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INTRODUCTION.
xi

there were some German tribes who were known as Hunes. Mr. Karl Blind has pointed out in the Gentleman's Magazine,[1] that our own Venerable Bede speaks of Hunes as being among the tribes of Germany that came over to Britain together with the Saxons. Else where[2] he explains "the tribal origin of Siegfried (of the Nibelungen lied) as a German Hüne;" a word which has nothing whatever to do with the Mongolian Huns. We know mediæval writers were not very particular about facts, and the licentia poetica was claimed not only by poets, but also by historiographers, as an indisputable privilege. Thus, João Barros, in his chronicle of Clarimundus,[3] calmly tells us that Count Henry of Portugal, the Navigator, was of Hungarian descent, and that he found the statement in a Magyar book.[4] This alleged pedigree was the cause of a fierce controversy amongst Hungarian savants, and was fully threshed out in the early part of the present century.[5]

Vigfusson[6] remarks that the northern poet, whom he designates the "Tapestry poet," uses Hunar (Huns), Hynske (Hunnish) as a vague word for "foreign." Probably the East Baltic folk would have been Huns to the earlier poets. With regard to the German and Scandinavian Huns, it is noteworthy what Olaus Magnus writes with regard to the "Huns" of his time. The learned prelate says that "in

    who figured in fairy tales. Simrock and Grimm are inclined to see real persons in them, and say they were the Huns, and in later history the Magyars.

  1. ↑ 1883, vol. i. pp. 466, 467.
  2. ↑ Cornhill Magazine, May, 1882.
  3. ↑ The first edition appeared in 1520. Cf. Diccionario Bibiographico Portuguez (Lisboa, 1859) sub voce "Barros."
  4. ↑ He asserts that his chronicle is a translation of "ex lingua Ungara." So far as one knows, the original remains undiscovered and unknown!
  5. ↑ Cf. Geo. Fejér, Henricus Portagulliae Comes origine Burgundus non Hungarus, Budæ 1830, and other dissertations by M. Holéczy, &c. in the British Museum. Press Mark 10632⁄1.
  6. ↑ Corpus Poeticum Boreale, by Vigfusson and Powell. Oxford, 1883, p. Ixi. vol. i.
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