SOURCE: "King Horn and Havelok the Dane," in English Medieval Romance, Longman, 1987, pp. 65-74.

In the following excerpt, Barron considers the relative popularity of King Horn and Havelok the Dane and contends that while the realism of Havelok has more appeal for today's readers, that was not necessarily true in the case of its original audience.

… In the earliest of the English romances, King Horn (c. 1225), history is so throughly absorbed into folklore that, though the period of the Viking raids provides the violent social context of the action, specific historical events and characters cannot be identified. The Anglo-Norman version, which predates it by half a century, seems independently derived from a common original, perhaps a folk-tale told by people of Norwegian descent in the west of England.³ As a boy, Horn is set adrift with his companions by Saracen pirates (late substitutes for Viking originals?) who have...