Eng. Ælfthryth, Elfrida—Threatening elf

Eng. Ælfwold—Elf power

Alvaro and Elvira are the Spanish forms of these elf names.

A bishop of Lichfield, whose name was Ælfwine, was always called Ælla, and thus there is reason to suppose that elves named both the Ælle of Deira, whose name caused Gregory the Great to say that Alleluja should be sung in those regions, and also the later Ælla, who put Ragnar Lodbrog to death. Otherwise these would be referred to the word in Gothic, aljan, meaning battle, found in the Old German Ellanheri and Ellanperaht.

Some of our commencing els are no doubt from the fairy source; but there are others very difficult to account for, beginning in Anglo-Saxon with ealh, which is either a hall, or without the final h, the adjective all, by which in fact they are generally translated. The most noted of them is Ealhwine, the tutor of Charlemagne’s sons, generally called Alcuin, though his name has remained at home as Aylwin. Some Aylwins, are, however, certainly from Ægilwine, or awful friend; Ealhfrith, Ealhmund, and Ealhred, are also found, and one of these must have formed the modern Eldred. Among ladies are Ealhfled, and Ealhswyth, or Alswitha. On the whole it seems to us that the hall is the more probable derivation; the h so carefully used in the Saxon Chronicle is unlike a contraction.[[138]]

[138]. Munch; Weber and Jamieson; St. Pelaye, Huon de Bourdeaux; Grimm; Keightley; Lappenburg; Landnama-bok; Domesday; Scott, Minstrelsy of Scottish Border; Sharon Turner; Kemble, Names of the Anglo-Saxons.

CHAPTER V.
THE KARLING ROMANCES.

Section I.—The Paladins.

Another remarkable cycle of romantic fable connected itself with a prince, not lost in the dim light of heroic legend, but described by a contemporary chronicler, and revealed in the full light of history. However, in reality, the records of Eginhard were, no doubt, as unread and unknown as if they had never existed, and with the notion that a magnificent prince had reigned over half Europe, there was ample scope for tradition to connect with him and his followers all the floating adventures that Teutonic, Keltic, or Latin invention had framed; and, by-and-by, literature recorded them, using them as her own world of beauty and of wonder, until nothing but the names were left in common with their originals.