[67] See Olrik, Episke Love in Danske Studier, 1908, p. 79. Compare the remark of Goethe in Wilhelm Meister, as to the necessity of there being both a Rosencrantz and a Guildenstern (Apprenticeship, Book V, chap. v).
[68] ll. 587-9.
[69] ll. 1165-8.
[70] Perhaps such murder of kin was more common among the aristocratic houses than among the bulk of the population (Chadwick, H.A. 348). In some great families it almost becomes the rule, producing a state of things similar to that in present day Afghanistan, where it has become a proverb that a man is "as great an enemy as a cousin" (Pennell, Afghan Frontier, 30).
[71] This is proposed by Cosijn (Aanteekeningen, 21) and again independently by Lawrence in M.L.N. XXV, 157.
[72] ll. 467-9.
[73] ll. 2155-62.
[74] See Widsith, ed. Chambers, pp. 92-4.
[75] See Rickert, "The Old English Offa Saga" in Mod. Phil. II, esp. p. 75.
[76] The common ascription of the Lives of the Offas to Matthew Paris is erroneous: they are somewhat earlier.