{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_74284/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_74284","id":"gutenberg_74284","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74284","summary":null,"tags":["Ballads, Danish -- Translations into English","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","Danish poetry -- Translations into English"],"text":"DANISH BALLADS\n\n\n                        CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS\n                           C. F. CLAY, MANAGER\n                       LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4\n\n                       NEW YORK:  G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n                       BOMBAY   }\n                       CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.\n                       MADRAS   }\n                       TORONTO:   J. M. DENT AND SONS, LTD.\n                       TOKYO:     MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA\n\n                           ALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n\n\n\n                              DANISH BALLADS\n\n                              TRANSLATED BY\n                           E. M. SMITH-DAMPIER\n\n                                CAMBRIDGE\n                         AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS\n                                   1920\n\n                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY\n                      RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,\n                   BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,\n                           AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nSo far as possible, I have reproduced the metrical variations of the\noriginal Ballads, and striven in general rather for literal accuracy than\npoetical effect.\n\nAll proper names are to be pronounced after the Danish fashion\u2014with\nthe one exception of \u201cSir Klaus Krummerdike\u201d (\u201cNiels Ebbeson,\u201d Revised\nConclusion, v. 46)\u2014a lapse which, from a sorely-tried rhymester\u2019s point\nof view, surely deserves rather mercy than judgment.\n\nThe Burdens should, of course, be repeated with each verse, but, for\nconvenience\u2019 sake, I have followed the modern custom in placing them only\nat beginning and end of the Ballads.\n\nI am deeply indebted to the late Dr. Axel Olrik, who gave me invaluable\ncriticism on my work as a translator. His Introduction to _Danske\nFolkeviser i Udvalg_ (Copenhagen) is indispensable to the student. To his\nliterary executors, Hr. Hans Ellekilde and Fr\u00f8ken I. Falbe Hansson, I am\nindebted for leave to make use of some of his ballad-versions.\n\nMy thanks are due also to Messrs. Andrew Melrose, Ltd., by whose courtesy\nI am enabled to reprint many translations previously published.\n\n                                                      E. M. SMITH-DAMPIER.\n\n_London, 1920._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  CHAP.                                            PAGE\n\n          INTRODUCTION                                1\n\n                  HISTORICAL BALLADS\n\n       I. VALDEMAR AND TOVE (A)                      16\n\n      II. VALDEMAR AND TOVE (B)                      19\n\n     III. QUEEN DAGMAR\u2019S BRIDAL                      25\n\n      IV. QUEEN DAGMAR\u2019S DEATH                       28\n\n       V. QUEEN BENGERD                              32\n\n      VI. THE KING-SLAYING IN FINDERUP               38\n\n     VII. MARSK STIG AND HIS LADY                    41\n\n    VIII. THE LONG BALLAD OF MARSK STIG (_Extract_)  43\n\n      IX. NIELS EBBESON                              52\n\n                  LEGENDARY BALLADS\n\n       X. HAVBOR AND SIGNELIL                        67\n\n      XI. EBBE SKAMMELSON                            77\n\n     XII. OH, SEVENTY-SEVEN TWICE-TOLD WERE THEY     85\n\n    XIII. HOLGER DANSKE AND STOUT DIDRIK             92\n\n                   BALLADS OF MAGIC\n\n     XIV. YOUNG SVEJDAL                              98\n\n      XV. THORD OF HAFSGAARD                        105\n\n     XVI. THE AVENGING SWORD                        109\n\n    XVII. THE ELFIN SHAFT                           116\n\n   XVIII. THE KNAVISH MERMAN                        120\n\n     XIX. AGNES AND THE MERMAN                      123\n\n      XX. THE ENCHANTED MAIDEN                      128\n\n                MISCELLANEOUS BALLADS\n\n     XXI. TORBEN\u2019S DAUGHTER                         133\n\n    XXII. THE MAIDEN AT THE THING                   135\n\n   XXIII. THE GAME OF DICE                          139\n\n    XXIV. KING ERIK AND THE SCORNFUL MAID           143\n\n     XXV. THE MAIDEN\u2019S MORNING DREAM                147\n\n    XXVI. SIR KAREL\u2019S LYKE-WAKE                     150\n\n   XXVII. AAGE AND ELSE                             154\n\n  XXVIII. LOVEL AND JOHN                            159\n\n    XXIX. TYGE HERMANDSSON                          163\n\n\n\n\nDANISH BALLADS\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nIt may be assumed that the student who approaches the Danish Ballads has\nalready acquired some acquaintance with the prevailing theories as to\nthe origin of Ballads in general. On that dark and debatable question\nI am unqualified to enter. To the earnest beginner I commend Dr. T. F.\nHenderson\u2019s excellent Cambridge Manual _The Ballad in Literature_, where\nthe opinions of Child, Gummere, Kittredge, and other authorities, are\ndiscussed with lucidity, learning, and common-sense. Suffice it here\nand now to say that those who push to extremes the theory of Communal\nAuthorship must be capable of belief in that mythological personage who\nwas born of nine mothers. While some Ballads (with their Incremental\nRepetition and so forth) were obviously created between leader and chorus\nin the Dance, others, no less obviously, were the work of individual\npoets. As the nineteenth century had its Walter Scott and its Hawker of\nMoorwinstow, so earlier ages had the anonymous minstrels who stamped the\nmark of original genius on \u201cNiels Ebbeson\u201d and \u201cSir Patrick Spens.\u201d\n\n    \u201cAt the period when these songs were born, classes were mingled\n    together, or rather did not as yet exist. The people was one;\n    it was the _\u00e9lite_, the best among them, who interpreted what\n    all felt, but all could not express\u2014who sang in the name of\n    all. And thus it is that this poetry belongs to the populace\n    as a whole.... It resembles a stone constantly rolled by the\n    waves\u201d (Pineau).\n\nChild, moreover, points out that the British Ballad \u201cwas not originally\nthe property of the common orders among the people\u201d\u2014and in Denmark,\nsays Henderson, \u201cit was fostered and favoured more particularly by the\nupper classes, and was for some centuries the chief medium of literary\nexpression and culture.\u201d\n\nIn Denmark, as elsewhere, the more primitive forms of the Ballad were\nclosely connected with the Dance\u2014the _carole_, or circular dance with\njoined hands, accompanied by the voice; a pastime which still survives in\nthe Faro\u00eb Islands. The word _Ballad_, indeed, is derived from the South\nItalian _ballare_ = to dance, which in its turn comes from the Greek.\nThe Teutonic tribes, whose sword-dances are mentioned by Tacitus, may,\nin the beginning, have learnt dancing from the Celts. Be that as it may,\nthe round dance became popular throughout Europe during the early Middle\nAges (roughly speaking, between 1149-1400), and took the North by storm,\nfrom the King\u2019s court to the Icelandic farmstead. The dance-songs made\nlight of frontiers, just as the Australian corroborees pass, irrespective\nof language, from tribe to tribe. Vainly did Saxo Grammaticus record\nhis opinion that \u201csuch mountebank antics\u201d (g\u00f8glerspring) were unworthy\nof persons of quality. Every knight had his own dancing-ground\u2014as do\nPapuan chiefs at the present day. Vainly did the Church frown on a\npastime associated with Beltane fires, and other unhallowed survivals of\npaganism. Absalon, it is true, when in 1158 he became Bishop of Sj\u00e6lland,\nput a stop to light-heeled frolic among the merry monks of Eskil\u00f8. The\nCopenhagen clergy in 1425 forbade \u201cheathen\u201d songs and dances on the Feast\nof S. John. But the churchyard was still the popular place to dance in,\nespecially on the wake-nights of the greater festivals, when the people\nassembled from far and near. England behaved no better; a shocking record\nexists of an English priest, so obsessed by the refrain which had rung in\nhis ears all night, that he began the Mass with \u201cmyn hert\u00eb swete!\u201d\n\nThe leader of the Dance sang the Ballad proper: the other dancers came\nin as chorus with the Burden or Refrain. Some Burdens merely imitate\ninstrumental music; such are our own Hey nonny nonny, Tirly low (the\nshepherd\u2019s pipe)\u2014the Danish Hejt lejt lejtli, tra fal de ral, etc. Others\nwere derived from the Ballad itself, which was originally a lyrical\noutburst improvised by the singer.\n\nHere is a gay example from the Icelandic:\n\n  \u201cFair the swan is singing\n  All the summer-tide:\n  Sweet it is to dance and play\n  My lily white!\n      Fair the swan is singing\u201d (Burden).\n\nOr, in graver mood:\n\n  \u201cHeavy are my sorrows,\n    A load of lead to bear,\n  Burnt are all the castles\n    Were builded new and fair.\u201d\n\n(This was sung by the Icelander Thord Andresson when treacherously\ncaptured by Gissur the Earl, 1264.)\n\nA list of Icelandic Dance-Burdens is given in the _Corpus Poeticum\nBoreale_.\n\nThe beginning of the thirteenth century inaugurated a new fashion.\nNarrative poetry\u2014originally a separate art\u2014was combined with the\ndance-lyric. Fables, for instance, were borrowed from the Troubadours,\nthe Minnesingers, and the various foreign minstrels attached to the\nDanish court. The lyrics were sometimes retained as introductory\nstanzas, sometimes broken up into Burdens. Thus the song:\n\n  \u201cThe King he rules the castle\n    And over all the land,\n  And over many a warrior bold\n    With shining sword in hand,\u201d\n\nlent its first line as Burden to a Ballad of King Didrik:\n\n  \u201cKing Didrik sits in Brattingsborg,\n    And far and wide looks he:\n  Oh, none know I in all the world\n    Who may my equal be!\n      The King he rules the castle.\u201d\n\nEvery Ballad, in time, came to have its own introductory stanza,\ncalculated to arouse the hearer\u2019s attention and attune it to the story\nwhich followed\u2014had also its own Burden, which echoed the principal theme.\nBut many have survived shorn of both adjuncts: and a few have borrowed\nBurdens, sometimes far from appropriate.\n\nThe Danish Ballads, like all others, deal with love, warfare, and\nwitchcraft. Like all others, they are pagan at heart. Some of their\nthemes are peculiar to Denmark, some common to all Europe. The\nsimilarity, for instance, between certain Danish and Scottish Ballads\nsuggests that the one country borrowed them directly from the other. The\neditors of the _C.P.B._ (where a list may be found) give the lead in the\nmatter to Scotland; but other authorities are of a different opinion.\nGenerally speaking, it is acknowledged that Denmark\u2019s literary output\nwas influenced far less by Britain than by France and the other Latin\ncountries.\n\nBut, be the themes what they may, the Danish Ballads inform them with\ntheir own characteristic spirit\u2014the glamour and grimness of the North.\nThe battle-scenes show us glimpses of Bersark fury, and weapons with\ndemon souls. The Dark Powers in the Ballads of magic are those born\nof long winter nights and misty waters. Here and there we meet with\nthe gods of Valhalla, and the heroes sung in Old Norse Lays. Woman, in\nthe love-ballads, is no Troubadour\u2019s divinity, but a human helpmeet of\nwarriors\u2014brave, shrewd, strong-minded, occasionally strong-armed to boot.\nAs for humour, while we have rollicking man-at-arms fun of the \u201cKinmont\nWillie\u201d type, and some dry, pawky, Scots-like wit, a few Ballads charm\nus with such a delicate, wistful archness as flowers again in Andersen\u2019s\nfairy-tales. There are, indeed, a number of Satirical Ballads, whose\ncharacters\u2014gaffer and gammer, wandering fiddler, Bishop\u2019s Daughter,\nand Mighty Maid\u2014burlesque the heroes and heroines of the Ballads of\nchivalry. These, however, from the poetical standpoint, are of little or\nno significance.\n\nThe social conditions depicted in these Ballads are, in many respects,\npeculiar to Scandinavia. The atmosphere is distinctly democratic. Denmark\nhad no school of court-poetry, no minstrel-class corresponding to the\nTroubadours and Minnesingers. Her kings made foreign marriages, and\nimported foreign talent; no petty courts, princely or ducal, existed to\nserve as centres of culture.[1] The native singers found patrons among\nthe native gentry, or lesser nobility\u2014the Knights, whose position in\nmany respects was that of the old-time English country squire. With the\ntastes, interests, and outlook of this class the Ballads as a whole are\nchiefly concerned.\n\nApart from such ballad-cycles as those dealing with the two Valdemars,\nthe King mostly appears merely as a power in the background\u2014a _deus_\n(or, more frequently, a _diabolus_) _ex machin\u00e2_. Of devoted loyalty, of\npatriotism identified with the royal person, we find traces only in the\nmost ancient historical Ballads\u2014with an occasional after-echo such as the\nPage\u2019s words in the \u201cKing-Slaying in Finderup\u201d (No. 6). His courtiers\nand \u201ccaptains\u201d are derided by the country-bred minstrel: \u201cSo long have\nthey served in the royal court they can bear nor heat nor smoke!\u201d\n\nThe Church, too, is only seen afar off\u2014affects the Knight chiefly through\nthe convent school, where young ladies are educated. The Burgher is an\nunknown quantity. Only in a late (fifteenth-century) Ballad do we hear of\nthe rich merchants, with houses in \u201cRanders street,\u201d whose gilded vanes\ngleam over the walls, shaming the castles of envious Knights.\n\nThe Yeoman (Bonde) class was that with which this lesser nobility was\nmost intimately connected\u2014the class whence it sprang, wherein it was\nmerged after the Peasant Revolt of 1584. Well-born youths are described\nas \u201cnoble yeomen\u2019s sons\u201d (\u00e6delige B\u00f8nders\u00f8nner), and a yeoman\u2019s wife\nmakes occasional appearance as heroine of a Ballad. The Knight defends\nthe yeoman against pillage and oppression. The two classes, however, are\ndistinct, and keep their distance. The Knight may farm his own land\u2014may\neven be found holding the plough\u2014but he is, none the less, the yeoman\u2019s\nsocial superior. His daughter, if she weds a yeoman, must \u201cdoff the\nscarlet fine, and don the wadmal grey.\u201d\n\nThe Knight was served by his Squires (svende)\u2014sometimes of yeoman\nextraction, but more frequently landless nobles, or younger sons\u2014his\nlady by her Maidens. The former received wages, and a training in\nchivalry; the latter learnt polite deportment, household duties, and\nneedle-craft. Thus in our own \u201cFause Foodrage\u201d:\n\n  \u201cAnd ye sall teach my gay goss-hawk\n    To wield baith bow and brand,\n  And I sall teach your turtle-doo\n    To lay gowd wi\u2019 her hand.\u201d\n\nThe Knight\u2019s existence, then, much resembled the Viking\u2019s\u2014was passed\nin warfare, with intervals of agriculture, of sport, or even of\ncommerce. That it was lived chiefly \u201con the land\u201d is shown by a thousand\ntouches and images racy of the soil. The arrows stick \u201cthick as hay\u201d\nin Knight Stig\u2019s mantle; young Engelbret hews down his foes \u201cas the\npeasant cuts down corn.\u201d The Knight\u2019s absences from home are frequently\nmentioned\u2014absences on foray, on trading journeys, or at the Thing\u2014the\nYeomen\u2019s Thing or District Council, distinct from the great national\nLand\u2019s Thing. There the local notabilities met to settle local affairs,\nconclude bargains, and dispose of their children\u2019s hands in marriage (see\n\u201cLovel and John,\u201d No. 28).\n\nAs this Knight was to some extent a country squire, so his dwelling\nrather resembled a fortified farm than a feudal castle. Its garth\n(gaard), surrounded by a palisade, contained a collection of separate\nbuildings, mostly built of wood, and thatched with straw or reed. The\nlinden tree which shaded the garth, and the castle gate which afforded a\nglimpse of the outer world, figure largely in the Ballads.\n\nThe main building contained the principal living-rooms, and was adorned\nwith carved beams projecting from the gables\u2014which beams, in process\nof time, were replaced by weather-vanes. Access both to ground-floor\nand upper storey (h\u00f8jeloft) was obtained by means of an outside\ngallery-staircase (svalegang, h\u00f8jloftssvale), where the traveller was\nwont to hang up his cloak (axler sit Skind) ere he entered the hall.\n\nRefuge from attack was to be found in another building, the Stone-hall\n(stenstue)\u2014or, where this was lacking, in the nearest church tower. (The\nterm \u201cstenstue\u201d is occasionally applied to the main building, should it\nhappen to be built of stone, but this is exceptional.)\n\n  \u201cA house have I walled round with stone\n    That stands my garth within;\n  I wot when I take refuge there\n    I fear not a hundred men!\u201d\n\nAnother most important building was the Maiden\u2019s Bower, richly adorned,\nand \u201clocked right well\u201d lest it be \u201cbroken\u201d by over-importunate suitors.\nThose fathers were censured as \u201cinexperienced\u201d who built it in too remote\na spot.\n\nA few Ballads speak of castles with dungeons and fortified gates, but\nthese were few and far between.\n\nTowards the close of the Middle Ages manners underwent a change; antique\nsimplicity was corrupted. These unpretentious knights were swamped by\nthe rise of a more powerful nobility, who united their estates through\nintermarriages, and followed the fashions of the court. The round\ndance was driven from the castle to the farmhouse. Persons of quality,\nhowever, retained a certain amount of interest in the old Ballads; and\nto this interest the fact is owing that Ballads in Denmark were earlier\nwritten down than those of any other European country. The young lady\nof the sixteenth century was wont to keep an album, wherein verses were\ninscribed by her friends; and, amid love-complaints, compliments, moral\nemblems, and so forth, the old national folk-poems found their place.\nFrom these albums were gathered the first collections of Ballads. Every\nlady\u2019s bower had its own collection\u2014and the singing of the Ballads during\nthe long winter evenings led to much disastrous dilution of the original\ntexts.\n\nWith the coming in of the seventeenth-century Pastoral, the fashionable\ncareer of the Ballad was over, but its value was recognized from the\nliterary and historical point of view; and the business of collection\nbegan in earnest. Royal patronage was not lacking. In June 1586 Queen\nSophie visited Tycho Brah\u00e9 in his observatory on the isle of Hveen, was\nstorm-bound for three days, and entertained with Ballads by another\nguest, Anders Vedel the historian. He promised her a collection, which\npromise materialized in the shape of _Queen Sophie\u2019s Ballad Book_,\nfollowed shortly by another based on the great folio MS. of the Odensee\nnunnery (Karen Brah\u00e9\u2019s library).\n\nThe yeoman and peasant, meanwhile, remained faithful to the Ballad as\na means of recreation, and continued to import new ones, mostly from\nGermany. Ballads were sung in Jutland until late in the nineteenth\ncentury, and many of these, not previously written down, were collected\nduring the national revival of the eighteen-forties.\n\nDanish Ballads were not only collected in MS., but printed and published\nearlier than those elsewhere\u2014Vedel\u2019s _A Hundred Choice Danish Ballads_\nin 1591; _Tragica, or Love Ballads_ in 1657. Peter Syr\u2019s enlarged\ncollection followed in 1695. _Danish Ballads from the Middle Ages_\nwas published in 1811-12 by Abrahamson, Nyerip, and Rahbek; and then\ncame Sven Grundtvig\u2019s epoch-making _Denmark\u2019s Ancient Ballads_ (1853),\nwhich contains every known version of every specimen, with critical and\nhistorical prefaces.\n\nAn excellent popular selection, by Axel Olrik and Ida Falbe Hansen\n(_Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg_), was published in 1912; and from the\nballad-versions given therein I have prepared the translations which\nfollow.\n\n[1] With one exception\u2014the ducal court at Gottorp in\nSleswik; but its intellectual influence suffered from\nthe constant warfare among the Holstein nobility.\n\n\n\n\nHISTORICAL BALLADS\n\n\n\n\nI, II\n\nVALDEMAR AND TOVE (A) AND (B)\n\n\nThe historical foundation for these two Ballads amounts only to this;\nthat Valdemar I, or the Great (1157-82), had a mistress named Tove; that\nshe bore him a son, Christopher; and that the King found it expedient\nto put her away, and ally himself with his opponent Knud Magnusson by\nmarrying his half-sister Sophia. Nothing is known of Tove\u2019s fate; her\ndeath at her rival\u2019s hands is a figment of the popular fancy.\n\nThe older (A) version (preserved in Iceland) is chiefly interesting from\nits picture of Tove in the character of that perfect lover so dear to the\nmedi\u00e6val masculine mind\u2014the Patient Grizel, the Burd Ellen, who knows no\njealousy where her lord\u2019s affections are concerned. Valdemar\u2019s apparently\ntactless questions are designed to bring out the contrast between the\nmeek submission of the mistress and the frank hatred of the wife.\n\nThe Danish or B version, probably composed some fifty years later, takes\na more human point of view. It sacrifices historical accuracy to dramatic\neffect by handing over Sophia\u2019s son Knud (afterwards King) to Tove.\n\n\nI\n\nVALDEMAR AND TOVE, 1157 (A)\n\n\n1\n\n  King Valdemar sailed here and there,\n    \u2014Good sooth,\u2014\n  He wed little Soffi, a maid so fair,\n    \u2014King Valdemar he wooed them both.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cHarken, Tove mine, and hear,\n  Dost thou hold Queen Soffi dear?\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cLess dear to me, I ween\n  Than my son, I hold the Queen.