Gen Intro to Ballads -- Nora Kershaw

It is the custom here that the same ballad should not be sung more than once a year⁴ in the 'dancing-chamber,' so

that the repertoire is obviously extensive, seeing that they dance at wedding feasts, generally for three days and nights without cessation. In the special dancing season from Yule till Lent, the ballads are danced not only on Sundays but also on the so-called 'Feast Days.' (They do not dance again from the beginning of Lent till the day after Christmas.) The dance at Sumbø has characteristics of its own which differ from those of the rest of the Faroes. The people here generally sing well and know how to put expression into the actual dance. Elsewhere on the Islands this is now for the most part reduced to a uniform stamp with the feet, marking the melody of the ballad. Moreover they still continue here in common use both the 'Walking Verse' (stígingar stev) and the more rapid measure 'Tripping Verse' (tøkingar stev) of the Round Dance, in which, as a rule, the dancers hold one another by the hand, forming a circle, dancing backwards while the verse (örindi) is sung, and reversing the movement with considerable energy during the singing of the the refrain (viðgangur, niðurlág, stev). This round dance is characteristic of Sumbø ¹.

The dancing-ground was an oblong space. . . . the drummer with the singers generally struck up a song, but sometimes the dancers sang a refrain or called for a song by name. Each song seemed to be associated with its own particular dance and to be accompanied by some story or incident which was illustrated by the movement of the dancers.

Nothing remains but a few names of things and two or three remnants of songs which one old man can repeat;

Most of the fragments they have are old historical ballads and romances. . . . William Henry, a farmer in Guttorm in

Foula has the most knowledge of any I found; he spoke of three kinds of poetry used in Norn, and repeated or sung by the old men; the Ballad (or Romance, I suppose); the Vysie or Vyse, now commonly sung to dancers¹; and the simple song. . . .
Most of all their tales are relative to the history of Norway; they seem to know little of the rest of Europe but by names; Norwegian transactions theyhave at their fingers' ends.

The ballads are not rude, rustic travesties of older more dignified stories; though some, perhaps many, of the older stories may survive among the ballads. They are for Denmark in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries what the older heroic lays of the Poetic Edda had been before them in the Northern lands. They take the place of earlier heroic poetry.

	STORIES AND BALLADS OF THE FAR PAST, Nora Kershaw BALLADS GENERAL INTRODUCTION I. The ballads of the Faroe Islands aroused the interest of Ole Worm early as 1639; but the five ballads which he took down are no longer extant, and we know of them only from a reference by Peter Syv¹ towards the close of the seventeenth century. In 1673 Lucas Debes² wrote a description of the islands which contained an account of their dances and songs; but unfortunately he did not transcribe any of the ballads. Indeed the balladry and songs attracted little general attention till the close of the eighteenth century, when Jens Kristjan Svabo devoted himself to a careful study of the language and a collection of the ballads of his native Islands. In 1781-2, during a visit to the Faroes, Svabo turned his attention especially to Faroese folk-songs and made a MS. collection of fifty-two ballads, which were purchased by the Crown Prince and presented to the Royal Library at Copenhagen. It is interesting to note that Svabo, like his contemporary Bishop Percy ³, thought it necessary to apologise in his preface ¹ Cf. S. Grundtvig, Meddelelse Angående Færøernes Litteratur og sprog, in Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed, published by the Royal Norse Early Text Society (Copenhagen), 1882, p.358. ² Færoa Reserata (Copenhagen, 1673), pp.251 and 308 (tr. John Sterpin, London, 1676). ³ Reliques, Vol. I. , Epistle to the Countess of Northumberland.	* Ole Worm (1588-1654). Danish polymath scholar; a naturalist and a collector of zoological specimen, compiled a catalog on runic petroglyphs in Scandinavia. * Peder Syv (1631-1702). Danish poet. Collected and published a corpus of 200 ballads, 200 Viser om Konger, Kæmper og andre (1695). * Lucas Debes (1623-1675) Faeroe et Faeroa reserata (1673) * Jens Christian Svabo (Svabonius) (1746-1824) Faroese civil servant, philologist who authored the first Faroese dictionary(Fa-Dan.-Lat.). * Thomas Percy (1729-1811). Reliques of ancient English poetry (1765)
