ballads, but it has been obscured by accidents and prejudices; whereas in Denmark the accidents of culture and literary tradition have been mostly in favour of the ballads, have saved them from unfair competition, and fostered them with the best life of the nation through many centuries.

XXVII

ICELAND AND THE HUMANITIES

THE Humanities in the ordinary professional sense, the humaner letters of Greece and Rome, have sometimes been rather intolerant of studies further afield, in barbarous Northern or Western regions; they have taken Gothic as a general term of disrespect for things with which they refuse to deal, and so their serene temples are defended from the tumult and misrule of the Northern forests. But it is pleasant to remember that there are exceptions; even in the heart of the Renaissance a relenting towards the art and poetry of the less favoured nations:

All our understandings are not to be built by the square of Greece and Italy... Nor can it but touch of arrogant ignorance to hold this or that nation barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how this manifold creature man, wheresoever he stand in the world, entertains the order of Society, effects that which is most in use, and is eminent in some one thing or other, that fits his humour and the times.1

If this liberal way of thinking were more generally known and appreciated it might lead to some interesting discoveries, even in places not far from our doors. The Island of Britain has never yet been thoroughly explained to its inhabitants. Few people know any1 S. Daniel, A Defence of Ryme, 1607.

thing of the poetical traditions of Wales, of the ancient and elaborate art of verse as it is still practised there, where a postman is quoted as an artist in metre,1 and a policeman writes the history of literature.2. Does not even a casual glimpse into this unfamiliar order of studies add something to one's knowledge, add something to the character of Britain ?

Then there are the Highlands of Scotland, with their old language. I speak without knowledge, except of the most accidental kind, but I know there are pleasant surprises waiting for anyone who takes up the study of Gaelic romance and poetry. There is a volume, published last year, on the Poetry of Badenoch,3 which has many unfamiliar beautiful things in it: songs that dally with the innocence of love, like the old age laments for the fall of great men-one of those elegies, quite in the fashion of the Middle Ages, composed by a juggler (Punch and Judy showman), on the "Loss of Gaick," the death of Captain Macpherson in the great snowstorm of Christmas, 1799.

We may remember Dr. Douglas Hyde's editions and translations of the poetry of Connaught before we steer for Iceland.

On the voyage we are reminded of the amazing difference of fortune in the progress of the modern world; to pass from Shetland to the Faroe Islands is to go from one group to another, which in their early history were closely related, which are still alike in many features of their daily business, and yet how different in their education, in the contents and habits

1 Cf. J. Morris Jones, Welsh Versification," in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie iv. p. 140 (1903).

2 Charles Ashton, Editor of the works of Iolo Goch.

3 Collected and edited by the Rev. Thomas Sinton, Minister of Dores (Inverness, 1906).

of their mind! Shetland, in spite of its separation from Scotland, is, I suppose, interested in the same things, and has been so for many years past-interested in the Disruption, in the Free Church Declaratory Act, in the House of Lords (various aspects), in Irish Home Rule, and in Tariff Reform. Out to the Northwest all those things are forgotten; though I am told that Mr. Chamberlain in the Faroes has been turned into the wicked person of a poem on the Boer Warfiguring, I suppose, as something like Thrond of Gata in the Faroe legend, a crafty and malignant adversary. It is well in every way to stop at the Faroes on the way to Iceland. The old manners, Dr. Jakobsen tells us, are slowly changing,1 but they are still alive, and they will always be wonderful to think of. Much has been written about the dances and songs of the Faroes, and more is still to be told, in the book that we are expecting from Mr. Hjalmar Thuren.2

For the present it is enough to remember that these old fashions surviving in the islands are those that once belonged to the whole of Christendom; they are the carols and ballads of the Middle Ages, not revived as a curiosity, but coming down in unbroken tradition, keeping the forms of eight hundred years ago, and matters that are older still. There, if you have luck, you may hear the tune of the Volsung ballad-how Grani, the horse of Sigurd, bore the Nibelung treasure from the heath; there you may see faces "kindle like a fire new-stirred" at the name of Sigmund Brestisson. There is no end to the wonders of those islands, and it is no mere fanciful conceit to say that you meet with the ghosts of old romances there. Not only the themes 1 See Saga-Book, vol. iv. part i. p. 52.

2 Now published (April 1908), Folkesangen paa Færøerne.

of Northern tradition; not only the island story of Thrond and Sigmund, but the heroes of the Southyou have only to look at the titles in the Faroese Anthology to find them. One of the first things offered to me by the bookseller in Thorshavn was the ballad of Roncesvalles.

One reason for stopping at the Faroes is that the Icelanders rather look down on the Faroese as comparatively illiterate, and have reasons, if not a complete justification for this loftiness of theirs. The difference between Iceland and the Faroes is nearly as great as the difference between the Faroes and Shetland. Iceland has had an education of its own, and therefore a consciousness and character of its own. Its temper in some things is like that of the old Humanists, who were proud of their knowledge and despised the uninstructed multitude. There is a story of a famous scholarly Dean of Christ Church, who, in a sermon explaining the advantages of Greek, gave this among other arguments, that a knowledge of Greek enabled you to look down on your fellow-creatures. The Icelanders had this sort of spirit from the first, and mainly through pride in their own language. The glory of the Icelandic Commonwealth in old days, the present distinction of Iceland as against the ruder life of the Faroes, is largely due to grammar. This is what makes Iceland so interesting to a student of the Humanities. He recognises there an instinct for language like that which he finds in Greece.

There is a self-conscious principle of style and good grammar in Iceland by which the people are kept together as articulate speaking men, through all the difficulties of their climate and their history-through famine, plagues, earthquakes, and oppression, still