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SIR ALDINGAK. 237
It behoved her to clear herself from shame By battle; and she takes much trouble • To find one to be her champion: But finds no one, for very huge was The accuser, — as a giant. But a dwarf, whom she had brought up, Undertook the fight with him. At the first blow he hamstrung him; At the second he cut off his feet. Mimecan was the dwarfs name, Who was so good a champion, As the history, which is written, Says of him. The lady was freed from blame, But the lady the emperor No more will have as her lord."
finally, John Brompton, writing two hundred years after William of Malmesbury, repeats his account, and gives the names of both the combatants, — "a youth called Mimicon, and a man of gigantic size, by name Roddyngar" (Raadengard = the Danish Ravengaard).
The story of William of Malmesbury and the rest, though it is sufficiently in accordance with the Danish and English ballads, is in direct opposition to the testimony of contemporary German chroniclers, who represent Queen Gunhild as living on the best terms with her husband, and instead of growing old in God's service in a nunnery, as dying of the plague in Italy two years after her marriage, and hardly twenty years of age. It is manifest, therefore, that the English chroniclers derived their accounts from ballads current at their day,* which, as they were not founded on any
* William of Malmesbury refers to ballads which were |
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