of the eighth and early ninth centuries, reproaches his son Thorstein
as a degenerate, in that he expects to inherit his father's wealth,
instead of winning fortune for himself: "It used to be the custom
with kings and earls, men of our kind, that they won for themselves
fortune and fame; wealth was not counted as a heritage, nor would sons
inherit from their fathers, but rather lay their possessions in the
howe with them." It is easy to see that when this custom came into
conflict with the son's natural desire to inherit, the sacrosanctity
of the dead man's treasure and of his burial-mound would be their only
protection against violation. The fear of the consequences of breaking
the custom took form in the myth of the curse, as in the sword of
Angantyr and the Nibelungs' hoard; while the dangers attending the
violation of the howe were personified in the dragon-guardian. In
_Gold-Thori's Saga_, the dead berserks whose howe Thori enters, are
found guarding their treasure in the shape of dragons; while Thori
himself is said to have turned into a dragon after death.

Marriage with alien wives, which in the case of the Mastermaid story
has been postulated as means of transmission and as the one possible
explanation of its nearly universal diffusion, may perhaps with more
simplicity be assumed as the common basis in custom for independently
arising myths of this type. The attempts of the bride's kindred to
prevent the marriage, and of the bridegroom's to undo it, would be
natural incidents in such a story, and the magic powers employed by
and against the bride would be the mythical representatives of the
mutually unfamiliar customs of alien tribes. This theory at least
offers a credible explanation of the hero's temporary oblivion of
or unfaithfulness to his protectress, after their successful escape
together.