to think that the Yggdrasil Myth has been "contaminated " by the other mediæval allegory of the "Man in the Well." In the first place, the accessories common to the two are, in large measure, meaningless in the Yggdrasil Myth, especially "The Four Stags"; in the second place, the Norse Myth, so far from being primitive, as Grimm regards it, is probably late and artificial. Messrs. Vigfusson and York-Powell, indeed, go so far as to suggest that the Myth never "travelled beyond the single poem in which it was wrought out by a Master-Mind" (Corp. Poet. Bor., ii. 459). As for the possibility of the Barlaam Legend reaching Iceland, one may remember the close connection between Norway and Constantinople through the Varangars, the Norse bodyguard of the Eastern Emperors. Altogether, therefore, I think it possible, and even likely, that the Yggdrasil Myth, in the form in which we have it now, has been influenced in some of its details by the parable of the " Man in the Well."[1]
Before leaving this interesting parable some-
- ↑ It is fair to add that Professor Bugge, who is generally most ready to account for such similarities by transmission, does not see how to do so in the present instance. See his Studien.
