Stories and Ballads of the Far Past Part 23

The pa.s.sages quoted above would seem to point to Rimur rather than Sagas as the sources of the ballads. Or had more than one "Book so broad" come from Iceland? One wonders. Heusler notices[30] the tendency to divide up the longer ballads into sections or _Taettir_, each whole in itself and yet forming a part of the ballad, and suggests the Icelandic _Rimur_ as the models for this particular form.

It is even possible that the word _Rima_ is used advisedly in the first strophe of _Olufu Kvaei_, instead of the somewhat commoner _Kvaei_, with some reminiscence of its origin. One of the _Sjurar Kvaei_ (_Dvorgamoy_ III) begins:

Eina veit eg rimuna, i inni hevir ligi leingi.

(I know a rhyme (or _Rima_?) etc.)

and _Risin i Holmgar_ also begins:

Eg veit eina rimuna, i gjord 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 gave rise to our poems as they now stand, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that they, like the rest of the _Froyja Kvaei_, are first and last _Ballads_--rightly ballads. They have a form of their own, like other ballads, and are not a degenerate form of _Rimur_ or a mere versification of some old Icelandic legends. Indeed what Professor Ker says of the Danish ballads[31] 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 navete, 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 a.s.suming that two earlier ballads or perhaps _taettir_ 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.

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 saying[32] 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 ma.s.s an artistic whole.

Indeed whatever their faults one realises in all these ballads the truth of Sidgwick's epigram[33]: "You never know what a ballad will say 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 a.s.sonance and rhyme, the disregard of alliteration, and the general verse form; the love of repet.i.tion and ballad formulae,--especially of repet.i.tion of whole phrases or verses with the alteration of merely the words that rhyme, or of repet.i.tion with inversion of word order; the balladist's love of colour, of the material and the concrete, of glitter and s.h.i.+ne; the large element of dialogue; the abrupt dramatic openings; the condensation and concentration of narrative and the 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 fate[34]." 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 mult.i.tude of ballads are 'partakers[35].'"

[Footnote 1: Cf. S. Grundtvig, _Meddelelse Angende Faerernes Litteratur og sprog_, in _Aarbger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, published by the Royal Norse Early Text Society (Copenhagen), 1882, p. 358.]

[Footnote 2: _Faeroa Reserata_ (Copenhagen, 1673), pp. 251 and 308 (tr. John Sterpin, London, 1676).]

[Footnote 3: _Reliques_, Vol. I, _Epistle to the Countess of Northumberland_.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. W. A. Craigie, _Evald Tang Kristensen, A Danish Folk-lorist_, in _Folklore_, Vol. IX, 1898, pp.

194-220.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. C. J. Sharp, _English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians_ (London, 1917), p. xxii.]

[Footnote 6: Axel Olrik, _Om Svend Grundtvigs og Jorgen Blochs Froyjakvaei og faerske ordbog_, in _Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi_ (Lund, 1890), p. 249.]

[Footnote 7: Sv. Grundtvig, _Faerernes Litteratur og Sprog_, in _Aarbg for Nord. Oldk._, 1882, p. 364.]

[Footnote 8: Cf. N. Annandale, _The Faroes and Iceland_ (Oxford, 1905), p. 42.]

[Footnote 9: For interesting accounts of the composition of new ballads, cf. Lyngbye's article in the _Skandinavske Litteraturselskabs Skrifter_, 12th and 13th Annual, p. 234 ff.; also P. E. Muller, Introduction to Lyngbye's _Faer. Kv._, pp. 14, 15. The _Trawlaravisur_ 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 Faererne, med et Musikbilag_, 1901. _Folkesangen paa Faererne_, 1908, etc., (cf. especially _Nyere Danseviser_, pp.

273-282), etc.]

[Footnote 10: _Antiq. Tidsk._, 1846-1848, pp. 258-267.]

[Footnote 11: According to H. Thuren, _Dansen paa Faererne_ (Copenhagen, 1908), p. 9, a certain fixed number of songs are now sung on Suder; a great many have been quite forgotten since Hammershaimb wrote.]

[Footnote 12: It is also occasionally danced in Andefjord, but only very rarely nowadays (cf. H. Thuren, _Dansen paa Faererne_, p. 8).]

[Footnote 13: _Ib._ p. 8.]

[Footnote 14: _Ib._, pp. 4-10.]

[Footnote 15: _Dances and Dance Paraphernalia_, in _Expedition to the Torres Straits_ (Cambridge, 1904), Vol. IV, p. 292.]

[Footnote 16: Miss Aline Brylinska, who has kindly supplied me with this information.]

[Footnote 17: S. Grundtvig and Jon Sigursson, _Islenzk Fornkvaei_, in _Nordiske Oldskrifter_ (Copenhagen, 1854-85).]

[Footnote 18: Landstad, _Norske Folkeviser_ (Christiania, 1853); S. Bugge, 1858.]

[Footnote 19: Geijer and Afzelius, 1814-1816, 1880; Arwidsson, 1834-1842.]

[Footnote 20: S. Grundtvig, _Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser_, 1853-1890. S. Grundtvig and A. Olrik, _Danske Ridderviser_, 1895-1919.]

[Footnote 21: _Riboldsvisen_ (a review of von der Recke's _Nogle Folkeviseredaktioner_) in _Danske Studier_, 1906, p.

175 ff.]

[Footnote 22: Landstad, _Norske Folkeviser_, note to _Dei Tvo Systar_, p. 867.]

[Footnote 23: _On the Danish Ballads_ (_Scottish Historical Review_, Vol. I, No. 4, July, 1904), p. 362.]

[Footnote 24: _A Tour through Orkney and Schetland in 1774_, Kirkwall, 1879. Cf. also Preface to _Sorla Thattr_, p. 39 ff.

above.]

[Footnote 25: _Ib._, p. 105 ff.]

[Footnote 26: The _Vyse_, be it observed, is the Danish word most commonly used to denote a ballad. The Faroese use _Kvaei_, and less frequently _Rima_.]

[Footnote 27: For an account of the Scandinavian settlements on the Bristol Channel, cf. A. Bugge, _Contributions to the History of the Nors.e.m.e.n in Ireland_, No. III, published in _Videnskabsselskabet i Christiania, Historisk-filosofisk Kla.s.se_, 11, 1900.]

[Footnote 28: Axel Olrik, Introduction to _Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg_, 3rd ed. (Copenhagen and Christiania, 1913), p. 40 ff.

Cf. also Steenstrup, _Vore Folkeviser_ (Copenhagen, 1891), ch.

VII.]

[Footnote 29: On the literary sources of the Faroese ballads, cf. Steenstrup, _op. cit._ Introduction.]

[Footnote 30: _Lied und Epos_ (Dortmund, 1915), p. 19.]

[Footnote 31: _On the History of the Ballads, 1100-1500_, published in _Proceedings of the British Academy_ for 1902-1910, p. 202.]

[Footnote 32: _On the History of the Ballads_, etc., p. 202.]

[Footnote 33: Frank Sidgwick, _The Ballad_, London (Arts and Crafts of Letters Series), p. 61.]

[Footnote 34: Gummere, _The Popular Ballad_ (London, 1907), p.

340.]

[Footnote 35: _On the History of the Ballads_, etc., p. 204.]