\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cI will give her a good grey steed,\n  And the name of Queen she shall bear indeed.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cHarken, Soffi mine, and hear,\n  Dost thou hold my Tove dear?\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cI love her all so well\n  As the wild wolf in the dell.\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cI will give her castles three,\n  She may burn therein for me!\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  The Queen she spake to her page so small:\n  \u201cNow bring Tovelille in to the hall!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  So fain was Tove to see the Queen\n  She clad her at night by the taper\u2019s sheen.\n\n\n10\n\n  She clad her in a kirtle of blue,\n  At every seam red gold shone through.\n\n\n11\n\n  She clad her in a silken sark,\n  Of eleven maidens the handiwork.\n\n\n12\n\n  She wrapped her in a cloak of red,\n  And thus to see the Queen she sped.\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cArt fainer with the King to speak\n  Or the bath with me to seek?\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cFar fainer with the King I\u2019d speak\n  Than the bath with thee I\u2019d seek!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  Soffi the Queen was strong of arm,\n  She thrust her in to work her harm.\n\n\n16\n\n  So hot she heated the fire beneath\n  That Tovelille could scarce draw breath.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cHelp me, Christopher, son of mine!\n  Soffi will slay me in dule and pine!\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cOh how should I give help to thee?\n  Twelve armed men have hold of me!\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  Up spake the King, his men among,\n  \u201cWhy goeth not Tove to Evensong?\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  Up spake Queen Soffi, red with wrath:\n  \u201cThy Tove is wearied with her bath!\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cWell, Soffi, will I pay thy pain,\n  Shalt never sleep in my bed again!\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cBetter was she with one cow for dower\n  Than thou art, Soffi, with town and tower!\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cBetter was Tove in silken sark\n  Than thou art, Soffi, with all thy goldsmith\u2019s work!\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cDearer is Tovelil, tho\u2019 she be dead,\n  Than thou, for all thy gold so red!\u201d\n\n\n25\n\n  The way was long, the way was drear,\n  The King himself bore up the bier.\n  \u2014Good sooth.\n  King Valdemar, he wooed them both.\n\n\nII\n\nVALDEMAR AND TOVE (B)\n\n\n1\n\n  Gay went the dance in King Valdemar\u2019s hall,\n  There danced the Queen with maidens small;\n  \u2014By my troth; King Valdemar he wooed them both.\n\n\n2\n\n  There danced the Queen with maidens fair,\n  There danced Tove with waving hair.\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cHarken now, Tove, my playfellow sweet!\n  Gird up thy silk skirts around thy feet.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cSmall praise from me the King should gain\n  If I might not trail a silken train.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cTove, my playfellow, tell to me\n  How did the King get his will o\u2019 thee?\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cThe King he won his will of me,\n  For stronger than I the King was he.\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cI was but a maiden small\n  Dwelling in my father\u2019s hall.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cSo little and fair by the door stood I\n  When the King and all his merry men they came a-riding by.\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cBy nine, by ten, his knights he sent,\n  But never for their commands I went.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cThe King he came himself with all his merry men,\n  And I, Tovelille, must follow then!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cTove, my playfellow, tell thou me\n  What bridal-gift he gave to thee.\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cHe gave me a chest of golden sheen\n  Such as was never in Denmark seen.\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cHe gave to me nine rings of gold\n  That Sweden\u2019s Queen did have and hold.\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cHe clad me in silk and in scarlet gay;\n  Thou and all thy maidens ne\u2019er went in such array.\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  Up spake Queen Soffi in anger wild:\n  \u201c\u2019Twas enough, I trow, for a yeoman\u2019s child!\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cBy God the Lord, while I breathe and live,\n  Less by half to thee shall he give!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  The Queen she wrapped her in cloak of vair,\n  To speak with King Valdemar did she fare.\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cNow answer what I ask of thee;\n  Why lovest thou Tove more than me?\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cFor this Tovelille to me is dear,\n  Because she hath two sons that serve my person near.\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cWhen Flensborg town I first rode by\n  Christopher bore my banner so high.\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cWhen first I rode to Holsterland\n  Knud bore my banner in his right hand.\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  Winters twain were gone and past\n  Ere the Queen got her will at last.\n\n\n23\n\n  All on a holy Christmas day\n  Tove sought the kirk to pray.\n\n\n24\n\n  Tovelille fared forth in the street,\n  Golden silk and samite went floating round her feet.\n\n\n25\n\n  Forth from her window the Queen did spy,\n  She saw proud Tovelil passing by.\n\n\n26\n\n  The Queen she spake to her maidens three:\n  \u201cNow bid proud Tovelil come to me!\u201d\n\n\n27\n\n  Tove wrapped her in cloak of vair,\n  And unto Soffi\u2019s bower did fare.\n\n\n28\n\n  \u201cLithe now and listen, proud Tove, to me;\n  I will seek the bath to-night with thee.\u201d\n\n\n29\n\n  \u201cNe\u2019er of the bath can I have my fill;\n  I\u2019ll do thy bidding with right good-will!\u201d\n\n\n30\n\n  The Queen she spake to her pages three:\n  \u201cTake heed that the bath is hot for me!\n\n\n31\n\n  \u201cHeat it hot, and heat it red!\n  There shall Tovelil lie dead!\u201d\n\n\n32\n\n  Tovelil went in before.\n  The Queen herself she locked the door.\n\n\n33\n\n  \u201cHere is no water, here is no lye!\n  Let me out for the sake of God on high!\u201d\n\n\n34\n\n  Christopher went riding by,\n  He heard his mother wail and cry.\n\n\n35\n\n  He struck the door a blow so stout\n  That bolt and nail came leaping out.\n\n\n36\n\n  He burst the door with rage and wrath,\n  He bore his mother forth from the bath.\n\n\n37\n\n  He bore her out where the blossoms blow,\n  But she was dead ere first cock-crow.\n  \u2014By my troth; King Valdemar he wooed them both.\n\n\n\n\nIII, IV, V\n\nTHE DAGMAR BALLADS\n\nQUEEN BENGERD\n\n\nValdemar II (1202-41) has been strangely dealt with by the Ballads. They\nare silent alike as to the warlike exploits which won him the name of\nSejr, the Victorious, and the administrative reforms commemorated in his\nother title of Legifer. His crusade against the heathen Esthonians\u2014even\nthe miraculous gift of the Dannebrog, the national standard blazoned\nin the armorial bearings of the conquered city Reval\u2014left popular\nimagination unmoved. It seized, however, on the images of his two Queens,\nascribing to the one all that was liked, to the other all that was\nloathed, in the King\u2019s treatment of his subjects.\n\nDragomir the Bohemian came to Denmark in 1205, bore the King a son,\nValdemar, and died two years later, probably in childbirth. From the\nfirst she was the people\u2019s darling; her Slav name was changed to Dagmar\n(Dag-m\u00f8 = day-maid or light-bringer) \u201cby reason,\u201d says a contemporary\nchronicler, \u201cof her great beauty.\u201d\n\nThe Ballads of her Bridal and Death were probably composed by the next\ngeneration, and have little pretension to historical accuracy. Bishop\nValdemar, for instance, was not the Queen\u2019s uncle, but the King\u2019s first\ncousin\u2014son of Knud Magnusson, whose sister was Valdemar\u2019s mother. In\nconsequence of an attempt to usurp the throne, as the German Emperor\u2019s\nvassal, he was thrown into prison at S\u00f8berg, where he lay for fourteen\nyears. His release in 1205 was due to the Pope\u2019s intervention, aided, as\na monkish chronicle puts it, \u201cby the loving representations of Bishop\nAndreas and others\u201d\u2014but the people, perhaps with some reason, pictured\nDagmar as the peacemaker.\n\nA second Ballad of her bridal describes her wooing by Sir Strange as the\nKing\u2019s proxy:\n\n            \u201cI saw a sail fare o\u2019er the Sound,\n              \u2014So many a pennon of gold\u2014\n  There sailed he, Sir Strange, with Dagmar the Queen.\u201d\n\nLittle is known of Valdemar\u2019s second Queen, Berengaria, except that she\ntoo was beautiful. But, since she came of a contentious and covetous\nfamily, the popular view of her character may be accurate enough. The\n\u201cbinding the harbours with iron bands\u201d means the closing of them with\nchains, so that tribute might be exacted from incoming vessels. The\nBallad\u2019s account of her death\u2014a relishing piece of poetical justice\u2014has\nno foundation in fact.\n\n\nIII\n\nQUEEN DAGMAR\u2019S BRIDAL, 1205\n\n\n1\n\n  It was the Queen of Bejerland\n    That to her daughter cried:\n  \u201cGreat honour will they show to thee\n    When thou art Denmark\u2019s bride.\u201d\n  \u2014They sailed from noblest Bejerland.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cWhen thou art wed to Denmark\u2019s King\n    Thou shalt have pride and praise;\n  Now bid the peasant pay no tax,\n    And he\u2019ll love thee all his days!\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cThis first boon beg thou of thy lord,\n    And beg it withouten fear,\n  That Bishop Valdemar go free,\n    Thy mother\u2019s brother dear!\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  They spread the cloths of samite\n    To lie her feet before;\n  They took her, the lady Dagmar,\n    And led her to the shore.\n\n\n5\n\n  They hoisted up their sails of silk\n    All on the golden mast,\n  And so they sailed to Denmark\n    Or e\u2019er two months were past.\n\n\n6\n\n  Down they cast their anchors\n    All in the snow-white sand;\n  They took her, the lady Dagmar,\n    And led her first to land.\n\n\n7\n\n  They took her, the lady Dagmar,\n    And led her first to land;\n  It was the King of Denmark\n    Stretched forth his lily hand.\n\n\n8\n\n  They spread the cloths of samite\n    To lie her feet before;\n  They led her, the lady Dagmar,\n    Up to the castle door.\n\n\n9\n\n  All in the morning early,\n    Long ere the dawn of day,\n  It was the lady Dagmar\n    Her bridal-gift did pray.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cThe first boon that I beg of thee,\n    I beg withouten fear;\n  Let Bishop Valdemar go free,\n    My mother\u2019s brother dear!\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cThe second boon I beg of thee\n    \u2019Tis with good-will, I trow;\n  Loose every captive from his irons,\n    And tax not the peasant\u2019s plough!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cHush thee now, Queen Dagmar,\n    Speak no such words to me!\n  If Bishop Valdemar comes forth\n    A widow he\u2019ll make of thee!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  She\u2019s taken off her crown of gold\n    And laid it on the board:\n  \u201cOh, what shall I do in Denmark\n    Since thou wilt not hear my word?\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cNow bring me in Sir Strange,\n    And bring Sir Knud to me!\n  \u2019Tis they shall ride to Attingborg\n    And set the captives free!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  And when he came from dungeon forth\n    He could not stand nor go:\n  \u201cHere have I lain eight years and more,\n    Long years, I ween, and slow!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  She\u2019s taken out her comb of gold,\n    To comb his yellow hair:\n  For every lock she ordered\n    Down fell a bitter tear.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cHarken now, Queen Dagmar,\n    And weep not thus for me!\n  For an I live but a twelvemonth\n    Sore shall my vengeance be!\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cNow hush thee, Bishop Valdemar,\n    Let be thy chiding vain!\n  Art thou thrown once more into Attingborg\n    Thou\u2019lt ne\u2019er win out again!\u201d\n  \u2014They sailed from noblest Bejerland.\n\n\nIV\n\nQUEEN DAGMAR\u2019S DEATH\n\n\n1\n\n  Queen Dagmar lay in Ribe sick,\n    To Ringsted did she fare;\n  All the dames of Denmark\u2019s land\n    She bade them seek her there.\n  \u2014In Ringsted rests Queen Dagmar.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cGo fetch me four, go fetch me five,\n    The wisest among them all!\n  Go fetch little Kirsten of Rise,\n    The sister of Sir Karl.\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  All so modest and so mild\n    She came to the bower door;\n  So fain of her was Dagmar the Queen\n    That she raised her head once more.\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cNow canst thou read and canst thou write\n    To help me in my need,\n  Then shalt thou don the scarlet fine,\n    And ride my good grey steed.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cOh, can I read and can I write\n    I\u2019ll do it for thee full fain,\n  For by my troth I tell thee\n    Sharper than steel is thy pain.\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  She\u2019s taken up Saint Mary\u2019s book,\n    And the sheen of the golden crown\n  She could not see whenas she read,\n    So fast her tears ran down.\n\n\n7\n\n  They led her up, they led her down,\n    And still her pain was sore:\n  \u201cOh, send ye word to the King our lord\n    To speak with me once more!\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  Up he stood, the little page,\n  Full fain was he to speed,\n  He reached his saddle down from the beam\n  And mounted the milk-white steed.\n\n\n9\n\n  The King stood on the tower so tall\n    And looked out far and wide:\n  \u201cOh, yonder I see a little page,\n    And ruefully doth he ride.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cYonder I see a little foot-page,\n    And mournful is his mien;\n  Now grant, Almighty God in heaven,\n    That all be well with the Queen!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  In he came the little foot-page,\n    Before the board stood he:\n  \u201cNow wilt thou speak with the Queen again\n    Thou must speak right speedilie!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  The King smote hard upon the board\n    That all the goblets rung:\n  \u201cAlmighty God in heaven forbid\n    That Dagmar should die so young!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  The King he rode by Skanderborg\n    With a hundred swains and one,\n  But when he rode by Ribe\n    Then rode he all alone.\n\n\n14\n\n  Oh, woe there was in the women\u2019s bower,\n    And bitter dule and harm,\n  For the Queen, or ever the King rode up,\n    Lay dead in Kirsten\u2019s arm.\n\n\n15\n\n  And when he entered in the door\n    He saw the bier beside:\n  \u201cNow help me, God our Father in heaven,\n    My bitter grief to bide!\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cNow pray for me, dames and damsels all,\n    And see that ye pray not in vain,\n  So fain am I to speak a word\n    With Dagmar once again!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  Uprose the Queen upon the bier,\n    And red, red were her eyne:\n  \u201cNow woe is me, my noble lord,\n    That thus we meet in pine!\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cThe first boon that I beg thee now\n    I beg for love of me;\n  Give peace to every outlawed man,\n    And set the captives free.\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cThe second boon I beg thee now\n    I beg for love of thee;\n  Oh, take not Bengerd for thy mate,\n    So sour a shrew is she!\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cThe third boon that I beg thee now\n    I beg for love so dear;\n  That thou let Knud, my youngest son,\n    Be King in Denmark here.\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cNe\u2019er need I ha\u2019 burnt in bitter pains\n    By night and else by day,\n  Had I ne\u2019er on the Sabbath tired my head\n    And tied my ribbons gay.\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cNow time it is I were away,\n    No longer may I bide;\n  The bells of heaven are ringing for me,\n    And the angels wait beside.\u201d\n  \u2014In Ringsted rests Queen Dagmar.\n\n\nV\n\nQUEEN BENGERD\n\n\n1\n\n  All in the morning, long ere day,\n  She for her bridal-gift did pray,\n  \u2014Woe be on her then, Queen Bengerd!\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cNow give me Samsey to have and hold,\n  And let every maid pay a crown of gold!\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  To Bengerd spake the King eftsoon:\n  \u201cThou must beg another boon!\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cSo many a maid lives in poverty\n  She cannot do it though she die!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cDear my lord, now heed my prayer,\n  Let no lady scarlet wear!\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cOh, can she buy it with gold and fee\n  She may wear it full well for me!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cDear my lord, my prayer now heed,\n  That no son of a churl may ride a fair steed!\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cOh, can he come by it in honestie\n  He may ride it full well for me!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cDear my lord, now give commands\n  To close all the havens with iron bands!\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cNow where shall I so much metal win\n  As to close all the havens with fetters in?\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cUp to Ribe will we fare,\n  We shall find good blacksmiths there.\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cHow dare the peasant hope for more\n  Than hut of wood and hingeless door?\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cWhat more gear should a peasant gain\n  Than a single cow and oxen twain?\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cFor every son that his wife shall bear\n  A piece of gold shall be my share.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cA piece of gold for every son,\n  For every daughter half a one!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  The King slept first in the dawning dim,\n  And good Queen Dagmar appeared to him.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cWhen thou farest abroad thy foes to find\n  Bengerd must not bide behind!\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cBides Bengerd behind a year, I say,\n  The babe in the cradle must rue the day!\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cNow busk thee and boun thee, Bengerd the Queen!\n  Shalt fare to the foray with me, I ween.\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  The first shaft shot from the foeman\u2019s bark\n  In Bengerd\u2019s bosom found its mark.\n\n\n21\n\n  Now Bengerd in darksome mould abides,\n  And the peasant hath oxen and kine besides.\n\n\n22\n\n  Now Bengerd lies in mirk and mould,\n  And every maid hath her crown of gold!\n  \u2014Woe be on her then, Queen Bengerd!\n\n\n\n\nVI, VII, VIII\n\nTHE KING-SLAYING IN FINDERUP\n\nMARSK STIG AND HIS LADY\n\nEXTRACT FROM THE LONG BALLAD OF MARSK STIG\n\n\nThese Ballads have been selected from a cycle dealing with the murder\nof King Erik Klipping (1259-86), and the subsequent disturbances. All\nthrough his reign he was at feud with his turbulent nobles; in 1282\nthey extorted his signature to a Constitution (Denmark\u2019s Magna Carta)\nsafeguarding the rights of the nobility and liberties of the people;\nthen, since he proved faithless, they did him to death. The murder took\nplace on the night of November 22, 1286; his corpse was found next\nmorning, with fifty-six wounds, in a barn at Finderup, whither he had\nretired to sleep during a hunting expedition. The assassins escaped for a\ntime, but their identity was suspected, and the young King Erik M\u0153ndved\n(1286-1319) was determined to have justice. At the Parliament of Nyborg\n(1287) a grand jury was impanelled to try the late King\u2019s principal\nadversaries; nine, mostly of one family, were found guilty and declared\noutlaws, the royal marshal, Stig Andersen, among them. They took refuge\namong the islands, whence they harried the coasts of Denmark; and the\nprotection afforded them by Norway gave rise to a lengthy war.\n\nThe \u201cKing-Slaying\u201d is the earliest of the Ballads on this subject. The\ninnocence of the King\u2019s page Rane was loudly maintained by his friends,\nwho asserted that he, \u201cnaked and weaponless, warded his master,\u201d but\nevidence was forthcoming that proved his treachery.\n\nThe Ballad next in date describes the outlaws\u2019 departure from Denmark,\nand Stig\u2019s resolve to build a castle at Hj\u00e6lm. The third of the series\ntells of his ill-omened dream, and his wife\u2019s attempt to explain it\naway\u2014his ride to the royal castle, the Queen\u2019s taunt that he wishes\nto usurp the crown, and his reply that such an ambition rather befits\nher paramour, Drost Ove. The young King declares him an outlaw; Stig\nthreatens to keep his foot in Denmark, and begins the building of his\ncastle, whose looming battlements scare the peasantry.\n\nThe fourth Ballad, \u201cMarsk Stig and his Lady\u201d (No. 7), was written after\na lapse of time when the political motive for the Slaying had been\nforgotten, and replaced by one more romantic, based on a vague tradition.\nThe King, in fact, appears as David, and Stig as Uriah the Hittite. The\nBallad has therefore no claim to historical accuracy; moreover, it places\nthe action throughout in Sj\u00e6lland.