[i]

DANISH BALLADS

[ii]

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[iii]

DANISH BALLADS

TRANSLATED BY
E. M. SMITH-DAMPIER

CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920

[iv]

Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited ,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

So far as possible, I have reproduced the metrical variations of the original Ballads, and striven in general rather for literal accuracy than poetical effect.

All proper names are to be pronounced after the Danish fashion—with the one exception of “Sir Klaus Krummerdike” (“Niels Ebbeson,” Revised Conclusion, v. 46)—a lapse which, from a sorely-tried rhymester’s point of view, surely deserves rather mercy than judgment.

The Burdens should, of course, be repeated with each verse, but, for convenience’ sake, I have followed the modern custom in placing them only at beginning and end of the Ballads.

I am deeply indebted to the late Dr. Axel Olrik, who gave me invaluable criticism on my work as a translator. His Introduction to Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg (Copenhagen) is indispensable to the student. To his literary executors, Hr. Hans Ellekilde and Frøken I. Falbe Hansson, I am indebted for leave to make use of some of his ballad-versions.

My thanks are due also to Messrs. Andrew Melrose, Ltd., by whose courtesy I am enabled to reprint many translations previously published.

E. M. Smith-Dampier.

London, 1920.

It may be assumed that the student who approaches the Danish Ballads has already acquired some acquaintance with the prevailing theories as to the origin of Ballads in general. On that dark and debatable question I am unqualified to enter. To the earnest beginner I commend Dr. T. F. Henderson’s excellent Cambridge Manual The Ballad in Literature , where the opinions of Child, Gummere, Kittredge, and other authorities, are discussed with lucidity, learning, and common-sense. Suffice it here and now to say that those who push to extremes the theory of Communal Authorship must be capable of belief in that mythological personage who was born of nine mothers. While some Ballads (with their Incremental Repetition and so forth) were obviously created between leader and chorus in the Dance, others, no less obviously, were the work of individual poets. As the nineteenth century had its Walter Scott and its Hawker of Moorwinstow, [2] so earlier ages had the anonymous minstrels who stamped the mark of original genius on “Niels Ebbeson” and “Sir Patrick Spens.”

Child, moreover, points out that the British Ballad “was not originally the property of the common orders among the people”—and in Denmark, says Henderson, “it was fostered and favoured more particularly by the upper classes, and was for some centuries the chief medium of literary expression and culture.”

In Denmark, as elsewhere, the more primitive forms of the Ballad were closely connected with the Dance—the carole , or circular dance with joined hands, accompanied by the voice; a pastime which still survives in the Faroë Islands. The word Ballad , indeed, is derived from the South Italian ballare = to dance, which in its turn comes from the Greek. The Teutonic tribes, whose sword-dances are mentioned by Tacitus, may, in the beginning, have learnt dancing from the Celts. Be that as it may, the round dance became popular [3] throughout Europe during the early Middle Ages (roughly speaking, between 1149-1400), and took the North by storm, from the King’s court to the Icelandic farmstead. The dance-songs made light of frontiers, just as the Australian corroborees pass, irrespective of language, from tribe to tribe. Vainly did Saxo Grammaticus record his opinion that “such mountebank antics” (gøglerspring) were unworthy of persons of quality. Every knight had his own dancing-ground—as do Papuan chiefs at the present day. Vainly did the Church frown on a pastime associated with Beltane fires, and other unhallowed survivals of paganism. Absalon, it is true, when in 1158 he became Bishop of Sjælland, put a stop to light-heeled frolic among the merry monks of Eskilø. The Copenhagen clergy in 1425 forbade “heathen” songs and dances on the Feast of S. John. But the churchyard was still the popular place to dance in, especially on the wake-nights of the greater festivals, when the people assembled from far and near. England behaved no better; a shocking record exists of an English priest, so obsessed by the refrain which had rung in his ears all night, that he began the Mass with “myn hertë swete!”

The leader of the Dance sang the Ballad proper: the other dancers came in as chorus with the Burden or Refrain. Some Burdens merely imitate [4] instrumental music; such are our own Hey nonny nonny, Tirly low (the shepherd’s pipe)—the Danish Hejt lejt lejtli, tra fal de ral, etc. Others were derived from the Ballad itself, which was originally a lyrical outburst improvised by the singer.

Here is a gay example from the Icelandic:

Or, in graver mood:

(This was sung by the Icelander Thord Andresson when treacherously captured by Gissur the Earl, 1264.)

A list of Icelandic Dance-Burdens is given in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale .

The beginning of the thirteenth century inaugurated a new fashion. Narrative poetry—originally a separate art—was combined with the dance-lyric. Fables, for instance, were borrowed from the Troubadours, the Minnesingers, and the various foreign minstrels attached to the Danish [5] court. The lyrics were sometimes retained as introductory stanzas, sometimes broken up into Burdens. Thus the song:

lent its first line as Burden to a Ballad of King Didrik:

Every Ballad, in time, came to have its own introductory stanza, calculated to arouse the hearer’s attention and attune it to the story which followed—had also its own Burden, which echoed the principal theme. But many have survived shorn of both adjuncts: and a few have borrowed Burdens, sometimes far from appropriate.