	154 THE BALLADS [PT. II] for making the collection, and humbly claims for it an interest merely antiquarian. It is clear, however, from his tone throughout the Preface, that Svabo had a far more scholarly appreciation of the value of his material than had Percy. Inded it would be difficult to overestimate the debt which all succeeding students of Faroese ballads owe to him. Disappointed in his hopes of public recognition of his work done for the Civil Service, he retired to the Islands, where, in solitude and poverty, he devoted himself, till his death in 1829, to the collection and transcription of ballad material. His personal help and example inspired other Faroe-islanders to make collections for themselves, some of which, notably Klemmentsen's Sandoyjarbók, are among our best authorities for the ballads today. His own ballad collection, still in MS. In the Royal Library at Copenhagen, has never been published; but Schrøter, Lyngbye and Hammershaimb all owed their incentive and inspiration to his work. To study the history of Faroese ballad collections without realizing the force of Svabo's personality is to leave Hamlet out of the play. In 1817 the Danish botanist, Hans Kristjan Lyngbye visited the Faroes, where he became acquainted with "the learned Svabo" as he calls him, and also with Johan Henrik Schrøter, a clergyman on Suderø, himself a keenly interested ballad collector, and, incidentally, the first to make a collection of Faroese folk-tales in prose. Partly from these men, and partly from oral recitations and material supplied by Provost Hentze, Lyngbye was able to gather together a considerable body of Faroese ballads which, with the support and encouragement	* Klemmentsen →J. Klementsen, with Hentze(q.v.), compiled the Sandoyarbók. cf. Jóannes í Króki. * Johan Henrik Schrøter (also Hendrik) (1771-1851). Translated Færeyinga saga into Faroese (1832). * Hans Christian Lyngbye (1782-1837) Danish marine botanist. * Peter Mathiasen Hentze (1753-1843), priest and provost.
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 155 of Bishp P. E. Müller, he published at Copenhagen in 1822, under the title of Færöiske Kvæder om Sigurd Fofnersbane og hans Æt. Unfortunately Lyngbye knew no Icelandic and very little Faroese, and his work necessarily suffers in consequence. Still more unfortunate was his unscientific handling of material and lack of literary conscience, which permitted his cutting out, adding and transposing stanzas—and again we are reminded of the Reliques—till the original form of a ballad is sometimes entirely lost. Fortunately, however, most of the material that he had at this command is still preserved. It is to be noted that the qualities which go to make an ideal collector of ballads do not always imply an ideal editor of the material collected. The great collector of Jutland ballads ad folk-lore, Evald Tang Kristensen, has started a new and sounder tradition by a reverent in-gathering of all that formed part of the common stock of peasant lore in his day¹. The sifting of material is wisely left to the trained scholar, and, one hopes, to a later and less intrepid generation². The tradition started by Svabo and Lyngbye was carried on by V. U. Hammershaimb, himself a native of the Islands and a great lover of Faroese folk-lore. During the years 1847-8, and again in 1853, he visited the Faroes expressly to study the dialects, and to collect the native ballads and folk- lore, which he published under the title of Færöiske ¹ Cf. W. A. Craigie, Evald Tang Kristensen, A Danish Folk-lorist, in Folklore, Vol. IX, 1898, pp.194-220. ² Cf. C. J. Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Applachians (London, 1917), p.xxii.	* Evald Tang Kristensen (1843-1929) Danish folklorist. * Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb (1819-1909) Faroese priet, ballad-collector; established modern orthography in the Faroe Islands.
