We have one clue to the age of the legend of Havelok in the statement by
the eleventh-century Norman poet that his tale comes from a British
source, which at least gives a very early date for the happenings
related; while another version tells us that the king of "Lindesie" was
a Briton. Welsh names occur, accordingly, in several places; and it is
more than likely that the old legend preserved a record of actual events
in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in England, when there
were yet marriages between conquerors and conquered, and the origins of
Angle and Jute and Saxon were not yet forgotten in the pedigrees of the
many petty kings.

One of the most curious proofs of the actual British origin of the
legend is in the statement that the death of Havelok's father occurred
as the result of a British invasion of Denmark for King Arthur, by a
force under a leader with the distinctly Norse name of Hodulf. The claim
for conquest of the north by Arthur is very old, and is repeated by
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and may well have originated in the remembrance of
some successful raid on the Danish coasts by the Norse settlers in the
Gower district of Pembrokeshire, in company with a contingent of their
Welsh neighbours.

This episode does not occur in the English version; but here an attack
on Havelok on his return home to Denmark is made by men led by one
Griffin, and this otherwise unexplainable survival of a Welsh name seems
to connect the two accounts in some way that recalls the ancient legend
at the back of both.

I have therefore treated the Welsh element in the story as deserving a
more prominent place, at least in subsidiary incidents, than it has in
the two old metrical versions. It has been possible to follow neither of