The Danish Ballads, like all others, deal with love, warfare, and witchcraft. Like all others, they are pagan at heart. Some of their themes are peculiar to Denmark, some common to all Europe. The similarity, for instance, between certain Danish and Scottish Ballads suggests that the one country borrowed them directly from the [6] other. The editors of the C.P.B. (where a list may be found) give the lead in the matter to Scotland; but other authorities are of a different opinion. Generally speaking, it is acknowledged that Denmark’s literary output was influenced far less by Britain than by France and the other Latin countries.

But, be the themes what they may, the Danish Ballads inform them with their own characteristic spirit—the glamour and grimness of the North. The battle-scenes show us glimpses of Bersark fury, and weapons with demon souls. The Dark Powers in the Ballads of magic are those born of long winter nights and misty waters. Here and there we meet with the gods of Valhalla, and the heroes sung in Old Norse Lays. Woman, in the love-ballads, is no Troubadour’s divinity, but a human helpmeet of warriors—brave, shrewd, strong-minded, occasionally strong-armed to boot. As for humour, while we have rollicking man-at-arms fun of the “Kinmont Willie” type, and some dry, pawky, Scots-like wit, a few Ballads charm us with such a delicate, wistful archness as flowers again in Andersen’s fairy-tales. There are, indeed, a number of Satirical Ballads, whose characters—gaffer and gammer, wandering fiddler, Bishop’s Daughter, and Mighty Maid—burlesque the heroes and heroines of the Ballads of chivalry. [7] These, however, from the poetical standpoint, are of little or no significance.

The social conditions depicted in these Ballads are, in many respects, peculiar to Scandinavia. The atmosphere is distinctly democratic. Denmark had no school of court-poetry, no minstrel-class corresponding to the Troubadours and Minnesingers. Her kings made foreign marriages, and imported foreign talent; no petty courts, princely or ducal, existed to serve as centres of culture. [1] The native singers found patrons among the native gentry, or lesser nobility—the Knights, whose position in many respects was that of the old-time English country squire. With the tastes, interests, and outlook of this class the Ballads as a whole are chiefly concerned.

Apart from such ballad-cycles as those dealing with the two Valdemars, the King mostly appears merely as a power in the background—a deus (or, more frequently, a diabolus ) ex machinâ . Of devoted loyalty, of patriotism identified with the royal person, we find traces only in the most ancient historical Ballads—with an occasional after-echo such as the Page’s words in the “King-Slaying in Finderup” (No. 6). His courtiers and [8] “captains” are derided by the country-bred minstrel: “So long have they served in the royal court they can bear nor heat nor smoke!”

The Church, too, is only seen afar off—affects the Knight chiefly through the convent school, where young ladies are educated. The Burgher is an unknown quantity. Only in a late (fifteenth-century) Ballad do we hear of the rich merchants, with houses in “Randers street,” whose gilded vanes gleam over the walls, shaming the castles of envious Knights.

The Yeoman (Bonde) class was that with which this lesser nobility was most intimately connected—the class whence it sprang, wherein it was merged after the Peasant Revolt of 1584. Well-born youths are described as “noble yeomen’s sons” (ædelige Bøndersønner), and a yeoman’s wife makes occasional appearance as heroine of a Ballad. The Knight defends the yeoman against pillage and oppression. The two classes, however, are distinct, and keep their distance. The Knight may farm his own land—may even be found holding the plough—but he is, none the less, the yeoman’s social superior. His daughter, if she weds a yeoman, must “doff the scarlet fine, and don the wadmal grey.”

The Knight was served by his Squires (svende)—sometimes of yeoman extraction, but more [9] frequently landless nobles, or younger sons—his lady by her Maidens. The former received wages, and a training in chivalry; the latter learnt polite deportment, household duties, and needle-craft. Thus in our own “Fause Foodrage”:

The Knight’s existence, then, much resembled the Viking’s—was passed in warfare, with intervals of agriculture, of sport, or even of commerce. That it was lived chiefly “on the land” is shown by a thousand touches and images racy of the soil. The arrows stick “thick as hay” in Knight Stig’s mantle; young Engelbret hews down his foes “as the peasant cuts down corn.” The Knight’s absences from home are frequently mentioned—absences on foray, on trading journeys, or at the Thing—the Yeomen’s Thing or District Council, distinct from the great national Land’s Thing. There the local notabilities met to settle local affairs, conclude bargains, and dispose of their children’s hands in marriage (see “Lovel and John,” No. 28).

As this Knight was to some extent a country squire, so his dwelling rather resembled a fortified farm than a feudal castle. Its garth (gaard), [10] surrounded by a palisade, contained a collection of separate buildings, mostly built of wood, and thatched with straw or reed. The linden tree which shaded the garth, and the castle gate which afforded a glimpse of the outer world, figure largely in the Ballads.

The main building contained the principal living-rooms, and was adorned with carved beams projecting from the gables—which beams, in process of time, were replaced by weather-vanes. Access both to ground-floor and upper storey (højeloft) was obtained by means of an outside gallery-staircase (svalegang, højloftssvale), where the traveller was wont to hang up his cloak (axler sit Skind) ere he entered the hall.

