[In the following excerpt, Hibbard alludes briefly to Bevis's genre classification, possible origins, metrical schemes, and wide popularity.]

… Beves of Hampton differs materially from both Horn and Havelok. Although originally, perhaps, a viking tale of the tenth century,¹⁶ in its extant forms it is a typical romance of adventure. There is no notably English feature in it save a few place-names and the obviously late addition telling of Beves's fight with the London citizens.¹⁷ It would seem, rather, that Beves was an international character. Five versions of his story in French, six in Italian, others in Scandinavian, Dutch, and Welsh, attest his popularity; in Russia 'he was the most acclimated hero of the chivalric epic.'¹⁸ The wide wandering of his story was like his own fabled adventurings, from England to Africa, and up and down the length and breadth of Europe.

Like a rolling ball it seems to have gathered up widely divergent motives and incidents, and in itself aptly illustrates the catholicity of mediaeval taste. There is scarcely an incident in it that may not be paralleled in some one of such famous romances as Guy of Warwick or Lancelot de Lake, which it mentions by name, or in Tristram, William of Palerne, or Ferumbras. Much of the phraseology is the stock-in-trade sort, long tried and dear to the children-like lovers of mediaeval story.¹⁹ Traces of Germanic folk lore are found in the animal fights, and other motives suggest Greek,²⁰ Persian, Middle High German, and old French stories.²¹ The influence of the Crusades is evident in the importance of Saracen conquest, and the belligerency of a militant age reveals itself in the detailed account of four single combats and five pitched battles. The romantic element is enlivened, as in most cases where Crusading influence entered in, by spirited wooing on the part of the young Saracen heroine; and the supernatural, through magic rings and herbs of healing, lends the ever delightful touch of mystery. Finally, the bourgeois element, indicative of the passing of romance from courtly lips and courtly audience, adds its touch of real and simple life. Like any little lad of a village housewife, Beves is taken by the ear; he is a rude and awkward lover; Josian, in a scene like that of Brunhild in the Nibelungenlied, over which 'one can hear the old-time audience chuckling,' hangs her unwelcome husband on the wall; and Ascopard's attempted baptism is a scene of pure burlesque comedy.

From all this, then, it may be concluded that the author of Beves was of different character and purpose from those who wrote Horn and Havelok. These stories have in them more clearly the sound of the minstrel's voice; they were better, probably, in the telling than in the writing, but in Beves one feels a clerkly, fourteenth-century scribe at work. Though possibly inspired by local pride, for his Southern dialect would indicate a home in the neighbourhood of Southampton,²² he wrote down no native English 'song,' but followed a French original, deviating from it only in the way of expanded detail and such additions as a typical dragon fight or a battle, which seemed to him necessary ingredients in the ample proportions of romance. He knew his 'olde bokes' and made industrious, generous use of them. The result is a tale of 4620 verses, interesting enough as a kind of summary of popular mediaeval motives, but well open to the elvish ridicule of a Chaucer, who jeers at such long-winded 'merriness' and solemnly parodies from it most of the metre of his Sir Thopas. The two entirely different metres of Beves, the tail-rhymed six-line stanzas of the first 474 lines, the short rhyming couplet of the remainder, may, perhaps, be explained by that lack of decisive literary consciousness which distinguishes the imitators from the originators of a popular literary fashion. In Beves, despite the old-fashioned, undying charm of a story for the story's sake, one may see clearly the forces that brought about the degeneracy of metrical romance.

Notes

… ¹⁶ Suchier, H., 'Bibliothethaca Normannica' VII. cxcv, 1899. But see also Leo Jordan, 'Uber Boeve de Hamtone,' p. 59, Halle, 1908, or R. Zenker, 'Das altfranzosische Epos von Boeve de Hamtone und der Ursprung de Hamlet Sage.' Literarhistorischen Forschungen, Band XXXII: Berlin, 1909.

¹⁷ 'Beves of Hamtoun,' ed. E. Kolbing, p. xxxiv: E.E.T.S., 1894.

¹⁸ Wasselofsky, A., Materiaux et Recherches pour servir a l'Histoire du Roman et de la Novelle, Tome III, 229-305. Reviewed in Romania XVIII, 313.

¹⁹ Schmirgel, C. 'Typical Expression and Repetitions in "Sir Beves of Hamtoun,"' Kolbing's edition, p. xlv.

²⁰ Zenker, pp. 318, 398.

²¹ Deutschbein, [M., 'Studien zur Sagengeschichte Englands, Horn, Havelok, Tristram, Boeve, Guy'], pp. 194, 211 [Cöthen, 1906].

²² 'Beves,' ed. Kölbing, p. xxv.