Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, the Assumption of Our Lady
BY the beginning of the 13th century, when literature in the English tongue began to Show some signs of revival, the earlier English epic tales seem to have been almost entirely obliterated from memory. A solitary survival seems to have been the story of the dragon-killing Wade with his famous boat Guingelot; but even this story is lost to us Save for occasional references,1 and from these we must infer that all definite idea of its origin was lost, since Wade is associated, now with Weyland, now with Horn and Havelok, now with Lancelot. The place Of these earlier epic tales was filled In Middle English times by a new set of tales for the most part no longer of purely native, popular origin. Tales were imported from every conceivable quarter, though usually by way of France, and even in the popular romances of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, which are supposed to contain a kernel of genuine English tradition, the original story is almost unrecognizable amid the, embellishments added. Similarly In the stories of Waldef and Hereward the historical facts are almost lost amid this mass of added foreign matter, and in the late romance of Richard Coeur de Lion we have to do, not with the historical-richard, but with a conventionalized hero of mediaeval romance.
Standing apart from these largely conventionalized tales are the stories of Havelok and King Horn. These are supposed to have been among the first products of the second growth of English story. They seem to pre serve, more than the other, later romances, their primitive traits, and are hence usually classed as English, or Germanic, In origin.
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