Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal

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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. IX.-GERMANIC ELEMENTS IN THE STORY OF KING HORN. To the mass of romances current during the Middle English period of our literature, the contribution of purely Germanic tradition was a relatively meagre one. The spirit which had produced the earlier epic was at this time extinct. A solitary offshoot of the earlier epic seems to have survived in the story of the dragon-killing Wade with his famous boat, Guingelot. But even this story is lost to us save in occasional references, and from these we must infer that all definite idea of its origin was lost, since it is associated, now with Weyland, now with Horn and Havelok, now with Launcelot. To these earlier tales, such as those of Beowulf and possibly of Wade, having a popular, epic origin, succeeded in the Middle English period a mass of tales and romances of the most diverse origin imaginable. 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 lost amid the mass of mythical, imaginary, or purely conventional matter later added. The historical events in the lives of Waldef and Hereward are embellished with much of the conventional romantic matter, and the late romance of Richard Coeur de Lion consists very largely of the purely conventional. The stories of Havelok and Horn, which are supposed to have been among the first products of this second growth of story, seem to preserve more than the other later romances, their primitive traits and are hence usually classed as English, or Germanic, in origin. I have undertaken in this paper to distinguish if possible some of the peculiarly Germanic elements in the story of King Horn. The story of Horn, it is generally believed, had its origin in the turbulent times of the Danish invasions, though the 221