[96] Boer (Ark. f. nord. Filol. XIX, 19).
[97] This suggestion is made (very tentatively) by Brandl, in Pauls Grdr. (2), II, i, 992.
[98] This view has been enunciated by Wundt in his Völkerpsychologie, II, i, 326, etc., 382. For a discussion see A. Heusler in Berliner Sitzungsberichte, XXXVII, 1909, pp. 939-945.
[99] Cf. Lawrence in Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer. XXIV, 265, etc., and Panzer's "Beowulf" throughout.
[100] The tradition of "the devil and his dam" resembles that of Grendel and his mother in its coupling together the home-keeping female and the roving male. See E. Lehmann, "Fandens Oldemor" in Dania, VIII, 179-194; a paper which has been undeservedly neglected in the Beowulf bibliographies. But the devil beats his dam (cf. Piers Plowman, C-text, XXI, 284): conduct of which one cannot imagine Grendel guilty. See too Lehmann in Arch. f. Religionswiss. VIII, 411-30: Panzer, Beowulf, 130, 137, etc.: Klaeber in Anglia, XXXVI, 188.
[101] Cf. Beowulf, ll. 1282-7.
[102] There are other coincidences which may be the result of mere chance. In each case, before the adventure with the giants, the hero proves his strength by a feat of endurance in the ice-cold water. And, at the end of the story, the hero in each case produces, as evidence of his victory, a trophy with a runic inscription: in Beowulf an engraved sword-hilt; in the Grettis saga bones and a "rune-staff."
[103] Vigfússon, Corp. Poet. Boreale, II, 502: Bugge, P.B.B. XII, 58.
[104] Boer, for example, believes that Beowulf influenced the Grettis saga (Grettis saga, Introduction, xliii); so, tentatively, Olrik (Heltedigtning, I, 248).
[105] For this argument and the following, cf. Schück, Studier i Beowulfssagan, 21.