	156 THE BALLADS [PT. II] Kvæder in the Nordiske Literatur-Samfund, the Antiquarisk Tidsskirft, etc. Like Svabo, Hammershaimb eventually returned and settled on the Faroes; but unfortunately, owing to the pressure of his administrative duties, he was never able to spare time for a final revision of his collection, though urged repeatedly to the work by his friend Svend Grundtvig. Ultimately, however, when Grundtvig himself undertook to make an exhaustive critical edition of the Faroese ballads in all their variant forms, Hammershaimb placed all his material in his hands. Svend Grundtvig and his colleague J. Bloch, of the Royal Library staff, completed in 1876 their great fifteen vol. MS. collection of Faroese ballads with all their known variants, Føroyja Kvæði— Corpus Carminum Faeroensium—Færøernes Gamle Folkeviser. This was afterwards increased by Bloch to sixteen volumes by the addition of much new material, some of which was collected by Jakobsen in his journey to the Faroes in 1887¹. Before beginning the work Gruntvig had every available version, whether in public or private hands, at his disposal, so that he had a magnificent apparatus criticus. Unfortunately, the work has never been published, so that owing to the difficulties of communication with Denmark (which have proved to be insuperable) it has been impossible for me to consult it. The first three volumes, however, which include all the Faroese ballads translated below, are based on Hammershaimb's collections of 1851-1855. Ham- ¹ Axel Olrik, Om Svend Grundtvigs og Jörgen Blochs Føroyjakvæði og færøske ordbog, in Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi (Lund, 1890), p.249.	* Sven Grundtvig [Svend Hersleb Grundtvig] (1824-1883). Danish folklorist. Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser (1853). * Jørgen Bloch (1839-1910). Grundtvig's collaborator. * Jakob Jakobsen (1864-1918) Philologist and collector of Faroese prose stoies. Færøske Folkesagn Og æventyr (1901), Etymologisk ordbog over det norröne sprog på Shetland (1921).
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 157 mershaimb was himself a genuine scholar with a sensitive literary conscience and a thorough knowledge of all the Faroese dialects, and his work is spoken of in the highest terms by Grundtvig in his article on the Corpus Carminum Faeroensium ¹. Moreover Hammershaimb had consulted all the other available versions of these ballads before printing; so that it is improbable that when a comparison of the texts can be made much alteration will be required. II. The Faroe Islands are probably the only place to be found in Western Europe where ballads are still sung to the accompaniment of the dance. The dance and song, it must be confessed, are gradually losing their original character, while the ballads are often long and unwieldly, sometimes, as in the Ballad of Ívint Herintsson, running to five divisions (Tættir) and over three hundred and fifty verses. The verses are frequently chanted in a solemn recitative, while the ballad tunes tend to be confined chiefly to the refrains. The method of supplying the melody, however, is subject to almost endless variation. Sometimes old native folk tunes are attached to special ballads, e.g . in the case of Vi hugged mid kaarde; sometimes native ballads are sung to Danish folk melodies and refrains as, e.g. Grindevisen, sung to the tune of the Danish Burmand holder I Fjældet ut. Sometimes in the Faroese repertoire, Norse ballads are found complete with their own melodies, e.g. Sømandsviserne, or sung to Danish folk-tunes, e.g. Zinklars Vise. Most curious of all is the method not infrequently resorted to in ¹ Sv. Grundtvig, Færøernes Litteratur og Sprog, in Aarbøg for Nord. Oldk., 1882, p.364.
	158 THE BALLADS [PT. II] modern times of singing native ballads, often of modern origin, to the tunes of the Protestant Psalmody—a custom which may have had its origin in the common practice of singing both ballads and psalms on all momentous occasions, such as on the night of a wedding, or before starting on a big fishing expedition. The Islanders have little idea of tone or melody and do not sing well; and eye-witnesses of some of the ballad dances at Thorshaven aver that the tunes sound less like dance music than melancholy dirges. In Folkesangen paa Færøerne (Færøske Kvadmelodier), pp.85-140, Thuren has published a large number of original ballad tunes. The characteristic motifs of folk tunes are traceable throughout, as well as their elusive qualities. Thus we find, side by side with airs based on the odinary major and minor scales, others which, like mediaeval church music, are based on a 'modal' or 'gapped' tonal system. Indeed traces