[45] Mr. Chambers, in his edition of the play, Appendix A, § l8, gives (i) Tarlton's News out of Purgatory (1590) (see p. 63), (ii) Churchyard's Handfull of Gladsome Verses (1592) (see p. 141), (iii) Nashe's Terrors of the Night (1594).
[46] The word folk-lore has only been in existence sixty years, and the science is very little older; it was vaguely referred to as "popular antiquities" before that time.
[47] Alfred Nutt, The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare (1900), p. 24. This little book is instructive and valuable.
[48] Nashe's Works, ed. R.B. McKerrow, i. 347.
[49] Gower, however, does so, as early as the fourteenth century; Confessio Amantis, ii. 371.
[50] The opening of the beautiful Helgi and Sigrun Lay as translated by Vigfusson and York Powell in Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883), i. 131; see also the editors' Introduction, i. lxi, lxiv.
[51] Danish History, iii. 70, 77; vi. 181; cf. O. Elton's translation (1894), pp. 84, 93, 223, and York Powell's introduction thereto, lxiv.
[52] "It is worth noting that the Romance of Olger the Dane contains several late echoes of the old Helgi myth. a. The visit of the fairies by night to the new-born child ... e. His return to earth after death or disappearance ... Mark that Holgi is the true old form ... The old hero Holgi and the Carling peer Otgeir (Eadgar) are distinct persons confused by later tradition."—Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. cxxx.
"The Fates ... bestow endowments on the new-born child, as in the beautiful Helge Lay ... a point of the story which survives in the Ogier of the Chansons de Geste, wherein Eadgar (Otkerus or Otgerus) gets what belonged to Holger (Holge), the Helga til of Beowulf's Lay."—Saxo, Danish History, lxiv.
[53] Cf. Child's Ballads, i. 319.