\n\nLatest of all comes \u201cThe Long Ballad of Marsk Stig,\u201d which\u2014after the\nfashion of the \u201cLytell Geste of Robin Hood\u201d\u2014unites all the other Ballads\nin a consecutive narrative, reproducing them mostly word for word, yet\nenriching them with its own characteristic touches. The King\u2019s villainy\nis heightened by his promise to watch over Dame Ingeborg during her\nhusband\u2019s absence; \u201cshe shall suffer no more wrong than if thyself wert\nhome.\u201d Rane, the treacherous page, appears as sister\u2019s son to the Dame,\nwith whom he plots the King\u2019s murder. After Stig\u2019s defiance at the Thing,\nand before the Slaying, the Long Ballad inserts an episode peculiar to\nitself; the amorous King goes a-hunting with Rane, gets lost in the\nwood, and encounters an Elf-Maid, who, in riddling words, prophesies his\nimminent death.\n\nThis poem, fine as it is, foreshadows the decline of the Ballad pure and\nsimple, and its supersession by the more lengthy and complicated Romance,\nor novel in verse.\n\nThere are other Ballads (not contemporary) dealing with the minor\ncharacters in the drama, which give picturesque glimpses of the outlaw\u2019s\nadventurous life:\n\n  \u201cMarstig he had daughters twain,\n  And all their lot was sorrow and pain.\n  The elder took the younger by the hand,\n  And thro\u2019 the wide world did lead her.\u201d\n\n(Since, in some versions, the wandering maidens are the King of England\u2019s\ndaughters, it is probable that Marsk Stig\u2019s name crept in from a\nsemi-historical Ballad of Erik M\u0153ndved\u2019s Bridal, wherein the young Queen\nbegs the release of Stig\u2019s daughters from prison.)\n\nAnother sings the \u201cWooing of Ranild Jonson,\u201d who by threats forces his\nbeloved from her reluctant parents:\n\n  \u201cNought for their bridal bower they found\n  But the wood and the wild and the low green ground,\n  For sorely was he severed from friends and kinsmen.\n  ...\n  Forests have ears, and fields have eyes;\n  We must wander, my maid, as the wild swan flies,\n  Since we are severed both from friends and kinsmen.\u201d\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE KING-SLAYING IN FINDERUP, 1285\n\n\n1\n\n  So many dwell in Denmark\n    Would all be masters there!\n  They\u2019ve ridden up to Ribe\n    And close disguise they wear.\n  \u2014And therefore the land lies in peril.\n\n\n2\n\n  They\u2019ve clothed them in a close disguise\n    As friars of orders grey,\n  And up the land they\u2019ve ridden\n    Their leal lord to betray.\n\n\n3\n\n  They watched him in, they watched him out,\n    They watched thro\u2019 time and tide,\n  They watched him till the woful hour\n    He should to Finderup ride.\n\n\n4\n\n  They rode into the goodman\u2019s garth,\n    And shining spears they bore;\n  Was never a man might know them\n    For the monkish cowls they wore.\n\n\n5\n\n  Oh, they rode in where the wax-light stood\n    A-burning in the bower;\n  They led him out, the youthful King,\n    And that was an evil hour.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cHarken, Ranild Jonson,\n    Wilt thou defend my life,\n  Half my kingdom I\u2019ll give thee,\n    And my sister to thy wife!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  It was Ranild Jonson\n    That hewed at beam and board;\n  Good sooth, most like a traitor\n    Did he defend his lord!\n\n\n8\n\n  Oh, they\u2019ve struck in at the shoulder,\n    And out at the heart they smite:\n  \u201cThere shall be woe in all Denmark\n    For the deed we ha\u2019 done this night!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  It was the little foot-page\n    That mote not bear the sight;\n  The saddle he took from the good grey steed\n    And set it upon the white.\n\n\n10\n\n  The saddle he took from the good grey steed\n    And set it upon the white,\n  And he has ridden to Skanderborg\n    Before the fall of night.\n\n\n11\n\n  The Queen sits on the tower so tall,\n    And looks forth far and wide:\n  \u201cYonder I see a little foot-page,\n    And swiftly doth he ride.\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cAll on his master\u2019s steed he rides,\n    And woe is me for fear!\n  Now watch, Almighty God in heaven,\n    Over my lord so dear!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cNow GOD have mercy on his soul!\n    For slain our lord doth lie;\n  The King lies killed in Finderup,\n    And the land is in jeopardy!\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cNow watch ye well your castle,\n    Now watch ye well your realm,\n  Now watch ye well your own young son\n    Shall stand at Denmark\u2019s helm!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cSo long as thou and I shall live,\n    Though ill thy tidings be,\n  Fire and food in the royal court\n    This shalt thou have in fee!\u201d\n  \u2014And therefore the land lies in peril.\n\n\nVII\n\nMARSK STIG AND HIS LADY\n\n\n1\n\n  It is young Sir Marstig must journey far and wide;\n  It is young King Erik that hath betrayed his bride.\n  \u2014The lady she sits in S\u00e6lland, and weeps right woefully.\n\n\n2\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig that home from sea did fare;\n  She would not rise, his own dear wife, nor give him greeting there.\n\n\n3\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig that entered in apace;\n  She would not rise, his own dear wife, nor look him in the face.\n\n\n4\n\n  Still he stood, Sir Marstig, and thought right heavily:\n  \u201cWhat ails her then, mine own dear wife, that hath no word for me?\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cWhen thou didst depart, my husband, I was a knightly dame;\n  Now am I queen in Denmark\u2014the greater is my shame.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cNever again shalt slumber all on my lily-white arm,\n  Until thou hast slain King Erik, that wrought me dule and harm!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig that rode away to the Thing;\n  Never a word he answered, until he should meet with the King.\n\n\n8\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig stood forth in all men\u2019s sight,\n  He greeted there both page and squire and many a noble knight.\n\n\n9\n\n  Up he stood, King Erik, and took him by the hand:\n  \u201cWelcome now, Sir Marstig, home to lord and land!\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  Up and spake Sir Marstig, and wrathful was his mind:\n  \u201cOh, little I guessed when I fared forth what falsehood I left behind!\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cBoth Revel and Riga I won for thee, and that with mickle strife,\n  While thou, King Erik, didst bide at home to ravish my fair young wife!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cHarken now, Sir Marstig, and be not wroth with me!\n  Seven castles in S\u00e6lland, all will I give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cSeven castles in S\u00e6lland will never \u2019suage my shame;\n  Know thou, King of Denmark, dearer I hold my dame!\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cHarken, King of Denmark, and heed the words I say:\n  No fealty shalt thou have of me until my dying day!\u201d\n  \u2014The lady she sits in S\u00e6lland, and weeps right woefully.\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE LONG BALLAD OF SIR MARSK STIG\n\n(_Extract_)\n\n\n35\n\n  Sir Marstig has donned his armour of proof\n    And ridden away to the Thing,\n  With his merry men well weaponed in steel,\n    All for to seek the King:\n  \u2014My noble lord, the young Sir Marstig.\n\n\n36\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig\n    Before the Thing stood forth;\n  He greeted the redesmen of the realm\n    And the nobles of the north.\n\n\n37\n\n  Sir Marstig stood in open Thing,\n    And thus did speak and say:\n  \u201cBecause my wife hath suffered wrong\n    Do I stand here to-day.\n\n\n38\n\n  \u201cOh, I fared forth to a far countrie\n    And risked for the realm my life\u2014\n  Thou satst at home, King Erik,\n    To ravish my fair young wife!\u201d\n\n\n39\n\n  Up spake young King Erik,\n    And smiled \u2019neath cloak of vair:\n  \u201cOh, her consent and will thereto\n    As good as mine they were!\u201d\n\n\n40\n\n  Up he spake, Sir Marstig,\n    In mood that needs must mourn:\n  \u201cOh, well we wot the ancient saw\n    That scathe must follow scorn.\n\n\n41\n\n  \u201cNow thou hast ravished my fair young wife\n    A mock o\u2019 me to make,\n  But wot thou wilt, King Erik,\n    I\u2019ll slay thee for her sake!\u201d\n\n\n42\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig\n    That turned him from the Thing:\n  \u201cBear witness, redesmen of the realm,\n    That I defy the King!\u201d\n\n\n43\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and list, Sir Marstig,\n    And let such prating be!\n  Castles and holds and lands so green\n    All will I give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n44\n\n  \u201cOh, little reck I of holds or lands,\n    They ne\u2019er shall \u2019suage my shame!\n  I would that the wrong had ne\u2019er been wrought\n    Against my dainty dame!\u201d\n\n\n45\n\n  \u201cOh, Marstig, never so fast canst ride,\n    But I can ride faster still;\n  But wilt thou be mine enemy\n    Then follow thy wasteful will!\u201d\n\n\n46\n\n  \u201cOh, let my riding be ne\u2019er so slow,\n    And ne\u2019er so mild my mind,\n  Yet have we seen a small greyhound\n    Run down both hart and hind.\n\n\n47\n\n  \u201cOnly do thou remember\n    The cause I have had to plead;\n  Oft haps it that a hillock small\n    Doth throw a mighty steed!\u201d\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n86\n\n  Now when Sir Marstig slew the King\n    Little he rued the deed!\n  Forth he fared to Skanderborg\n    All on his swiftest steed.\n\n\n87\n\n  It was she, the Queen o\u2019 Danes,\n    Forth from the window spied:\n  \u201cOh, yonder I see the self-made King\n    That to our hold doth ride!\u201d\n\n\n88\n\n  \u201cNay, never a self-made King am I\n    For all thy words, I ween;\n  That name befits Drost Lovmand,\n    Lay last thine arms between.\n\n\n89\n\n  \u201cOh, little to thee King Erik\u2019s death,\n    And less thy dule and pine,\n  So long as he lives, Drost Lovmand,\n    And thou dost hold him thine!\u201d\n\n\n90\n\n  Up spake young Prince Christopher,\n    Clad all in the scarlet red:\n  \u201cOh, little amends, I wot, ye make\n    For my father fallen and dead!\u201d\n\n\n91\n\n  Up he stood, Prince Christopher,\n    And spake a royal word:\n  \u201cShalt get thee gone from out the realm\n    If I am King and lord!\u201d\n\n\n92\n\n  \u201cAnd must I depart from Denmark\n    To sail the sea so deep,\n  So many a widow will I make\n    That the noblest dames shall weep!\n\n\n93\n\n  \u201cAnd must I go a-roaming\n    From wife and bairn, O King,\n  Denmark shall feel my foot, I trow,\n    Both winter and summer and spring!\u201d\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n95\n\n  It was young Sir Marstig,\n    Home to his hold did fare;\n  It was beauteous Ingeborg\n    Came forth to meet him there.\n\n\n96\n\n  Up spake young Sir Marstig,\n    And held her in his arm:\n  \u201cNow have I slain King Erik\n    That wrought thee hurt and harm!\n\n\n97\n\n  \u201cNow wilt thou follow an outlawed man\n    To dwell a landless dame,\n  Rather than be a light o\u2019 love,\n    And bear the King his name?\u201d\n\n\n98\n\n  \u201cOh, rather I\u2019d follow an outlawed man\n    To dwell a Danish dame,\n  Than I would be a light o\u2019 love\n    And bear the King his name!\u201d\n\n     *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n100\n\n  Oh, they have builded a hold at Hj\u00e6lm,\n    A hold with tower and wall,\n  Not to be won with engine of war,\n    By arrow nor cannon-ball.[2]\n\n\n101\n\n  Forth to his field went the farmer\n    All for to sow his corn:\n  \u201cNow help us, God in heaven above,\n    Since Hj\u00e6lm hath gotten a horn!\u201d\n\n\n102\n\n  Marstig he builded a hold at Hj\u00e6lm,\n    A hold with wall and tower;\n  The King in vain laid siege thereto\n    With all his royal power.\n  \u2014My noble lord, the young Sir Marstig.\n\n[2] Cannons (b\u00f6sser) are first mentioned in the time\nof Valdemar Atterdag (1340-85), and were certainly not\nknown when Hj\u00e6lm was besieged by Erik M\u0153ndved. Their\nmention here is a proof that the Long Ballad was put\ntogether some hundred years after the event.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nNIELS EBBESON\n\n\nNiels Ebbeson was the man of his hour; and the hour was one of the\nblackest in Danish history. The worthless King Christopher was dead, his\nson Valdemar abroad, and the greedy Holstein nobles were scrambling for\nthe choicest parts of the kingdom. One of these local tyrants, Count\nGert, or Gerhardt, held Fyn and Jutland in pledge; and how the Jutlanders\nfound deliverance is best told by a Franciscan chronicler, writing in\n1385:\n\n  \u201cCount Gerhardt of Holstein was then (Jan. 1340) in Lubeck.\n  He heard tidings that his sister\u2019s son, Count of Sleswik,\n  had made agreement with the Danes that they should establish\n  the aforesaid Valdemar (V. Atterdag, King Christopher\u2019s son)\n  in the kingdom, and marry him to Hedvig, the Duke\u2019s sister.\n  Moreover, the Count knew well that many nobles and cities would\n  fain, for the sake of peace, have a King in the land.... Count\n  Gerhardt sent far and wide for help, and there came to him much\n  people.... He invaded North Jutland.... Not long thereafter\n  the Count fell sick in Randers.... It was his custom, when he\n  was able, to sit up at night with his chaplain, and keep the\n  Hours like a priest. When the Danes learnt his whereabouts,\n  sixty doughty karls assembled, came to Randers on Thursday\n  night (April 1, 1340) and, as though they were the night-watch\n  for the sleeping army, took possession of a stone house. When\n  the Count had read his Hours and lain down again, they came\n  and struck him dead in his bed, with his chaplain and three\n  pages. This heard a renowned knight from Westphalia, Henrik\n  von Vitinghof, whose lodging was hard by: he came forth and\n  attacked them, but they escaped, each his own way, without\n  hurt. The foreign men-at-arms are much to be blamed for\n  defending their lord so ill; and they were forced with shame\n  and scathe to return to the far countries whence they came.\u201d\n\nWe learn from other sources that the patriots fired a house to divert\nthe Germans\u2019 attention, and that they escaped over Randers Bridge,\nwhich\u2014having previously loosened the timbers\u2014they broke down behind them.\nThus they, and their leader Niels Ebbeson, saved Denmark from becoming a\nGerman province.\n\nLittle or nothing, apart from this exploit, is known of Niels Ebbeson;\nhis very dwelling-place, \u201cNoringsris\u201d\u2014\u201cNorroway\u201d in one version of his\nBallad\u2014is unidentified. He and two of his brothers fell, fighting against\nthe Holsteiners, at Skanderborg, on November 1, 1340; and their bodies\nwere taken to the family burial-place in Vestervig monastic church.\n\nThree noble families claimed him; but recent researches have proved that\nhe belonged to the Strangesons, chieftains in Ty, and descendants of Ebbe\nSkammelson (see No. 11), which family played a prominent part during the\nfirst half of the fourteenth century. They were connected by blood and\nintermarriage with another clan of Strangesons, with the Frosters, Ove\nHaas, Niels Bugge, and the Globes of Vendesyssel. (This Ove Haas was\na partisan of Count Gerhardt\u2019s, and fell at Randers.) In the opening\ndialogue of the Ballad the Count hints at Ebbeson\u2019s rumoured complicity\nwith Bugge, leader of the rebellion, and tries generally to discover the\nattitude of Niels\u2019 powerful connections. With the latter\u2019s defence of\nAnders Frost, the trial of wits becomes a quarrel\u2014for here the German and\nDanish systems of fealty are brought into collision.\n\nThe services of the vassal, by German law, belonged from birth to his\nliege lord, with whose consent alone could the contract be broken;\nwhereas the Danish chieftainship was based on the Law of Commutation,\nwhich gave the vassal the annual right to \u201ctake leave\u201d (Orlov tage) and\nserve another chieftain. Twice over in the Ballad does Ebbeson gives his\n\u201cswains\u201d the choice whether or no they will follow him into danger; and\ntwice over the system of free-will service is vindicated by their answer.\n\nValiant attempts have been made by Danish antiquaries to identify \u201cSwain\nTr\u00f8st\u201d\u2014Vedel, for instance, provided him with a name and a family\u2014just\nas their English confr\u00e8res would fain find an original for Robin Hood.\nBut this Trusty Page had no local habitation: his very name is borrowed\nfrom the Ballad of Young Danneved; for the Svend Tr\u00f8st who saves his lord\nat a pinch is a figure frequently found in the ballad-world. Popular\nimagination, through him, does honour to all his class.\n\nThis Ballad is obviously the work of a minstrel (not contemporary with\nNiels), and is not associated with the Dance.\n\nThe Revised Conclusion is by another hand, and slightly later in date\nthan the original version. A third exists, very imperfectly preserved,\nwhich is more historically accurate than either. It replaces Anders Frost\nby Esge, his father, and depicts Niels as asking aid of his brother Knud\nEbbeson of Bygholm. We learn from it\u2014with regret\u2014that Niels\u2019 speech to\nhis house-carles, and Swain Tr\u00f8st\u2019s achievement, are the inventions of an\nadmiring posterity.\n\nOne other poetical p\u00e6an must be quoted\u2014the song-burst of a grave\nchronicler:\n\n  \u201cM semel et ter C bis binos X lege per te.\n  Danorum mentes beat ipse dies Sitientes!\n  Filius Ebbonis Nicholaus more leonis\n  stravit serpentem Gerardum bella gerentem.\u201d\n\n\nIX\n\nNIELS EBBESON, 1340\n\n\n1\n\n  The Count to Denmark took his way,\n    Nor failed for fear of strife,\n  Tho\u2019 langsyne \u2019twas to him foretold\n    He there should lose his life.\n\n\n2\n\n  Was none that might gainsay his will\n    His fate to put to test;\n  Yeoman and boor and knight and knave,\n    With all he will be guest.\n\n\n3\n\n  The Count he called Niels Ebbeson\n    To come and meet with him,\n  And truce he sent him therewithal,\n    And safety for life and limb.\n\n\n4\n\n  The Count he met Niels Ebbeson\n    Northward beside the sea:\n  \u201cNow be thou welcome, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Right welcome unto me!\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cBlithe is thy cheer, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Retainer dear of mine!\n  Say, what is the mind of the northern Jutes,\n    And what of kinsmen thine?\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cOh, kinsmen have I \u2019mid the northern Jutes,\n    And my wife hath kin als\u00f2;\n  And all of them shall do thy will,\n    If they thy will may know.\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cNiels Ebbeson, thou art a valiant man,\n    And a man of wit beside,\n  And canst thou not ride straightforward,\n    The long way round thou\u2019lt ride.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Wilt thou mine errand speed,\n  Then say how many swains hast thou\n    Will stand thee by at need?\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cOh, five and forty carles have I,\n    Such as they well may be;\n  And be they many or be they few\n    Right dear are they to me.\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cAnd hast thou five and forty carles\n    Well art thou served, I ween!\n  But last night wert thou in Sir Bugge\u2019s hold\n    With a hundred mail-clad men.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  Niels Ebbeson he stamped his foot,\n    And straight made answer high:\n  \u201cIs any man here, or knight or knave,\n    Who dares maintain that lie?\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cIs any man here, or knight or knave,\n    Dares put it to the touch,\n  Never a foot will I give back,\n    For I have sworn as much!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cLithe and listen, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Such words must have an end!\n  Now seek him, and see, Sir Bugge,\n    If he will be my friend.\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cSir Bugge and Povl Glob the young\n    To do my will did swear,\n  And Sir Anders Frost is one with them,\n    And foremost in counsel there.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cAnd more have sworn to do my will\n    That now will work me woe;\n  So list and heed Sir Bugge\u2019s rede,\n    And see how the thing will go!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cOh, nought know I of Sir Bugge\u2019s mind,\n    What he may say or do;\n  But Anders hath kept his faith with thee,\n    As all men will tell thee true.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cAnders hath kept his faith with thee,\n    As all men will tell thee true;\n  But, would he take leave of thy service,\n    Such leave is a free man\u2019s due.\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cFor this is the Danish custom,\n    And hath been from days of yore,\n  If a swain would cease his service,\n    He should have leave therefor.\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  Up and spake Sir Gert the Count\n    That liked his words right ill:\n  \u201cOh, never a vassal should leave his lord\n    Save with his lord\u2019s good-will!\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cOh, none is joined with a holy vow\n    Save a monk to his cowl of grey!\n  Let chieftains come and chieftains go,\n    Men serve them as best they may!\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cOverbold is his speech, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Dares bandy words with me!\n  Or thou shalt depart from Denmark\n    Or I\u2019ll hang thee to a tree!\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cAnd must I depart from Denmark,\n    From wife\u2019s and bairn\u2019s embrace,\n  Oh, thou shalt call it a luckless hour\n    That ever thou saw\u2019st my face!\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cGet hence, get hence, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Let all thy prating be!\n  Or I will do what well I may,\n    And break my truce with thee!\u201d\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cOh, ne\u2019er hast thou seen me so sore afraid\n    As to tremble for curse and ban!\n  Look well to thyself, Lord Count, I say,\n    And defend thy head like a man!