SOURCE: "Havelok the Dane: Structure, Symbols, Meaning," Studies in Philology, Vol. LXIV, No. 4, July, 1967, pp. 586-605.

[In the following excerpt, Hanning praises Havelok the Dane for its unified structure and consistent symbolism which work together to clarify and support the main meaning of the work.]

The so-called Matter of England romances—the middle English romances whose stories are drawn from the sagas and traditions of pre- and post-conquest England—¹ have yet to receive their due share of attention from critics of medieval literature. Earlier investigators of King Horn, Havelok, Athelston,²Richard the Lion Hearted, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, and Gamelyn, concentrating mainly on sources and analogues, on the priority of the various saga versions, and on folklore parallels and basic story. patterns,³ showed little inclination to discuss questions of literary worth. Despite major shifts in critical emphasis, little has been done in recent years to redress the balance in favor of a literary analysis of the Matter of England romances through a systematic study of structure, symbols, and central concerns. J. M. Hill's reconsideration of King Horn,⁴ a happy exception to the general neglect, has established beyond doubt the need for such study, and it is the intention of the present discussion to follow Hill's lead by re-examining the romance of Havelok the Dane.⁵ I hope to show that Havelok, for all its popular quality and its roughhewn versifying, is nevertheless deserving of commendation for its unified structure, for its consistent use of central symbolic acts and devices, and for the way in which structure and symbols cooperate to establish and clarify the work's central meanings.

There are several versions of the Havelok story, of which Havelok the Dane is the earliest extant English version.⁶ The basic story concerns a young crown prince of Denmark who, while still a child, is deprived of his inheritance and almost of his life. He flees to England and grows up a commoner. After a series of adventures, and marriage to the analogously dispossessed heiress to an English kingdom, Havelok, by now fully grown, returns to Denmark and regains his throne. The story ends with Havelok's return to England to punish those who had denied his wife her inheritance, and with the inauguration of a joint rule over both kingdoms by Havelok and his wife.

This farfetched plot has, it will be granted, a popular ring to it.⁷ It also has important similarities to the plot of King Horn, which, as Hill has shown, is basically the story of a hero's coming of age.⁸ In both Horn and the Havelok story, the young prince, having attained adulthood, regains his royal patrimony, and in the process marries a princess whose land he will also rule after he has recovered his own kingdom. Nor do similarities cease with the respective heroes. The heroine of the Havelok story (Goldeboru in Havelok the Dane, Argentille in the earlier versions of Gaimar and the Anglo-Norman lai d'Avelok) is, like Rimenid, heroine of Horn, the daughter of a king, and is married against her will. In the case of Goldeboru (to give her the name she has in the version here under discussion), her unwilling marriage to the unrecognized Havelok is preceded by years of imprisonment in a castle, thanks to the wicked guardian who wishes to usurp her throne.

The parallels just outlined are not unique to Havelok and Horn; rather, they represent three common elements of romance plots, medieval and non-medieval, which may be characterized as follows: (1) the hero's movement from loss to recovery.⁹ This movement is often linked with (2) his development from immaturity or faultiness toward maturity or perfection.¹⁰ The process of development, in turn, often involves (3) a love relationship which unites the hero (in his deprived and/or developing state) and a heroine who has also been the victim of deprivation or other injustice.¹¹

Hill has suggested that these themes, so closely bound together in Horn, serve there to reflect the process of growth taking place within the hero. In his view, the various betrayals and forced marriages which form the climaxes of the romance represent a symbolic psycho-machia between Horn's desire to excel in deeds of prowess and his desire for the love of Rimenild.¹² It is Horn's immaturity and indecisiveness which cause, and are reflected in, the trials of the heroine.

The psycho-symbolism which Hill proposes as the key to the meaning, and to the thematic complexes which determine the meaning, of King Horn is not, however, a suitable key to Havelok the Dane. This becomes clear at the very beginning of the latter work, where we see that the heroine's misadventures, far from being introduced as reflections of the hero's state of emotional immaturity, form the opening episode of the story. Goldeboru's perilous predicament—her father, king Athelwold, dies and she is left in the protection of earl Godrich, who betrays her and wishes the throne for himself—comes at a time when we have as yet heard nothing of Havelok, and when, as we soon learn, he is himself a helpless child undergoing the process of being orphaned, betrayed, and deprived of his inheritance.¹³ If, however, the interacting plot elements of Havelok the Dane are not susceptible of explanation in the same way as the analogous parts of King Horn, this is not to say that the Havelok poet has failed to impress any unified artistic design upon his largely inherited narrative fabric. I believe it possible to demonstrate that Havelok has a structure capable of supporting a consistent meaning and that the structural skeleton is garbed in the firm flesh of artistically convincing and emotionally fitting incidents.

