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Hollander: Jómsv. saga. 219
at least, bears resemblance to a well-known biblical story —
I refer, of course, to the childhood of Moses, Exodus chap.
2: Moses is concealed for three months after his birth as
according to Pharao’s behest all man-children of the Hebrews
are to be cast into the river. Thus his bringing up, if not
his conception, is illicit. I continue in the words of the
Bible: ”and when she could no longer hide him, she took
for him an ark of bulrushes . . . und put the child therein;
and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his
sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done with him”
— and she sees that Pharaos daughter discovers the babe
and has him brought up. This feature that somebody goes
to witness what becomes of the child is not to be found in
any other Mediæval legend I am acquainted with; nor is it
to be found in any of the Rabbinical legends that cluster
about the childhood of Moses.
The grandson of Knút the Foundling is Gorm the Old.
He wishes for wife |>yra, the wise daughter of earl Klak-
harald of Holstein1). She promises to become his queen on
condition that he has certain favorable dreams in the first
three nights of the following winter.
H 2, 1 : The king said that he dreamed the first night
that he thought he was standing out-of-doors and looking
over all his realm; and the sea seemed to him to recede
from land as far as his eye could reach, and dry were all
sounds between the islands and the firths. Then saw he
three oxen come up out of the sea; white they were and
*) The gift of interpreting dreams and visions seems to have been a
family trait. Earl Klakharald himself has it, and so has his granddaughter
Bagnhild who was married to Halfdan the Black of Norway (Hmsk., Half-
danarsaga svarta chap. 5). NB., by the way, that her famous dream about
the future greatness of her race, symbolized by a tree spreading over all
Norway, bears a striking resemblance to Astyages’ dream as told by Hero-
dotos I chap. 108. On similar dreams cf. Henzen, Über die Träume in der
Altnord. Litt, p 81 f.
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