\u201d\n\n\n25\n\n  \u201cNiels Ebbeson, thy words are wild,\n    To hold thy peace were best;\n  But I will keep truce with thee to-day\n    Till the sun goes down to rest.\u201d\n\n\n26\n\n  Niels Ebbeson waved his lily-white hand,\n    And turned his steed on the shore:\n  \u201cFarewell, Count Gert, with all thy men!\n    Soon shall we meet once more.\u201d\n\n\n27\n\n  Niels Ebbeson he fled full fast,\n    Nor spur was fain to spare,\n  And the Count held back with all his men,\n    Was none durst follow there.\n\n\n28\n\n  It was he, Niels Ebbeson,\n    That to his hold did win;\n  It was his own dear lady\n    Came forth to lead him in.\n\n\n29\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, mine own dear wife,\n    And my rede shall rise at thee;\n  The Count will drive me from the land\n    Or hang me to a tree!\u201d\n\n\n30\n\n  \u201cWhat counsel can I give to thee\n    That have but a woman\u2019s wit?\n  The worst of rede were here the best\n    Could we but light on it.\n\n\n31\n\n  \u201cThe worst of rede were here the best,\n    All in this evil hour,\n  Either the Count to strike adown\n    Or burn him in his bower!\n\n\n32\n\n  \u201cNow let thy steeds to the smithy fare\n    (This is my counsel true),\n  And see that their shoon turn the backward way\n    When they are shod anew.\n\n\n33\n\n  \u201cOh, see that their shoon turn the backward way,\n    So the foemen thy track shall miss,\n  And take heed and tell to no man\n    That a woman taught thee this!\u201d\n\n\n34\n\n  Up and spake Niels Ebbeson,\n    Unto his men cried he:\n  \u201cNow which of you will follow,\n    And which take leave of me?\n\n\n35\n\n  \u201cLet him that now will follow\n    Stretch forth his hand to me,\n  And he that now will take his leave\n    Speak up right speedilie!\u201d\n\n\n36\n\n  Up they stood, his Danish squires,\n    And answered their lord so free:\n  \u201cLo, all of us will follow\n    And risk our lives for thee!\u201d\n\n\n37\n\n  Oh, up they rode to Lady-wood,\n    And there their steeds did bind,\n  And forth into the town they went\n    Count Gert to seek and find.\n\n\n38\n\n  It was he, Niels Ebbeson,\n    To Randers Bridge did ride:\n  \u201cNow let him take leave and go his way\n    Dares not the brunt abide!\u201d\n\n\n39\n\n  Up and spake he, little boy Trust,\n    More faithful than them all:\n  \u201cNow give me leave, my master,\n    And saddle and steed withal!\u201d\n\n\n40\n\n  He gave him leave, his master,\n    And saddle and steed withal,\n  And or ever the day was over\n    He served him best of all.\n\n\n41\n\n  It was he, Niels Ebbeson,\n    With sword that smote the door:\n  \u201cStand up, stand up, Lord Gert the Count,\n    For thou shalt sleep no more!\n\n\n42\n\n  \u201cStand up, Lord Gert the Count,\n    And lend to me thine ear,\n  Duke Henrik\u2019s messenger am I,\n    And he hath sent me here.\n\n\n43\n\n  \u201cHarken, Gert the Count,\n    Nor longer lay thee down!\n  Kolding is beleaguered,\n    And burnt is Ribe town.\u201d\n\n\n44\n\n  \u201cAnd dost thou tell me tidings true,\n    Then good are such tidings to hear;\n  Forth from the hold while yet we live,\n    And forth with the steeds and gear!\u201d\n\n\n45\n\n  Oh, they have opened wide the door\n    That the message might be sped,\n  And it was he, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Went up to the County\u2019s bed.\n\n\n46\n\n  \u201cOh, thou and I, Niels Ebbeson,\n    Can a better bargain strike;\n  Word will we send to Duke Henrik\n    And Sir Klaus Krummerdike.\u201d\n\n\n47\n\n  \u201cYestere\u2019en thy words were other,\n    All out upon the strand;\n  I should go to the gallows,\n    Or get me from the land.\u201d\n\n\n48\n\n  Up and spake the swarthy swain:\n    \u201cNow waste no further word!\n  Let be, let be thy tedious tale,\n    And harken to the sword!\u201d\n\n\n49\n\n  They\u2019ve seized him, Gert the Count,\n    All by his golden hair,\n  And they have hewn his neck in twain\n    Over his bedside there.\n\n\n50\n\n  Now when the Count was done to death\n    All on their drums they beat;\n  Forth he fared, Niels Ebbeson,\n    And galloped adown the street.\n\n\n51\n\n  Forth he fared, Niels Ebbeson,\n    And fain would flee away,\n  But there he met Sir Ove Haas\n    That strove to say him nay.\n\n\n52\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, Sir Ove Haas,\n    And see that thou let me go,\n  For thou hast wed my kinswoman,\n    And that thou well dost know.\u201d\n\n\n53\n\n  \u201cAnd have I wed thy kinswoman,\n    Then kin am I to thee,\n  But since thou hast struck down my lord\n    I may not let thee be!\u201d\n\n\n54\n\n  Niels Ebbeson drew his brand so brown,\n    For ne\u2019er would he shrink from strife;\n  Sir Ove and many a Teuton swain\n    Must there lay down his life.\n\n\n55\n\n  It was he, Niels Ebbeson,\n    To Randers Bridge did ride,\n  And the little page that erst took leave\n    Was standing there beside.\n\n\n56\n\n  Niels Ebbeson rode o\u2019er the bridge,\n    For fast his foes came on;\n  It was the little foot-page\n    That broke the bridge adown.\n\n\n57\n\n  Niels Ebbeson rode to Noringsris,\n    And fast he spurred his steed,\n  Sore, good sooth, was his anguish,\n    And sore, good sooth, his need.\n\n\n58\n\n  She sheltered him, an old good-wife,\n    Of loaves that had but two,\n  And she\u2019s given one to Niels Ebbeson\n    Because the Count he slew!\n\n\nTHE RE-MODELLED CONCLUSION OF NIELS EBBESON\n\n\n34\n\n  \u201cNow eat ye, and drink, my Danish squires,\n    And see that your hearts be gay!\n  For when the night is overpast\n    Oh, then we will seize the day.\n\n\n35\n\n  \u201cWhen day doth dawn and sun doth shine\n    We shall have tidings new;\n  And then shall I see, \u2019mid all my men,\n    How many will stand me true.\u201d\n\n\n36\n\n  Up they stood, the Danish squires,\n    And answered their lord so free:\n  \u201cOh, we will risk both goods and life\n    And all to ride with thee!\u201d\n\n\n37\n\n  Oh, up they rode to Lady-wood,\n    And there their steeds they bind,\n  And in they\u2019ve gone to Randers town,\n    Count Gert to seek and find.\n\n\n38\n\n  Forth he fared, Niels Ebbeson,\n    To Randers Bridge came he:\n  \u201cNow let him take leave and go his way\n    That will not follow me!\u201d\n\n\n39\n\n  Up they stood, the captains good,\n    Swore fealty to their lord anew,\n  All but Niels Ebbeson\u2019s sister\u2019s son,\n    Was there to him untrue.\n\n\n40\n\n  It was he, Niels Ebbeson,\n    With sword that smote the door:\n  \u201cStand up, stand up, Sir Gert the Count,\n    For thou shalt sleep no more!\n\n\n41\n\n  \u201cStand up, stand up, Sir Gert the Count,\n    And lend to me thine ear!\n  Duke Henrik\u2019s messenger am I,\n    And he hath sent me here.\u201d\n\n\n42\n\n  \u201cAnd art thou Duke Henrik\u2019s messenger,\n    Then tarry thou not too long;\n  To-morrow we\u2019ll meet in the Greyfriars\u2019 Kirk\n    \u2019Twixt Mass and Evensong.\u201d\n\n\n43\n\n  \u201cStand up, Sir Gert the Count,\n    Nor longer lay thee down!\n  Kolding is beleaguered,\n    And burnt is Ribe town!\u201d\n\n\n44\n\n  Forth from the window looked the Count,\n    And the shining spears he spied:\n  \u201cOh, luckless the hour that I came in!\n    Niels Ebbeson holds outside.\u201d\n\n\n45\n\n  They knocked at the door with glaive and with spear,\n    That loosed were lock and link:\n  \u201cArt thou within, Lord Gert the Count,\n    A health to thee we\u2019ll drink!\u201d\n\n\n46\n\n  \u201cNow set thee down upon my bed,\n    A league we can form, belike;\n  Word will we send to Duke Henrik,\n    And Sir Klaus Krummerdike.\u201d\n\n\n47\n\n  \u201cOh, neither keep nor hold have I\n    To guard so rich a prey!\n  Draw out, draw out the swords so sharp,\n    And let them have their way!\u201d\n\n\n48\n\n  The goose did cackle, the sheep did bleat,\n    And the cock in the high loft crew;\n  \u2019Twas by daylight and not in darkness\n    That Gert the Count they slew.\n\n\n49\n\n  God rest thy soul, Niels Ebbeson,\n    All for that slaying\u2019s sake!\n  Full many a German in Denmark\n    The self-same way shall take.\n\n\n\n\nLEGENDARY BALLADS\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nHAVBOR AND SIGNELIL\n\n\nThe story of Havbor, or Hagbard, and Signelil is a very ancient one.\nSven Grundtvig gives it a Russian origin; but, however that may be,\nit is traced back by other Danish authorities to the dim period of\nFolk-Migration, before the Skjoldung kings. Sung in an antique Lay\u2014which\nhas perished\u2014it was re-told by Saxo Grammaticus, and frequently referred\nto in the works of the Icelandic skalds between the ninth and eleventh\ncenturies. The twelfth-century Kormak\u2019s Saga mentions a representation\nof Hagbard among the carvings in Thorkel\u2019s hall. Snorris\u2019 Edda\n(Skaldskarparsmal) gives Hagbard\u2019s name in a list of sea-kings; and\nBrynhild (Volsunga Saga 25) calls him the first of men before the birth\nof Sigurd Fafnirsbane.\n\nThe probable scene of the tragedy is Sigarsted, in Sj\u00e6lland, near\nRingsted, the ancient royal residence. There the sites yet exist of\nSigar\u2019s palace and Signe\u2019s bower\u2014there, too, is the howe where the\ngibbet was raised, and the field where Sigar was defeated by Hagbard\u2019s\navenging kinsmen. They were visited by Ole Worm in 1642, and a map of\nthem was published in _Monumenta Danica_. The Rev. S. M. Beyer, in 1791,\nexcited the antiquarian world by his alleged discovery of a rune-stone\ncommemorating King Sigar\u2014but, since the stone, he was careful to add, had\nsince been destroyed, the statement, to put it mildly, lacks verification.\n\nThe ballad-minstrel omits much of the original story, but adds details\nof his own\u2014Havbor\u2019s reply to the serving-maid, the King\u2019s remorseful\noutburst, and the punishment of the tale-bearer. The binding of Havbor\nwith Signe\u2019s hair, and his refusal to break it, though appearing at first\nsight a touch of fantastic medi\u00e6val chivalry, probably harks back to a\nmuch more primitive superstition, well known to all witches\u2014that which\nregards the hair as enshrining the life of its possessor. In verse 20 we\nhave a faint reminiscence of the antique Shield-Maidens, Choosers of the\nSlain.\n\n\nX\n\nHAVBOR AND SIGNELIL\n\n\n1\n\n  Havbor the King and Sivord the King\n    Have fallen out in strife,\n  All for the stately Signelil\n    That was so fair a wife.\n    \u2014Ne\u2019er wilt thou win such a fair one.\n\n\n2\n\n  Havbor the King he dreamt a dream,\n  And woeful did he wake;\n  He went to seek his mother,\n  And unto her he spake:\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cMethought that I was up in heaven,\n    And that was so fair a town;\n  And I held proud Signelil in mine arms,\n    And we fell from the sky adown.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cAnd didst thou dream thou wast in heaven,\n    And fellest adown from the sky,\n  That bodes that thou wilt win the maid,\n    But for her sake shalt die!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cAnd if I win the maiden\n    Such happiness have I,\n  I count the cost but little\n    That I for her must die!\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  Havbor he let his locks wax long,\n    And clad him in woman\u2019s gear,\n  And so he rode to Denmark\n    As though he maiden were.\n\n\n7\n\n  All in the midst of the castle garth\n    His garment chang\u00e8d he,\n  Then entered in the ladies\u2019 bower\n    Proud Signelil to see.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cHere sittest thou, stately Signelil,\n    With matrons and maids arow!\n  Havbor hath sent me hither\n    To learn to broider and sew.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cAll the woman\u2019s craft I know\n    Shall be for thee displayed;\n  Shalt eat from the self-same dish as I,\n    And sleep with my serving-maid.\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cOh, I have eaten with king\u2019s children,\n    And lain in their arms at night;\n  And must I sleep with thy serving-maid\n    I shall die of the sore despite.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, my beauteous maid,\n    Let all thy sorrow be!\n  Shalt eat of the self-same dish as I,\n    And sleep by the side of me.\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  He\u2019s taken out a knife so small,\n    And cut as best he could;\n  He\u2019s shaped them out, both hind and hart,\n    That run in good greenwood.\n\n\n13\n\n  Still sat all the haughty maids\n    And sewed as best they might,\n  All save Havbor, the son of kings,\n    His needle still did bite.\n\n\n14\n\n  Up and spake the serving-maid,\n    So evil a tongue had she:\n  \u201cOh, never saw I so poor a seam\n    Sewn by a fair ladye!\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cEver her needle is in her mouth,\n    She sets no stitches fine;\n  And ever she drains the goblet out,\n    So deep as they pour the wine!\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cNe\u2019er have I seen a lady\u2019s hands\n    Stiffer than steel, I trow!\n  And ne\u2019er have I seen so bold an eye\n    Under a lady\u2019s brow!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cNow hold thy tongue, thou evil maid,\n    And speak no spite of me!\n  Let me turn mine eyes where\u2019er I may\n    I\u2019ll turn them not on thee!\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  Now all were bound to slumber,\n    Whenas the eve was spent;\n  Havbor and stately Signelil\n    To the self-same chamber went.\n\n\n19\n\n  She laid her hand on Havbor\u2019s breast\n    That shone with gold so red:\n  \u201cWhy hast thou a bosom so like a man,\n    And not the breasts of a maid?\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cOh, the custom it is in my father\u2019s land\n    That maids to the Thing should fare,\n  And therefore have I no maiden\u2019s breasts\n    Because of the mail we wear!\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cNow tell me, stately Signelil,\n    While we are all alone,\n  Is there ever a man in all the world\n    Thou hast set thy heart upon?\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cOh, there\u2019s never a man in all the world\n    That lies my heart within,\n  Saving young Havbor, the son of kings,\n    That I may never win.\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cAnd is it Havbor, the son of kings,\n    That to thy heart is dear,\n  Then turn thee hither, mine own true love!\n    He is sleeping all so near!\u201d\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cAnd art thou Havbor, the son of kings?\n    Why hast thou sham\u00e8d me?\n  Why didst not ride to my father\u2019s court\n    With hawk on hand so free?\u201d\n\n\n25\n\n  \u201cOh, how should I ride with hawk on hand\n    To thy father\u2019s court so free?\n  Full well I know thy wrathful sire\n    Would hang me to a tree!\u201d\n\n\n26\n\n  \u201cNow hush thee, hush thee, Havbor,\n    And take thou heed, I pray!\n  My serving-maid lies waking\n    And listens to all we say.\u201d\n\n\n27\n\n  \u201cOh, let her lie and listen,\n    Thine evil serving-maid!\n  Beneath my bolster are hidden\n    Both corselet and trusty blade.\n\n\n28\n\n  \u201cBeneath my bolster are hidden\n    Both corselet and sword so true;\n  And were a hundred warriors here\n    The meeting they should rue!\u201d\n\n\n29\n\n  Oh, she has heard their counsel,\n    The evil serving-maid;\n  She\u2019s stolen away his byrnie brown\n    But and his trusty blade.\n\n\n30\n\n  Both trusty blade and byrnie brown\n    She\u2019s secretly stolen away;\n  She\u2019s hied her to the chamber fair\n    Where Sivord the King he lay.\n\n\n31\n\n  \u201cOh, sleep ye, wake ye, my noble lord?\n    Your slumber is all too deep!\n  For now lies Havbor, the son of kings,\n    By your daughter\u2019s side asleep.\u201d\n\n\n32\n\n  \u201cNow hold thy peace, thou evil maid,\n    For an thou art a liar,\n  To-morrow or ever the sun goes down\n    Thou shalt be burnt with fire!\u201d\n\n\n33\n\n  \u201cLithe now and listen, King Sivord,\n    Well may ye trust my word;\n  For here is Havbor\u2019s byrnie brown\n    But and his trusty sword.\u201d\n\n\n34\n\n  Up he sprang, King Sivord,\n    And cried thro\u2019 bower and hall:\n  \u201cRise up, rise up, my merry men,\n    And don your armour all!\n\n\n35\n\n  \u201cNow don your mail, my merry men,\n    And clasp it well enough,\n  For here is Havbor, the son of kings,\n    A warrior tall and tough!\u201d\n\n\n36\n\n  Oh, they have knocked at the chamber door\n    With glaive and eke with spear:\n  \u201cRise up now, Havbor, son of kings!\n    Come forth and meet us here!\u201d\n\n\n37\n\n  Up sprang Havbor, the son of kings,\n    Or ever they spake the word,\n  And he has missed his byrnie brown,\n    But and his trusty sword.\n\n\n38\n\n  \u201cOh, gone, gone is my byrnie,\n    And gone my blade so true!\n  Now by my troth, proud Signelil,\n    This meeting we shall rue!\u201d\n\n\n39\n\n  All hail to Havbor, son of kings,\n    That fought like a warrior stout!\n  Ne\u2019er could his foes come nigh him\n    While the boards of the bed held out.\n\n\n40\n\n  Oh, some he slew with his naked hands,\n    And some underfoot did tread;\n  Full thirty of King Sivord\u2019s men\n    By Signild\u2019s bower lay dead.\n\n\n41\n\n  They\u2019ve taken Havbor, the son of kings,\n    And fetters on him they draw;\n  He burst them all asunder\n    As they had been of straw.\n\n\n42\n\n  Oh, shame be on the serving-maid\n    That gave them counsel there:\n  \u201cNever shall ye bind Havbor\n    But with proud Signild\u2019s hair!\u201d\n\n\n43\n\n  They took a hair of Signild\u2019s head\n    To bind him foot and hand;\n  His haughty heart had broken\n    Ere he would burst that band.\n\n\n44\n\n  \u201cNow harken, haughty Signelil!\n    Wilt show thy love to me,\n  Then burn thy bower and all therein\n    When they hang me to a tree!\u201d\n\n\n45\n\n  \u201cOh, is there a man of my father\u2019s men\n    That in thy death hath part,\n  Be sure I will avenge it\n    All on his own sweetheart!\u201d\n\n\n46\n\n  Up spake Havbor, the son of kings,\n    When first he saw the tree:\n  \u201cHang up my cloak of scarlet\n    A sign for all to see!\n\n\n47\n\n  \u201cHang up my cloak of scarlet\n    That is both fair and fine!\n  The ladies all will weep and wail\n    When first they see the sign.\u201d\n\n\n48\n\n  It was stately Signelil\n    To roof and reed set fire;\n  She and all her maidens\n    Burned in the self-same pyre.\n\n\n49\n\n  Long stood Havbor, the son of kings,\n    To look his last on land,\n  Until he saw proud Signild\u2019s bower\n    That all in flame did stand.\n\n\n50\n\n  \u201cTake down, take down my cloak of red,\n    And cast it to earth so deep,\n  For an I had ten thousand lives\n    Not one of them would I keep!\u201d\n\n\n51\n\n  Up and spake King Sivord,\n    That looked, and needs must speak:\n  \u201cOh, what is the bale a-burning there,\n    But and the driving reek?\u201d\n\n\n52\n\n  Up and spake the little foot-page,\n    And sore his tears ran down:\n  \u201cOh, that is stately Signelil\n    That lets her love be shown!\u201d\n\n\n53\n\n  \u201cSave her, stately Signelil!\n    See that ye ride and run!\n  Get ye in haste to the gallows\n    And save King Havbor\u2019s son!\u201d\n\n\n54\n\n  When they came to the bower\n    Signelil\u2019s soul was sped;\n  When they came to the gallows\n    Havbor was hanged and dead.\n\n\n55\n\n  \u201cOh, had I known but yesternight\n    How deep in love were they,\n  I would not ha\u2019 done for all Denmark\n    The deed I ha\u2019 done this day!\u201d\n\n\n56\n\n  Now woe is me for the gallows-tree,\n    And the bower in ashes laid!\n  They\u2019ve buried her in the earth alive,\n    The cruel serving-maid.\n  \u2014Ne\u2019er wilt thou win such a fair one.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nEBBE SKAMMELSON\n\n\nThis ballad of a brother\u2019s treachery (which may be compared with our own\n\u201cChilde Vyet\u201d) dates from _circa_ 1300, and is considered by Olrik as the\nbest produced in Denmark during the medi\u00e6val period. In character-drawing\nit yields to none. Proud Adelus, \u201cstrong in will and true in troth,\u201d is\nthe ideal noble lady; the hot-blooded hero, the cowardly brother, and\nthe mother with her unavailing attempt at smoothing things over, are\nall well individualized. The burden, too, is peculiarly haunting and\npicturesque.\n\nTradition points to the Nordentoft homestead in North Jutland (Ty) as the\nscene of the tragedy; and the great Strangeson family claims Ebbe as its\nfounder.\n\n\nXI\n\nEBBE SKAMMELSON\n\n\n1\n\n  Skammel he dwells up north in Ty,\n    And Skammel is rich and gay;\n  Five sons hath he both fair and tall,\n    But two went an evil way.\n  \u2014Therefore roams Ebbe Skammelson so many a lonely way.\n\n\n2\n\n  Sir Ebbe serves for fame and fee\n    The royal court within,\n  While Peter his brother that bides at home\n    His true-love\u2019s troth would win.\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cDost sit at home, proud Adelus,\n    And broider my brother\u2019s gear?\n  Ebbe he serves in the King\u2019s own court,\n    And scorns thee, nor holds thee dear!\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cFull well do I know him, Ebbe,\n    And Ebbe his heart knows he;\n  And scorns he never a maiden proud\n    The less hath he scorn for me!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, proud Adelus,\n    And be my plighted maid!\n  For true I tell thee the tidings\n    That Ebbe my brother is dead.\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  All on the self-same evening\n    They drank to the plighted pair;\n  All on the Monday after\n    To bridal-feast they fare.\n\n\n7\n\n  It was Ebbe Skammelson\n    At midnight did awake,\n  And he up and called to the nearest swain\n    And of his dream he spake.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cMethought that my stone-built tower\n    Stood all in a leaping lowe,\n  And Peter my brother burned therein,\n    And my fair love als\u00f2.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cAnd didst thou dream thy tower of stone\n    Stood all in a lowe so red,\n  Then know, that Peter thy brother\n    Thine own fair love doth wed.\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  It was Ebbe Skammelson\n    That girt his sword by his side,\n  And leave he won, Sir Ebbe,\n    Homeward in haste to ride.