he left, the common talk was that a nobleman named "Bilonmat" from Spain had been in Scotland enlisting men (que hacía gente) and that the King of Scotland had imprisoned him? Was the skipper providing his Spanish entertainers with such news as he thought would please them, and did he throw in "Ben Lomond " as a well-sounding name in default of a better? Anyhow, there is the little Scotch coal gabbert, sailing in company with an Irish boat of a similar build, the two of them caught off the Long Ships by Spanish men-ofwar on the 2nd July, N.S., 1588, in wild weather, blowing hard from the north-east and the sea running high. Juan Gomez with his hulks, as it happened, was not far off (op. cit. ii. p. 164).

The moral is that the rivalry of England and Spain includes a great and real likeness between the two nations. They belong to the Ocean stream, and the Spanish yarns are of the same sort as the English reports of voyages in Hakluyt. The people of the Peninsula made a more direct attempt to turn their voyages into poetry; England has nothing to compare with the great Portuguese epic of the voyage of Vasco da Gama, the Spanish epic of Chile. But I do not believe that any foreign nation is better qualified than the people of this island to appreciate Os Lusiadas of Camoens or La Araucana of Juan de Ercilla.

NOTE A.

SIR RICHARD BINGHAM, Governor of ConnauGHT, TO THE
QUEEN, December 3rd, 1588.

Laughton, Defeat of the Armada (Navy Records Society),
ii. p. 299.

I have adventured, in the consideration of my duty and bounty of your Highness's favour toward me, your

poor and faithful soldier, to present your Highness now with these humble and few lines, as a thanksgiving to Almighty God for these his daily preservations of your sacred person, and the continual deliverance of us, your Majesty's subjects, from the cruel and bloody hands of your Highness's enemies, and that lastly from the danger of the Spanish forces, defeated first by your Majesty's navy in the narrow Seas, and sithence overthrown through the wonderful handiwork of Almighty God, by great and horrible shipwrecks upon the coasts of this realm, and most upon the parts and creeks of this province of Connaught, where it hath pleased your Majesty to appoint my service under your Highness's Lord Deputy. Their loss upon this province, first and last, and in several places, was 12 ships, which all we know of, and some two or three more supposed to be sunk to seaboard of the out isles; the men of which ships did all perish in the sea, save the number of 1,100 or upward, which we put to the sword; amongst whom there were divers gentlemen of quality and service, as captains, masters of ships, lieutenants, ensign-bearers, other inferior officers, and young gentlemen, to the number of some 50, whose names I have for the most part set down in a list,1 and have sent the same unto your Majesty; which being spared from the sword till order might be had from the Lord Deputy how to proceed against them, I had special direction sent me to see them executed, as the rest were, only reserving alive one, Don Luis de Cordova, and a young gentleman, his nephew, till your Highness's pleasure be known.

NOTE B.

I offer an emendation in the text, in a very interesting paper printed by Fernandez Duro, ii. p. 163: report of the Alférez Esquivel who sailed in a pinnace, June 27 N.S., from La Coruña to look for the scattered ships. He came in for the wild weather off the Land's End a few days later; running south before the wind on July 2 they were pooped :

nos dió un golpe de mar que nos sobrepujó por encima de la popa de medio en medio, de manera que 1 [Juan Gil, alférez (ensign, 'Ancient") was one of them, who picked up the Falmouth boatmen, July 20th, scouting in a zabra, Fernandez Duro, ii, p. 229.]

quedamos á ras con la mar, anegados y del todo perdida la pinaza que con la mucha diligencia que se puso á agotar el agua con barriles que desfondamos y baldes, y la hecha con [sic] que se hizo de todo lo que habia dentro, fué nuestro Señor servido de que hiciese cabeza la pinaza . . .

For "la hecha con," which is nonsense, read "la hechaçon." The word, printed "echazon," comes a line or two later in the narrative, and is clearly required in this place: "We were pooped by a heavy sea, swamped and the pinnace done for, but that doing all we could to bale with barrels, knocking the tops out, and buckets, and with jettison (echazon) of all the stuff on board, by the favour of God we brought the pinnace up and got way on her." The whole story is worth reading.

XXV

ON THE DANISH BALLADS. I

THE close relation between the Danish and the Scottish ballads has long been recognised. Jamieson particularly called attention to the subject by his translations from the Danish, included in his own Popular Ballads, in the notes to the Lady of the Lake, and in larger numbers, with a fuller commentary, among the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities (1814), edited by Scott. Motherwell in the introduction to his Minstrelsy referred to the likenesses which Jamieson had already pointed out, and added a note of his own on the ballad of Leesome Brand and its Danish counterpart. All the earlier discoveries in this field are of course recorded, with innumerable additions, in the great work of Svend Grundtvig, the collection of all the Danish ballads which is being so worthily completed by his successor Dr. Axel Olrik; while the same matters, the correspondences of ballads in English and Danish (not to speak of other languages), are to be found, with frequent acknowledgments of obligation to Grundtvig, in the companion work of Child. The commentaries of

1 Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, quoted as D.g.F., five volumes, 1853-1890; continued by Dr. Axel Olrik, Danske Ridderviser, 1895-1902 (in progress).

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited by Francis James Child, five volumes, Boston, 1882-1898.

Grundtvig and Olrik on the one hand, of Child on the other, leave one almost in despair as to the possibility of ever making out the history of the connection between the ballads of this country and of Denmark. The present paper is little more than an attempt to define some of the problems.

I

"

Danish ballads-the name 'Danish ' for many purposes in relation to ballads may be taken to mean also Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroesehave preserved more than the English, and much more than the German, of their original character as dancing songs. Though the dancing custom has long died out in Denmark, hardly any of the ballads are without a refrain; and when the refrain is missing, there is generally other evidence to prove that the ballad is not really Danish. Thus the ballad of Grimild's Revenge, a version of the Nibelung story, which has no refrain, is known to be of German origin on other grounds; the plot of it agrees with the Nibelungenlied in one most important thing which makes all the difference between the German and Northern conception of that tragic history. Other examples may be found in Dr. Steenstrup's book on the ballads,1 admirably stated and explained. And though Denmark has lost the old custom of the dance, it is well known how it is retained in the Faroes; 2 the old French carole

1 Vore Folkeviser, 1891.

The ballads of the Faroes, including the dance and the tunes, are being studied by Mr. Hjalmar Thuren of Copenhagen, who has collected much new material since his preliminary essay (Dans og Kvaddingining paa Faerøerne, med et Musikbilag, 1901; in German, expanded, in Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, iii. 2, pp. 222-269).