of the pentatonic scale are not infrequently met with, especially in the tunes attached to the earlier ballads. The majority of Faroese melodies, however, have only one gap and have more in common with the system of notation found in Gregorian music than with the pentatonic scale of many Hebridean lays. A further characteristic of folk music which appears in most Faorese airs is the curious form of close which rarely occurs on the tonic. Not infrequently the theme ends on the leading note or supertonic which strikes the ear with a perpetual surprise, the cadence leading one to anticipate a repetition rather than a conclusion of the air. The reason is that these tunes, like many folk songs from Somerset, the Appalachians and the Hebrides, were
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 159 'circular,' that is, formed for continuous repetition to suit the lengthy nature of the songs and ballads. The ballad however is not a mere historical relic on the Faroes, but a living literary form. The simplicity of the life, and the absence of class distinction¹, still constitute an atmosphere in some respects not unlike that of Mediaeval Denmark, and the ballad is the favourite form of artistic expression. A whale-hunt, a shipwreck, or the adventures of fishermen in the far north are still made the subject of a new ballad, composed by one or more of the community; and if the result finds general favour it is added to the ballad repertoire along with the ballads of Sir Tristram or Childe Sigurth². In his description of his travels on the Faroes 1847-8, V. U. Hammershaimb³ says that he took down the greater number of his ballads at Sumbø on Suderø, the most southerly village in the Islands. He describes the ballad dance as follows: It is the custom here that the same ballad should not be sung more than once a year⁴ in the 'dancing-chamber,' so ¹ Cf. N. Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland (Oxford, 1905), p.42. ² For interesting accounts of the composition of new ballads, cf. Lyngbye's article in the Skandinavske Litteraturselskabs Skrifter, 12th and 13th Annual, p.234ff.; also P. E. Müller, Introduction to Lyngbye's Fær. Kv., pp.14, 15. The Trawlaravísur and other ballads, besides the dances and tunes of the Faroe Islands of today, have been investigated by Thuren who published several studies on this most interesting subject, e.g. Dans og Kvaddigtning paa Færøerne, med et Musikbilag, 1901. Folkesangen paa Færøerne, 1908, etc., (cf. especially Nyere Danseviser, pp.273-282), etc. ³ Antiq. Tidsk. 1846-1848, pp.258-267. ⁴ According to H. Thuren, Dansen paa Færøerne (Copenhagen, 1908), p.9, a certain fixed number of songs are now sung on Suderø; a great many have been quite forgotten since Hammershaimb wrote.
	160 THE BALLADS [PT. II] that the repertoire is obviously extensive, seeing that they dance at wedding feasts, generally for three days and nights without cessation. In the special dancing season from Yule till Lent, the ballads are danced not only on Sundays but also on the so-called 'Feast Days.' (They do not dance again from the beginning of Lent till the day after Christmas.) The dance at Sumbø has characteristics of its own which differ from those of the rest of the Faroes. The people here generally sing well and know how to put expression into the actual dance. Elsewhere on the Islands this is now for the most part reduced to a uniform stamp with the feet, marking the melody of the ballad. Moreover they still continue here in common use both the 'Walking Verse' (stígingar stev) and the more rapid measure 'Tripping Verse' (tøkingar stev) of the Round Dance, in which, as a rule, the dancers hold one another by the hand, forming a circle, dancing backwards while the verse (örindi) is sung, and reversing the movement with considerable energy during the singing of the the refrain (viðgangur, niðurlág, stev). This round dance is characteristic of Sumbø ¹. For the most part the dance is now performed with the same speed in both verse and refrain², and though little changed since Hammershaimb wrote, it tends more and more to become a solemn and joyless function; and there is a curious unanimity today among eyewitnesses as to the depressing effect it has on them. Hjalmar Thuren, writing in later times (1908), furnishes some additional information as to the manner of the ballad dance ³. The ballads are danced with special zest on the 29th of July, the day of the anniversary of the death of Saint Olaf, when all the islanders who can leave their homes flock to Thors- ¹ It is also occasionally danced in Andefjord, but only very rarely nowadays (cf. H. thuren, Dansen paa Færøerne, p.8). ² Ib., p.8. ³ Ib., pp 4-10.