The first clue to the ability and intent of the poet is provided by those opening scenes of the poem to which allusion has just been made. Havelok and Goldeboru are subjected to exactly parallel introductory calamities: each is the juvenile heir of a good king struck down by disease while still in his prime;¹⁴ each child-monarch is then entrusted to a baron of the realm who betrays his trust and oppresses the helpless protagonist to satisfy his own greed and ambition.¹⁵ The elaborate parallelism of these incidents is a noteworthy peculiarity of this version of the Havelok story. In the earlier versions found in Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis and the Anglo-Norman lai d'Avelok,'¹⁶ the heroine's situation is much as we find it in the English romance,¹⁷ but Havelok's misfortunes stem from King Arthur's conquest of Denmark, which unseats and destroys the king and establishes a traitor on the throne, forcing a loyal noble, Grim, to flee the country with the endangered child.¹⁸ In short, this earlier form of the Havelok story includes political and historical elements which the poet of Havelok the Dane removes, preferring in their place a double statement of the process by which a helpless child is stripped of his rights, and therefore of his future, by a strong and wicked adult.¹⁹ The poet's restatement of these hard facts reinforces our impression of the helplessness of youth and the contrasting power of adulthood; there are no political or pseudo-historical considerations to divert our attention from this central, stark contrast. Why the poet should wish to emphasize the contrast becomes apparent when we recall that the central movements of the Havelok story are from loss to recovery and, complementarily, from youth to maturity. By linking youth and loss twice in quick succession without other complications, Havelok the Dane unmistakably announces the thematic interests which control its narrative progress.

The narrative begins by examining royal power, and then proceeds to portray a double transfer of royal power, underscoring in the process the crucial relationship between power and human destiny. It is important to note that royal power is two-fold in nature: there is the personal power which allows the king to maintain possession of his throne, and there is the social power which keeps his kingdom in a state of order and peace. The latter, social power of the king is stressed in the encomium on Athelwold which opens the poem:

It was a king bi are dawes,
þat in his time were gode lawes:
He dede maken an ful wel holden; …
Wreieres and wrobberes made he falle,
And hated hem so man doth galle;
Vtlawes and theues made he bynde,
Alle that he micthe fynde,
And heye hengen on gaiwe-tre; …

And wo dide widuen wrong,
Were he neure knicth so strong
þat he ne made him sone kesten
In feteres, and ful faste festen,.
(27-82)²⁰

although his personal power is not ignored:

Of knith ne hauede he neuere drede, …
And oþer he refte him hors or wede,
Or made him sone handes sprede,
And "Louerd, merci!" loude grede.
(90-96)

When death threatens the king, his first worry is that his offspring is too young and weak to wield the personal power necessary to survive in the royal office:

 "Crist, wat shal y don?
Louerd, what shal me to rede?
I woth ful wel ich haue mi mede:
Hw shal nou mi douhter fare? …
Sho ne kan speke, ne sho kan go.
Yif scho couþe on horse ride,
And a thousande men bi hire syde,
And sho were comen intil helde,
And Engelond sho couþe welde,
And don of hem that hire were queme,
And hire bodi couke yeme,
Ne wolde me neuere iuele like,
Ne þou ich were in heuene-riche!"
(117-33)

The king's fears are justified: the rightful heir falls an easy prey to the treacherous baron, who usurps and misapplies the royal power in order to keep the country for himself and his heirs.

þe riche erl [Godrich] ne foryat nouth
þat he ne dede al Engelond
Sone sayse intil his hond; …
Soþlike, in a lite þrawe,
Al Engelond of him stod awe;
Al Engelond was of him adrad
So his þe beste fro þe gad.…
þo bigan Godrich to sike,
And seyde, "Weþer [Goldeboru] sholde be
Quen and leuedi ouer me? …
Sholde ic yeue a fol, a þeme,
Engelond, þou sho it yeme? …
Ich haue a sone, a ful fayr knaue:
He shal Engelond al haue!
(249-309)²¹

The first five hundred lines of Havelok the Dane re-count the stripping away of all the legitimate rights and expectations of Goldeboru and Havelok; this equals one-sixth of the entire poem, and brings us to the low point of the narrative. That point, I suggest, comes not when Grim is preparing to kill Havelok at Godard's command,²² but earlier, at line 484. There the child Havelok, after watching the fiendish Godard slaughter his two sisters, kneels before the usurper and surrenders his inherited sovereignty, saying:

Manrede, louerd, biddi you!23

The medieval ceremony of offering homage, here portrayed in stark simplicity, symbolized the establishment or reaffirmation of a special relationship between the lord and his vassal. Coming at this moment in Havelok the Dane, the hero's act of homage takes on additional significance, for by offering homage to Godard, Havelok is symbolically denying his identity as king and lord of Denmark. The loss of social identity implicit in Havelok's surrender of sovereignty determines and prefigures his subsequent, explicit loss of personal identity in leaving Denmark to grow up as a fisherman's son in England.

