Enough surely has now been said to shew that the old religion and
mythology of the Norseman still lives disguised in these popular
tales. Besides this internal evidence, we find here and there, in the
written literature of earlier days, hints that the same stories were
even then current, and current then as now, among the lower classes.
Thus, in _King Sverri's Saga_ we read: 'And so it was just like
what is said to have happened in old stories of what the king's
children suffered from their stepmother's ill-will.' And again, in
_Olof Tryggvason's Saga_ by the monk Odd: 'And better is it to
hear such things with mirth than stepmother's stories which shepherds
tell, where no one can tell whether anything is true, and where the
king is always made the least in their narrative.' But, in truth, no
such positive evidence is needed. Any one who has read the Volsung
tale as we have given it, will be at no loss to see where the 'little
birds' who speak to the Prince and the lassie, in these tales, come
from; nor when they read in the 'Big Bird Dan', No. lv, about 'the
naked sword' which the Princess lays by her side every night, will
they fail to recognize Sigurd's sword _Gram_, which he laid
between himself and Brynhildr when he rode through the flame and won
her for Gunnar. These mythical deep-rooted groves, throwing out fresh
shoots from age to age in the popular literature of the race, are far
more convincing proofs of the early existence of these traditions
than any mere external evidence'. [32]




CONCLUSION

We have now only to consider the men and women of these Tales, and