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 161 haven and dance from sunset till sunrise. Sometimes the ballads are danced in the open air, and it has been the custom in certain districts from ancient times to hold assemblies for dancing out in the fields on certain fixed days. On the 12th Sunday after Trinity people meet in definite places on the Northern Islands. On the other hand the dance is often the spontaneous outcome of the desire of the moment, "as much to keep themselves warm as for the sake of entertainment." Thus after a whale-hunt the men sometimes dance in their wet, bloody clothes, singing the popular ballad of the ca'ing whale with the refrain: To us bold men great joy it is To slay a whale! The dance is always accompanied by song, but instrumental music has never been in use on the Faroes. The time and character of the dance are indicated at the beginning of the ballad by the precentor. This post of honour was originally much sought after and some precentors were famous over the islands for their special rendering of certain ballads, some of which were family possessions in the old days. When a ballad is concluded, one of those who are taking part straightway begins on a new one, the dance frequently continuing uninterrupted, even when the song is ended. The precentor must have a strong voice and great powers of endurance as the ballads are often very long. He is generally of a lively disposition with some dramatic power, so that by imitating his gesticulations the dancers give character and individuality to the ballad. Thus in the refrain to the Death-Song of Ragnar Loðbrók: We struck with the sword
	162 THE BALLADS [PT. II] the dancers stamp on the floor and clap hands together; but they are solemn and silent during the singing of a sorrowful ballad such as Queen Dagmar lies sick, etc. With the ballad dances of the Faroes it is interesting to compare the ballad dances of the Ukraine and also the choral dances of a community so far removed as the Torres Straits. Of these latter Dr Haddon writes¹: The dancing-ground was an oblong space. . . . the drummer with the singers generally struck up a song, but sometimes the dancers sang a refrain or called for a song by name. Each song seemed to be associated with its own particular dance and to be accompanied by some story or incident which was illustrated by the movement of the dancers. A much closer parallel, however, is furnished by the Хороводъ or choral dance of Little Russia. The Хороводъ, according to the account of an eye witness², is not only a song sung to the accompaniment of a dance; but the song is narrative in form and answers in all respects to the ballad of North Western Europe. The dancers join hands and dance in a circle from west to east, in a contrary direction to the sun's movements—withershins as the Scots peasants have it. Then, because it is considered unlucky to do anything withershins, in the refrain the motion is reversed and the dancers pass from east to west, to counteract the baleful effects of the ¹ Dances and Dance Paraphernalia, in Expedition to the Torres Straits (Cambridge, 1904), Vol. IV, p.292. ² Miss Aline Brylinska, who has kindly supplied me with this information.	* Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940)
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 163 first direction. Here too, however, it is interesting to to note, the dance is sometimes stationary. III. Into the rise of the ballads on the Faroes and their exact relation of form and content to the Icelandic Fornkvæði¹, and to the Viser of Norway², Sweden³, and above all of Denmark⁴, it is impossible to enter here. Perhaps the relationship between the ballads of the various countries of the North will never be fully understood. The ramifications are too many and too complex, while too many links in the chain have already been lost in the "scrubby paper books" such as that with which Bishop Percy found the housemaid lighting the parlour fire. And those who would too hastily dogmatise on the 'con- veyance,' translation, and borrowing of the various versions receive a wholesome warning from Dr Axel Olrik's analysis⁵ of the ancestry and parallel versions of the Scots, Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish forms of the ballads of Earl Brand (Dan. Riboldsvisen). Moreover it is no easier to generalise about the sources of the Faroese ballad material than about the Danish. The motif of the Faroese Tristrams Táttur, also found in hte Icelandic ballad of Tristram, comes ultimately (thorugh the Tristram's Saga one would suppose) from a French romance; that of ¹ S. Gruntvig and Jón Sigurðsson, Islenzk Fornkvæði, in Nordiske Oldskrifter (Copenhagen, 1854-85). ² Landstad, Norske Folkeviser (Christiania, 1853); S. Bugge, 1858. ³ Geijer and Afzelius, 1814-1816, 1880; Arwidsson, 1834-1842. ⁴ S. Grundtvig, Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, 1853-1890. S. Grundtvig and A. Olrik, Danske Ridderviser, 1895-1919. ⁵ Riboldsvisen (a review of von der Recke's Nogle Folkevisere-daktioner) in Danske Studier, 1906, p.175ff.	* Axel Olrik (1864-1917)