Refuge from attack was to be found in another building, the Stone-hall (stenstue)—or, where this was lacking, in the nearest church tower. (The term “stenstue” is occasionally applied to the main building, should it happen to be built of stone, but this is exceptional.)

Another most important building was the Maiden’s Bower, richly adorned, and “locked right well” lest it be “broken” by over-importunate [11] suitors. Those fathers were censured as “inexperienced” who built it in too remote a spot.

A few Ballads speak of castles with dungeons and fortified gates, but these were few and far between.

Towards the close of the Middle Ages manners underwent a change; antique simplicity was corrupted. These unpretentious knights were swamped by the rise of a more powerful nobility, who united their estates through intermarriages, and followed the fashions of the court. The round dance was driven from the castle to the farmhouse. Persons of quality, however, retained a certain amount of interest in the old Ballads; and to this interest the fact is owing that Ballads in Denmark were earlier written down than those of any other European country. The young lady of the sixteenth century was wont to keep an album, wherein verses were inscribed by her friends; and, amid love-complaints, compliments, moral emblems, and so forth, the old national folk-poems found their place. From these albums were gathered the first collections of Ballads. Every lady’s bower had its own collection—and the singing of the Ballads during the long winter evenings led to much disastrous dilution of the original texts.

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With the coming in of the seventeenth-century Pastoral, the fashionable career of the Ballad was over, but its value was recognized from the literary and historical point of view; and the business of collection began in earnest. Royal patronage was not lacking. In June 1586 Queen Sophie visited Tycho Brahé in his observatory on the isle of Hveen, was storm-bound for three days, and entertained with Ballads by another guest, Anders Vedel the historian. He promised her a collection, which promise materialized in the shape of Queen Sophie’s Ballad Book , followed shortly by another based on the great folio MS. of the Odensee nunnery (Karen Brahé’s library).

The yeoman and peasant, meanwhile, remained faithful to the Ballad as a means of recreation, and continued to import new ones, mostly from Germany. Ballads were sung in Jutland until late in the nineteenth century, and many of these, not previously written down, were collected during the national revival of the eighteen-forties.

Danish Ballads were not only collected in MS., but printed and published earlier than those elsewhere—Vedel’s A Hundred Choice Danish Ballads in 1591; Tragica, or Love Ballads in 1657. Peter Syr’s enlarged collection followed in 1695. Danish Ballads from the Middle Ages was published in 1811-12 by Abrahamson, Nyerip, and Rahbek; [13] and then came Sven Grundtvig’s epoch-making Denmark’s Ancient Ballads (1853), which contains every known version of every specimen, with critical and historical prefaces.

An excellent popular selection, by Axel Olrik and Ida Falbe Hansen ( Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg ), was published in 1912; and from the ballad-versions given therein I have prepared the translations which follow.

[14]

The historical foundation for these two Ballads amounts only to this; that Valdemar I, or the Great (1157-82), had a mistress named Tove; that she bore him a son, Christopher; and that the King found it expedient to put her away, and ally himself with his opponent Knud Magnusson by marrying his half-sister Sophia. Nothing is known of Tove’s fate; her death at her rival’s hands is a figment of the popular fancy.

The older (A) version (preserved in Iceland) is chiefly interesting from its picture of Tove in the character of that perfect lover so dear to the mediæval masculine mind—the Patient Grizel, the Burd Ellen, who knows no jealousy where her lord’s affections are concerned. Valdemar’s apparently tactless questions are designed to bring out the contrast between the meek submission of the mistress and the frank hatred of the wife.

The Danish or B version, probably composed [16] some fifty years later, takes a more human point of view. It sacrifices historical accuracy to dramatic effect by handing over Sophia’s son Knud (afterwards King) to Tove.

I
VALDEMAR AND TOVE, 1157 (A)

[19]

II
VALDEMAR AND TOVE (B)

Valdemar II (1202-41) has been strangely dealt with by the Ballads. They are silent alike as to the warlike exploits which won him the name of Sejr, the Victorious, and the administrative reforms commemorated in his other title of Legifer. His crusade against the heathen Esthonians—even the miraculous gift of the Dannebrog, the national standard blazoned in the armorial bearings of the conquered city Reval—left popular imagination unmoved. It seized, however, on the images of his two Queens, ascribing to the one all that was liked, to the other all that was loathed, in the King’s treatment of his subjects.

Dragomir the Bohemian came to Denmark in 1205, bore the King a son, Valdemar, and died two years later, probably in childbirth. From the first she was the people’s darling; her Slav name was changed to Dagmar (Dag-mø = day-maid or light-bringer) “by reason,” says a contemporary chronicler, “of her great beauty.”

The Ballads of her Bridal and Death were probably composed by the next generation, and [24] have little pretension to historical accuracy. Bishop Valdemar, for instance, was not the Queen’s uncle, but the King’s first cousin—son of Knud Magnusson, whose sister was Valdemar’s mother. In consequence of an attempt to usurp the throne, as the German Emperor’s vassal, he was thrown into prison at Søberg, where he lay for fourteen years. His release in 1205 was due to the Pope’s intervention, aided, as a monkish chronicle puts it, “by the loving representations of Bishop Andreas and others”—but the people, perhaps with some reason, pictured Dagmar as the peacemaker.

