. 
‘The Kyng of Tars and the Soudan 
of Dammas, from the Bodleian, the 
writing apparently of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, supposed to be from the French, 
as the poet repeatedly refers to his ori- 
ginal. But is it not possible that these 
repeated references may have been an 
artifice of the poet; as Ariosto quotes 
Turpin for tales, which Turpin never 
devised? The King of Tars has a fair 
daughter, whom the Soldanne of Da- 
mascus demands in marriage: neither 
she nor her parents will consent that she 
should be wedded to a heathen hound. 
The soldan comes with a mighty army, 
and gives the king a severe defeat, and 
then the princess resolves to marry him, 
that theremay be no nacre waste of blood. 
When the soldan has carried her to Da- 
mascus, he makes her renounce her re- 
ligion, which she does outwardly, hav- 
ing been encouraged in a dream. In 