In addition to serving the functions mentioned so far, line 484 also provides an important clue to the overall construction of Havelok the Dane. By recognizing the line (and the situation it describes) as the low point of the story, we are enabled to perceive the relationship carefully established by the poet between Havelok's moment of loss and his moment of recovery, and thus to gain a new appreciation of the poem's structural symmetry. The moment of recovery occurs after Ubbe, the powerful earl of Denmark, has recognized Havelok by the latter's birth—or "destiny-marks."²⁴ Realizing that Havelok is the rightful heir to the throne on which Godard still sits, Ubbe calls together his men and, falling on his knees before the astonished Havelok, cries,

Manred, louerd, bede y be.
(2172)

The almost literal duplication of the earlier line is surely no accident; Havelok has regained all that he lost years before in kneeling to Godard. The pattern is neat and decisive: Havelok surrenders his sovereignty; loses his identity; regains his identity; recovers his sovereignty. At line 2172 the main action of Havelok the Dane is fulfilled; what remains is Havelok's firm establishment on the throne by the destruction of Godard, and the overthrow of Godrich, the corresponding villain in England.²⁵

The progression from loss of power to recovery of power is thus clearly marked in the structure of Havelok. So is the other central thematic progression, that of development from helpless youth to capable adulthood. It is, of course, the second, developmental progression which makes possible the completion of the first pattern, while it is the onset of adversity (the first part of the loss-recovery pattern) which determines the mold into which the maturation process is to be cast.²⁶ Since the process of development or growth must, unlike the loss-recovery movement, be gradual, it is represented in the narrative not by a symbolic beginning and ending (such as line 484 repeated at line 2172), but by a series of repeating symbols, the recurrences of which mark stages in the hero's journey toward maturity.²⁷ I have discovered three main repeating symbols in Havelok, none of which, to my knowledge, have been previously recognized for what they are. They include: (1) feasts; (2) feats of strength; and (3) discovery of Havelok's birth- or "destiny-marks." Such symbolic moments and events in Havelok the Dane reflect the poet's ability to manipulate his main themes with skill and effectiveness.

Feasts often occupy an important place in the narrative of medieval romances, where they possess a special ritual or symbolic value over and above their nutritional function. Examples which come to mind at once are the Grail feast in the Grail romances, and the Whitsun feast at Arthur's court which often serves as the starting point for an adventure involving one or more of the knights of the Round Table.²⁸ In Havelok the Dane, no less than six eating occasions are described in 3000 lines.²⁹ Each feast is more important than the one before, though all come at crucial moments in the story, and signal important stages in Havelok's development. Of special note is that the first two feasts have nothing of the social ritual about them; they serve to revive Havelok at times when he has been without food for days.

The first meal takes place in Grim's hut in Denmark. The bondsman has received Havelok from Godard with orders to throw the child into the sea. He takes the child home to his cottage, binds and gags him, and leaves him on the floor. When Grim and his wife arise in the middle of the night to prepare for the murder, they see the flame which plays around Havelok's mouth and discover the cross-mark on his shoulder which indicates his royalty. These revelations save his life; Grim asks mercy and promises obedience to Havelok. The text continues,

þo was Haueloc a bliþe knaue;
He sat him up and crauede bred,
And seide, "Ich am ney ded,
Hwat for hunger, wat for bondes
þat þu leidest on min hondes."
(632-36)

Grim's wife responds,

"Wel is me þat,þu mayth hete!
Goddoth!" quath Leue, "y shal þe fete
Bred an chese, butere and milk,
Pastees and flaunes; al with suilk
Shole we sone the wel fede,
Louerd, in þis mikel nede."
(641-46)

Havelok eats all that is placed before him with great gusto:

þanne sho hauede brouth þe mete,
Haueloc anon bigan to ete
Grundlike, and was ful bliþe;
Couþe he nouth his hunger miþe.
A lof he het, y woth and more,
For him hungrede swiþe sore,
þre dayes þer-biforn, i wene,
Et he no mete, þat was wel sene.
(649-56)

The poet stresses the variety of homely fare, and Havelok's great need of it. The humble feast is the first concrete sign that Havelok has stepped back from the brink of death, and since it also acts to restore his famished body, it aptly typifies the course of the narrative at this point.

The second meal in Havelok, like the first, breaks a fast for the hero. Havelok, now a young man in England, has left the home of his putative father because of a famine which has ravaged the land and made it impossible for Grim to feed his large family.³⁰ He arrives at the town of Lincoln, barefoot, clad in a suit made from an old sail, friendless, and hungry.

Hwan he kam per, he was ful wil:
Ne hauede he no frend to gangen til;
Two dayes per fastinde he yede,
Pat non for his werk wolde him fede.
(863-66)

On the third day, he finds work carrying baskets of fish for the earl's cook, and after carrying prodigious loads on two consecutive days, he is hired on a regular basis as the cook's apprentice. The cook tells him,

Go pu yunder [to the castle] and sit pore,
And y shal yeue the ful fair bred,
And make the broys in the led.
Sit now doun and et ful yeme:
Dapeit hwo the mete werne!
(922-26)

This quite satisfies Havelok, who has just told the cook,

            … leue sire,
Bidde ich you non oper hire:
But yeuep me inow to ete
(909-11)

Again, obtaining nourishment becomes an important symbolic act, this time of Havelok's first independent and competitive steps in the world.³¹

The third occasion for a meal is also the first in which the prime motive is not the assuaging of violent hunger. After Havelok and Goldeboru have been married at the command of Godrich—and much to the chagrin of the princess, who thinks she has been forced to marry a churl—Havelok, fearful for his safety and for the virtue of his bride in Lincoln, rushes her off to Grimsby—only to discover that Grim is dead.³² His children are still there, however, and are overjoyed to see Havelok:

On knes ful fayre he hem setten
And Hauelok swipe fayre gretten,
And seyden, "Welkome, louerd dere!
And welkome be pi fayre fere! …
Pou mipe us bope yeue and selle,
With pat pou wilt here dwelle.…
We hauen shep, we hauen swin;
Bileue her, louerd, and al be pin!
Pou shalt ben louerd, pou shalt ben syre,
And we sholen seruen pe and hire."
(1211-30)

These lines describe the turning over of Grims' household, its goods and inhabitants, to Havelok in terms which suggest the bondsman's surrender of himself and his property to his lord ("pou mithe us bope yeue and selle … pou shalt ben louerd, pou shalt ben syre,/And we sholen seruen pe and hire"). Grim himself had used similar words to the helpless Havelok when the latter's identity was first revealed to him.³³ Havelok has returned to his home, which has also become his "kingdom" now that Grim is gone. It is the first moment in which Havelok's majesty accords at all with his situation—he has also wed a princess—and the contrast between the hero's stage of growth at this time and the stage at which Grim first offered him service is sharply etched by means of two feasts, the first of which, in Grim's cottage, has already been mentioned. As opposed to that humble repast, the present meal is an elaborately prepared, joyfully consumed banquet, serving not so much to fill empty stomachs as to celebrate Havelok's i stallation as head of Grim's household. Seen in this light, the dinner also prefigures Havelok's final coronation feast; it thus looks both forward and backward along the arc of the hero's development:

Hwan he pis ioie haueden maked,
Sipen stikes broken and kraked,
And pe fir brouth on brenne;
Ne was ther spared gos ne henne,
Ne pe hende ne pe drake:
Mete he deden plenté make;
Ne wanted pere no god mete,
Wyn and ale deden he fete,
And hem made glade and blipe:
Wesseyl ledden he fele sipe.
(1237-46)

The fourth feast is even grander and more sumptuous. It is prepared for the disguised Havelok on his arrival in Denmark with Goldeboru and the three sons of Grim. Ubbe, a noble who had been a staunch friend of Havelok's father, King Birkabeyn, takes an immediate liking to the strong, handsome stranger who seems more than the merchant he claims to be.³⁴ Ubbe invites the newcomers to dinner, where

Bifom hem com the beste mete
þat king or cayser wolde ete:
Kranes, swannes, ueneysun,
Lax, lampreys, and god sturgun,
Pyment to drinke, and god claré,
Win hwit and red, ful god plenté.
(1724-29)

The near-royal fare and the joyful occasion with its many toasts ("And fele siþes haueden wosseyled") underscores the importance of the moment: Havelok is back in his own land and is on the threshold of the victory toward which he has been maturing and developing since the very first night—and meal—in Grim's house.

The fifth feast crowns the series. It is Havelok's coronation feast, and is preceded by games and tournaments, songs and minstrelsy.³⁵ Of the meal itself the poet says,

þere was swiþe gode metes;
And of wyn þat men fer fetes,
Rith al so mikel and gret plenté
So it were water of þe se.
The feste fourti dawes sat;
So riche was neuere non so þat.
(2340-45)

Significantly, it is only after the festivities are over that Havelok dispatches his knights to apprehend Godard. Havelok's coming of age and his recovery of what he had earlier lost are treated as self-enclosed thematic movements; just as the political and historical considerations of the French versions are excised from the beginning of Havelok the Dane, so at the end the obvious revenge motif and scenes are isolated from the story's main thematic concerns, and provide a spectacularly gory "sideshow" to the central action.³⁶

Why did the Havelok poet choose eating and feasting as a symbolic action marking off stages in Havelok's development? The answer is not far to seek: all human strength and growth depend upon sufficient nourishment, and therefore repeated feasts accord well with the poet's constant interest in Havelok's progress from an impotent child to a strong adult.³⁷ Moreover, the feasts in Havelok are closely related to the next symbolic device I propose to discuss, viz., Havelok's feats of strength. Havelok himself alludes to the interrelationship of food, growth, strength, and destiny just before his return to Denmark and recovery, when he tells Grim's sons of his real lineage and heritage, and commends Grim's loyalty in saving his life years before in the face of Godard's evil schemes:

For-þi fro Denemark hider [Grim] fledde,
And me ful fayre and ful wel fedde,
So þat vn-to þis day
Haue ich ben fed and fostred ay.
But nou ich am up to þat helde
Cumen, that ich may wepne welde,
And y may grete dintes yeue,
Shal i neuere hwil ich lyue
Ben glad, til that ich Denemark se.
(1431-39)