A second Ballad of her bridal describes her wooing by Sir Strange as the King’s proxy:

Little is known of Valdemar’s second Queen, Berengaria, except that she too was beautiful. But, since she came of a contentious and covetous family, the popular view of her character may be accurate enough. The “binding the harbours with iron bands” means the closing of them with chains, so that tribute might be exacted from incoming vessels. The Ballad’s account of her death—a relishing piece of poetical justice—has no foundation in fact.

[25]

III
QUEEN DAGMAR’S BRIDAL, 1205

IV
QUEEN DAGMAR’S DEATH

[32]

V
QUEEN BENGERD

These Ballads have been selected from a cycle dealing with the murder of King Erik Klipping (1259-86), and the subsequent disturbances. All through his reign he was at feud with his turbulent nobles; in 1282 they extorted his signature to a Constitution (Denmark’s Magna Carta) safeguarding the rights of the nobility and liberties of the people; then, since he proved faithless, they did him to death. The murder took place on the night of November 22, 1286; his corpse was found next morning, with fifty-six [35] wounds, in a barn at Finderup, whither he had retired to sleep during a hunting expedition. The assassins escaped for a time, but their identity was suspected, and the young King Erik Mœndved (1286-1319) was determined to have justice. At the Parliament of Nyborg (1287) a grand jury was impanelled to try the late King’s principal adversaries; nine, mostly of one family, were found guilty and declared outlaws, the royal marshal, Stig Andersen, among them. They took refuge among the islands, whence they harried the coasts of Denmark; and the protection afforded them by Norway gave rise to a lengthy war.

The “King-Slaying” is the earliest of the Ballads on this subject. The innocence of the King’s page Rane was loudly maintained by his friends, who asserted that he, “naked and weaponless, warded his master,” but evidence was forthcoming that proved his treachery.

The Ballad next in date describes the outlaws’ departure from Denmark, and Stig’s resolve to build a castle at Hjælm. The third of the series tells of his ill-omened dream, and his wife’s attempt to explain it away—his ride to the royal castle, the Queen’s taunt that he wishes to usurp the crown, and his reply that such an ambition rather befits her paramour, Drost Ove. [36] The young King declares him an outlaw; Stig threatens to keep his foot in Denmark, and begins the building of his castle, whose looming battlements scare the peasantry.

The fourth Ballad, “Marsk Stig and his Lady” (No. 7), was written after a lapse of time when the political motive for the Slaying had been forgotten, and replaced by one more romantic, based on a vague tradition. The King, in fact, appears as David, and Stig as Uriah the Hittite. The Ballad has therefore no claim to historical accuracy; moreover, it places the action throughout in Sjælland.

Latest of all comes “The Long Ballad of Marsk Stig,” which—after the fashion of the “Lytell Geste of Robin Hood”—unites all the other Ballads in a consecutive narrative, reproducing them mostly word for word, yet enriching them with its own characteristic touches. The King’s villainy is heightened by his promise to watch over Dame Ingeborg during her husband’s absence; “she shall suffer no more wrong than if thyself wert home.” Rane, the treacherous page, appears as sister’s son to the Dame, with whom he plots the King’s murder. After Stig’s defiance at the Thing, and before the Slaying, the Long Ballad inserts an episode peculiar to itself; the amorous King goes a-hunting with Rane, [37] gets lost in the wood, and encounters an Elf-Maid, who, in riddling words, prophesies his imminent death.

This poem, fine as it is, foreshadows the decline of the Ballad pure and simple, and its supersession by the more lengthy and complicated Romance, or novel in verse.

There are other Ballads (not contemporary) dealing with the minor characters in the drama, which give picturesque glimpses of the outlaw’s adventurous life:

(Since, in some versions, the wandering maidens are the King of England’s daughters, it is probable that Marsk Stig’s name crept in from a semi-historical Ballad of Erik Mœndved’s Bridal, wherein the young Queen begs the release of Stig’s daughters from prison.)

Another sings the “Wooing of Ranild Jonson,” who by threats forces his beloved from her reluctant parents:

VI
THE KING-SLAYING IN FINDERUP, 1285

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VII
MARSK STIG AND HIS LADY

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VIII
THE LONG BALLAD OF SIR MARSK STIG
( Extract )

Niels Ebbeson was the man of his hour; and the hour was one of the blackest in Danish history. The worthless King Christopher was dead, his son Valdemar abroad, and the greedy Holstein nobles were scrambling for the choicest parts of the kingdom. One of these local tyrants, Count Gert, or Gerhardt, held Fyn and Jutland in pledge; and how the Jutlanders found deliverance is best told by a Franciscan chronicler, writing in 1385:

We learn from other sources that the patriots fired a house to divert the Germans’ attention, and that they escaped over Randers Bridge, which—having previously loosened the timbers—they broke down behind them. Thus they, and their leader Niels Ebbeson, saved Denmark from becoming a German province.

