SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

250 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
substitution in England of the Three Heads for the old
woman encountered near a well in another group of
variants whose main area of diffusion was France. The
question of the ultimate origin of the motif of the Heads
forms no part of his enquiry, but it is undoubtedly
interesting, in view of the similarity with Mimir on the
one hand and with the Celtic material on the other, that
it should be so clearly limited to areas of British and
Scandinavian influence. It would seem that in these
areas alone the notion of a head associated with a well
was familiar enough to replace the old woman, fairy
or witch who appears in the great majority of versions
of this folktale.
Finally, it is perhaps worth noting that in one Swedish
version':' the Heads bestow on the girl not merely the
usual shower of gold but also an increase of wisdom.
As such a reward is very rare in this folktale (there are
only two other instances of it in over nine hundred
examples studied by W. E. Roberts), it is tempting to
see in it a last faint recollection of the connexion between
these heads and Mimir, the giver of wisdom. A similar
distant echo of ancient mythology may linger in the title
given to this tale in Scotland. According to Chambers,
it is called "The Well at the World's End". Admittedly,
the same title is also given to Scottish variants of the
quite unrelated story, "The Frog King", and there is no
means of proving which of the two tales has the better
claim to it. If in fact it belonged to the former tale, it
might conceivably be derived from some recollection of the
mythological Well of Mimir under the root of Yggdrasill ­
a location which could be very properly described as "at
the world's end".
15 Hylten-Cavallius and Stephens, op. cit" 445 n , 3.