It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge assistance from various quarters. I am indebted to the libraries of the British Museum and Cambridge University, and the Bodleian library at Oxford for the use of manuscripts; also to the Duke of Sutherland for permission to copy the text of Floris and Blauncheflur from the manuscript in his private library; also to the Cornell University library for conveniences placed at my disposal in the preparation of this volume. I must also acknowledge timely words of advice from Prof. J. M. Hart, notes on Layamon from Dr. B. S. Monroe, and assistance in proof-reading by Prof. W. Strunk, jr. But above all I must acknowledge the less apparent work of Dr. Furnivall in preparing the texts for press, a work the amount of which one who has not edited for the E.E.T.S. is not likely to realize. G. H. M. K. _Ithaca, N.Y., July 8, 1901._ INTRODUCTION. KING HORN. § 1. _Setting of the Story_, p. vii. § 2. _Versions_, p. viii. § 3. _Elements of the Story_, p. xvi. § 4. _Topography_, p. xvii. § 5. _Style_, p. xx. § 6. _Versification_, p. xxi. § 7. _Dialect_, p. xxiv. § 8. _Manuscripts_, p. xxviii. § 1. SETTING OF THE STORY. By the beginning of the 13th century, when literature in the English tongue began to show some signs of revival, the earlier English epic tales seem to have been almost entirely obliterated from memory. A solitary survival seems to have been the story of the dragon-killing Wade with his famous boat Guingelot; but even this story is lost to us save for occasional references,[I-1] and from these we must infer that all definite idea of its origin was lost, since Wade is associated, now with Weyland, now with Horn and Havelok, now with Lancelot. The place of these earlier epic tales was filled in Middle English times by a new set of tales for the most part no longer of purely native, popular origin. Tales were imported from every conceivable quarter, though usually by way of France, and even in the popular romances of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, which are supposed to contain a kernel of genuine English tradition, the original story is almost unrecognizable amid the embellishments added. Similarly in the stories of Waldef and Hereward the historical facts are almost lost amid this mass of added foreign matter, and in the late romance of Richard Cœur de Lion we have to do, not with the historical Richard, but with a conventionalized hero of mediæval romance. Standing apart from these largely conventionalized tales are the stories of Havelok and King Horn. These are supposed to have been among the first products of the second growth of English story. They seem to preserve, more than the other, later romances, their primitive traits, and are hence usually classed as English, or Germanic, in origin. [Footnote I-1: Cf. Skeat’s Chaucer. Note to Marchaundes Tale 1424, and Tr. and C. iii, 614.] § 2. VERSIONS.