Little or nothing, apart from this exploit, is known of Niels Ebbeson; his very dwelling-place, “Noringsris”—“Norroway” in one version of his Ballad—is unidentified. He and two of his brothers fell, fighting against the Holsteiners, at Skanderborg, on November 1, 1340; and their bodies were taken to the family burial-place in Vestervig monastic church.

Three noble families claimed him; but recent researches have proved that he belonged to the Strangesons, chieftains in Ty, and descendants of Ebbe Skammelson (see No. 11), which family played a prominent part during the first half of the fourteenth century. They were connected by blood and intermarriage with another clan of [50] Strangesons, with the Frosters, Ove Haas, Niels Bugge, and the Globes of Vendesyssel. (This Ove Haas was a partisan of Count Gerhardt’s, and fell at Randers.) In the opening dialogue of the Ballad the Count hints at Ebbeson’s rumoured complicity with Bugge, leader of the rebellion, and tries generally to discover the attitude of Niels’ powerful connections. With the latter’s defence of Anders Frost, the trial of wits becomes a quarrel—for here the German and Danish systems of fealty are brought into collision.

The services of the vassal, by German law, belonged from birth to his liege lord, with whose consent alone could the contract be broken; whereas the Danish chieftainship was based on the Law of Commutation, which gave the vassal the annual right to “take leave” (Orlov tage) and serve another chieftain. Twice over in the Ballad does Ebbeson gives his “swains” the choice whether or no they will follow him into danger; and twice over the system of free-will service is vindicated by their answer.

Valiant attempts have been made by Danish antiquaries to identify “Swain Trøst”—Vedel, for instance, provided him with a name and a family—just as their English confrères would fain find an original for Robin Hood. But this Trusty Page had no local habitation: his very [51] name is borrowed from the Ballad of Young Danneved; for the Svend Trøst who saves his lord at a pinch is a figure frequently found in the ballad-world. Popular imagination, through him, does honour to all his class.

This Ballad is obviously the work of a minstrel (not contemporary with Niels), and is not associated with the Dance.

The Revised Conclusion is by another hand, and slightly later in date than the original version. A third exists, very imperfectly preserved, which is more historically accurate than either. It replaces Anders Frost by Esge, his father, and depicts Niels as asking aid of his brother Knud Ebbeson of Bygholm. We learn from it—with regret—that Niels’ speech to his house-carles, and Swain Trøst’s achievement, are the inventions of an admiring posterity.

One other poetical pæan must be quoted—the song-burst of a grave chronicler:

[52]

IX
NIELS EBBESON, 1340

[62]

THE RE-MODELLED CONCLUSION OF NIELS EBBESON

The story of Havbor, or Hagbard, and Signelil is a very ancient one. Sven Grundtvig gives it a Russian origin; but, however that may be, it is traced back by other Danish authorities to the dim period of Folk-Migration, before the Skjoldung kings. Sung in an antique Lay—which has perished—it was re-told by Saxo Grammaticus, and frequently referred to in the works of the Icelandic skalds between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The twelfth-century Kormak’s Saga mentions a representation of Hagbard among the carvings in Thorkel’s hall. Snorris’ Edda (Skaldskarparsmal) gives Hagbard’s name in a list of sea-kings; and Brynhild (Volsunga Saga 25) calls him the first of men before the birth of Sigurd Fafnirsbane.

The probable scene of the tragedy is Sigarsted, in Sjælland, near Ringsted, the ancient royal residence. There the sites yet exist of Sigar’s [66] palace and Signe’s bower—there, too, is the howe where the gibbet was raised, and the field where Sigar was defeated by Hagbard’s avenging kinsmen. They were visited by Ole Worm in 1642, and a map of them was published in Monumenta Danica . The Rev. S. M. Beyer, in 1791, excited the antiquarian world by his alleged discovery of a rune-stone commemorating King Sigar—but, since the stone, he was careful to add, had since been destroyed, the statement, to put it mildly, lacks verification.

The ballad-minstrel omits much of the original story, but adds details of his own—Havbor’s reply to the serving-maid, the King’s remorseful outburst, and the punishment of the tale-bearer. The binding of Havbor with Signe’s hair, and his refusal to break it, though appearing at first sight a touch of fantastic mediæval chivalry, probably harks back to a much more primitive superstition, well known to all witches—that which regards the hair as enshrining the life of its possessor. In verse 20 we have a faint reminiscence of the antique Shield-Maidens, Choosers of the Slain.

[67]

X
HAVBOR AND SIGNELIL

This ballad of a brother’s treachery (which may be compared with our own “Childe Vyet”) dates from circa 1300, and is considered by Olrik as the best produced in Denmark during the mediæval period. In character-drawing it yields to none. Proud Adelus, “strong in will and true in troth,” is the ideal noble lady; the hot-blooded hero, the cowardly brother, and the mother with her unavailing [77] attempt at smoothing things over, are all well individualized. The burden, too, is peculiarly haunting and picturesque.

Tradition points to the Nordentoft homestead in North Jutland (Ty) as the scene of the tragedy; and the great Strangeson family claims Ebbe as its founder.

