aution is given; nor is the lady's
calling on her lover's name at all alluded to as being the cause of his
death. It is so, however, as in the Danish version:

"She held his steed in her milk-white hand,
And never shed one tear,
Until that she saw her seven brethren fa',
And her father hard fighting, who loved her so dear.

"O hold your hand, Lord William, she said,
For your strokes they are wondrous sair;
True lovers I can get many a ane,
But a father I can never get mair."

There is no note in the _Kaempe Viser_, says Mr. Jamieson, on this
subject; nor does he attempt to explain it himself. It has, however, a
clear reference to a very curious Northern superstition.

Thorkelin, in the essay on the Berserkir, appended to his edition of the
_Kristni-Saga_, tells us that an old name of the Berserk frenzy was
_hamremmi_, _i.e._, strength acquired from another or strange body,
because it was anciently believed that the persons who were liable to
this frenzy were mysteriously endowed, during its accesses, with a
strange body of unearthly strength. If, however, the Berserk was called
on by his own name, he lost his mysterious form, and his ordinary
strength alone remained. Thus it happens in the _Svarfdaela Saga:_

"Gris called aloud to Klanfi, and said, 'Klanfi, Klanfi! keep a fair
measure,' and instantly the strength which Klanfi had got in his
rage, failed him; so that now he could not even lift the beam with
which he had been fighting."

It is clear, therefore, continues Thorkelin, that the state of men
labouring under the Berserk frenzy was held by some, at least, to
resemble that of those, who, whilst their own body lay at home
apparently dead or asleep, wandered under other forms into distant
places and countries. Such wanderings were called _hamfarir_ by the old
northmen; and were held to be only capable of performance by those who
had attained the very utmost skill in magic.

RICHARD JOHN KING.

* * * * *

THE RED HAND.--THE HOLT FAMILY.
(Vol. ii., pp. 248. 451.)

Your correspondent ESTE, in allusion to the arms of the Holt
family, in a window of the church of Aston-juxta-Birmingham, refers to
the tradition that one of the family "murdered his cook, and was
afterwards compelled to adopt the red hand in his arms." Este is
perfectly correct in his concise but comprehensive particulars. That
which, by the illite