The names of the characters in the Danish ballads are Henry (called Duke of Brunswick and of Schleswig in the oldest), Gunild (of Spires, called also Gunder), Ravengaard, and Memering. To these correspond, in the English story, King Henry, Queen Eleanor, Sir Aldingar (the resemblance of this name to Ravengaard will be noted), and a boy, to whom no name is assigned. Eleanor, it hardly need be remarked, is a queen's name somewhat freely used in ballads (see vol. vi. 209, and vol. vii. 291), and it is possible that the consort of Henry II. is here intended, though her reputation both in history and in song hardly favors that supposition.
The occurrence of Spires in the old Danish ballad would naturally induce us to look for the origin of the story in the annals of the German emperors of the Franconian line, who held their court at Spires, and are most of them buried in the cathedral at that place. A very promising clue is immediately found in the history of King (afterwards Emperor) Henry III., son of the Emperor Conrad II. Salicus. This Henry was married, in the year 1036, to Gunhild, daughter of Canute the Great. An English chronicler, William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the 12th century, tells us that after this princess had lived many years in honorable wedlock, she was accused of adultery. Being forced to clear herself by wager of battle,
she found in all her retinue no one who was willing to risk a combat with her accuser, a man of gigantic stature, save a little boy whom she had brought with her from England. The issue of the duel established her innocence,—her diminutive champion succeeding by some miracle in ham-stringing his huge adversary; but it is alleged that the queen refused to return to her husband, and passed the rest of a long life in a monastery.[3]
A Norman-French Life of Edward the Confessor, written about 1250, repeats this story, and adds the champion's name.[4]
"A daughter had the king,
Who was not so beautiful as clever.
Gunnild her name; and he gave her
To him who with love had asked for her,—
The noble Emperor Henry.
She remained not long with him,
Because by felons, who had no reason
To blame her calumniously,
She was charged with shame:
To the Emperor was she accused.
According to the custom of the empire,
It behoved her to clear herself from shame
By battle; and she takes much trouble
To find one to be her champion:
But finds no one, for very huge was
The accuser,—as a giant.
But a dwarf, whom she had brought up,
Undertook the fight with him.
At the first blow he hamstrung him;
At the second he cut off his feet.
Mimecan was the dwarf's name,
Who was so good a champion,
As the history, which is written,
Says of him. The lady was freed from blame,
But the lady the emperor
No more will have as her lord."
Finally, John Brompton, writing two hundred years after William of Malmesbury, repeats his account, and gives the names of both the combatants,—"a youth called Mimicon, and a man of gigantic size, by name Roddyngar" (Raadengard = the Danish Ravengaard).
The story of William of Malmesbury and the rest, though it is sufficiently in accordance with the Danish and English ballads, is in direct opposition to the testimony of contemporary German chroniclers, who represent Queen Gunhild as living on the best terms with her husband, and instead of growing old in God's service in a nunnery, as dying of the plague in Italy two years after her marriage, and hardly twenty years of age. It is manifest, therefore, that the English chroniclers derived their accounts from ballads current at their day,[5] which, as they were not founded on any
real passages in the life of Gunhild, require us to look a little further for their origin.
The empress Gunhild was called by the German chroniclers of her day by various names—as Cunihild, Chunihild, Chunelind, and Cunigund, which last name she is said to have assumed at her coronation. This change of Gunhild's name accounts for the unfounded scandals which were in circulation about her in her native land, scarcely a hundred years after her death. Cunigund, wife of Henry III., was in fact confounded with a contemporary German queen and empress, St. Cunigund, widow of the Emperor Henry II. This mistake, which has been made more than once, will be acknowledged to be a very natural one (especially for foreigners), when it is considered that both queens not only bore the same name, but were married each to an emperor of the same name (Henry), both of whom again were sons of Conrads.[6]