\n\n\n11\n\n  It was Ebbe Skammelson\n    That paused not on his way;\n  He came to his father\u2019s castle\n    All on the bridal-day.\n\n\n12\n\n  Forth they come, his sisters twain,\n    With bracelets on either hand:\n  \u201cNow welcome, Ebbe our brother,\n    Home to thy father\u2019s land!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, my sisters twain,\n    And look that ye do not lie!\n  Say wherefore are gathering hither\n    This goodly companie?\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  Up spake his youngest sister,\n    For needs must the words be said:\n  \u201cLo! \u2019tis Peter thy brother\n    Thine own true-love doth wed!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  To one he has given a brooch for her breast,\n    To the other a ring for her hand:\n  \u201cOh, I brought them both to my own true-love\n    Out of the strangers\u2019 land!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  The one she has bidden him bide at home,\n    The other has bidden him go:\n  \u201cFor dost thou tarry here o\u2019er this night\n    Be sure it will work us woe!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  Ebbe he turned his horse\u2019s head\n    Forth from the hold to ride,\n  But his mother she seized the bridal-rein\n    And begged him at home to bide.\n\n\n18\n\n  His mother all to the highest place\n    Hath brought him cushion and chair,\n  His father hath brought him a cup of wine\n    To pledge the bridal-pair.\n\n\n19\n\n  He pledged them in the mead so brown\n    And in the red, red wine,\n  But when he looked upon the bride\n    The tears ran from his eyne.\n\n\n20\n\n  Now when the dew was falling\n    And even was well-nigh sped,\n  Up she rose, the beauteous bride,\n    To seek the bridal-bed.\n\n\n21\n\n  They followed her, the beauteous bride,\n    All to her chamber door;\n  Foremost went Ebbe Skammelson\n    To hold the torch before.\n\n\n22\n\n  All to the door of the upper room\n    Ebbe the bride led he:\n  \u201cHast thou forgot, proud Adelus,\n    The troth thou didst plight to me?\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cAll the troth I plighted thee\n    Is given to Peter thy brother;\n  But each and every day I live\n    I\u2019ll be to thee e\u2019en as a mother!\u201d\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cI wooed thee not for my mother,\n    I wooed thee for my wife!\n  For this shall Peter Skammelson\n    Yield up to me his life!\n\n\n25\n\n  \u201cLithe and listen, proud Adelus,\n    And fly from the land with me!\n  Peter my brother I\u2019ll slay eftsoon,\n    And bear the blame for thee.\u201d\n\n\n26\n\n  \u201cAnd wilt thou slay Peter thy brother eftsoon\n    I never will be thy wage!\n  And thou shalt sorrow thyself to death\n    Like a wild bird in a cage.\u201d\n\n\n27\n\n  It was Ebbe Skammelson\n    That drew his brand so brown;\n  It was haughty Adelus\n    That he to earth struck down.\n\n\n28\n\n  Oh, he has hidden the bloody brand\n    Beneath his cloak of pall;\n  He\u2019s sought his brother Sir Peter\n    That sat in the stone-built hall.\n\n\n29\n\n  \u201cNow harken, Peter Skammelson,\n    A laggard art thou to wed!\n  The bride is longing after thee\n    All in the bridal-bed.\u201d\n\n\n30\n\n  It was Peter his brother\n    Spake up with mickle spite:\n  \u201cI give thee leave with right good-will\n    To sleep by the bride to-night!\u201d\n\n\n31\n\n  It was Ebbe Skammelson\n    That drew his brand so brown;\n  It was Peter his brother\n    That he to earth struck down.\n\n\n32\n\n  Oh, he has wounded his father sore,\n    And struck off his mother\u2019s hand;\n  And so must he roam, Ebbe Skammelson,\n    The wild ways of the land!\n  \u2014Therefore roams Ebbe Skammelson so many a lonely way.\n\n\n\n\nXII, XIII\n\nOH, SEVENTY-SEVEN TWICE-TOLD WERE THEY\n\nHOLGER DANSKE AND STOUT DIDRIK\n\n\nThese Ballads are two of a large group celebrating popular legendary\nheroes. Those concerned with Didrik\u2014all jovial ones with happy\nendings\u2014were adapted or translated from the work of the wandering German\nminstrels known as the \u201cSaxon Singers,\u201d who visited Denmark during the\ntime of Knud Lavard and Sven Grade (1131-57). Part of this poetry,\nmoreover, apparently trickled into Scandinavia by circuitous routes,\nsince a lengthy \u201cDidrikssaga\u201d was composed during the thirteenth century\nat Bergen.\n\nThere are those who consider Didrik as a mere Mrs. Harris, and derive\nhis name from the vague appellation \u00feio\u00f0reke = folk-king. But most\nauthorities believe that he had a flesh-and-blood original in Theoderic,\nKing of the East Goths, and conqueror of Italy, whose royal seat was at\n\u201cBern,\u201d _i. e._ Verona. Be that as it may, this kingly shade enlisted\nhis champions among the most august phantoms of the North. Sivord\nSnarensvend, for example, is no less a personage than Sigurd Fafnirsbane;\nwhile Helled Haagen is Hogne the Hero, Sigurd\u2019s slayer. Raadengaard may\n(or may not) be the Hrothgar of \u201cBeowulf,\u201d and the \u201cSir Aldingar\u201d of\nBritish ballad. Most of the other figures may be pursued through the\nmazes of legend; but Falkvor the Fiddler is a creation of the \u201cfiddling\u201d\nminstrel\u2019s; and he or his translator inserted Tetlev Danske as a\ncompliment to the Danes.\n\nAs for Holger Danske, he is the French hero Ogier le Danois, originally\none of Charlemagne\u2019s champions, who fought for Christendom against the\ninfidel. The oldest Danish ballad of Holger describes his victory over\nBurmand, an amorous Troll, who would fain carry off the Lady Gloriant,\nthe King of Hungary\u2019s daughter, from her rightful lover King Karvel. This\nchivalrous deed of Holger\u2019s captivated the popular fancy, which adopted\nhim henceforth as national hero, crowned him with the \u201cred, red gold\u201d and\npictured him as defending Denmark against the power of the German Empire,\npersonified in the giants Sverting and Bermer-Ris. \u201cHolger Danske and\nStout Didrik may,\u201d says Olrik, \u201cbe considered Denmark\u2019s first patriotic\nsong.\u201d\n\nVerses 4 and 5 find a parallel in \u201cThe Battle of Otterburn\u201d (English\nversion).\n\n  \u201cUp spake a berne upon the bent\n    Of comfort that was not cold,\n  And said: We have brente Northumberland,\n    We have all wealth in hold.\n\n  \u201cNow we have harried all Bambroughshire,\n    All the wealth in the world have we;\n  I rede we ride to Newcastle\n    So still and stalworthlie!\u201d\n\n\nXII\n\nOH, SEVENTY-SEVEN TWICE-TOLD WERE THEY\n\n\n1\n\n  Oh, seventy-seven twice-told were they\n    When out from Hald they went,\n  And when they came to Brattingsborg\n    They pitched the silken tent.\n  \u2014There sounds thunder the captains under, when they ride forth.\n\n\n2\n\n  King Isung stands on high watch-tower,\n    And looks forth far and wide:\n  \u201cOh, little care for their lives have they\n    That hither list to ride!\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cNow harken, Sivord Snarensvend,\n    Hast wandered here and there;\n  Tell me what warriors are they\n    These golden shields that bear?\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cThere shineth on the foremost shield\n    A lion all so bold;\n  The bearing of Didrik the King it is,\n    With a crown of ruddy gold.\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cAnd shining on the second shield\n    Hammer and tongs appear;\n  The sign of Vidrik Verlandson\n    That takes no prisoner.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cAnd on the third shield shining see\n    A golden serpent, bound;\n  That beareth Master Hildebrand,\n    Cunning in counsel found.\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cAnd on the fourth shield, see where shines\n    A leafy linden-tree;\n  That beareth youthful Humlunger,\n    Earl Hornbook\u2019s son is he.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cThere shineth on the following shield\n    A wolf in a wild wood,\n  The sign of Ulv van J\u00e6rn the young\n    Who is a warrior good.\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cAnd on the sixth there shineth still\n    A vulture red as gold;\n  And that bears Helled Haagen\n    Who is a champion bold.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cAnd see, the seventh shining shield\n    Fiddle and bow doth keep,\n  The sign of Falkvor Minstrel-Man\n    Would liefer drink than sleep.\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cAnd on the eighth an elephant\n    Is pictured with a swain,\n  The sign of Tetlev Danske\n    That swings his sword amain.\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cAll on the ninth shield shining, lo\n    A swarthy vulture shows,\n  The sign of young Sir Raadengaard\n    Full many a rune who knows.\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cAnd on the tenth shield, lo there shine\n    Two arrows wan and white,\n  He bears them, Hvitting Hermandson,\n    Is foremost still in fight.\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cThere shines on the eleventh shield\n    Nought but a burning brand;\n  That bears Sir Brand Vidf\u00e6rling\n    Against all lordling\u2019s land.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cAnd on the twelfth shield shining, see,\n    There stands a cowl so grey;\n  That bears the monk, Brother Alsing,\n    Would follow fain the fray!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cNow harken, Sivord Snarensvend,\n    Thou art a warrior free!\n  Shalt fight with one of Didrik\u2019s men\n    For all my land and me!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  Up stood Sivord Snarensvend,\n    And to the tents he hied:\n  \u201cNow is there ever a warrior stout\n    A joust with me will ride?\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  Oh, on the board they cast the dice\n    That fell both far and wide,\n  And the lot it was young Humlunger\u2019s\n    With Sivord there to ride.\n\n\n19\n\n  It was he, young Humlunger,\n    Did forth to Vidrik speed:\n  \u201cNow I will give thee a pledge to hold\n    Wilt lend me Skemming thy steed.\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cOh, Sivord sees not the point of his spear,\n    Because his sight is dim,\n  And if my Skemming to-day wins scathe\n    Nor thou nor thy kinsfolk can pay for him!\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cBut I, I have a sister\n    Is fairer than maidens all;\n  And if thy Skemming wins scathe to-day\n    I\u2019ll pay it her hand withal.\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cOh, nought of Skemming thou\u2019lt see to-day\n    Unless thy surety firm doth stand;\n  The hand I\u2019ll have of thy sister fair,\n    And seven castles in Birtingsland!\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cSeven castles in Birtingsland\n    Thy surety they shall be;\n  Thereto the maid my sister,\n    A pledge of price for thee!\u201d\n\n\n24\n\n  Oh, he has backed that steed so bold,\n    And gaily ridden away;\n  Good sooth, but Skemming thought it strange\n    To feel the spur that day!\n\n\n25\n\n  The gold did shine upon his shield\n    Like the sun in summer-tide:\n  \u201cGod help me now, a simple swain,\n    The brunt to bear and bide!\u201d\n\n\n26\n\n  The first course that they ran together\n    Would neither champion yield;\n  And both their shields were shattered there,\n    And hurled so far afield.\n\n\n27\n\n  \u201cMethinks thou art a fair young swain,\n    That well can run and ride!\n  Go now and take thy shield again,\n    And I the brunt will bide.\u201d\n\n\n28\n\n  And when they ran the second course,\n    Then one of them must yield;\n  Young Humlunger was stricken,\n    And hurled so far afield.\n\n\n29\n\n  \u201cOh, I have struck thee down to earth,\n    And wounded thy steed als\u00f2;\n  Now whence thou comest, thou fair young swain,\n    Full fain am I to know.\u201d\n\n\n30\n\n  \u201cOh, Hornbook hight my father,\n    In Birtingsland is lord,\n  And I am called young Humlunger\n    Whenas I ride abroad.\u201d\n\n\n31\n\n  \u201cFull well I know thy father,\n    For comrades kind we were;\n  Now take thy shield and mount again,\n    Son of my sister dear!\n\n\n32\n\n  \u201cAnd take thou up my shattered shield,\n    Bind me to oaken tree;\n  Then ride and tell the champions\n    The game is won by thee!\u201d\n\n\n33\n\n  Forth to the tents fared Humlunger,\n    Cast blade upon the board:\n  \u201cNow have I bound the grey-beard carle\n    That spake the vaunting word!\u201d\n\n\n34\n\n  \u201cNow hold thy peace, young Humlunger,\n    That aye must prate thy fill!\n  If thou hast bound him, Sivord,\n    \u2019Tis with his own good-will!\u201d\n\n\n35\n\n  Up stood Vidrik Verlandson,\n    Bade saddle his steed so free:\n  \u201cI will fare forth to the forest,\n    This conquered carle to see!\u201d\n\n\n36\n\n  Oh, Sivord all in the greenwood\n    Saw where the knight did ride;\n  Up by the roots he reft the oak,\n    For he might not his bonds abide.\n\n\n37\n\n  Up by the roots he reft the oak,\n    For he might not his bonds abide:\n  \u201cIf Vidrik Verlandson comes here\n    My ribs he\u2019ll hew from my side!\u201d\n\n\n38\n\n  The Queen stood in the lofty bower,\n    And looked both up and down:\n  \u201cOh, hither comes Sivord Snarensvend\n    A-bearing summer to town!\u201d\n\n\n39\n\n  The Queen looked out with her ladies\n    All from the lofty bower:\n  \u201cSivord hath been in good greenwood\n    And gathered a gallant flower!\u201d\n\n\n40\n\n  Gay went the dance at Brattingsborg,\n    Where champions danced amain;\n  There danced with oak-tree in his belt\n    Sivord the purblind swain!\n  \u2014There sounds thunder the captains under, when they ride forth.\n\n\nXIII\n\nHOLGER DANSKE AND STOUT DIDRIK\n\n\n1\n\n  Stout Didrik dwells in Berneland\n    With brethren eight all told,\n  And each of them twelve sons hath got,\n    All doughty knights and bold.\n  \u2014But the battle is raging northward up in Jutland.\n\n\n2\n\n  Stout Didrik dwells in Berneland\n    With fifteen sisters bright,\n  And each of them hath twelve fair sons\n    That hold their lives full light.\n\n\n3\n\n  And when they rode out all by Bern,\n    A goodly companie,\n  Sooth to say, each warrior\n    Was tall as a beechen tree.\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cNow we have fought o\u2019er all the world\n    And conquered far and wide,\n  And we have heard of Holger Dansk\n    That doth in Denmark bide.\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cWe have heard tell of Holger Dansk,\n    In Jutland doth abide,\n  And he is crowned with the red, red gold.\n    And ne\u2019er will bate his pride.\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  Oh, Sverting seized a pike of steel,\n    And spake up loud and high:\n  \u201cA hundred of Holger Danske\u2019s men\n    I count them not a fly!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cOh, harken, Sverting, thou swarthy swain,\n    Or ever thou rue the day!\n  We ha\u2019 heard of Holger Danske\u2019s men,\n    And bold young blades are they!\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  Up and spake tall Bermer-Ris,\n    And a vaunting word spake he:\n  \u201cOh, we will fare to Denmark,\n    And try if the King will flee!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  Now all with eighteen thousand steeds\n    From Berneland they fare,\n  And they\u2019ve drawn up to Denmark\n    To see King Holger there.\n\n\n10\n\n  Stout Didrik hath sent a messenger\n    And bidden King Holger yield,\n  To pay him scot and lot for aye,\n    Or meet him in the field.\n\n\n11\n\n  Up spake Vidrik Verlandson,\n    He spake a word so stout:\n  \u201cAnd come they in to Denmark thus,\n    They shall not thus go out!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  Oh, they have met, a mighty host,\n    All on the darksome heath;\n  And that was a woeful trysting-place\n    Where warriors fought till death.\n\n\n13\n\n  They\u2019ve fought for a day, for three they\u2019ve fought,\n    And stiff in stower they stand;\n  Holger the King and his mighty men\n    Slew many from Berneland.\n\n\n14\n\n  Oh, mild of mood was Bermer-Ris,\n    And softly spake he then:\n  \u201cNow how shall we conquer Holger Dansk\n    With scarce a hundred men?\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  It was doughty Didrik\n    Looked upward to the sky:\n  \u201cNo help is here for us, I ween,\n    \u2019Tis time to turn and fly!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  Stout Didrik took to both his legs,\n    To fly o\u2019er hill and dale,\n  And Sverting went the self-same way\n    For all his boastful tale.\n\n\n17\n\n  Up spake little Iron-Wolf,\n    That held the hill beside:\n  \u201cOh, they that are come to fight the Danes\n    Have little praise or pride!\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  When they rode out of Berneland\n    They were eighteen thousand men;\n  \u2019Twas scarce a tithe of all that host\n    That won back home again.\n\n\n19\n\n  Oh, stern the stream of red, red blood\n    Ran o\u2019er land and lea!\n  The reek of it rose up to heaven\n    Till the sun was bloody and red to see.\n  \u2014But the battle is raging northward up in Jutland.\n\n\n\n\nBALLADS OF MAGIC\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nYOUNG SVEJDAL\n\n\nA certain number of Ballads borrowed their subjects from the Old Norse\nLays, making of them, not translations, but fresh creations; for the\nLays tower above the many-coloured ballad-world like ice-peaks that loom\nover flowery meads. The story of Young Svejdal is derived from two Lays\ndealing with the adventures of Svipdag, who wakes Menglad from her trance\non the magic mountain; but\n\n  \u201cthere is a vast difference between the simplicity of the\n  Ballad and the stately measure and rhetorical pomp of the\n  original:\u2014\n\n      \u2018Svipdag is my name; Sunbright was my father\u2019s name;\n      The winds have driven me far, along cold ways;\n      No one can gainsay the word of Fate,\n      Though it be spoken to his own destruction.\u2019\n\n  \u201cThe difference is as great as the difference between the\n  ballad of the \u2018Marriage of Gawayne\u2019 and the same story as told\n  in the _Canterbury Tales_; or the difference between Homer\u2019s\n  way of describing the recovery of lifted cattle and the ballad\n  of \u2018Jannie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead\u2019\u201d (W. P. Ker\u2019s _Epic and\n  Romance_, chap. ii., section 3).\n\nThis Ballad, indeed, brings down the story from the misty peaks of\nValhalla into the garrulous region of fairy-tale. It is faithful to the\nprimitive tradition which depicts the dead as waking unwillingly from\ntheir slumbers. Svejdal\u2019s mother speaks as does the dead Vala in the\nnameless Lay called \u201cBaldr\u2019s Doom\u201d by the editors of the _Corpus Poeticum\nBoreale_:\n\n  \u201cHvat es manna \u00feat mer okunnra\n  es mer hefir aukit ervitt sinni?\n  Vas-ek snivin sniovi ok slegin regni,\n  ok drifin doeggo; dau\u00f0 vas-ek lengi.\u201d\n\n(Who is the man unknown to me that has put me to this weary journey? I\nwas snowed on with snow, and smitten with rain, and dripped on with dew;\ndead was I lang syne.)\n\nThe refrain is:\n\n  \u201cNau\u00f0ig sag\u00f0ak. N\u00fa mun-ek \u00feegja!\u201d\n\n(Loath have I spoken. Now must I be silent!) Gray, in his translation,\n\u201cThe Descent of Odin,\u201d puts it with eighteenth-century elegance:\n\n  \u201cAgain my wearied eyes I close,\n  Leave me, leave me to repose!\u201d\n\nand readers of _Mansfield Park_ will remember how fitly these words are\napplied to the languid speech of Lady Bertram. A \u201cclever fancy\u201d on the\npart of the Norns, to spin this slender thread connecting Jane Austen (of\nall people!) with the \u201cRunick savages boozing ale!\u201d Had she known more of\nthem, she would doubtless have agreed with Frederick the Great, that all\ntheir works were not worth a charge of powder, and that she would have no\nsuch stuff in her library.\n\n\nXIV\n\nYOUNG SVEJDAL\n\n\n1\n\n  It was he, young Svejdal,\n    Was playing at the ball;\n  The ball flew into the maiden\u2019s breast,\n    And her cheeks grew white withal.\n  \u2014Choose thy words well!\n\n\n2\n\n  The ball flew into the maiden\u2019s bower,\n    And after went the swain,\n  And or ever he left the bower behind\n    She dreed full bitter pain.\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cOh, never shouldst thou venture\n    To throw thy ball to me!\n  There sits a maid in a far-off land\n    A-longing after thee.\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cOh, ne\u2019er shalt thou seek slumber,\n    And never rest shalt know,\n  Until thou hast loosed the lovely maid\n    That long hath lain in woe!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  It was he, young Svejdal,\n    Wrapped him in cloak of vair,\n  And to the hall betook him\n    To seek the captains there.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cNow sit in peace, my captains,\n    And pledge your healths in mead,\n  Whiles I fare forth to the grave-mound\n    To seek my mother\u2019s rede!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  It was he, young Svejdal,\n    That loud did cry and call,\n  Till the marble-stone was rent and riven\n    And the mound was nigh to fall.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cOh, who is it that wakes me?\n    Who calls with cry so bold?\n  May I not lie and sleep in peace\n    All under darksome mould?\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cIt is I, young Svejdal,\n    Only son o\u2019 thine!\n  And all I ask is counsel good\n    From thee, dear mother mine.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cMy sister and my stepmother\n    Have made me pale and pine,\n  All for a lovely lady\n    That ne\u2019er I saw with eyne.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cI will give thee a palfrey\n    Shall serve thy need, I ween!\n  He can go as well o\u2019er the salt sea-swell\n    As over the land so green.\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cA sword I will give thee also,\n    Is tempered in dragon\u2019s blood,\n  And it will shine like a burning brand\n    When thou ridest the darksome wood.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  It was he, young Svejdal,\n    That spurred his steed so free;\n  Forth he rode thro\u2019 darksome wood\n    And over the wide sea.\n\n\n14\n\n  It was he, young Svejdal,\n    That rode \u2019twixt sea and land;\n  And he was \u2019ware of a herdsman there\n    That drove his flock to the strand.