Grammaticus,[51] who calls them "three maidens"; their caprices are shown
when two of them bestow good temper and beauty on Fridleif's son Olaf, and
the third mars their gifts by endowing the boy with niggardliness.

In commenting upon both the Eddic Lay and the Danish Historian, the editors
remark that this point of the story--the bestowal of gifts at
birth--survives in the _chanson de geste_ of Ogier the Dane,[52] whose
relations with the fairy-world may be narrated shortly as follows.[53]

At the birth of Ogier the Dane, five fairies promised him strength,
bravery, success, beauty, and love; after them came Morgan le Fay, whose
gift was that, after a glorious career, Ogier should come to live with her
at her castle of Avalon. When the hero was over a hundred years of age,
Morgan caused him to be wrecked near Avalon. In his wanderings he comes to
an orchard, where he eats an apple. A beautiful lady approaches whom he
mistakes for the Virgin; but she tells him she is Morgan le Fay. She puts a
ring on his finger and he becomes young; she puts a crown on his head, and
he forgets the past. For two hundred years he lives in unearthly delights,
and the years seem to him to be but twenty. He then returns to earth to
champion Christendom; but after triumphing over his foes he returns to
Avalon.[54]

The tale of Ogier was long popular in Denmark--of which country he is the
national hero--and also in France; and the notion of supernatural gifts at
birth has obtained a very wide vogue. But Ogier's story also exhibits
another very popular piece of superstition--that of a journey to or a
sojourn in the supernatural world.[55] Our English parallel to Ogier, as
Professor Child points out,[56] is Thomas of Erceldoune.

This leads us to the consideration of three English metrical Romances,