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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,1 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

1Danmarks 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.

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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 Kvaddingtning paa Faerøerne, med et Musikbilag, 1901; in German, expanded, in Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, iii. 2, pp. 222-269).

being there the favourite amusement, with any number of ballads to go along with it, and the refrain always an essential part of the entertainment.

The French carole was well established in the twelfth century in Denmark, and even in Iceland, where the word danz is used of the rhymes sung-the ballade rather than of the dancing itself. The chief documents of this early part of the history are clerical protests against the vanity of the new fashion, much the same in Denmark, Iceland, France, England, and Germany; e.g. in the common story of the dancers on whom a judgment fell, so that they could not leave off dancing, but kept at it night and day.1

Fortunately the preachers and moralists, in noting the vices of the dancing song, have given some of the earliest information about it, and the oldest quotations. There are few remains of English lyrical poetry of the twelfth century, but the fact of its existence is proved by historians. Giraldus Cambrensis in his Gemma Ecclesiastica has a chapter against songs and dances in churches and churchyards, and tells a story of a priest in the dioceses of Worcester who was so haunted by the refrain 2 of a song which he had heard repeated all night long about his church, that in the morning at the Mass instead of Dominus vobiscum he said Swete lemman thin are-" Sweet heart, take pity!" Almost at the same time is found the first notice of the ring

1 Cf. Gaston Paris, Les Danseurs Mardits, légende allemande du XI siècle, 1900. There is another story in the Durham Exampla described by M. Paul Meyer (Notices et Extraits, xxxiv.). A priest, a lusty bachelor, was fond of wakes and dances; once, however, he saw at a dance two devils to each man and woman, moving their arms and legs, ad omnes motus et vertigines quas faciebant.

2" Interjectam quandam cantilenae particulam ad quam saepius redire consueverant, quam refectoriam seu refractoriam vocant." Giraldus Cambrensis, Rolls Series, ii. 120.

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dance in Denmark: the great Archbishop Absolon, about 1165, had to correct the monks of Eskilsoe who kept their festivals with too much glory, and who approved of dancing in hall.1 Passages showing the opposition of the clergy and the strong vogue of the dance in early days are quoted from the Bishop's Lives of Iceland in the essay on "Dance and Ballad " in the Oxford Corpus.2 The earliest ballad refrains in Icelandic belong to the thirteenth century; one of them (A.D. 1264) repeated by an Icelandic gentleman on his way to meet his death.

Mínar eru sorgir þungar sem blý.

(My sorrows are heavy as lead.)

which was intended originally as a lover's complaint and is applied humorously otherwise in the quotation.3 The French lyrical dancing game appears to have conquered the north just at the critical period when the world became closed to northern adventurers of the old type, when the Viking industry was passing away, and along with it much of the old northern poetical traditions. It is known how King Hacon of Norway (our adversary at Largs) encouraged French romance in Norwegian adaptations—a sign of changing manners. These were in prose, but besides these the Icelandic quotations above referred to show how French tunes and French rhymes were taking the place of the old narrative blank verse, even there in Iceland. Denmark had probably been accustomed to rhyme long before, through the example of German minstrels, whether

1 Steenstrup, Danmarks Riges Hist., i. p. 688.

2 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. Vigfússon and York Powell, ii. p. 385.

3 Ibid. p. 387; Sturlunga Saga, Oxford, 1878, ii. 264.

Canute the Dane really made his song about the monks of Ely or no.

This is all some way from the ballads, English, Scottish, or Danish. The French caroles could get on without stories; the refrains quoted by Giraldus and by Sturla have nothing about them to show that they were used in those days with narrative ballads; rather the contrary. The essay on the Icelandic danz, above quoted, takes very strongly the view that there was no narrative along with the danz in Iceland; that the verses of those early ballads were satirical or amatory. Narrative was supplied in a different way.

But at some time or other the refrain began to be used regularly in Denmark, as it is now used in the Faroes, along with narrative poems: ballads, as we ordinarily understand the term. The date of the first ballads is not likely to be discovered soon; and for the present it may be well to leave it alone. One thing, or rather a large system of things, is certain, and interesting enough, whatever the dates may be.

The use of refrains constantly in Denmark, and less regularly in this country, makes it necessary to regard the English and Danish ballads as one group over against the German ballads of the Continent. Resemblances in matter between English and Danish ballads are not so frequent as we might expect; but there is identity of manner almost everywhere, at any rate where the ballads of this side have refrains along with them.

In some of the Danish ballads the chorus comes in at the end, as in the old English poem of Robin and Gandeleyn, where the overword

Robin lieth in green wood bounden,

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