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cLithe and list, good herdsman,\n    And speak thou sooth to me!\n  Who is it owns the flock so fair\n    Thou drivest down to the sea?\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cOh, a maiden there is in this countrie\n    Lies spellbound in dule and pine,\n  All for a swain hight Svejdal\n    That never she saw with eyne.\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cAnd knowest thou where the maiden dwells,\n    Then hide it not from me!\n  Whenas I am king of all this land\n    A knight I\u2019ll make of thee.\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cOh, yonder under the linden green\n    There stands my lady\u2019s hold;\n  The towers are all of the marble grey,\n    And the doors are decked with gold!\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cThe towers are all of the marble grey,\n    And the doors are decked with gold!\n  Full seven years are over and gone\n    Since she did sun behold.\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cThere stands a bear by my lady\u2019s bower,\n    And a lion so fell to see,\n  But art thou Svejdal in very sooth\n    Thou shalt pass by them free.\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n  Forth he fared, young Svejdal,\n    And up to the hold he went;\n  All the locks that held it\n    Were riven asunder and rent.\n\n\n22\n\n  The bear and the lordly lion\n    They followed him from the door;\n  The linden with all its silvery leaves\n    Bowed down to earth before.\n\n\n23\n\n  The linden bowed adown to earth\n    With every silver leaf:\n  And up she stood, the maiden proud,\n    That long had lain in grief.\n\n\n24\n\n  Up she waked, the maiden proud,\n    When she heard the spurs a-ringing:\n  \u201cNow thanks be unto God in heaven\n    Who help to me is bringing!\u201d\n\n\n25\n\n  In he went, Sir Svejdal,\n    That was both young and fair;\n  It was the haughty maiden\n    That hailed his entrance there.\n\n\n26\n\n  \u201cWelcome to thee, young Svejdal,\n    Thou noble lord of mine!\n  Now praised be God in heaven\n    Hath loosed us from pain and pine!\u201d\n  \u2014Choose thy words well!\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nTHORD OF HAFSGAARD\n\n\nHere we have the Old Norse Lay of Thrym (\u00ferymskvi\u00f0a) recast and trolled\nforth by a medi\u00e6val minstrel. He has been faithful to the grim jollity\nof the original poem; but, as his lilting verse has lost the trenchant\nbattle-axe swing of the old alliterative metre, so the tale he tells\nis shorn of the epic dignity surrounding Valhalla and the gods. On the\nrestoration of the Thunderer\u2019s hammer hangs the fate of the \u00c6sir in their\nendless warfare with the Frost Giants; its loss is a calamity such as was\nnever known in heaven nor earth. When Freyja is asked to play the Bride,\nher stamp shakes the celestial floor. When Thor drives to the wedding\nfeast, earth burns under his chariot wheels. Whereas the Thord of the\nBallad might, for aught we are told, be a mere bonnet-laird; and it is\nonly by implication that we gather any idea of his hammer\u2019s importance.\n\nThe erudite M. Pineau (_\u00c9tude sur les Chants Populaires Scandinaves_) is\npuzzled and pained by these variations and omissions\u2014notably that of the\n\u00c6sir\u2019s council, and of Thor\u2019s indignation at the idea of assuming bridal\nattire. \u201cDon\u2019t tell me,\u201d he exclaims indignantly, \u201cthat this scene of\nall others could be forgotten by the popular imagination!\u201d The Eddie\nLays, according to him, jealously guarded by the priests, were never\nknown to the people at large; and he goes so far as to declare that the\nsource alike of Lay and Ballad must be sought in some older, and now\nnon-existent, form of the story. M. Pineau, in short, is a Necessitarian,\nwho will not allow free-will to poets. Why should not the minstrel pick\nand choose his incidents? Why, on M. Pineau\u2019s own showing, should not the\nLay have reached him in fragmentary form? The student must decide for\nhimself; suffice it meanwhile to say that the Ballad is a capital one,\nand the \u201cmerry jest\u201d at the end a racy substitute for the ferocious pun\nwhich concludes the original, at the expense of the Giant\u2019s mother:\n\n  \u201cFor pence a pound was what she won.\u201d\n\n\nXV\n\nTHORD OF HAFSGAARD\n\n\n1\n\n  It was Thord of Hafsgaard o\u2019er the blowing meads did ride,\n  There he lost his hammer of gold, and sought for it far and wide.\n\n\n2\n\n  It was Thord of Hafsgaard spake with his brother bold:\n  \u201cThou must fare to Norrefjeld, and seek my hammer of gold!\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  It was little Loki that donned his feather-fell,\n  Forth he flew to Norrefjeld, all over the salt sea-swell.\n\n\n4\n\n  All in the castle-garth his garment chang\u00e8d he,\n  Then entered in the stone-built hall, the Giant-King to see.\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cNow welcome, little Loki, be thou right welcome here!\n  How fares the country round Hafsgaard, and the land that lies anear?\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cWell fares the country round Hafsgaard, and the land that lies anear,\n  But Thord hath lost his hammer of gold, and therefore am I come here.\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cNever shall Thord have his hammer again, altho\u2019 ye seek and strive!\n  Under the earth \u2019tis buried deep, full fifty fathom and five!\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cNever shall Thord have his hammer again (for ye shall buy it dear),\n  Till ye bring me your sister Fredensborg, with all your goods and gear!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  It was little Loki that donned his feather-fell,\n  Forth he flew on the homeward way, all over the salt sea-swell.\n\n\n10\n\n  All in the castle-garth his garment chang\u00e8d he,\n  Then entered in the stone-built hall, his brother dear to see.\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cNever shall Thord have his hammer again, altho\u2019 we seek and strive,\n  Under the earth \u2019tis buried deep full fifty fathom and five!\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cNever shall Thord have his hammer again (for we must buy it dear),\n  Till we take him our sister Fredensborg, with all our goods and gear!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  The maiden seated on the bench she up and spake to him:\n  \u201cOh, give me to a christened man, and not to a goblin grim!\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cNow we will take our father, and comb his locks with care,\n  And lead him up to Norrefjeld, all for a bride so fair!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  Now true is the tale I tell ye, they took that fair young bride,\n  They spared no costly plenishing to deck her out with pride.\n\n\n16\n\n  They seated her, that beauteous bride, upon the bridal-seat;\n  Forth he came, the Giant-King, full fain the maid to greet.\n\n\n17\n\n  An ox that lusty bride devoured, and thirty salted swine,\n  And drank, ere she could slake her thirst, twelve tuns of good red wine!\n\n\n18\n\n  The Giant-King he paced the floor, and wrathful was his mood:\n  \u201cWho e\u2019er beheld a beauteous bride fall thus upon her food?\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  Up spake little Loki, beneath his cloak smiled he:\n  \u201cFor seven days she ate no meat, so sore she longed for thee!\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  Stayed upon a mighty tree by seven champions bold,\n  Up to the knees of the maiden they bore the hammer of gold.\n\n\n21\n\n  Up she rose, the bride, and took the hammer in her hand;\n  Good sooth, I say, she swung it light as a willow wand!\n\n\n22\n\n  She slew the King o\u2019 the Giants, that Troll so fierce and grim,\n  And the lesser Trolls that sought the feast, she slew them after him.\n\n\n23\n\n  It was little Loki that spake a merry jest:\n  \u201cOur father he is a widow now, to lead him home were best!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\nTHE AVENGING SWORD\n\n\nThis fine Ballad (admired by Andrew Lang) is unique in its mingling\nof pagan and Christian sentiment. The hero, who in his Bersark\nblood-lust spares neither wife, maid, nor suckling\u2014whose brother the\nsword is possessed by a demon\u2014who has ranged the world in pursuit of\nrevenge\u2014ranges it again as a penitent pilgrim, bound, for the heavier\npenance, in iron chains. Since, however, the Ballads concern themselves\nlittle with ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the penance is depicted as ending,\nnot at any saintly shrine, but at the grave of his enemy.\n\nThe belief that the warrior\u2019s favourite weapons were animated by\na mysterious personality is familiar to all students of Old Norse\nliterature. One celebrated example occurs in Nj\u00e0ls Saga, 79, when H\u00f8gni,\nstealing out with Skarphe\u00f0inn by night to avenge the death of Gunnar,\ntakes down the dead hero\u2019s halberd, and hears it singing aloud. (The\nO.N. impersonal idiom, \u201cit sang in the halberd,\u201d hints at the indwelling\nsoul.) \u201cThen sprang up Rannveig (Gunnar\u2019s mother) and cried in bitter\nwrath, \u2018Who is taking the halberd, which I forbade all men to touch?\u2019\n\u2018I would carry it,\u2019 said H\u00f8gni, \u2018to my father, that he may have it in\nValhalla, and bear it at the Weapon Thing.\u2019 \u2018Further than that,\u2019 said\nshe, \u2018wilt thou bear it, even to thy father\u2019s avenging, for the halberd\ndeclares the death of one man or more.\u2019\u201d\n\nThat magical forces, once unchained, might end by destroying their\nliberator\u2014that the naming of the name conferred power over the name\u2019s\npossessor\u2014are superstitions common to almost all primitive races.\n\nVersions of this Ballad exist in Swedish, Norwegian, and Faro\u00ebse.\n\n\nXVI\n\nTHE AVENGING SWORD\n\n\n1\n\n  Sir Peter rode to the castle door,\n  The King of Danes he stood before.\n  \u2014Forward, hurrah! ride forward.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cWelcome, Sir Peter, comrade mine!\n  Say, hast thou avenged that sire o\u2019 thine?\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cOh, I ha\u2019 been so southerly\n  Until the sun bowed down to me.\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cAnd I ha\u2019 been so westerly\n  Until the sun sank near to me.\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cAnd I ha\u2019 been so northerly\n  Until the frost was frore to see.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cAnd I ha\u2019 been so easterly\n  Until the day was fair to see;\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cBut never did I find the wight\n  Could rede me my father\u2019s death aright!\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cOh, say, what wilt thou give the wight\n  Can rede thee thy father\u2019s death aright?\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cOf silver he shall have his fill,\n  And of golden coin whate\u2019er he will!\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cYea, more I\u2019ll give to him,\n  A ship in sailing-trim!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  He smiled, the King, his words to heed:\n  \u201cHere stands he that did the deed!\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cBy GOD in heaven, I tell thee true,\n  None but I thy father slew!\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  Sir Peter smote himself on the breast:\n  \u201cHeart, bide still, nor break thy rest!\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cHeart, lie still, bide patiently:\n  Sure and swift shall my vengeance be.\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  In the garth Sir Peter stayed\n  To speak with his good blade:\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cHarken, sword so good!\n  Wilt drink thy fill of blood?\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cGood brown brand, wilt fight for me?\n  No brother have I on earth but thee.\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cOh, say, how can I fight for thee?\n  My hilt lies broken in pieces three.\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  To the smith his way he wended\n  That the hurt might be amended.\n\n\n20\n\n  He gave him iron, he gave him steel\n  Of proof and price, the hurt to heal.\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cGood brown brand, wilt fight for me?\n  No brother have I on earth but thee.\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cBe only in thy blows so stern\n  As I\u2019ll be swift in point to turn!\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cBe only in thy blows so stout\n  As I in hilt will bear thee out!\u201d\n\n\n24\n\n  Sir Peter sought the hall\n  Where the knights were drinking all.\n\n\n25\n\n  To prove his sword he was so fain\n  That seven champions straight lay slain;\n\n\n26\n\n  Up and down he swung his blade,\n  Neither matron he spared nor maid;\n\n\n27\n\n  Behind the arras there he thrust,\n  The King and his sons they bit the dust.\n\n\n28\n\n  Up spake the babe, in cradle lay:\n  \u201cA red revenge dost thou wreak to-day!\n\n\n29\n\n  \u201cA red revenge for that sire o\u2019 thine\u2014\n  GOD give me a day for avenging mine!\u201d\n\n\n30\n\n  \u201cAnd have I avenged that sire o\u2019 mine,\n  Shalt see no day for avenging thine!\u201d\n\n\n31\n\n  He seized the babe amain,\n  And struck it straight in twain.\n\n\n32\n\n  \u201cCease, brown brand, thy thirst to slake!\n  Bide thou still for our Saviour\u2019s sake!\u201d\n\n\n33\n\n  Wearily whispered the sword and still:\n  \u201cFain o\u2019 thy blood I\u2019d have my fill!\n\n\n34\n\n  \u201cHadst thou not named my name, I vow\n  I would have slain thee, here and now!\u201d\n\n\n35\n\n  He sought the smith again,\n  Bade forge an iron chain.\n\n\n36\n\n  He bound in chains both foot and hand,\n  For now would he leave for aye the land.\n\n\n37\n\n  But when o\u2019er the grave of the King he passed\n  The chains of iron were riven and brast.\n  \u2014Forward, hurrah! ride forward.\n\n\n\n\nXVII\n\nTHE ELFIN SHAFT\n\n\n\u201cAfter the old gods had vanished,\u201d says Olrik, \u201cand before the Christian\nGod was personally apprehended, arose the rich poetry which deals with\nNature-Spirits.\u201d\n\nThey always appear in the older Ballads under a grim and treacherous\naspect; the Nixies, for instance, are such as we find in the \u201cBallad of\nAnnan Water.\u201d\n\n  \u201cThe bonnie grey mare did sweat with fear,\n  For she heard the water-kelpie roaring.\u201d\n\nThis fear, natural to a human-kind as yet not master of the elements, was\nintensified by the teaching of the Church. In the Eddic mythology the\nDwarfs had their own recognized place, whereas their semi-descendants,\nthe Fairies or Nature-Spirits, not being Angels, were regarded as Devils\nby priestly eyes. Only in later Ballads, such as \u201cAgnes and the Merman,\u201d\nand \u201cThe Mermaid\u2019s Soothsaying,\u201d do we find any hint of compassion for\nthe soulless fay.\n\nThe theme of this Ballad\u2014the fairy\u2019s fatal love for a mortal\u2014originated\nin Northern France, whence it crept into the folk-lore of Europe in\ngeneral. (Gervase of Tilbury has a warning word to young men on the\ndangers of elfin flirtations; and the Rev. \u2014 Kirk in his _Secret\nCommonwealth_ (1691) points out their \u201cinconvenience.\u201d) The peasant of\nAnnam, too, knows the \u201c_con-tinh_,\u201d the wild-haired feminine Genii who\ndance on a starless night, and lure mortal youths to their undoing.\n\nTo the Elfin Shaft or Elfin Bolt was attributed sudden death or seizure\nof pain, either in man or beast, among the Scandinavians.\n\nThe Icelandic form of the Ballad heightens the horror by the addition of\nthose fiery portents associated with burial-houses containing treasure,\nguarded by fairies or by the dead. The \u201cfalse fairy\u201d stabs Sir Oluf with\na sword, which, under cover of her cloak, she takes from her \u201ctreasure\nchest of gold.\u201d\n\n  \u201cSign ye your brows with the holy cross,\n  (They will woo him to undo him)\n  Sancta Maria, watch over us!\n  (See the red flames leaping high!\n  Blithe lay the bower beneath the fells,\n  Blithe lay the bower the fells hard by.)\u201d\n\n\nXVII\n\nTHE ELFIN SHAFT\n\n\n1\n\n  Sir Oluf hath ridden west and east\n  To bid his friends to his bridal feast.\n  \u2014Gay goes the dance by the greenwood tree.\n\n\n2\n\n  By the howe he took his way,\n  And there danced elf and fay.\n\n\n3\n\n  There they danced in blithesome band;\n  The Elf-king\u2019s daughter reached forth her hand.\n\n\n4\n\n  The Elf-king\u2019s daughter her hand stretched she:\n  \u201cAnd will Sir Oluf tread a measure with me?\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cI may not, I dare not, the measure tread!\n  To-morrow morn shall I be wed.\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cOh, tread now a measure, Sir Oluf, with me!\n  Two buckskin boots will I give to thee,\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cBoots well beseeming a knight so bold,\n  With spurs thereto of red, red gold.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cOh, tread now a measure, Sir Oluf, with me!\n  A silken kirtle I\u2019ll give to thee,\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cA silken kirtle so fair and fine\n  That my mother bleached in the pale moonshine.\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cI may not, I dare not, the measure tread!\n  To-morrow morn shall I be wed.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cOh, tread now a measure, Sir Oluf, with me!\n  An orb of gold I will give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cAn orb of gold I fain would win,\n  But I may not dance with the fairy kin.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cAnd if thou wilt not dance with me,\n  Scathe and sickness shall follow thee!\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  She struck Sir Oluf under his heart,\n  Deep in its roots he felt the smart.\n\n\n15\n\n  She lifted him up on his horse of pride:\n  \u201cGo home, go home, and seek thy bride!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  Oh, he rode up to his castle door,\n  And it was his mother that stood before.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cLithe now and listen, Sir Oluf my son,\n  Why is thy cheek so white and wan?\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cWell may my cheek be wan and white,\n  I have seen the elf-maids\u2019 sport to-night!\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cLithe now and listen, dear son of mine,\n  What shall I say to that bride of thine?\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cShalt say I am in the mead\n  A-proving hound and steed.\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n  All on the morrow ere dawn was grey\n  The bride rode in with glad array\n\n\n22\n\n  They poured the mead and they poured the wine:\n  \u201cNow where is Sir Oluf, dear bridegroom mine?\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cSir Oluf is in the mead\n  A-proving hound and steed.\u201d\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cOh, doth he love hound and horse of pride\n  Better than he loves his bride?\u201d\n\n\n25\n\n  She sought him alow, she sought him aloft,\n  She found Sir Oluf sleeping soft.\n\n\n26\n\n  She lifted the cloak of scarlet red,\n  There lay Sir Oluf, was cold and dead.\n\n\n27\n\n  She kissed him in the bridal-bower,\n  She died herself the self-same hour.\n\n\n28\n\n  All so early, ere dawn was red,\n  Were three in Sir Oluf\u2019s hold lay dead.\n\n\n29\n\n  Sir Oluf lay dead, and his bride also;\n  The third was his mother, that died for woe.\n  \u2014The dance goes gay by the greenwood tree.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII, XIX\n\nTHE KNAVISH MERMAN\n\nAGNES AND THE MERMAN\n\n\nThat the first of these Ballads is the more ancient appears probable\nthrough its conception of the Merman\u2014the grim troll with his\nshape-changing and his glamour, fit image of the inexorable sea. The\nfine imaginative touch of the holy images averting their heads must have\nbeen borrowed from this by the later Ballad. Versions exist in Swedish,\nNorwegian, Faro\u00ebse, Icelandic, and English (\u201cClerk Colvill and the\nMermaid\u201d).\n\nThe \u201cAgnes\u201d Ballad must, I take it, have been known to Matthew Arnold,\nwho enriched its simple folk-melody with the elaborate orchestration of\nhis \u201cForsaken Merman.\u201d But, for dramatic power and genuine feeling, the\nhonours remain with the more primitive bard.\n\nIt dates from the late medi\u00e6val period when creative power was on the\nwane, and is an adaptation of the German \u201cSch\u00f6ne Agnete\u201d\u2014which, in its\nturn, has a Slav original. The German Ballad, however, takes the more\nprimitive view of the Merman, who ends by destroying his mortal mistress.\nLater Danish minstrels\u2014Sven Grundtvig among them\u2014have altered the\nconclusion accordingly.\n\n\nXVIII\n\nTHE KNAVISH MERMAN\n\n\n1\n\n  Gay goes the dance in the kirkyard there,\n    \u2014Welladay\u2014\n  They dance, the knights, with blades so bare,\n    \u2014Methinks \u2019tis hard to ride away.\n\n\n2\n\n  They dance, the maidens, with hair unbound;\n  It was the King\u2019s daughter sang the round.\n\n\n3\n\n  Proud was the Princess, sweet was her song;\n  That heard the Merman, the waves among.\n\n\n4\n\n  Up rose the Merman, thus spake he:\n  \u201cPerchance the King\u2019s daughter will wed with me!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  Garments he shaped and a golden ring,\n  He called him Sir Alfast, son of a King.\n\n\n6\n\n  He shaped him a steed so black and bold,\n  He rode like a knight in a saddle of gold.\n\n\n7\n\n  He tied his steed where the shade was mirk,\n  Withershins went he round the kirk.\n\n\n8\n\n  Into the kirk the Merman hied,\n  And all the holy images they turned their heads aside\n\n\n9\n\n  Up spake the priest by the altar that stood:\n  \u201cWho may he be, this knight so good?\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  The Princess smiled, her cloak behind:\n  \u201cNow would to GOD the knight were mine!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cListen, proud Princess, and love thou me!