XI
EBBE SKAMMELSON

These Ballads are two of a large group celebrating popular legendary heroes. Those concerned with Didrik—all jovial ones with happy endings—were adapted or translated from the work of the wandering German minstrels known as the “Saxon Singers,” who visited Denmark during the time of Knud Lavard and Sven Grade (1131-57). Part of this poetry, moreover, apparently trickled into Scandinavia by circuitous routes, since a lengthy “Didrikssaga” was composed during the thirteenth century at Bergen.

There are those who consider Didrik as a mere Mrs. Harris, and derive his name from the vague appellation þioðreke = folk-king. But most authorities believe that he had a flesh-and-blood original in Theoderic, King of the East Goths, and conqueror of Italy, whose royal seat was at “Bern,” i. e. Verona. Be that as it may, this kingly shade enlisted his champions among the most august phantoms of the North. Sivord Snarensvend, for example, is no less a personage than Sigurd Fafnirsbane; while Helled Haagen is Hogne the Hero, Sigurd’s slayer. Raadengaard may (or may [84] not) be the Hrothgar of “Beowulf,” and the “Sir Aldingar” of British ballad. Most of the other figures may be pursued through the mazes of legend; but Falkvor the Fiddler is a creation of the “fiddling” minstrel’s; and he or his translator inserted Tetlev Danske as a compliment to the Danes.

As for Holger Danske, he is the French hero Ogier le Danois, originally one of Charlemagne’s champions, who fought for Christendom against the infidel. The oldest Danish ballad of Holger describes his victory over Burmand, an amorous Troll, who would fain carry off the Lady Gloriant, the King of Hungary’s daughter, from her rightful lover King Karvel. This chivalrous deed of Holger’s captivated the popular fancy, which adopted him henceforth as national hero, crowned him with the “red, red gold” and pictured him as defending Denmark against the power of the German Empire, personified in the giants Sverting and Bermer-Ris. “Holger Danske and Stout Didrik may,” says Olrik, “be considered Denmark’s first patriotic song.”

Verses 4 and 5 find a parallel in “The Battle of Otterburn” (English version).

XII
OH, SEVENTY-SEVEN TWICE-TOLD WERE THEY

[92]

XIII
HOLGER DANSKE AND STOUT DIDRIK

A certain number of Ballads borrowed their subjects from the Old Norse Lays, making of them, not translations, but fresh creations; for the Lays tower above the many-coloured ballad-world like ice-peaks that loom over flowery meads. The story of Young Svejdal is derived from two Lays dealing with the adventures of Svipdag, who wakes Menglad from her trance on the magic mountain; but

This Ballad, indeed, brings down the story from the misty peaks of Valhalla into the garrulous region of fairy-tale. It is faithful to the primitive tradition which depicts the dead as waking unwillingly from their slumbers. Svejdal’s mother speaks as does the dead Vala in the nameless Lay called “Baldr’s Doom” by the editors of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale :

(Who is the man unknown to me that has put me to this weary journey? I was snowed on with snow, and smitten with rain, and dripped on with dew; dead was I lang syne.)

The refrain is:

(Loath have I spoken. Now must I be silent!) Gray, in his translation, “The Descent of Odin,” puts it with eighteenth-century elegance:

and readers of Mansfield Park will remember how fitly these words are applied to the languid [98] speech of Lady Bertram. A “clever fancy” on the part of the Norns, to spin this slender thread connecting Jane Austen (of all people!) with the “Runick savages boozing ale!” Had she known more of them, she would doubtless have agreed with Frederick the Great, that all their works were not worth a charge of powder, and that she would have no such stuff in her library.

XIV
YOUNG SVEJDAL

Here we have the Old Norse Lay of Thrym (þrymskviða) recast and trolled forth by a mediæval minstrel. He has been faithful to the grim jollity of the original poem; but, as his lilting verse has lost the trenchant battle-axe swing of the old alliterative metre, so the tale he tells is shorn of the epic dignity surrounding Valhalla and the gods. On the restoration of the Thunderer’s hammer hangs the fate of the Æsir in their endless warfare with the Frost Giants; its loss is a calamity such as was never known in heaven nor earth. When Freyja is asked to play the Bride, her stamp shakes the celestial floor. When Thor drives to the wedding feast, earth burns under his chariot wheels. Whereas the Thord of the Ballad might, for aught we are told, be a mere bonnet-laird; and it is only by implication that we gather any idea of his hammer’s importance.