Havelok is repeatedly referred to as a strong man;³⁸ on three occasions he performs a prodigy of strength which has important consequences for his development. The first is actually a two-fold feat: Havelok overpowers all his competitors for a job as basket-carrier to the earl's cook in Lincoln, and carries an incredible load offish by himself. This display wins Havelok food (his second feast) and a steady job. It is closely related by the poet to the first appearance in Havelok of social, royal qualities—gentleness, generosity, justice—which complement his personal might.³⁹ Shortly thereafter, the cook orders Havelok to compete in the games at Lincoln, to which young champions have come from all over England. Despite his ignorance of the game, Havelok puts the shot further than any other contestant. This feat of strength wins the hero great fame,⁴⁰ and earl Godrich, hearing of the prodigy, decides to marry the imprisoned Goldeboru to the supposed servant, ostensibly to fulfill his promise to the dying Athelwold,⁴¹ actually to disgrace the princess beyond recovery. Ultimately, then, Havelok's heroic shotput wins him a wife.⁴²

The third occasion in which Havelok's strength manifests itself combines the greatest display yet of personal power with clear indications of the social uses of that power, and thus prepares the audience for the hero's imminent accession to kingship, where both personal and social power are essential.⁴³ Like the fourth feast, the third feat of strength comes after Havelok's return to Denmark, but before the final recognition and recovery. Havelok beats off almost single-handedly a band of seventy robbers who besiege the house of Bernard Brun, a retainer of Ubbe with whom Havelok is staying the night following Ubbe's feast. The fight is a gory affair, recounted with gusto; by morning, the house is surrounded by bleeding bodies and battered limbs.⁴⁴ When the incident is made known to Ubbe, stress is laid on Havelok's success in saving Bernard's life and goods, and on the common danger from which Havelok has delivered the area in destroying the brigands.⁴⁵ No such social consequences attend the fight analogous to this one in the earlier versions of the story; there Havelok saves his wife from the brutal attentions of six retainers of the earl himself.⁴⁶ As presented in Havelok the Dane, the incident rather looks back to the poet's introductory praise of the good king Athelwold, whose social power freed the land from thieves so effectively that a man would walk from one end of England to the other laden with gold, without fear for his treasure or his safety.⁴⁷

The result of Havelok's powerful and socially benevolent deed is that Ubbe houses him in his own castle and is therefore able that night to discover Havelok's real identity, thanks to the fiery breath and the crossmark, and finally to offer him the climactic "manred," the homage which marks the hero's full recovery. It should be clear, then, that Havelok's great strength in Havelok the Dane is not simply a folk tradition, exploited at random for sensational effects, but is closely integrated into the total scheme of Havelok's growth into kingship.⁴⁸

The fiery breath and cross-mark just mentioned form together the third symbolic device of the poem. In the story the two marks which distinguish Havelok are always employed together; discovery of the fact that Havelok emits fire from his mouth while he sleeps leads to a revelation of the "kyne-mark" (604) on his right shoulder, a cross which identifies Havelok as of royal stock. The distinguishing birth-mark, a common romance device, always serves the same purpose in romances, i. e., to emphasize the uniqueness and the special destiny of each individual, despite all outward changes of state due to fortune or malice.⁴⁹ In Havelok's case, the marks of his birth and destiny reappear periodically in the narrative, coming each time as a surprise to their discoverers. The repeated shock of disclosure and recognition reminds us of the discrepancy between Havelok's current situation and his final destiny, a discrepancy which will disappear only when he becomes king. At the same time, like the feasts and feats of strength, recognition of the marks measures and advances Havelok's progress.

The earlier versions of the Havelok story make their first use of the flaming breath after Havelok's marriage. The union does not begin happily, since the princess is mortified at being forced to marry a man of low station, while Havelok knows that he is only a pawn in the game of Argentille's wicked guardian. Eventually, however, the partners overcome their mutual dislike and consummate their marriage. That night, Argentille has a marvellous dream and, awakening in perplexity over its meaning, sees Havelok's flame for the first time, which compounds her confusion. The lovers decide to go to Grimsby, where they discover Havelok's identity.⁵⁰

The flame enters the story again in the French versions when Sigar (i.e., Ubbe) of Denmark, suspecting Havelok's true identity, confirms his suspicion by arranging to spy on the sleeping merchant in order to see the flame. In both these cases, the use of the device is anticlimactic. The consummation of the marriage, which prefigures and assures the eventual union of Denmark and England, takes precedence in the first episode, while Havelok's defense of his wife against the earl's men, which all but convinces the earl of the stranger's royalty, removes all suspense from the second.

Havelok the Dane adds a third instance, and presents all three so that the appearance of the fiery breath is the central and unexpected fact of the episode, creating in the process considerable suspense and tension. The first discovery has already been mentioned: as Grim prepares to carry out his assignment to kill Havelok in the middle of the night, his wife, Leve,

              saw þerinne a lith ful shir,
Also brith so it were day,
Aboute the knaue þer he lay.
Of hise mouth it stod a stem
Als it were a sunnebem:
Also lith was it þer-inne
So þer brenden cerges inne.
(588-94)

She calls Grim, the two undress the child, find his mark, and realize who he is. The flame has unexpectedly saved Havelok's life at the last moment.

No more is said of the marks until Havelok and Goldeboru go to bed after the feast prepared for them by Grim's children.

