From Hanover comes the story of Peter Bär[[858]], which shows all the familiar features: from the same district came some of Grimm's variants. Others were from the Rhine provinces: but the fullest version of all comes from the Scheldt, just over the Flemish border. The hero, Jean l'Ourson, is recovered as a child from a bear's den, is despised in his youth[[859]], but gives early proof of his strength. He defends an empty castle un superbe château, when his companion has failed, strikes off an arm[[860]] of his assailant Petit-Père-Bidoux, chases him to his hole, un puits vaste et profond. He is let down by his companion, but finding the rope too short, plunges, and arrives battered at the bottom. There he perceives une lumière qui brillait au bout d'une longue galerie[[861]]. At the end of the gallery he sees his former assailant, attended by une vieille femme à cheveux blancs, qui semblait âgée de plus de cent ans, who is salving his wounded arm. The hero quenches the light (which is a magic one) smites his foe on the head and kills him, and then rekindles the lamp[[862]]. His companion above seeks to rob him of the two princesses he has won, by detaching the rope. Nevertheless, he escapes, weds the good princess, and punishes his faithless companion by making him wed the bad one.
The white-haired old woman is not spoken of as the mother
of the foe she is nursing, and it may be doubted whether she is in any way parallel to Grendel's mother. The hero does not fight her: indeed it is she who, in the end, enables him to escape. Still the parallels between Jean l'Ourson and Beowulf are striking enough. Nine distinct features recur, in the same order, in the Beowulf-story and in this folk-tale. It needs a more robust faith than I possess to attribute this solely to chance.
Unfortunately, this French-Flemish tale is found in a somewhat sophisticated collection. Its recorder, as Sainte-Beuve points out in his letter introductory to the series[[863]], uses literary touches which diminish the value of his folk-tales to the student of origins. Any contamination from the Beowulf-story or the Grettir-story is surely improbable enough in this case: nevertheless, one would have liked the tale taken down verbatim from the lips of some simple-minded narrator as it used to be told at Condé on the Scheldt.
But if we take together the different versions enumerated above, the result is, I think, convincing. Here are eight versions of one folk-tale taken as representatives from a much larger number current in the countries in touch with the North Sea: from Iceland, the Faroes, Norway, Jutland, Zealand, Schleswig, Hanover, and the Scheldt. The champion is a bear-hero (as Beowulf almost certainly is, and as Bjarki quite certainly is); he is called, in Iceland, Bjarndreingur, in Jutland, Bjørnøre, in Hanover, Peter Bär, on the Scheldt Jean l'Ourson. Like Beowulf, he is despised in his youth (Faroe, Scheldt). In all versions he resists his adversary in an empty house or castle, after his comrades have failed. In most versions of the folk-tale this is the third attack, as it is in the case of Grettir at Sandhaugar and of Bjarki: in Beowulf, on the contrary, we gather that Heorot has been raided many times. The adversary, though vanquished, escapes; in one version after the loss of an arm (Scheldt): they follow his track to the hole into which he has vanished, sometimes, as in Beowulf, marking traces of his blood (Iceland, Faroe, Schleswig). The hero always ventures down alone, and gets into
an underworld of magic, which has left traces of its mysteriousness in Beowulf. In one tale (Scheldt) the hero sees a magic lamp burning below, just as he sees the fire in Beowulf or the Grettis Saga. He overcomes either his original foe, or new ones, often by the use of a magic sword (Faroe, Norway, Schleswig); this sword hangs by the door (Norway) or on the wall (Faroe) as in Beowulf. After slaying his foe, the hero rekindles the magic lamp, in the Scheldt fairy tale, just as he kindles a light in the Grettis Saga, and as the light flashes up in Beowulf after the hero has smitten Grendel's mother. The hero is in each case deserted by his companions: a feature which, while it is marked in the Grettis Saga, can obviously be allowed to survive in Beowulf only in a much softened form. The chosen retainers whom Beowulf has taken with him on his journey could not be represented as unfaithful, because the poet is reserving the episode of the faithless retainers for the death of Beowulf. To have twice represented the escort as cowardly would have made the poem a satire upon the comitatus, and would have assured it a hostile reception in every hall from Canterbury to Edinburgh. But there is no doubt as to the faithlessness of the comrade Stein in the Grettis Saga. And in Zealand, one of the faithless companions is called Stenhuggeren (the Stone-hewer), in Schleswig Steenklöwer, in Hanover Steinspieler, whilst in Iceland he has the same name, Stein, which he has in the Grettis Saga.
The fact that the departure home of the Danes in Beowulf is due to the same cause as that which accounts for the betrayal of his trust by Stein, shows that in the original Beowulf-story also this feature must have occurred, however much it may have become worn down in the existing epic.
I think enough has been said to show that there is a real likeness between a large number of recorded folk-tales and the Beowulf-Grettir story. The parallel is not merely with an artificial, theoretical composite put together by Panzer. But it becomes equally clear that Beowulf cannot be spoken of as a version of these folk-tales. At most it is a version of a portion of them. The omission of the princesses in Beowulf and the Grettis Saga is fundamental. With the princesses much else falls away. There is no longer any motive for the betrayal of trust
by the watchers. The disguise of the hero and his vengeance are now no longer necessary to the tale.
It might be argued that there was something about the three princesses which made them unsatisfactory as subjects of story. It has been thought that in the oldest version the hero married all three: an awkward episode where a scop had to compose a poem for an audience certainly monogamous and most probably Christian. The rather tragic and sombre atmosphere of the stories of Beowulf and Grettir fits in better with a version from which the princesses, and the living happily ever afterwards, have been dropped. On the other hand, it might be argued that the folk-tale is composite, and that the source from which the Beowulf-Grettir-story drew was a simpler tale to which the princesses had not yet been added.