The erudite M. Pineau ( Étude sur les Chants Populaires Scandinaves ) is puzzled and pained by these variations and omissions—notably that of the Æsir’s council, and of Thor’s indignation at the idea of assuming bridal attire. “Don’t [104] tell me,” he exclaims indignantly, “that this scene of all others could be forgotten by the popular imagination!” The Eddie Lays, according to him, jealously guarded by the priests, were never known to the people at large; and he goes so far as to declare that the source alike of Lay and Ballad must be sought in some older, and now non-existent, form of the story. M. Pineau, in short, is a Necessitarian, who will not allow free-will to poets. Why should not the minstrel pick and choose his incidents? Why, on M. Pineau’s own showing, should not the Lay have reached him in fragmentary form? The student must decide for himself; suffice it meanwhile to say that the Ballad is a capital one, and the “merry jest” at the end a racy substitute for the ferocious pun which concludes the original, at the expense of the Giant’s mother:

[105]

XV
THORD OF HAFSGAARD

This fine Ballad (admired by Andrew Lang) is unique in its mingling of pagan and Christian sentiment. The hero, who in his Bersark blood-lust spares neither wife, maid, nor suckling—whose brother the sword is possessed by a demon—who has ranged the world in pursuit of revenge—ranges it again as a penitent pilgrim, bound, for the heavier penance, in iron chains. Since, however, the Ballads concern themselves little with ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the penance is depicted as ending, not at any saintly shrine, but at the grave of his enemy.

The belief that the warrior’s favourite weapons were animated by a mysterious personality is familiar to all students of Old Norse literature. One celebrated example occurs in Njàls Saga, 79, when Høgni, stealing out with Skarpheðinn by night to avenge the death of Gunnar, takes down the dead hero’s halberd, and hears it singing aloud. (The O.N. impersonal idiom, “it sang in the halberd,” hints at the indwelling soul.) “Then sprang up Rannveig (Gunnar’s mother) and cried in bitter wrath, ‘Who is taking the halberd, which I forbade all men to touch?’ [109] ‘I would carry it,’ said Høgni, ‘to my father, that he may have it in Valhalla, and bear it at the Weapon Thing.’ ‘Further than that,’ said she, ‘wilt thou bear it, even to thy father’s avenging, for the halberd declares the death of one man or more.’”

That magical forces, once unchained, might end by destroying their liberator—that the naming of the name conferred power over the name’s possessor—are superstitions common to almost all primitive races.

Versions of this Ballad exist in Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroëse.

XVI
THE AVENGING SWORD

“After the old gods had vanished,” says Olrik, “and before the Christian God was personally apprehended, arose the rich poetry which deals with Nature-Spirits.”

They always appear in the older Ballads under a grim and treacherous aspect; the Nixies, for instance, are such as we find in the “Ballad of Annan Water.”

This fear, natural to a human-kind as yet not master of the elements, was intensified by the teaching of the Church. In the Eddic mythology the Dwarfs had their own recognized place, whereas their semi-descendants, the Fairies or Nature-Spirits, not being Angels, were regarded as Devils by priestly eyes. Only in later Ballads, such as “Agnes and the Merman,” and “The Mermaid’s Soothsaying,” do we find any hint of compassion for the soulless fay.

The theme of this Ballad—the fairy’s fatal love for a mortal—originated in Northern France, whence it crept into the folk-lore of Europe in [115] general. (Gervase of Tilbury has a warning word to young men on the dangers of elfin flirtations; and the Rev. — Kirk in his Secret Commonwealth (1691) points out their “inconvenience.”) The peasant of Annam, too, knows the “ con-tinh ,” the wild-haired feminine Genii who dance on a starless night, and lure mortal youths to their undoing.

To the Elfin Shaft or Elfin Bolt was attributed sudden death or seizure of pain, either in man or beast, among the Scandinavians.

The Icelandic form of the Ballad heightens the horror by the addition of those fiery portents associated with burial-houses containing treasure, guarded by fairies or by the dead. The “false fairy” stabs Sir Oluf with a sword, which, under cover of her cloak, she takes from her “treasure chest of gold.”

[116]

XVII
THE ELFIN SHAFT

That the first of these Ballads is the more ancient appears probable through its conception of the Merman—the grim troll with his shape-changing and his glamour, fit image of the inexorable sea. The fine imaginative touch of the holy images averting their heads must have been borrowed from this by the later Ballad. Versions [120] exist in Swedish, Norwegian, Faroëse, Icelandic, and English (“Clerk Colvill and the Mermaid”).

The “Agnes” Ballad must, I take it, have been known to Matthew Arnold, who enriched its simple folk-melody with the elaborate orchestration of his “Forsaken Merman.” But, for dramatic power and genuine feeling, the honours remain with the more primitive bard.

It dates from the late mediæval period when creative power was on the wane, and is an adaptation of the German “Schöne Agnete”—which, in its turn, has a Slav original. The German Ballad, however, takes the more primitive view of the Merman, who ends by destroying his mortal mistress. Later Danish minstrels—Sven Grundtvig among them—have altered the conclusion accordingly.

