Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by DavidPrice, . Many thanks to Norfolk andNorwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplying the imagesfrom which this transcription was made.
by
GEORGE BORROW
Edited
with an introduction
by
EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.
London:
printed for private circulation
1913
p. 4Copyright inthe United States of America
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for ClementShorter.
The modern poetical literature of Denmark opens with acollection of epical and lyrical poems from the Middle Ages,which are loosely connected under the title ofKjæmpeviser or Heroic Ballads. Of these thelatest scholarship recognises nearly 500, but in the time ofBorrow the number did not much exceed 200. These balladsdeal with half-historic events, which are so completely masked byfantastic, supernatural and incoherent imagery that theirpositive relation to history can rarely be discovered. Nevertheless, they throw a very valuable light upon the mannersof mediaeval society in Scandinavia, and they are often of highpoetical beauty. No conjecture can be formed as to theauthors of these ballads, and even the centuries in which theywere composed are uncertain. Grimm believed them to beuralt, and attributed them to the 5th and 6thcenturies. But on linguistic p. 6grounds, thisextreme antiquity cannot be maintained. It is now supposedthat they were composed at various times between 1300 and 1500,and that in their present form they bear the stamp of the periodwhen they were first collected by the Danish antiquaries of thesixteenth century.
The circumstances in which this famous collection offolk-songs came into public notice were of a romanticnature. Sophia, Queen of Denmark, when sailing across theSound in the year 1586, was driven by stress of weather to takeshelter in the little island-harbour of Hveen, where the famousobservatory stood, close by the house of the astronomer, TychoBrahe. It so happened that at that very time Brahe wasentertaining as a guest the most eminent Danish man of letters ofthat age, Anders Sörensen Vedel (1542–1616). Vedel, whose labours were encyclopædic, was engaged inpreserving all the monuments of Danish mediaeval history andlearning which he could discover in the monasteries and librariesof Denmark. He had been much encouraged in this work by theMonk of Roeskilde, Peder Olufsen, who on his death-bed, about1570, had placed in Vedel’s hands all the MSS. which he hadcollected. Queen Sophia, p. 7cloistered inthe Ouranienborg with her antiquary and her astronomer, andwaiting for the tempest to moderate, desired to be amused withstories of her national history. Vedel ventured to read toher some of the legendary poems which still lingered among thepeople, and she was so enchanted with them, that she commandedhim, when he returned to the mainland, to make a collection ofthese ballads and publish them.
Accordingly, in 1591, Vedel issued from the privateprinting-press in his house called Liljeborg at Ribe in Jutland,a selection of 100 mediaeval ballads, under the title of EtHundred udvalgte danske Viser. Th