men, and reach the sunny fields that bear the angelica:--

"Through griesly shadowes by a beaten path,
Into a garden goodly garnished."
--F.Q. ii. 7, 51.

(d) Next they cross, by a bridge, the "River of Blades", and see "two
armies fighting", ghosts of slain soldiers.

(e) Last they came to a high wall, which surrounds the land of Life, for
a cock the woman brought with her, whose neck she wrung and tossed over
this wall, came to life and crowed merrily.

Here the story breaks off. It is unfinished, we are only told that
Hadfling got back. Why he was taken to this under-world? Who took him?
What followed therefrom? Saxo does not tell. It is left to us to make
out.

That it is an archaic story of the kind in the Thomas of Ercildoune
and so many more fairy-tales, e.g., Kate Crack-a-Nuts, is certain. The
"River of Blades" and "The Fighting Warriors" are known from the Eddic
Poems. The angelica is like the green birk of that superb fragment, the
ballad of the Wife of Usher's Well--a little more frankly heathen, of
course--

"It fell about the Martinmas, when nights are long and mirk,
The carline wife's three sons cam hame, and their hats were
o' the birk.
It neither grew in syke nor dyke, nor yet in ony sheugh,
But at the gates o' Paradise that birk grew fair eneuch."