XVIII
THE KNAVISH MERMAN

XIX
AGNES AND THE MERMAN

The story told by this Ballad takes us into no very remote region of Faërie; wicked stepdame, enchanted maid, and knightly deliverer are all familiar personages. The belief in human blood as means whereby the bewitched mortal is delivered from the beast-likeness is found in the folk-lore of many nations, and may be a dim memory of sacrificial cannibal feasts. But the beautiful Introductory Stanzas are noteworthy; for such detailed descriptions of Nature occur but rarely in Ballads, Danish or other. This one recalls the famous opening of one among the Ballads of Robin Hood:

A verse of another Danish Ballad might have been spoken by Little John, who bids his “dere [128] master” pluck up heart, “and think this is a merrie time, all in a morning of May”:

XX
THE ENCHANTED MAIDEN

“Torben’s Daughter” is a fine example of compressed, dramatic narration—we are not even told the names of hero and heroine. It is interesting also as depicting the simplicity of antique manners, when a knight might be found holding the plough. The maiden who pledges her father’s slayer, behaves, though in all innocence, as does the false wife of the Baron of Brackley:

The second Ballad is that which, greatly daring, sings the praises of simple worth—thus expressing a tendency doomed by the spirit of later times. Unlike the reprover of Clara Vere de Vere, the minstrel adorns his theme with a dry humour, that spares neither hero nor heroine—dowdy country maid and dandified lordling. That [133] is an excellent touch (verse 3) which shows the former’s resentment of the pert page’s remarks on her garments; so is her artful reference to the excellent appetite which will reward her future lord’s agricultural exertions—the ancient wisdom of “Feed the brute!” The Ballad craves a sequel, to be entitled “The Husband turned Husbandman.”

XXI
TORBEN’S DAUGHTER

XXII
THE MAIDEN AT THE THING

These two Ballads deal, from different stand-points, with the change of manners that came in towards the close of the Middle Ages. A barrier grew up between bower and hall; the Squire became the serving man, whose menial labours were no longer shared by his master. There [139] were those, doubtless, who regretted the good old times; and the “King Erik” Ballad expresses their sentiments.

“The Game of Dice,” with its more conventional ending, is concerned for gentility. Its Danish version dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Other forms exist in Norwegian and Icelandic, and in a Swedish broadsheet of the later eighteenth century. There is also a Slav version.

XXIII
THE GAME OF DICE

XXIV
KING ERIK AND THE SCORNFUL MAID

This Ballad is a special favourite throughout Scandinavia. S. Grundtvig dates it from the twelfth century, the period of the Wendish invasions, and inclines to consider it as founded on fact. But, as Olrik points out, the Wend King here rides up, not as marauder, but as fairy prince; so that the Ballad was probably composed later, and borrowed his figure—a shadow of “old, unhappy, far-off things”—from earlier ones composed during the time of Wendish warfare. My translation of verse 21 hardly does justice to the original:

[147]

XXV
THE MAIDEN’S MORNING DREAM

This sixteenth-century Ballad has a Scots parallel in “Willie’s Wake,” and versions of the same story are found in Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Galicia; but whether it travelled from south to north, or vice versa, cannot be determined. Little Kirsten’s self-betrayal in owning her love for the supposedly dead man is peculiar to the Northern form. The wistful, delicate humour, moreover, of the two concluding verses, seems to me characteristically Danish—their author, a literary ancestor of Hans Andersen.

This Ballad may be compared with our own “Sweet William and May Margaret,” “Sweet William’s Ghost,” and the conclusion of “Clerk Saunders.” The same theme gave rise to Ballads in Sweden, Brittany, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Slav countries. (The idea of a dead lover’s return to his sweetheart is one so [154] natural that we surely need not hark back for its Danish source to the classical Lay of Helge and Sigrun.) It inspires another fine Ballad, “Sir Morten of Fuglsang,” whose Burden was borrowed by Longfellow in his poetical version of Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga ( Tales of a Wayside Inn ).

The line in verse 6, “ No cloak had he ,” refers to the custom of smiting the door with a fold of the cloak. (In “Niels Ebbeson” I have substituted “sword,” as more intelligible to the English reader.)

The metre of “Aage and Else” is an interesting variation on the usual form of the four-lined stanza.

XXVII
AAGE AND ELSE

Jovial Ballads, these, of the Young Lochinvar type, where the too tardy bridegroom wins the verdict “Serve him right!” (In the former, I have made free with the name of Sir Lave, turning it into Lovel.) The svalegang plays its part in the story, since it is along this open gallery-stair that Sir John lights the bride to her bower. The Burden is handled with singular skill; the concluding line in verses 2, 3, and 4 forms no part of the dialogue, but is an aside spoken by the poet.

“Gallant knight” in “Tyge Hermandsson,” v. 21, is literally “lady’s swain” (Jomfrusvend)—squire of dames, first in love as in war.

XXVIII
LOVEL AND JOHN

[163]

XXIX
TYGE HERMANDSSON

Child, F. J. (ed.). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 volumes. 1882-98.

Selection from Child’s collection, edited by H. C. Sargent and G. L. Kittredge . 1904.

Garborg, Hulda. Norske Folkeviser.

Grundtvig, S. (ed.). Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser. 5 volumes. 1853-1890. Translations into Danish of British Ballads.

Gummere, F. B. Article on Ballads in the Cambridge History of English Literature . 1908.

Henderson, T. F. The Ballad in Literature. ( Cambridge Manuals. ) 1912.

Ker, W. P. Epic and Romance. 1897.

Olrik, A. Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg, og Indledning. 1912.

Pineau, L. Les Vieux Chants Populaires Scandinaves. 1898.

Vigfusson, G. , and Powell, F. York . Corpus Poeticum Boreale. 2 volumes. 1883.