world ready to accuse innocent persons, and
proceeds to set all his doings in such a plausible light, that the
king, instead of sentencing him again to death, allows him to settle
his case by fighting a judiciary duel with the Wolf. The preparations
for the duel are ludicrous because the Fox, advised by the Ape, is
shaven smooth, greased until too slippery to be held, and duly
strengthened by advice and potations. Blinded by the sand continually
whisked into his eyes by the Fox's tail, unable to hold his all too
slippery opponent, the Wolf is beaten and the Fox acquitted by the
Judgment of God!

Although Noble now offers to make Reynard his privy counsellor, the
Fox returns home, where his admiring wife and children welcome him
rapturously.

In some versions of the tale Reynard further avenges himself by
suggesting, when the king is taken ill, that he can be cured if he
eats the head of a wolf just seven years old, knowing the only wolf of
that age is Isegrim, who throughout the epic is fooled by the clever
Fox, the hero of endless adventures which have delighted young and old
for centuries.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: See the author's "Legends of the Middle Ages."]

SCANDINAVIAN EPICS

The different Scandinavian dialects formed but one language until
about 1000 A.D., when they split up into two great groups, the East
Northern including the Danish and Swedish; and the West Northern
including the Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese. Danish literature
boasts of some five hundred chivalric ballads (Kjaempeviser), on
partly historical and partly mythical themes, which were composed
between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was the Danish
translator of the Bible who introduced his countrymen to Charlemagne
and Ogier, whose legends received their finished forms at his hands.
In 1555 Reynard the Fox was translated into Danish from the French, in
1663 the Heimskringla from the Icelandic, but it was in 1641 that
Arrebo composed the Hexaemeron or first real Danish epic. In the
nineteenth century Paludan Mueller also wrote epics, which, however,
are not very popular outside of his country. The runes of Sweden bear
witness to the existence of sundry ancient sagas or epics which
perished when Christianity was introduced into the land. In the Middle
Ages, a gleeman at the court of Queen Euphemia (1303-12) composed the
Euphemiaviser, or romances of chivalry done into Swedish verse. The
greatest epic work of Swe