\n  A crown of gold I\u2019ll give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cOver three kingdoms my father was King,\n  But ne\u2019er did he give me so fair a thing.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  He wrapped her in his cloak of blue,\n  Forth from the kirk they fared, they two.\n\n\n14\n\n  They met all on the wold\n  The steed with saddle of gold.\n\n\n15\n\n  As they rode o\u2019er the lea\n  He became a troll, so foul to see.\n\n\n16\n\n  When they rode down to the water\u2019s brim\n  He became a troll, so fierce and grim.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cSir Alfast, thou art christened man,\n  What wilt thou with this water wan?\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cNo knight am I, nor christened man,\n  My dwelling is in this water wan!\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  And when they reached the midmost Sound\n  Fifty fathom they sank to ground.\n\n\n20\n\n  Long heard the fishers with dread and dree\n  How the King\u2019s daughter sobbed under the sea!\n  \u2014Welladay!\n  Methinks \u2019tis hard to ride away.\n\n\nXIX\n\nAGNES AND THE MERMAN\n\n\n1\n\n  Agnes she walked on the edge of the steep,\n  And up came a Merman out from the deep.\n  \u2014Ha ha ha!\n  Up came a Merman out from the deep.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cLithe now and listen, Agnes, to me,\n  And say if thou wilt my true-love be?\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cYes, good sooth, that will I be\n  Wilt thou bear me down to the depths o\u2019 the sea.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  Oh, he has stopped her ears and stopped her mouth beside,\n  And borne her down all under the tide.\n\n\n5\n\n  There she dwelt eight years and more,\n  Seven sons she to the Merman bore.\n\n\n6\n\n  Agnes she sat by the cradle and sang,\n  And she heard how the bells of England rang.\n\n\n7\n\n  She to the Merman did speak and say:\n  \u201cMay I go up in the kirk to pray?\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cThou hast my leave to go withal,\n  But see thou come back to thy children small.\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cWhen to the kirkyard thou dost fare,\n  Then see thou let not down thy shining golden hair.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cAnd when thou enterest in the door\n  Then sit by thy mother\u2019s side no more.\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cWhen the priest names the Name of dread,\n  Then bow not down thy head.\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  Oh, he has stopped her ears and stopped her mouth amain,\n  And so he bore her up to England\u2019s shores again.\n\n\n13\n\n  When thro\u2019 the kirkyard she did fare,\n  Oh then did she let down her shining golden hair.\n\n\n14\n\n  And when she entered in the door\n  She sat by her mother, as of yore.\n\n\n15\n\n  When the priest named the Name of dread,\n  Then she bowed down her head.\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cAgnes, my daughter, I ask of thee,\n  Where hast thou been eight years away from me?\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cI dwelt in the sea eight years and more,\n  Seven sons I to the Merman bore.\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cNow tell me, daughter, and fear no blame,\n  What did he give for thy maiden fame?\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cHe gave me a ring of golden sheen,\n  Never a better one hath the Queen.\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cOf golden shoon he gave me a pair,\n  Never a better the Queen might wear.\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cHe gave me a harp of gold to play\n  That I might touch its strings and wile my cares away.\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  The Merman he made him a path so strait\n  Up from the strand to the kirkyard gate.\n\n\n23\n\n  Into the kirk the Merman hied,\n  And all the holy images they turned their heads aside.\n\n\n24\n\n  Like the purest gold was his shining hair,\n  His eyes were full of sorrow and care.\n\n\n25\n\n  \u201cLithe now and listen, Agnes, to me;\n  All thy little children are longing after thee!\u201d\n\n\n26\n\n  \u201cLet them long as they will, let their longing be sore,\n  I shall return to them nevermore!\u201d\n\n\n27\n\n  \u201cOh, think of the big ones and think of the small!\n  Of the baby in the cradle think thou most of all.\u201d\n\n\n28\n\n  \u201cI think not of the big ones, I think not of the small,\n  Of the baby in the cradle I\u2019ll think least of all!\u201d\n  \u2014Ha ha ha!\n  Of the baby in the cradle I\u2019ll think least of all.\n\n\n\n\nXX\n\nTHE ENCHANTED MAIDEN\n\n\nThe story told by this Ballad takes us into no very remote region of\nFa\u00ebrie; wicked stepdame, enchanted maid, and knightly deliverer are\nall familiar personages. The belief in human blood as means whereby\nthe bewitched mortal is delivered from the beast-likeness is found in\nthe folk-lore of many nations, and may be a dim memory of sacrificial\ncannibal feasts. But the beautiful Introductory Stanzas are noteworthy;\nfor such detailed descriptions of Nature occur but rarely in Ballads,\nDanish or other. This one recalls the famous opening of one among the\nBallads of Robin Hood:\n\n  \u201cIn summer when the shawes be sheen,\n    And leves be large and long,\n  It is full merrie in fair forest\n    To hear the foul\u00ebs\u2019 song,\n\n  \u201cTo see the deere draw to the dale,\n    And leave the hill\u00ebs hie,\n  And shelter them in the lev\u00ebs greene,\n    Under the greenwood tree.\u201d\n\nA verse of another Danish Ballad might have been spoken by Little John,\nwho bids his \u201cdere master\u201d pluck up heart, \u201cand think this is a merrie\ntime, all in a morning of May\u201d:\n\n  \u201cOs fry der Aarsens Tid og Tag\n    det Maj i Morgen er;\n  den kommer os alle til Behag\n    alt baade fjern og n\u00e6r.\u201d\n\n\nXX\n\nTHE ENCHANTED MAIDEN\n\n\n  Oh, well I wot where the greenwood grows\n    That standeth beside the firth,\n  And in it there grow the fairest trees\n    That a man may see on earth!\n\n  Therein the willow and linden grow,\n    The fairest a man may find,\n  And under them play the lordly beasts\n    That men call hart and hind.\n\n  There they play, both hind and hart,\n    And the beasts of the fair forest,\n  And there she plays, the lily-white hind,\n    With gold beneath her breast.\n\n\n1\n\n  It was Nilus Erlandsson\n    Rode forth the deer to take;\n  There he saw the lily-white hind\n    That ran thro\u2019 bush and brake.\n  \u2014So the knight hath won his lady.\n\n\n2\n\n  After went Nilus Erlandsson\n    That longed for her so sore;\n  But never might he reach the hind\n    For three days\u2019 space and more.\n\n\n3\n\n  Snares he set on every path\n    Where\u2019er the hind might go,\n  But all so cunning was she\n    He might not take her so.\n\n\n4\n\n  Sir Nilus thro\u2019 the greenwood\n    Rode after her in vain;\n  His hounds he loosed by two, by three,\n    To run her down amain.\n\n\n5\n\n  So hot the hounds went on her trail\n    That never might she \u2019scape;\n  She changed her all by grammarye\n    And fled in a falcon\u2019s shape.\n\n\n6\n\n  She shaped her as a falcon fleet,\n    And perched in the linden green;\n  Under the tree Sir Nilus stood\n    And sighed for toil and tene.\n\n\n7\n\n  Sir Nilus took an axe in hand\n    To fell the linden-tree,\n  When out there sprang a yeoman fierce\n    That smote the shaft in three.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cAnd wilt thou fell my father\u2019s wood\n    And all by wrongful power,\n  I swear to thee, Nilus Erlandsson,\n    Thou shalt abye it sore!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cNow let me fell this single tree,\n    This tree alone of thine,\n  For, but I take the falcon fair,\n    I die of dule and pine!\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, thou fair young knight,\n    To the counsel that I bring;\n  Ne\u2019er shalt thou take her until she taste\n    The flesh of a tam\u00e8d thing!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  A gobbet he hewed from out his breast,\n    (And that was mickle pain!)\n  She spread her wings and down she flew\n    And fell on the bait amain.\n\n\n12\n\n  She spread her wings and down she flew\n    And on the bait she fell;\n  She changed her shape to the fairest maid\n    That ever tongue might tell.\n\n\n13\n\n  She stood in a sark of silk so red\n    Where the linden-tree did blow;\n  The knight he took her in his arms,\n    And there she wept her woe.\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cOh, I sat and broidered lily and rose,\n    I guided my father\u2019s gear,\n  When in she came, my false stepdame,\n    That never held me dear.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cShe shaped me all as a lily-white hind\n    To run in fair greenwood,\n  And my seven maidens as seven wolves,\n    And bade them have my blood.\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  The maid stood under the linden-tree,\n    And loosed her golden hair,\n  And thither they came that erst were wolves,\n    Her seven maidens fair.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cNow thanks to thee, Nilus Erlandsson,\n    Hast loosed me from sore alarms!\n  Never shalt thou seek slumber\n    But in my lily-white arms.\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cNow thanks to thee, Nilus Erlandsson,\n    Hast saved me from pain and pest!\n  Never shalt thou seek slumber\n    But on my lily-white breast.\u201d\n  \u2014So the knight hath won his lady.\n\n\n\n\nMISCELLANEOUS BALLADS\n\n\n\n\nXXI, XXII\n\nTORBEN\u2019S DAUGHTER\n\nTHE MAIDEN AT THE THING\n\n\n\u201cTorben\u2019s Daughter\u201d is a fine example of compressed, dramatic\nnarration\u2014we are not even told the names of hero and heroine. It is\ninteresting also as depicting the simplicity of antique manners, when\na knight might be found holding the plough. The maiden who pledges her\nfather\u2019s slayer, behaves, though in all innocence, as does the false wife\nof the Baron of Brackley:\n\n  \u201cThe lady she feasted them, carried them ben,\n  She laughed wi\u2019 the men that her baron had slain.\u201d\n\nThe second Ballad is that which, greatly daring, sings the praises of\nsimple worth\u2014thus expressing a tendency doomed by the spirit of later\ntimes. Unlike the reprover of Clara Vere de Vere, the minstrel adorns\nhis theme with a dry humour, that spares neither hero nor heroine\u2014dowdy\ncountry maid and dandified lordling. That is an excellent touch (verse\n3) which shows the former\u2019s resentment of the pert page\u2019s remarks on her\ngarments; so is her artful reference to the excellent appetite which will\nreward her future lord\u2019s agricultural exertions\u2014the ancient wisdom of\n\u201cFeed the brute!\u201d The Ballad craves a sequel, to be entitled \u201cThe Husband\nturned Husbandman.\u201d\n\n\nXXI\n\nTORBEN\u2019S DAUGHTER\n\n\n    Oh, we were many sisters small,\n    \u2014On the lea\u2014\n    So early did our father fall.\n  \u2014The day it is dawning, and the dew it is falling so free.\n\n\n1\n\n  All on a Sunday evening they scoured both spear and sword,\n  All on a Monday morning wrathful they rode abroad.\n\n\n2\n\n  When they went by the northern shaw\n  Sir Torben ploughing his land they saw.\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cThere standst thou, Sir Torben, so fair and fine!\n  Now pay me blood-money for kinsman mine.\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cI will give thee farm and stead,\n  I will give thee my daughter, so fair a maid.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cWe come not hither for house nor land,\n  We come for the blood of thy red right hand!\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  They hewed Sir Torben to pieces small\n  As the leaves that under the linden fall.\n\n\n7\n\n  They\u2019re ridden up to Sir Torben\u2019s stead,\n  And there stood his daughter, so fair a maid.\n\n\n8\n\n  She stood, as slim as a willow-wand,\n  With a goblet of gold in either hand.\n\n\n9\n\n  She poured the wine with sport and play,\n  She pledged the man who her sire did slay.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cNow had I guessed thee so mild of mood,\n  I ne\u2019er had spilt thy father\u2019s blood!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cAnd if thou hast my father slain,\n  Then I must dree right bitter pain.\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cAnd have I done ill to thee thereby\n  Thou shalt fare hereafter as well as I.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  He set her up on his steed so true,\n  He wrapped her in his cloak of blue.\n\n\n14\n\n    They rode away o\u2019er the darksome heather,\n    \u2014On the lea\u2014\n    Never more did she see her father.\n  \u2014The day it is dawning, and the dew it is falling so free.\n\n\nXXII\n\nTHE MAIDEN AT THE THING\n\n\n1\n\n  Young was Inge the maid,\n  \u2014In the green grove\u2014\n  Yet she rode to the Thing unafraid.\n  \u2014To ride to the maiden\u2019s bower.\n\n\n2\n\n  Up and spake to his knights the King:\n  \u201cI spy a maiden that rides to the Thing!\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  The little foot-page he answered then:\n  \u201cOh, she comes here a-riding to gaze upon the men!\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cBut see her kirtle\u2019s old-fashioned shape,\n  And only look on her ill-cut cape!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  For all the maiden was so meek\n  She heard each word the page did speak.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cAnd if my heart had felt no tene,\n  I had been better at home, I ween!\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cAnd did I not know mine errand well,\n  I had been better at home to dwell!\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cBut my kirtle hath no ill-favoured shape,\n  And after the mode is cut my cape.\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cThou King o\u2019 Danes, now hark and hear;\n  A plaint have I for thy gracious ear.\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cI was but a little child\n  Whenas I lost my mother mild.\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cMy father set me on his knee,\n  And divided with me both gold and fee.\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cBut he died or ever two years were done;\n  O\u2019er house and lands I must rule alone.\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cBut in there came my uncles three,\n  All my goods they waste from me.\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cThe mown they mar, the sown they spoil,\n  Both man and maid they lure from toil.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cOxen and kine they drive abroad,\n  They wile my serving-men from my board.\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cEre I\u2019ll live longer without relief\n  I\u2019ll give thee my father\u2019s lands in fief!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cNow thanks to thee for thy gift, O maid!\n  Say, which of my knights thou fain wouldst wed?\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cAnd may I speak as my choice is made,\n  \u2019Tis Sir Ove Stison I fain would wed.\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cStand up, Sir Ove, and answer free;\n  Here is a maiden will marry thee!\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  Up stood Sir Ove, and answered so free:\n  \u201cFair maiden, nought shalt thou win from me!\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cBetter can I tie a silken band\n  Than play the farmer on lea and land.\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cBetter can I ride with hawk and hound\n  Than drive the plough through the heavy ground!\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cOh, sit in my chariot all by me,\n  So good a farmer I\u2019ll make of thee!\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cTake plough in hand, lay the furrow featly,\n  Take corn in hand, and scatter it meetly.\n\n\n25\n\n  \u201cAnd let the harrow after go,\n  Thou\u2019lt make a goodly farmer so;\n\n\n26\n\n  \u201cAnd of thy meat thou\u2019lt be so fain\n  That men will call thee a right true Dane!\u201d\n\n\n27\n\n  To laugh and be merry men were not loth\n  When Sir Ove plighted the maid his troth.\n\n\n28\n\n  All alone to the Thing she hied,\n  The King he led her home again, and all his swains beside.\n  \u2014In the green grove,\n  To ride to the maiden\u2019s bower.\n\n\n\n\nXXIII, XXIV\n\nTHE GAME OF DICE\n\nKING ERIK AND THE SCORNFUL MAID\n\n\nThese two Ballads deal, from different stand-points, with the change of\nmanners that came in towards the close of the Middle Ages. A barrier\ngrew up between bower and hall; the Squire became the serving man, whose\nmenial labours were no longer shared by his master. There were those,\ndoubtless, who regretted the good old times; and the \u201cKing Erik\u201d Ballad\nexpresses their sentiments.\n\n\u201cThe Game of Dice,\u201d with its more conventional ending, is concerned\nfor gentility. Its Danish version dates from the twelfth or thirteenth\ncentury. Other forms exist in Norwegian and Icelandic, and in a Swedish\nbroadsheet of the later eighteenth century. There is also a Slav version.\n\n\nXXIII\n\nTHE GAME OF DICE\n\n\n1\n\n      \u201cHarken here, thou good young swain,\n        And play at dice with me!\u201d\n      \u201cOh, ne\u2019er have I the ruddy gold\n        To wager here with thee.\u201d\n  \u2014Because they played, and threw the dice of gold.\n\n\n2\n\n      \u201cOh, wager now thy goodly hat,\n        Altho\u2019 it be of grey,\n      And I will wager my snood of pearl,\n        Shalt take it, an thou may!\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n      When first the dice of gold\n        Upon the board did run,\n      The youth he lost his wager,\n        And glad the maiden won.\n\n\n4\n\n      \u201cHarken here, thou good young swain,\n        And cast the dice with me!\u201d\n      \u201cOh, ne\u2019er have I the ruddy gold\n        To wager here with thee.\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n      \u201cNow wager thou thy kirtle,\n        Altho\u2019 it be of grey,\n      And I will wager my golden crown,\n        Shalt take it, an thou may!\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n      When next the dice of gold\n        Upon the board did run,\n      The youth he lost his wager,\n        And glad the maiden won.\n\n\n7\n\n      \u201cHarken here, thou good young swain,\n        And play at dice with me!\u201d\n      \u201cOh, ne\u2019er have I the ruddy gold\n        To wager here with thee.\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n      \u201cThy hosen shalt thou wager,\n        And shoon shalt wager both;\n      I\u2019ll set thereto my honour,\n        But and my plighted troth.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n      And when the dice of gold\n        Upon the board were cast,\n      The youth he won the wager,\n        And sad the maiden lost.\n\n\n10\n\n      \u201cHarken here, young jackanapes,\n        And get thee gone from me!\n      My knife adorned with silver\n        That will I give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n      \u201cThy knife adorned with silver\n        I\u2019ll take it when I may;\n      But I will have the maiden\n        I won with dice at play!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n      \u201cHarken here, young jackanapes,\n        And get thee gone from me!\n      Seven silk-sewn kirtles\n        All will I give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n      \u201cThy seven silk-sewn kirtles\n        I\u2019ll take whenas I may;\n      But I will have the maiden\n        I won with dice at play!\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n      \u201cHarken here, young jackanapes,\n        And get thee gone from me!\n      A white steed and saddle\n        Those will I give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n      \u201cWhite steed and saddle\n        I\u2019ll take whene\u2019er I may;\n      But I will have the maiden\n        I won with dice at play!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n      \u201cHarken here, young jackanapes,\n        And get thee gone from me!\n      My hold and my castle\n        Those will I give to thee.\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n      \u201cThy hold and thy castle\n        I\u2019ll take them when I may;\n      But I will have the maiden\n        I won with dice at play!\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n      The maiden sought her bower,\n        And there her locks arrayed:\n      \u201cNow for the match that I must make\n        GOD help me, luckless maid!\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n      All with his sword a-playing\n        The youth he up and spake:\n      \u201cOh, better far than thy deserts\n        The match that thou shalt make!\n\n\n20\n\n      \u201cFor I am ne\u2019er a jackanapes,\n        Altho\u2019 it be thy word;\n      I am the noblest son of kings\n        That ever walked abroad!\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n      \u201cArt thou the noblest son of kings\n        That ever walked abroad,\n      Then shalt thou have mine honour,\n        But and my plighted word!\u201d\n  \u2014Because they played, and threw the dice of gold.\n\n\nXXIV\n\nKING ERIK AND THE SCORNFUL MAID\n\n\n1\n\n  All so rich a damsel\n    Dwells southward in our land,\n  And ne\u2019er to dance with a poor young swain\n    Will she stretch forth her hand.\n  \u2014Damsel, great is thy favour! I thank thee right courteously.\n\n\n2\n\n  Ne\u2019er to dance with a poor young swain\n    Will she hold forth her hand;\n  She\u2019s tied up her sleeves with ribbons of silk\n    And many a golden band.\n\n\n3\n\n  It was young King Erik\n    Bade saddle his steed so free:\n  \u201cForth will we fare to the southland\n    And visit this proud ladye!\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  It was young King Erik\n    That forth to dance did stand;\n  He\u2019s taken that dainty damsel\n    All by her lily hand.\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cNow nay, I will not dance with thee!\n    Too hard are thy hands indeed;\n  Thou hast been hewing of hedges\n    Or spreading of muck on the mead!