[1] The word is used in modern Icelandic metaphorically of an imbecile or weak-minded person (see Cleasby and Vigfússon, Icelandic-English Dictionary, 1869).
[2] “’Tis said that far out, off yonder ness, the Nine Maids of the Island Mill stir amain the host—cruel skerry-quern—they who in ages past ground Hamlet’s meal. The good Chieftain furrows the hull’s lair with his ship’s beaked prow.” This passage may be compared with some examples of Hamlet’s cryptic sayings quoted by Saxo: “Again, as he passed along the beach, his companions found the rudder of a ship which had been wrecked, and said they had discovered a huge knife. ‘This,’ said he, ‘was the right thing to carve such a huge ham....’ Also, as they passed the sand-hills, and bade him look at the meal, meaning the sand, he replied that it had been ground small by the hoary tempests of the ocean.”
[3] Books iii. and iv., chaps. 86-106, Eng. trans. by O. Elton (London, 1894).
[4] Printed in Fornaldar Sögur Norðtrlanda (vol. i. Copenhagen, 1829), analysed by F. Detter in Zeitschr. für deutsches Altertum (vol. 36, Berlin, 1892).
[5] Printed with English translation and with other texts germane to the subject by I. Gollancz (Hamlet in Iceland, London, 1898).
[6] Professor I. Gollancz points out (p. lxix.) that Brjám is a variation of the Irish Brian, that the relations between Ireland and the Norsemen were very close, and that, curiously enough, Brian Boroimhe was the hero of that very battle of Clontarf (1014) where the device (which occurs in Havelok and Hamlet) of bluffing the enemy by tying the wounded to stakes to represent active soldiers was used.
[7] “Hamlet in Iran,” in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, x. (Berlin, 1900).
[8] See A. B. Gough, The Constance Saga (Berlin, 1902).
HAMLEY, SIR EDWARD BRUCE (1824-1893), British general and military writer, youngest son of Vice-Admiral William Hamley, was born on the 27th of April 1824 at Bodmin, Cornwall, and entered the Royal Artillery in 1843. He was promoted captain in 1850, and in 1851 went to Gibraltar, where he commenced his literary career by contributing articles to magazines. He served throughout the Crimean campaign as aide-de-camp to Sir Richard Dacres, commanding the artillery, taking part in all the operations with distinction, and becoming successively major and lieutenant-colonel by brevet. He also received the C.B. and French and Turkish orders. During the war he contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine an admirable account of the progress of the campaign, which was afterwards republished. The combination in Hamley of literary and military ability secured for him in 1859 the professorship of military history at the new Staff College at Sandhurst, from which in 1866 he went to the council of military education, returning in 1870 to the Staff College as commandant. From 1879 to 1881 he was British commissioner successively for the delimitation of the frontiers of Turkey and Bulgaria, Turkey in Asia and Russia, and Turkey and Greece, and was rewarded with the K.C.M.G. Promoted colonel in 1863, he became a lieutenant-general in 1882, when he commanded the 2nd division of the expedition to Egypt under Lord Wolseley, and led his troops in the battle of Tell-el-Kebir, for which he received the K.C.B., the thanks of parliament, and 2nd class of Osmanieh. Hamley considered that his services in Egypt had been insufficiently recognized in Lord Wolseley’s despatches, and expressed his indignation freely, but he had no sufficient ground for supposing that there was any intention to belittle his services. From 1885 until his death on the 12th of August 1893 he represented Birkenhead in parliament in the Conservative interest.