	164 THE BALLADS [PT. II] Nornagest, changed though it is in form, is surely founded on the Icelandic Saga; Olufu Kvæði comes no doubt from a Spanish story; and the motif of the Scots ballad of Binnorie is "found also among the people of Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Faroes¹." It would be pleasant to develop a theory that the purveyors of ballad material were the sailors and merchants who plied up and down the great trade routes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or even earlier. It has been suggested by Professor Ker² and others that Shetland may have been "the chief meeting-place or trading station between the ballads of Scotland and Norway." The Shetland ballad of Sir Orfeo actually has a refrain in Norn, the Norse dialect spoken in Shetland and the small neighbouring islands till the eighteenth century; while the ballad of Hildina taken down by Low³ on the Island of Foula off Shetland (cf. p.217 below) is entirely composed in Norn. Indeed we know from Low's account⁴ that many ballads and songs must have perished with the language: Nothing remains but a few names of things and two or three remnants of songs which one old man can repeat; and further on he continues: Most of the fragments they have are old historical ballads and romances. . . . William Henry, a farmer in Guttorm in ¹ Landstad, Norske Folkeviser, note to Dei Tvo Systar, p.867. ² On the Danish Ballads (Scottish Historical Review, Vol. I, No.4, July, 1904), p.362. ³ A Tour through Orkney and Schetland in 1774, Kikwall, 1879. Cf. also Preface to Sörla Tháttr, p.39ff. above. ⁴ Ib., p.105ff.	* William Paton Ker (1855-1923). * George Low (1747-1795)
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 165 Foula has the most knowledge of any I found; he spoke of three kinds of poetry used in Norn, and repeated or sung by the old men; the Ballad (or Romance, I suppose); the Vysie or Vyse, now commonly sung to dancers¹; and the simple song. . . . Most of all their tales are relative to the history of Norway; they seem to know little of the rest of Europe but by names; Norwegian transactions theyhave at their fingers' ends. One would like to have know more about Norn and its 'Vysies,' which might have formed an interesting and instructive link between some of the Northern ballads. On the other hand, the Scandinavian colonies in Ireland, and settlers in English ports such as Bristol, may have done not a little, through their trade with France and the Mediterranean countries, to spread the new rhyming four line verse and the romantic stories of southern and eastern Europe². While this obscurity remains as to the connection between the Faroese ballads and those of neighbouring countries, notably Denmark, the questions of the age and origin of many of the Faroese ballads in their present form are also frought with difficulty. Of the Danish ballads, which sometimes offer parallels so close as to suggest translation from one language to the other, the first MS. collection that can be dated with certainty was written down in 1550. But there is much evidence, both internal and ¹ The Vyse, be it observed, is the Danish word most commonly used to denote a ballad. The Faroese use Kvæði, and less frequently Ríma. ² For an account of the Scandinavian settlements on the Bristol Channel, cf. A. Bugge, Contributions to the History of the Norsemen in Ireland, No. III, published in Videnskabsselskabet I Christiania, Historisk-filosofisk Klasse, II, 1900.
	166 THE BALLADS [PT. II] external, for assigning a much earlier date to the historical ballads at least. It has been suggested by Olrik¹, who supports his view by arguments which it would be extremely difficult to contest, that many of the historical ballads are practically contemporaneous with the events which they describe, and some of these took place in the thirteenth century, while others, e.g. Riboldsvisen, are possibly of the twelfth century. Unfortunately we have fewer data, whether philological or historical, for assigning dates to the Faroese ballads than we have for the Danish. There can be little doubt, however, that the ballads translated below had their origin in the Fornaldar Sögur composed in Iceland during the thirteenth century or in some fourteenth century Rímur derived from the sagas. That many of the Faroese ballads were literary in origin², and were based on either Sagas or Rímur, is conclusively established by the opening lines of many of the ballads themselves, notable that of the Olufu Ríma: Ein er ríman úr Íslandi komin, úr> Skrívað í bók so breiða. ("This story is come from Iceland, written in a book so broad.") And Tröllini í Hornalandum: Verse 1. Frøðið er komið frá Íslandi Skrívað í bók so víða etc. ¹ Axel Olrik, Introduction to Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg, 3rd ed. (Copenhagen and Christiania, 1913), p. 40ff. Cf. also Steenstrup, Vore Folkeviser (Copenhagen, 1891), ch. VII. ² On the literary sources of the Faroese ballads, cf. Steenstrup, op. cit. Introduction.