On þe nith, als Goldeborw lay,
Sory and sorwful was she ay,
For she wende she were biswike
þat she were yeuen un-kyndelike.
O nith saw she þer-inne a lith,
A swiþe fayr, a swiþe bryth,
Al so brith, al so shir,
So it were a blase of fir.
She lokede norþ, and ek south,
And saw it commen ut of his mouth
That lay bi hire in þe bed.
(1247-57)

The princess' reaction is swift and to the point:

þouthe she, "Wat may this bimene?
He beth heymnen yet, als y wene:
He beth heyman er he be ded!"
(1259-1261)

She then sees the cross-mark and immediately hears an angel prophesy Havelok's future as king of Denmark and England. Goldeboru awakens Havelok, who tells her of a prophetic dream he has had; she interprets the dream and advises him to return at once to Denmark.

It is immediately clear that a major turning point in the story, which in the French versions is spread out over several events (the marriage, the consummation, the dream, the trip to Grimsby, the revelation of Havelok's identity), is here reorganized and constricted to take place in one bedroom scene, where the order of events makes for maximum cumulative effect. The consummation of the marriage is omitted, so that the discovery of Havelok's destiny by Goldeboru becomes the sole determining factor in cementing the relationship of hero and heroine. Moreover, instead of Goldeboru's having a dream which Havelok misinterprets, as he does in the other versions,⁵¹ Havelok has the dream, and Goldeboru, prompted by the prophetic voice which only she has heard,⁵² interprets it, and offers sound advice to fulfill it. The reason for these changes is evident: the poet wishes to emphasize at this crucial moment the role of love in Havelok's development. As soon as Goldeboru accepts Havelok, she becomes a valuable counsellor. The third plot element of the three enumerated earlier in this discussion is thereby closely integrated with the development theme, completing the interdependence of all the main narrative movements.⁵³

The final instance of the flaming breath again differs from its analogues in other versions of the Havelok story, and again has been reordered for maximum effect. Elsewhere, as has been mentioned, the Danish noble arranges to see Havelok asleep to confirm an already strong suspicion that he is the lost king. Neither Sigar nor the reader is surprised by the flame.⁵⁴ In Havelok the Dane, Ubbe invites Havelok into his home without any inkling that he is accommodating his lord. Ubbe awakens in the middle of the night, sees an eerie glow emanating from the next room, and investigates.⁵⁵ Startled by the flame, he calls his retainers, who rush to the scene to behold the hero and heroine asleep in each other's arms, and to note the cross-mark which reveals his identity. Wild joy and excitement break loose, Havelok awakens, and Ubbe climatically swears fealty. The entire scene traverses a curve of mounting excitement, from Ubbe's awakening, through his discovery, to his declaration. Once again, the poet has demonstrated his deft touch in the effective presentation of his material.⁵⁶

This brief consideration of some of the narrative and structural devices employed in Havelok the Dane has aimed at defending the poem's integrity and worth in the face of generations of critical indifference and patronization. If I have been able to indicate that Havelok is carefully constructed, that the various stages of the story are clearly marked, and that the recurring incidents clarify and buttress the work's central meaning, then my efforts have been gratifyingly successful. The meaning itself, as I understand it, is no less impressive for being presented in a popular rather than a courtly garb: the hero and heroine, stripped of their rights at the beginning of the poem by powerful and evil antagonists, recover their losses and fulfill their destinies as a result of the natural process of growth into capable adulthood. Havelok the Dane celebrates human development, and shows that love has a privileged role to play in the combined process of maturation and recovery. In so doing, the poem affirms its romance preoccupations with a degree of capability and originality that should prompt us to revise the dominant opinion of its worth, and incidentally to reappraise our general estimate of the Matter of England romances.

Notes

¹ The standard studies of saga traditions in the Old and Middle English periods are C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, 1939), and R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England (London, 1952), pp. 27-64, 123-32. Evidence collected by Wright and Wilson indicates that many more sagas were current throughout the medieval period than are extant as connected narratives; accordingly, there were undoubtedly more Matter of England romances than those we now possess.

² A. McI. Trounce, in the introduction to his edition of Athelston (EETS 224,. 1951, repr. 1957), argues convincingly for Athelston's kinship to and dependence upon the chanson de geste tradition. See especially pp. 4-25.

³ A typical and standard example of earlier scholarship is M. Deutschbein, Studien zur Sagengeschichte Englands (Cothen, 1906). An exhaustive bibliography of early studies is to be found in L. A. Hibbard (Mrs. L. H. Loomis), Medieval Romance in England (New York, 1924, new ed. 1960), passim.

⁴ "An Interpretation of King Horn," Anglia, LXXV (1957), 157-72.

⁵ All references to the text of Havelok the Dane (hereafter HD) follow the edition of the poem in W. H. French and C. B. Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances (New York, 1920), pp. 71-176. This edition adopts the line numbering and much of the commentary of W. W. Skeat's edition (EETS, ES 4, 1868; rev. K. Sisam, Oxford, 1915).

⁶ For an account of the various versions and their relative chronology see Hibbard, pp. 103-5. French and Hale posit a date of "about 1285" for the dialect of the only complete MS of HD.

⁷ H. H. Creek, "The Author of Havelok the Dane," Englische Studien, XLVIII (1914-15), 193-212, examines closely the various popular features, and the details of town and peasant life, in HD. The elaborate minstrel's preface (ll. 1-26) is another indication of popular origin.

