consciously or unconsciously, each writer takes some stones wherewith to
build his own edifice. Many allusions in the literature of our own day lose
much of their force simply because these legends are not available to the
general reader.

It is the aim of this volume to bring them within reach of all, and to
condense them so that they may readily be understood. Of course in so
limited a space only an outline of each legend can be given, with a few
short quotations from ancient and modern writings to illustrate the style
of the poem in which they are embodied, or to lend additional force to some
point in the story.

This book is, therefore, not a manual of mediaeval literature, or a series
of critical essays, but rather a synopsis of some of the epics and romances
which formed the main part of the culture of those days. Very little
prominence has been given to the obscure early versions, all disquisitions
have been carefully avoided, and explanations have been given only where
they seemed essential.

The wealth and variety of imagination displayed in these legends will, I
hope, prove that the epoch to which they belong has been greatly maligned
by the term "dark ages," often applied to it. Such was the favor which the
legendary style of composition enjoyed with our ancestors that several of
the poems analyzed in this volume were among the first books printed for
general circulation in Europe.

Previous to the invention of printing, however, they were familiar to rich
and poor, thanks to the scalds, bards, trouvères, troubadours, minstrels,
and minnesingers, who, like the rhapsodists of Greece, spent their lives in
wandering from place to place, relating or reciting these tales to all they