Havelok the Dane (Legendary character) -- Romances
§ 16. The story is also mentioned by Henry de Knyghton, a canon of
Leicester abbey, whose history concludes with the year 1395. But his is
no fresh evidence, as it is evidently borrowed from the French Chronicle
of Rauf de Boun; see § 7. It is also alluded to in a blundering manner
in a short historical compilation extending from the time of Brutus to
the reign of Henry VI., and preserved in MS. Cotton Calig. A. 2. At fol.
107 _b_ is the passage-- “Ethelwolde, qui generavit filiam de (_sic_)
Haueloke de Denmarke, per quem Danes per cccc. annos postea fecerunt
clameum Anglie.” Some omission after the word _de_ has turned the
passage into nonsense; but it is noteworthy as expressing the claim of
the Danes to the English crown by right of descent from Havelok; a claim
which is more clearly expressed in MS. Harl. 63, in which the King of
Denmark is represented as sending a herald to Æthelstan (A.D. 927)-- “to
witte wheder he wold fynde a man to fight w{i}t{h} Colbrande[14] for the
righ[t]e of the kyngdom Northumbr{e}, that the Danes had claymed byfore
by the title of kyng Haueloke, that wedded Goldesburghe the kyngis
daughter of Northumbr{e}” --fol. 19.[15] Four hundred years before this
date would intimate some year early in the sixth century. Finally, the
story is found at a later period in Caxton’s Chronicle (A.D. 1480) as
above intimated in § 12; whence it was adopted by Warner, and inserted
into his poem entitled Albion’s England; book iv. chap. 20, published in
1586. Warner called it the tale of “Argentile and Curan;” and in this
ballad-shape it was reprinted in Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry
(vol. ii. p. 261; ed. 1812) with the same title. Not long after, in
1617, another author, William Webster, published a larger poem in
six-line stanzas; but this is a mere paraphrase of Warner. The title
is-- “The most pleasant and delightful historie of Curan, a prince of
Danske, and the fayre princesse Argentile,” &c. John Fabyan, in his
Concordance of Historyes, first printed in 1516, alludes to the two
kings Adelbryght and Edill, only to dismiss the “longe processe”
concerning them, as not supported by sufficient authority. See p. 82 of
the reprint by Ellis, 4to, 1811.
[Footnote 14: Colbrande is the giant defeated by Guy in the
Ballad of “Guy and Colebrande.” See _Percy Folio MS._; ed. Hales
and Furnivall, vol. ii. p. 528, where _Auelocke_ means _Anlaf_.]
[Footnote 15: Quoted in a note in Sir F. Madden’s preface,
p. xxiii.]
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