⁸ Hill, p. 161.

⁹ This is the most common element of the romance plot. Well-known examples occur in the Odyssey, in Shakespeare's final romances, and, in the medieval period, in Sir Orfeo, King Horn, Chretien's Yvain, Marie's Guigemar, etc. Romances of separated families and lovers, or of the discovery of "real identity," are built around this device.

¹⁰ Stories of castaways or foundlings tend to fall into this pattern, and stories where education is an important factor, e. g., the Telemachus subplot of the Odyssey, and the various versions of the Perceval story.

¹¹ Marie's Guigemar relies on a modified form of this motif, as do the Gahmuret-Belakane and Parzival-Condwiramurs relationships of Parzival.

¹² Hill, pp. 161-62.

¹³Cf. HD, ll. 110-327 and 364-446.

¹⁴Cf. HD, ll. 114 and 352-57.

¹⁵Cf. HD, ll. 286-327 and 408-46.

¹⁶ Both versions are edited with a translation by J. D. Hardy and C. J. Martin (Rolls Series 91, pts. I and 2, London, 1888-89).

¹⁷Estoire, ll. 65-104; lai, ll. 193-234, 281-338.

¹⁸Estoire, ll. 400-32, 511-16; lai, ll. 25-109. The versions differ in some respects; the lai, for example, stresses Grim's rank. The Queen, unmentioned in HD, plays an active role in saving Havelok in both versions, and is then killed by pirates. The idea for the episode comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth's world-conquering Arthur. Cf Historia regum Britanniae ix. 11 (ed. Griscom, pp. 446-51).

¹⁹ It can be argued, of course, that Arthur and his war on Denmark were already missing from the sources which the HD poet used. Lacking intermediary versions of the story, we can only guess at its evolution from the French versions to its form in HD, and only assess HD's structure and art vis-à-vis the Estoire and the lai. The resulting critical judgments are valid in any case; if the HD poet is not to be commended for the effectiveness of his work, then someone else is. The poet's changes in the early part of HD are noted by Creek (see footnote 7, above), p. 199. Creek also points out some of the inconsistencies in the poet's exposition (pp. 200-2), especially on the matter of Havelok's awareness of his royal birth at various moments in the story. Creek's article is not primarily concerned with the poet's art, but with his moral purposes and his station in life.

²⁰ One might compare these lines and their sentiments with the briefer portrait of the good heroic king and his social power at the beginning of Beowulf (ll. 1-11). The Beowulf poet's estimate of Scyld Scefing could equally apply to Athelwold: "That waes god cyning!"

²¹ Godrich's term of contempt for Goldeboru—, þerne (serving maid)—is indicative of the close relationship between power and rank in HD.

²² Ll. 575-85.

²³Manred is the term for the homage which a vassal offers his lord. See NED, s. v. manred, 1.

²⁴ See below, pp. 601-2.

²⁵ There is no equivalent of these lines in either French version. The lai describes the general act of homage to Havelok after his return to Denmark (ll. 915-21), but no one speaks these essential words.

²⁶ The interrelationship of the two thematic progressions is elsewhere apparent in, e. g., Chrétien's Yvain and in The Winter's Tale. See the following note.

²⁷ There is a remarkable parallel between the interplay of theme and structure in HD and that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is also built around an act (the "beheading game") performed at the beginning of the story and repeated at the end, and uses a series of repeated symbolic moments (the hunts and bedroom scenes) to portray the hero's changing state. On the latter progression in Gawain, see H. L. Savage, The "Gawain"-Poet (Chapel Hill, 1956), pp. 31-48.

²⁸ See, e.g., Yvain, ll. 1-6, 723 ff. The source for the Whitsun feast as a quintessential moment of Arthurian splendor, and hence an apt starting point for adventures which will test the worth of the court or of one of its best knights, is Geoffrey's Historia ix. 13 ff.,. where the crown-wearing celebrations (themselves patterned on Anglo-Norman royal practice) form the context of the Roman challenge to Arthur's imperial rule. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which feasts also mark important points in the story, changes the time of the opening feast to New Year's day, and adds feasts before Gawain's departure from the court and after his arrival at Bertilak's castle.

²⁹ The sixth, Havelok's coronation feast in England, is anti-climactic, and the poet dismisses it in three lines (2948-50), without details. My discussion will treat the fifth as the last important feast, in keeping with what seems to be the poet's intent.

³⁰ Ll. 824 ff. There is no mention of this famine in either of the French versions; the Estoire says that Havelok left Grimsby when Grim died, and the lai, after describing Grim's sadness that Havelok has grown up in surroundings not fitting to his birth, has Grim counsel the young man to go to England and attach himself to the court, as a servant, in order to rise in it.

³¹ Havelok's method for gaining employment involves knocking over all the other claimants for the job. See also ll. 785-810, in which Havelok first resolves to go out and work for his food, since he eats more than Grim and his children, and has now grown up enough so that "Swinken ich wolde for mi mete" (798). Cf. the juxtaposition of growth, food, and the hero's purposeful activity cited on pp. 599-601 below.

³² Ll. 1189-1203.

³³Cf. ll. 617-20, 627-31.

³⁴ See ll. 1645-54; Ubbe exclaims, "Deus! qui ne were he knith?" (1650).

³⁵ Ll. 2320-29.

³⁶ See p. 590, above. Godard's death by torture is described in ll. 2488 ff., Godrich's by burning in ll. 2838 ff. Havelok himself takes no part in Goddard's capture, though he battles Godrich personally in England, as Goldeboru's champion.

³⁷ There is no series of feasts in either French version, though in both, Havelok interprets Argentille's prophetic dream as referring to a royal feast.

³⁸ See, e. g., ll. 987-90, and the passage just quoted in the text.

³⁹ Ll. 930-44 describe Havelok's strength, and ll. 945-58 his meekness, cheerfulness, and generosity. The description closes with the significant lines, "All him loueden þat him sowen,/ Boþen heye men and lowe." Cf. ll. 30-34, in the description of good king Athelwold: "Him louede yung, him louede holde, … / And al for hise gode werkes." There are similar descriptions of Havelok in the Estoire, ll. 105 ff., and the lai, ll. 241 ff., but they do not occur after a specific feat of strength; there is no specific line which states the universal love for Havelok, nor, of course, is there a parallel with the Athelwold passage. In fact, in the lai, Havelok's qualities seem to be more those of a simple-minded, goodhearted fool than of a future king. See especially l. 256.

⁴⁰ See ll. 1059-66.

⁴¹ LI. 198-201.

⁴² Godrich's reasoning appears in one of the few trenchantly ironic passages in the poem: "boru Iis knaue/Shal ich Engelond al haue,/ And mi sone after me;/ For so i wile tat it be" (1073-76). The irony is two-fold, for not only is Gildeboru's "disgraceful" marriage not disgraceful, but Godrich is actually giving Havelok in Goldeboru an important aid to his development toward kingship. See p. 603, below.

⁴³ See above, pp. 590-91.

⁴⁴ L1. 1899-1906, 1920-25.

⁴⁵ See ll. 1974-75, 2002-5, 2016-23, and, on the bandits' danger to "burgmen and knithes," 2044-51.

⁴⁶Estoire, ll. 533 ff.; lai, ll. 695 ff. There may be a reminiscence of the earlier version in HD, ll. 1926-29, 1934-35.

⁴⁷ See ll. 45-50.

⁴⁸ Havelok, in his prophetic dream at Grimsby (ll. 1285-1312), sees himself grasping all Denmark in a strong embrace, and later gathering England into one hand and giving it to Goldeboru. The dream is different in the French versions (see pp. 603-4 and note 51, below); in HD, its images of physical strength and power effectively prefigure the advent of Havelok's kingly power and provide another reinforcement of the poem's unity.

⁴⁹ Odysseus' scar in Odyssey xviii (not strictly a birthmark, but serving the same function) and Ascanius' fiery hair in Aeneid ii (a divine indication of his destiny which persuades Anchises and Aeneas to leave the doomed Troy) are classical examples of the device. In the French versions of the Havelok story, only the fiery breath appears.

⁵⁰Estoire, ll. 181 ff.; lai, ll. 381 ff. In the Estoire, Grim's daughter Kelloc reveals Havelok's true origins to him without the poet's preparing his audience for the revelation; in the lai, Goldeboru visits a holy hermit who tells her she will learn of her husband' birth and destiny by taking him to Grimsby.

⁵¹ The dream is an animal allegory of a kind familiar in the chanson de geste tradition (cf Chanson de Roland, ll. 725-36, 2555-69). Havelok interprets it as referring to a royal banquet on the following day. See Estoire, ll. 195-290; lai, ll. 397-484.

⁵² This device replaees the much less effective visit to the holy hermit (see note 50, above), which diffuses the impact of the discovery, especially as Goldeboru only goes because she is advised to do so by a sympathetic chamberlain who makes no other appearance in the lai.

⁵³ There is a suggestion for HD's portrayal of Goldeboru the counsellor in the other versions, where Argentille advises Havelok on the eve of his final battle with Edelsi to set up the bodies of dead soldiers on stakes and thus terrify the enemy by means of an apparently huge army (Estoire, ll. 773 ff.; lai, ll. 1047 ff.). The poet of HD transforms his sources by moving the Queen's advice to a central, climactic position in the story, and by making her counsel at once more intimate and more appropriate to a wife.

⁵⁴ In fact, the earl goes back to sleep and only reveals his discovery the next morning.

⁵⁵ The suspense is ironically heightened by Ubbe's grumbling that at this time of knight only evil men are up and about. See ll. 2096-105, and compare the similar effect achieved in dramatic and operatic "discoveries," e.g., in The Spanish Tragedy and Don Giovanni.

⁵⁶ L1. 2106-72. The passage also exploits the tension by humorous touches at 1. 2135 (the knights thought that staring at the naked, sleeping lovers was "god gamen") and ll. 2162-64 (Havelok is awakened by the knights kissing his feet, including his toes and toe-nails!).