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 167 Verse 2. Frøðið er komið frá Íslandi Skrívað í bók so breiða etc. Verse 3. Frøðið er komið frá Íslandi Higar ið skald tað tók, havið tær hoyrt um kongin tann, Íð skrívaður stendur í bók? ("This poem has come from Iceland, brought hither by a skald. Have you heard of the king about whom this book is written?") The passages quoted above would seem to point to Rímur rather than Sagas as the sources of the ballads. Or had more than one "Book so broad" come from Iceland? One wonders. Heusler notices¹ the tendency to divide up the longer ballads into sections or Tættir, each whole in itself and yet forming a part of the ballad, and suggests the Icelandic Rímur as the models for this particular form. It is even possible that the word Ríma is used advisedly in the first strophe of Olufu Kvæði, instead of the somewhat commoner Kvæði, with some reminiscence of its origin. One of the Sjurðar Kvæði (Dvörgamoy III) begins: Eina veit eg rímuna, Íð inni hevir ligið leingi. (I know a rhyme (or Ríma?) etc. ) and Rísin í Holmgarð also begins: Eg veit eina rímuna, Íð gjörd er um Virgar sterka. Many other instances might be quoted. But it would be perilous to press too far what may, after all, be a mere verbal coincidence. And whatever ¹ Lied und Epos (Dortmund, 1915), p. 19.	* Andreas Heusler (1865-1940).
	168 THE BALLADS [PT. II] gave rise to our poems as they now stand, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that they, like the rest of the Føroyja Kvæði, are first and last Ballads—rightly ballads. They have a form of their own, like other ballads, and are not a degenerate form of Rímur or a mere versification of some old Icelandic legends. Indeed what Professor Ker says of the Danish ballads¹ may with equal truth be applied to the ballads of the Faroes: The ballads are not rude, rustic travesties of older more dignified stories; though some, perhaps many, of the older stories may survive among the ballads. They are for Denmark in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries what the older heroic lays of the Poetic Edda had been before them in the Northern lands. They take the place of earlier heroic poetry. Whatever the nature of their connection with the ballads of the surrounding lands, the Faroese ballads are no isolated growth. They exhibit all the main characteristics of the ballad type, especially of the Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic ballads. Crude and inartistic they often are compared with the best of the Danish and even the Scottish ballads. The Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr has little to recommend it beyond its simplicity and naïveté, the 'quaintness' of primitive literature; the Ballad of Arngrim's Sons exhibits a curious lack of skill in the manipulation of the theme, and perhaps we are justified in assuming that two earlier ballads or perhaps tættir have been imperfectly welded. The Ballad of Nornagest is bald to a fault and lacks inspiration; and all alike show an imperfect artistry in diction. ¹ On the History of the Ballads, 1100-1500, published in Proceedings of the British Academy for 1902-1910, p. 202.
	GENERAL INTRODUCTION 169 Yet despite all these blemishes they are ballads as surely as Sir Patrick Spens or Ungen Sveidal are ballads. Nor is Professor Ker quite just to the ballads of the Faroes in saying¹ that because of their length, and "because they were made out of books, nothing but the lyrical form and the dancing custom kept them from turning into ordinary romances." Surely no material could be less promising than King Heithrek's Riddles; yet in virtue of what has been forgotten and what has been selected—the telescoping of the riddles and the elaboration of the setting—the ballad spirit has entered in and shaped from the unwieldy mass an artistic whole. Indeed whatever their faults one realizes in all those ballads the truth of Sidgwick's epigram²: "You never know what a ballad will day next, though you do know how it is going to say it!" For it is even less similarity of theme than similarity of form that Links the ballads of the Faroes with those of Denmark and the North. The invariable accompaniment of the refrain; the fluctuation between assonance and rhyme, the disregard of alliteration, and the general verse form; the love of repetition and ballad formulae, — especially of repetition of whole phrases or verses with the alteration of merely the words that rhyme, or of repetition with inversion of word order; the balladist's love of colour, of the material and the concrete, of glitter and shine; the large element of dialogue; the abrupt dramatic openings; the condensation and concentration of narrative and the ¹ On the History of the Ballads,, etc, p. 202. ² Frank Sidgwick, The Ballad, London (Arts and Crafts of Letters Series), p. 61.
	170 THE BALLADS [PT. II] strict exclusion of the irrelevant or superfluous; the infallible feeling for a 'situation'; the atmosphere of the tragic or the critical; the "echo, without comment, of the clash of man and fate¹." All these are the elements that make the ballad a form of literature distinct from other lyric or epic forms; all these are the elements that go to make the Faroese ballads what they are—part of what Ker calls the "Platonic Idea, a Ballad in itself, unchangeable and one, of which the phenomenal multitude of ballads are 'partakers'²." ¹ Grummere, The Popular Ballad (London, 1907), p. 340. ² On the History of the Ballads,, etc, p. 204.
	← Appendix to Part I \| TOC \| Gríplur →

BALLADS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION