Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
Finally, John Brompton, writing two hundred years after William of
Malmesbury, repeats his account, and gives the names of _both_ the
combatants,--"a youth called Mimicon, and a man of gigantic size, by
name Roddyngar" (Raadengard = the Danish Ravengaard).
The story of William of Malmesbury and the rest, though it is
sufficiently in accordance with the Danish and English ballads, is in
direct opposition to the testimony of contemporary German chroniclers,
who represent Queen Gunhild as living on the best terms with her
husband, and instead of growing old in God's service in a nunnery, as
dying of the plague in Italy two years after her marriage, and hardly
twenty years of age. It is manifest, therefore, that the English
chroniclers derived their accounts from ballads current at their day,[5]
which, as they were not founded on any real passages in the life of
Gunhild, require us to look a little further for their origin.
[5] William of Malmesbury refers to ballads which were made on the
splendid nuptial procession, by which Gunhild was conducted to the ship
that was to bear her to her husband, as still sung about the streets in
his time.
The empress Gunhild was called by the German chroniclers of her day by
various names--as Cunihild, Chunihild, Chunelind, and _Cunigund_, which
last name she is said to have assumed at her coronation. This change of
Gunhild's name accounts for the unfounded scandals which were in
circulation about her in her native land, scarcely a hundred years after
her death. Cunigund, wife of Henry III., was in fact confounded with a
contemporary German queen and empress, _St. Cunigund_, widow of the
Emperor Henry II. This mistake, which has been made more than once, will
be acknowledged to be a very natural one (especially for foreigners),
when it is considered that both queens not only bore the same name, but
were married each to an emperor of the same name (Henry), both of whom
again were sons of Conrads.[6]
[6] An argument in confirmation of what is here said is afforded by a
German annalist of the 14th century, who states, under the date 1038,
that the empress Cunigund died the 3d of March, and was buried at
Spires. Now St. Cunigund actually did die the 3d of March, and that day
is dedicated to her in the Roman calendar, but the year was 1040, and
she was buried at Bamberg, while Gunhild died in 1038 (July 18), and was
buried in the monastery of Limburg, near Spires.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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