ten-pound note picked up by the members of
a large, struggling household, who are too
ignorant to make much effort in the way of
advertising their good fortune. After a
short and decent period of delay, the
representative of value is considered to be a
member of the family. The back-rent is
fully paid up; the baby is treated to a new
hat with a voluminous feather; the youngest
boy is provided with a new pair of boots, and
his old ones are half-soled and heeled; a new
hat is procured for Bill, and a very good
secondhand coat for the master of the family;
the little account is balanced at the chandler's
shop, and a new house-broom and
pail are purchased to inaugurate a new
era of cleanliness; an old shawl of the
mistress is properly scoured and renovated,
and a certain light straw-bonnet which she
had when she was married, is by the aid of
cleaning and new ribbons made to look
better than it ever did within the memory
of man; finally, the whole troop have one
grand night of enjoyment at the local
theatres, and the balance of the treasure (one
pound, fifteen shillings) is safely deposited in
the parochial savings'-bank as a reserve for
doctoring and family exigencies.

HAVELOK THE DANE.

THE Normans, who brought with the
Conquest a new literature into Britain, brought
with them no literature that was exclusively
their own. Being half barbarous, they had
first settled themselves in France, among
a people from whom they had much to learn,
and while they learnt much, they forgot the
little they had brought with them. They
married French women; French mothers
sang their own songs to the sons of
Normandy. Already, under the second Duke of
Normandy, the native tongue was lost everywhere,
except among the men of the Bessin
and Cotentin. It was a French language
that the Norman conquerors brought over to
England. No runes were written among
them. There is not to be found in all
Normandy a stone inscribed in runic characters;
there is no trace of a single northern saga in
their early literature: they forgot not only
the language, manners, history, but even the
very whereabouts of their old home. Benoît
de Sainte More begins his Norman Chronicle
by placing Denmark at the mouth of the
Danube.

The Normans acquired in France, and
brought over with them to England, a keen
relish for rhymed fabliaux, or tales and lays,
which were recited by trouvères (minstrels)
in great men's halls, and of which the recital
was in the earliest time paid for with rich
presents, or which were sung by the guest to
the host in acknowledgment of hospitality.
Such songs were first of saints, afterwards
more commonly of love and romance,
sometimes of history, or even of the marvels of
birds, beasts, and stones. Chardry composed
thousands of verses on the lives of Saint
Josaphat and the Seven Sleepers. Robert
Wace and Benoît de Sainte More wrote
Norman Chronicles; Geoffrey Gaimar rhymed
the history of the Anglo-Saxons; Dourbault
turned even a law-book into verse. The lays
of love and fabliaux expanded into long
romances, and the subject of them was
usually drawn from that which was to the
Normans in France the especial haunt of
fairies, the home of heroic fable, Brittany.
Now Brittany was but an offset from Britain.
Thus it happened that the Norman
conquerors settled in England, brought to the
people of this country their own oral
traditions, which the English afterwards adopted
as a written literature by the mere act of
translation.

The most ancient of these stories has for
its hero the brave Havelok. Of the first, as of
the last of our heroic tales, a Havelok is hero.
The old lay of Havelok, and of the foundation
of the port of Grimsby, was known only
in French, until Sir Frederic Madden lighted
on an English version, which he published in
one of the volumes of the Roxburghe Club.
The story is as old as the Conquest.

This, says the bard, is a lay learnt from the
Bretons, and he loses no time in claiming
part of his own dues for telling it:

At the beginning of our tale
Fill me a cup of full good ale.
The rhyme is made of Havelok,
A stalworthy man in a flock.
He was the stalworthest man at need
That may riden on any steed.
He loved God with all his might,
And holy kirk, and sooth and right.

That is the tune to which the minstrel
sets the story which we repeat in simple
prose,

Athelwold, king of England, had no heir
to his body but an infant daughter. Feeling
his death draw near, he was much troubled
because of her helplessness. He sent then
for all his earls and barons between Rokeby
and Dover, and they came before the king at
Winchester. When they were seated round
about him, he told them that death was near
to him, and bade them choose among
themselves; wherefore they chose Earl Godrich
of Cornwall, who swore to protect the
princess and her England till she should be
twelve years old, and then to give her for a
husband the best man in all the land. After
this, the King Athelwold betook himself to
prayers, penance, and alms, gave away all
before he died, and died lamented. The bells
were rung and masses sung, the king was
buried, and the earl had power in the kingdom.
He received from all an oath of fidelity
until the deceased king's daughter should
attain her twentieth year; he sent justices
to travel through the kingdom, appointed
sheriffs and beadles set swordsmen to keep