\u201d\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cOh, yestre\u2019en I played at a bridal-feast,\n    A-tilting with knights so tall,\n  And hard is my hand with grasping the brand\n    That won me the prize from all!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cAnd wert thou yestre\u2019en at a bridal-feast\n    There tilted no knights so tall!\n  Wert loading thy father\u2019s wain with muck,\n    And deeper in dirt than all.\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cIll they become thee, thy garments,\n    Thy hosen are rent at the knee;\n  Thy master hath given thee holiday,\n    So thou must ride speedilie!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cAre there no tailors, women or men,\n    Here in this town o\u2019 thine,\n  Can cut me clothes of the scarlet cloth\n    And sew them with silk so fine?\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cTailors there are, both women and men,\n    Here in this town o\u2019 mine,\n  Can cut thee breeches of wadmal coarse\n    And sew them with hempen twine.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cLithe and listen, thou haughty maid,\n    Wilt yield thy love to me?\n  All the gold that in Denmark lies\n    Thy portion it shall be!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cAll the gold that in Denmark lies\n    Is held in strong duresse;\n  Get thee gone and patch thy shoon!\n    Thy feet will ache the less.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  Up spake the lady\u2019s serving-maid\n    As boldly as she might:\n  \u201cAnd it is young King Erik\n    That thou dost scorn and spite!\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cAnd is it young King Erik\n    That I have scorned and shent,\n  Methinks I ha\u2019 done an evil deed,\n    And sore do I repent.\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cAll in the midst o\u2019 my father\u2019s garth\n    There standeth a linden green,\n  And many a knight and lady fair\n    Hold tryst beneath unseen!\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n        \u201cAll in the midst o\u2019 thy father\u2019s garth\n          There standeth a linden green,\n        And many a thief and rascal wight\n          Hold tryst beneath unseen!\u201d\n  \u2014Lady, great is thy favour! I thank thee right courteously.\n\n\n\n\nXXV\n\nTHE MAIDEN\u2019S MORNING DREAM\n\n\nThis Ballad is a special favourite throughout Scandinavia. S. Grundtvig\ndates it from the twelfth century, the period of the Wendish invasions,\nand inclines to consider it as founded on fact. But, as Olrik points out,\nthe Wend King here rides up, not as marauder, but as fairy prince; so\nthat the Ballad was probably composed later, and borrowed his figure\u2014a\nshadow of \u201cold, unhappy, far-off things\u201d\u2014from earlier ones composed\nduring the time of Wendish warfare. My translation of verse 21 hardly\ndoes justice to the original:\n\n  \u201cVesselil ind at D\u00f8ren tren,\n  da var det ret som Solen sken.\u201d\n\n\nXXV\n\nTHE MAIDEN\u2019S MORNING DREAM\n\n\n1\n\n  To the bower went Riseli,\n  (But a Frankish mile away)\n  And the maid awakened she.\n  (The Wends come up to the castle.)\n\n\n2\n\n  With honour and praise should maidens awake,\n  But a whip for the waking did Riseli take.\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cIf thou dost lie and sleep so late,\n  Never a knight wilt thou win for mate!\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cOh, better I love my morning dream\n  Than other maids their silken seam!\n\n\n5\n\n  \u201cMethought I was but a spirit light,\n  To the land o\u2019 the Wends I took my flight.\n\n\n6\n\n  \u201cSo wide my wings were spanned\n  They covered lea and land.\n\n\n7\n\n  \u201cI set me down on a linden-root,\n  And the branches bowed beneath my foot.\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cNow heed, O niece, what I say to thee;\n  Shalt give thy morning dream to me!\n\n\n9\n\n  \u201cShalt give to me thy morning dream,\n  And I\u2019ll give thee all my summer\u2019s seam.\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  \u201cOh, keep thyself thy summer\u2019s seam!\n  Far dearer to me is my morning dream.\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  Oh, scarcely had they done debate,\n  When the Wendish King rode up to the gate.\n\n\n12\n\n  The Wendish King rode up to the door,\n  Riseli went and stood before.\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cWelcome, noble lord of mine!\n  Now shall I pour thee mead or wine?\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cI will have nor mead nor wine,\n  But I will see Vesselil, niece o\u2019 thine!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cBut five years old is Vesselil,\n  She bides with her foster-mother still.\u201d\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cAnd an she were but three years old,\n  These eyes the maiden must behold!\u201d\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cMy other maids sit sewing still,\n  But never of sleep can she have her fill.\u201d\n\n\n18\n\n  Into the hall the King she led,\n  And forth to seek her niece she sped.\n\n\n19\n\n  Her hair she tore, her face she struck:\n  \u201cWoe worth thee, Vesselil, for thy good luck!\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cNow do thou on thy garments bright,\n  For thou shalt see the King to-night.\u201d\n\n\n21\n\n  Into the hall did Vesselil fare,\n  And it seemed as the sun shone in with her.\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cOh, never a maiden did I behold\n  Was grown so well for five years old!\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  He stroked her on her cheek so white,\n  He called her love and heart\u2019s delight.\n\n\n24\n\n  \u201cI give thee my word, O Vesselil,\n  Shalt sleep as long as thou hast a will.\u201d\n\n\n25\n\n  They clad her all in silken weed,\n  They lifted her on the good grey steed.\n\n\n26\n\n  They set on her head a crown of gold,\n  And the King he led her from the hold\n  \u2014But a Frankish mile away\u2014\n  The Wends come up to the castle.\n\n\n\n\nXXVI\n\nSIR KAREL\u2019S LYKE-WAKE\n\n\nThis sixteenth-century Ballad has a Scots parallel in \u201cWillie\u2019s Wake,\u201d\nand versions of the same story are found in Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and\nGalicia; but whether it travelled from south to north, or vice versa,\ncannot be determined. Little Kirsten\u2019s self-betrayal in owning her\nlove for the supposedly dead man is peculiar to the Northern form. The\nwistful, delicate humour, moreover, of the two concluding verses, seems\nto me characteristically Danish\u2014their author, a literary ancestor of Hans\nAndersen.\n\n\n1\n\n  It was young Sir Karel\n    His mother\u2019s rede did pray,\n  If he should to the cloister ride\n    And bear his love away.\n  \u2014The roses and the lilies all a-blowing.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cShalt seem to die, a corse shalt lie\n    In shroud the bier upon,\n  And ne\u2019er a one will seek to prove\n    If thou art living man.\u201d\n\n\n3\n\n  Late, so late at even\n    The sickness on him fell;\n  All in the morning early\n    They tolled for him the bell.\n\n\n4\n\n  They\u2019ve ta\u2019en him, young Sir Karel,\n    And streeked him for a corse,\n  And all to tell the tidings\n    His page has taken horse.\n\n\n5\n\n  Up and into the cloister\n    All with the bier they hied,\n  The Prior came to meet them\n    With mickle pomp and pride.\n\n\n6\n\n  Forth they went, the singing-boys,\n    Clad all in scarlet red,\n  They bade the maidens come to watch:\n    \u201cFor young Sir Karl is dead.\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  It was little Kirsten\n    Spake with her mother dear:\n  \u201cAnd may I to the watching wend\n    Over Sir Karel\u2019s bier?\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cYea, do thou on thy scarlet weed,\n    And deck thy head with gold;\n  But be thou \u2019ware of young Sir Karl,\n    His wiles are manifold!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  She entered in, the little maid,\n    Amid the tapers\u2019 shine,\n  She could not see them burning bright,\n    So tearful were her eyne.\n\n\n10\n\n  Beside his head she sat her down,\n    And for his soul she prayed:\n  \u201cAlas, thou wast my heart\u2019s delight\n    In the days ere thou wast dead!\u201d\n\n\n11\n\n  Beside his feet she sat her down,\n    And smoothed the linen white:\n  \u201cOh, in the days ere thou wast dead\n    Thou wast my heart\u2019s delight!\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  Right softly then he up and spake:\n    \u201cNow cease from tene and tear,\n  For lo, \u2019tis all for love of thee\n    I lie upon the bier!\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cMy steed stands in the cloister garth\n    A-tarrying all for thee;\n  Wilt thou now, little Kirsten,\n    Fare forth afar with me!\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  It was young Sir Karel\n    Rose straightway from the dead;\n  And as they reached the cloister door\n    A gay good-night she bade.\n\n\n15\n\n  The nuns they all sat silent,\n    And on their books read they,\n  They thought \u2019twas GOD\u2019s good angel\n    That bore the maid away.\n\n\n16\n\n  The nuns they all sat silent,\n    Each to herself said she:\n  \u201cGOD grant that His good angel\n    May come eftsoon for me!\u201d\n  \u2014The roses and the lilies all a-blowing.\n\n\n\n\nXXVII\n\nAAGE AND ELSE\n\n\nThis Ballad may be compared with our own \u201cSweet William and May\nMargaret,\u201d \u201cSweet William\u2019s Ghost,\u201d and the conclusion of \u201cClerk\nSaunders.\u201d The same theme gave rise to Ballads in Sweden, Brittany,\nGermany, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Slav countries. (The idea of a\ndead lover\u2019s return to his sweetheart is one so natural that we surely\nneed not hark back for its Danish source to the classical Lay of Helge\nand Sigrun.) It inspires another fine Ballad, \u201cSir Morten of Fuglsang,\u201d\nwhose Burden was borrowed by Longfellow in his poetical version of Olaf\nTryggvason\u2019s Saga (_Tales of a Wayside Inn_).\n\nThe line in verse 6, \u201c_No cloak had he_,\u201d refers to the custom of smiting\nthe door with a fold of the cloak. (In \u201cNiels Ebbeson\u201d I have substituted\n\u201csword,\u201d as more intelligible to the English reader.)\n\nThe metre of \u201cAage and Else\u201d is an interesting variation on the usual\nform of the four-lined stanza.\n\n\nXXVII\n\nAAGE AND ELSE\n\n\n1\n\n    Three maidens sat in a bower,\n      Two broidered with gold\n    The third she wept her own true love\n      All under darksome mould.\n  (For she loved the knight so truly.)\n\n\n2\n\n  It was the Knight Sir Aage\n    Went riding here and there,\n  He loved the lady Elselil,\n    A maid so fair.\n\n\n3\n\n  He wooed the lady Elselil\n    With gifts and gold;\n  On Monday thereafter\n    He lay in the mould.\n\n\n4\n\n  Sore wept she, lady Elselil,\n    With wellaway;\n  That heard the knight Sir Aage\n    Low where he lay.\n\n\n5\n\n  Up stood the knight Sir Aage,\n    His coffin took amain,\n  Forth to his true love\u2019s bower he fared\n    With mickle pain.\n\n\n6\n\n  He knocked there with his coffin\u2014\n    No cloak had he\u2014\n  \u201cStand up, thou stately Elselil,\n    Open to me!\u201d\n\n\n7\n\n  Up spake the lady Elselil,\n    With tears spake she:\n  \u201cCanst thou name the name of Jesu\n    I\u2019ll open to thee!\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  \u201cStand up, thou lady Elselil,\n    Open thy door!\n  I can name the name of Jesu\n    As ever I could of yore.\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  Up stood she, stately Elselil,\n    With drearihed;\n  There opened she her bower door,\n    Let in the dead.\n\n\n10\n\n  She took her golden comb\n    To smooth his hair;\n  For every lock she ordered\n    Down fell a tear.\n\n\n11\n\n  \u201cLithe and listen, Sir Aage,\n    Dearest love mine,\n  How goes it under darksome earth\n    In grave o\u2019 thine?\u201d\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cSo goes it under the darksome earth\n    Where I am laid\n  As in the happy realm of heaven;\n    Therefore be glad.\u201d\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cLithe and listen, Sir Aage,\n    Dearest love mine.\n  Fain would I lie \u2019neath darksome mould\n    All in that grave o\u2019 thine.\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cSo is it under darksome mould,\n    There where I rest,\n  As in the blackest depths of hell\n    \u2014Cross thou thy breast\n\n\n15\n\n  \u201cFor every tear thou sheddest\n    In mournful mood,\n  Down into my grave doth fall\n    A drop of blood.\n\n\n16\n\n  \u201cUp above my head\n    The green grass grows;\n  Round about my feet\n    The wild worm goes.\n\n\n17\n\n  \u201cNow in the darksome entry\n    The black cock doth crow,\n  And all the gates are opening;\n    Forth must I go.\n\n\n18\n\n  \u201cNow crows upon the high-loft\n    The cock so red,\n  And I must go to the kirkyard\n    With all the dead.\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  Up stood the knight Sir Aage,\n    His coffin took again,\n  Forth fared he to the kirkyard\n    With mickle pain.\n\n\n20\n\n  Up stood she, stately Elselil,\n    Right mournful was her mood;\n  She followed him, her own true love,\n    Through the wild wood.\n\n\n21\n\n  As thro\u2019 the wood they wended\n    All to the kirkyard there,\n  Wan it grew and faded,\n    His goodly golden hair.\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cBehold now up in heaven\n    The stars so bright;\n  So shalt thou see soothly\n    How goes the night.\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  She saw them up in heaven,\n    The stars so fair;\n  Down in the earth the dead man sank\n    Ere she was ware.\n\n\n24\n\n    Home went she, lady Elselil,\n      With care so cold;\n    On Monday thereafter\n      Lay she in the mould.\n  (For she loved the knight so truly.)\n\n\n\n\nXXVIII, XXIX\n\nLOVEL AND JOHN\n\nTYGE HERMANDSSON\n\n\nJovial Ballads, these, of the Young Lochinvar type, where the too\ntardy bridegroom wins the verdict \u201cServe him right!\u201d (In the former, I\nhave made free with the name of Sir Lave, turning it into Lovel.) The\n_svalegang_ plays its part in the story, since it is along this open\ngallery-stair that Sir John lights the bride to her bower. The Burden is\nhandled with singular skill; the concluding line in verses 2, 3, and 4\nforms no part of the dialogue, but is an aside spoken by the poet.\n\n\u201cGallant knight\u201d in \u201cTyge Hermandsson,\u201d v. 21, is literally \u201clady\u2019s\nswain\u201d (Jomfrusvend)\u2014squire of dames, first in love as in war.\n\n\nXXVIII\n\nLOVEL AND JOHN\n\n\n  Lo now, I bid you, my merry men all,\n    Put your armour on![3]\n  Bind on your helms of the burning gold,\n    And follow Sir John!\n\n\n1\n\n  Sir Peter home from the Thing did fare,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Forth came little Kirsten to meet him there,\n    And ask after John.\n\n\n2\n\n  \u201cWelcome, dear father, home from the Thing!\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Tell me what tidings hast thou to bring?\u201d\n    What news of Sir John?\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cThese are the tidings I have for thee,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  That young Sir Lovel thy bridegroom shall be.\u201d\n    And not Sir John.\n\n\n4\n\n  \u201cIf young Sir Lovel my bridegroom shall be,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Sorrow and care shall he have with me!\u201d\n    While he lives, Sir John.\n\n\n5\n\n  Sir Lovel to bridal-feast doth speed,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Sir John hath bidden them shoe his steed.\n    \u201cI go with him,\u201d said John.\n\n\n6\n\n  Sir John he rode to the blithe brid\u00e0le,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  High on his horse in his coat of mail.\n    \u201cI come!\u201d said John.\n\n\n7\n\n  When the dew fell fast and the eve was sped,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  The bride must go to the bridal-bed.\n    \u201cI go thither!\u201d said John.\n\n\n8\n\n  They led the bride to the bridal-bower,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Sir John he carried the torch before.\n    \u201cI first,\u201d said John.\n\n\n9\n\n  Sir John he locked the door aright:\n    (Put your armour on)\n  \u201cNow bid Sir Lovel a gay good-night!\u201d\n    All from Sir John.\n\n\n10\n\n  Straight to Sir Lovel the news they cried:\n    (Put your armour on)\n  \u201cSir John he sleeps with thy fair young bride!\u201d\n    That did Sir John.\n\n\n11\n\n  Now when the day was dawning there\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Sir Lovel forth to the king did fare.\n    \u201cI go with him!\u201d said John.\n\n\n12\n\n  \u201cMy gracious lord, now hark and heed!\n    (Put your armour on)\n  A plaint have I that craves for rede.\u201d\n    \u201c\u2019Tis of me,\u201d said John.\n\n\n13\n\n  \u201cA fair young bride I thought to wed,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  But another knight took the bride instead!\u201d\n    \u201cThat was I,\u201d said John.\n\n\n14\n\n  \u201cAnd if ye both hold the maid so dear,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Now for her sake ye shall break a spear.\u201d\n    \u201cI shall win!\u201d said John.\n\n\n15\n\n  The first of the courses they rode so free,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Sir Lovel\u2019s horse fell on his knee.\n    \u201cHold up!\u201d said John.\n\n\n16\n\n  And when they rode to the joust again,\n    (Put your armour on)\n  Sir Lovel\u2019s neck was broken in twain.\n    \u201cLie there!\u201d said John.\n\n\n17\n\n  She clapped her hands, the dainty dame:\n    (Put your armour on)\n  \u201cNe\u2019er did I see so fair a game!\u201d\n    Thus he won, Sir John.\n  \u2014Bind on your helmets of burning gold,\n    And follow Sir John!\n\n[3] Lit: Be ye well boun! (I v\u00e6re vel bon.)\n\n\nXXIX\n\nTYGE HERMANDSSON\n\n\n1\n\n  All on a Saturday morning it rained both far and wide,\n  And it was Tyge Hermandsson that should fetch home his bride.\n  \u2014I will ride forth to seek for a fair one.\n\n\n2\n\n  The knight looked forth from the window, the burn it ran so high:\n  \u201cMy bride is not so dear to me that I for her should die!\n\n\n3\n\n  \u201cNow harken, Nilaus Bendiktsson, long-legg\u00e8d is thy steed!\n  Fetch home my bride for love of God, and help me in my need!\u201d\n\n\n4\n\n  Up spake Nilaus Bendiktsson, he spake a word so free:\n  \u201cAnd if I fetch thee home thy bride, be sure I\u2019ll cozen thee!\u201d\n\n\n5\n\n  It was Nilaus Bendiktsson that rode the bride to meet,\n  Silk and samite floated about his horse\u2019s feet.\n\n\n6\n\n  His swains were clothed in samite, with owches of gold beside;\n  Unto the kirk they\u2019ve ridden, all with the fair young bride.\n\n\n7\n\n  The bride she stood at kirkyard gate, red as a rose in bloom;\n  She looked out over the water: \u201cAnd where is the bonny groom?\u201d\n\n\n8\n\n  Up spake Nilaus Bendiktsson, he spake right joyfully:\n  \u201cHe dared not cross the burn to-day, for the water ran so high!\u201d\n\n\n9\n\n  All on the bridal-bench the bride right modestly she sate,\n  They looked out over the water: \u201cThe bridegroom tarries late!\u201d\n\n\n10\n\n  They poured in cups of silver the mead and wine so red;\n  All in the evening early the bride must seek her bed.\n\n\n11\n\n  They led her in, the fair young bride, all to her chamber door,\n  Forth went knights and pages to bear the torch before.\n\n\n12\n\n  Oh, they laid her in the bridal-bed, and she was a dainty dame.\n  She tarried there three hours and more, and ne\u2019er a bridegroom came.\n\n\n13\n\n  The priests they stood by the bridal-bed, and sang as best they mote;\n  \u201cNow who shall sleep beside our bride, since the bridegroom cometh not?\u201d\n\n\n14\n\n  Up stood Nilaus Bendiktsson, cast off his silver shoon:\n  \u201cNow I will plight her faith and troth and sleep by her eftsoon!\u201d\n\n\n15\n\n  I wot their heart were merry as they pledged the bonny bride,\n  All save Tyge Hermandsson, dared not the water ride.\n\n\n16\n\n  Now on the Wednesday after the flood began to fall;\n  Over came Tyge Hermandsson, but and his followers all.\n\n\n17\n\n  It was Tyge Hermandsson did to the castle fare,\n  She stood without, the bonny bride, wrapped all in cloak of vair.\n\n\n18\n\n  Oh, high she held her head, I wis, and spake with haughty cheer:\n  \u201cAway with thee, Tyge Hermandsson, no welcome hast thou here!\u201d\n\n\n19\n\n  \u201cNow lithe and listen, proud Liselil, this blame I have for thee,\n  Hast plighted troth with another man, so hast thou cozened me!\u201d\n\n\n20\n\n  \u201cHarken, Tyge Hermandsson, this word I tell thee plain,\n  Never, ah, never I\u2019ll wed the man dares not ride out in the rain!\n\n\n21\n\n  \u201cNow hadst thou been a gallant knight, and pledged a lady word,\n  Thou wouldst have braved the billows blue all with thy naked sword!\u201d\n\n\n22\n\n  \u201cOh, I will enter a cloister, and learn the monkish lore!\n  But know, thou haughty Liselil, thou\u2019lt see my face no more!\u201d\n\n\n23\n\n  \u201cOh, go thy ways where\u2019er thou wilt, let all thy prating be!\n  For had I bread and cheese for two, there should be none for thee!\u201d\n  \u2014I will ride forth to seek for a fair one.\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\nCHILD, F. J. (ed.). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 volumes.\n1882-98.\n\nSelection from Child\u2019s collection, edited by H. C. SARGENT and G. L.\nKITTREDGE. 1904.\n\nGARBORG, HULDA. Norske Folkeviser.\n\nGRUNDTVIG, S. (ed.). Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser. 5 volumes. 1853-1890.\nTranslations into Danish of British Ballads.\n\nGUMMERE, F. B. Article on _Ballads_ in the _Cambridge History of English\nLiterature_. 1908.\n\nHENDERSON, T. F. The Ballad in Literature. (_Cambridge Manuals._) 1912.\n\nKER, W. P. Epic and Romance. 1897.\n\nOLRIK, A. Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg, og Indledning. 1912.\n\nPINEAU, L. Les Vieux Chants Populaires Scandinaves. 1898.\n\nVIGFUSSON, G., and POWELL, F. YORK. Corpus Poeticum Boreale. 2 volumes.\n1883.","title":"Danish ballads","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":25968}