ON THE SONGS OF THE PEOPLE OF GOTHIC OR TEUTONIC RACE. ALL the low German tribes were early distinguished for maritime enterprize, but the Danes and Scandinavians, who all passed by the name of Northmen, or Normen, were by far the most remarkable for bold adventure in the middle ages. Numberless are the names of the sea kings and heroes, whose deeds are related in the histories and sagas of the north. It is impossible not to be astonished at the wide extent of the space traversed by them. To the eastward, Rorik, (Roderick) with his brothers, founded a kingdom in Novogorod, and thereby laid the foundation of the state of Russia. Oskold and Dir founded a state in Kiew, which united with that of Novogorod. Ragnwald, who settled at Polotzk, on the Dwina, was the ancestor of the grand Dukes of Lithuania. Northwards, Naddod was thrown in a storm on Iceland, which became the asylum of the noblest races of Norway. Westwards the Feroe, Orkney, Shetland, and Western Islands were often visited, and partly peopled by the Normen; and on several of them Northern Jarls (pronounce Yarls) long ruled, so that the harassed Gaels were not secure, even in their remotest corners, from German nations. In Ireland they settled as early as the times of Charlemain, when Dublin fell to Olof, Waterford to Sitirk, and Limerick to Y war. In England, they made themselves dreaded under the name of Danes; they not only possessed Northumberland in common with Saxon earls, partly independently, and partly in fiefs, but all England was subject to them under Canute, Harold, and Hardicanute. From the sixth century, they disturbed the coasts of France; and the fear of Charlemain, that much danger impended over his country from them, was but too amply justified soon after his death. The devastations which they committed, not merely along the coasts, but far up the rivers, and in the middle of both France and Germany, are hardly to be credited. Rolf, in baptism called Robert, the first Duke of Normandy, became the founder of several dynasties. From him descended Wil liam the Conqueror, who gave England a new constitution. The Normen, who with almost incredible fortune and courage wrested from the Arabs, Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, and for a time, Jerusalem and Antioch, were adventurers from the Duchy founded by Rolf; and Tancred, whose descendants at last wore the crown of Sicily and Apulia, descended from him. If we were to relate all the bold deeds which in pilgrimages, in the service of Constantinople, and in expeditions in almost every land and sea, even to Greenland and America, were achieved by the Normen, the relation would seem a romance. A country, for the most part sterile and mountainous, with a stern climate, possessing on one side an extent of coast from the Elbe to Lapland, of not less than 1,400 miles in length, could hardly fail to be a nursery of maritime adventurers. It was ruled by a number of petty kings, whose authority depended on their success in their expeditions. Besides the territorial chiefs, there were sovereigns, who possessed neither country nor regular subjects; the sea kings, as they were called, who, with no wealth but their ships, no force but their crews, and no hope but from their swords, swarmed in every ocean, and plundered every coast, and whose boast it was, that they never slept under a smoky roof, and never quaffed the social cup over a hearth. The youth roved about in search of booty for the bride he left at home; the father, for his wife and children. The Normen were true to one another, and virtuous men in their own eyes; for in human nature there is generally a wonderful spirit of accommodation in our principles to our convenience. The plundering Normen held murder, in the acquisition of their booty, no crime; though they piqued themselves on their esteem for women, and were the chief founders of chivalry; just as the Roman murderers and robbers of the present day pique themselves on their orthodoxy, and the fervour of their attachment to their church. We doubt if Christianity made the Normen more scrupulous, with regard to the property of others, than it did our Scotch and English borderers, who received absolution one day, and stole cattle the next. The Normen settled the matter with their conscience, on the terms of the following low German adage: Ruten, roven dat en is ghein Schande Dat doynt die besten van dem Lande, which means that robbing and devastating were no shame, as they were practised by the best in the land. But these times are gone; the seas are now covered by a very different sort of vessels from the Snekkes which issued from the friths and bays of Norway and Denmark; and we have, in our time, seen Denmark in turn plundered by the descendants of those who were among the greatest sufferers from her devastations. The old Normen might exclaim with Palnatoke, in Ŏehlenschlager: On our power at sea Our real strength is founded; for the Dane Is truly like a sea-fowl; Aegir is His kind divinity, and Ocean's daughters On foam-clad billows sweetly sing his praise On every strand. This is the destiny Which God allotted him, and as imperish able That Rolf has founded Normandy; that Constantinople's suburbs fired? What is 't That even in distant Africa the negro From the adventurous character so long possessed by the Northmen, we might naturally expect to find copious recollections of their deeds among their descendants. From the unmixed character too of the population, which is the most purely Teutonic of any in Europe, we are if any where, the genuine songs, muwarranted in expecting to find here, sic, and superstitions peculiar to the that Denmark and Scandinavia are Teutonic race. Accordingly, we find not only richer than any of the other Germanic countries, in ballads of adventure of all descriptions, from the vague traditions of a dark antiquity, to the achievements of the chivalrous ages, and even to those of the the Twelfth; but that the supernacomparatively recent age of Charles tural beings of our forefathers, by whom every sea, every stream, every fountain, hill, and forest, were peopled, exist only here in all the purity and definitiveness of their attributes, occupying a place in song proportioned to their importance; and that the genuine music of the race, which has been almost expelled from Scotland by the more animated and heart-rending strains of the Celts, and of which traces only exist in England, in a few old ballad airs, fortunately preserved from oblivion, yet lives in all its freshness among the peasantry of Scandinavia.--These circumstances will, we hope, justify us in entering at some length into an account of * Aegir, in the northern mythology, the husband of Ran, one of the names for the ocean. the ballads of Denmark and Scandinavia. The first class, to which the title formerly given to the earliest publication of Danish ballads, namely, Kiæmpe-Viser (ballads of giants and warriors), ought properly to be confined, comprehends ballads relating to the ancient mythical times. Of this class, the Danes have several, the Swedes have only one, the ballad of Grimborg. The subjects of them are the combats and adventures of giants or heroes of extraordinary strength and courage. Most of these heroes either belonged to the court of the celebrated Dideric or Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, or were in some manner connected with it. His residence is called Bern, (supposed Verona). The splendour of this court, in the representations of the northern bards, hardly yields to that of Charlemain and his twelve peers, or of King Arthur and his round table. This class has all the marks of a very remote age. The style is not merely simple, it may be called rude. There is a great confusion throughout with respect to places and times; and a number of famous heroes, who lived in very different ages, are often brought together without much ceremony. All traces of the traditions respecting these characters are nearly lost in England. One of the most important of them, however, is said in the new novel of Kenilworth, on the authority of Gough, still to live in the traditions of Berkshire, namely Weyland, the smith, to whom the great novelist has assigned so prominent a part. The same Weyland occurs in "Horn Child, and Maiden Rimenild," in Ritson's Ancient Romances, iii. 295. Then sche let forth bring In the minstrelsy of the Scotch border, and Mr. Ellis's specimens of early English Romances, may also be found some account of him; and the latter has a curious Latin quotation on the subject, from Geoffrey's Vita Merlini. The first Danish ballad of this class, called the Tournament, brings together most of the personages who figure in the series, and describes the bearings on their shields, an important matter in former times, to which reference is often afterwards made. The following extract from the commencement of this ballad, which is of great length, may serve to give some idea of its nature: There were seven and seven times twenty, Who from the hall outwent, And when they came to Brattingsborg There pitched they their tent. It thunders 'neath their horses as the Danish warriors ride. King Nilus stands on his castle wall, Whence he sees both far and wide"Why hold these warriors their lives so cheap, That they long my strength to bide ?" Thou hast roved far and wide, To the tent he hied amain; I pray you take it not amiss, Nor angry be with me- Your bearings I first must see. A lion large and strong- To King Diderick it doth belong. Upon the second shield appears A hammer large and tongs, Who is a warrior bold. It is borne by Olger, the Dane, Who leaves aye his foemen dead. Amidst all the rudeness of this class of ballads, they often display much energy and greatness of conception. Take as an instance a passage in the Danish ballad of Berner the giant, and Orm Ungerswend, where a youth goes to his father's grave, to wake him from the dead, in order to obtain his sword from him to combat the giant; who, in the outset, is thus described: It was Berner the great giant, He rose over walls the most high; No man durst come him nigh. No man durst to him go, He would have worked much woe. Orm Ungerswend, stimulated by Berner, the high giant, Who looked over his shoulder to see: "Whence cometh then this little mouse, Who dare speak such words to me?" Orm Ungerswend proceeds without delay to the hill, in which he "his father dwells with all." says It was late in the evening, It was late in the evening tide, It was Orm Ungerswend, He struck so hard on the hill, It was, indeed, great wonder That falling it did not him kill. It was Orm Ungerswend, He struck the hill with such art, stones, Which were in its lowest part. Orm Ungerswend's father then came forth "Who waketh me so early And makes me so to moan, Why can I not remain in peace "Who dareth thus my hill to break, Who dares to face mine eye? Truly I must tell to him, He shall by Birting die." "I am Orm Ungerswend, "If thou beest Orm Ungerswend, 415 "Thou silver and gold did'st give to me, It is so good a sword." "Thou shalt not get from me Birting, To win so fair a maid, Till thou hast been in Ireland To revenge thy father's death." "Come, quickly give me Birting up, "T will be full well with me, Or else in a thousand pieces I break The hill which is over thee." Take Birting from my side; It was common in the north, that the things which in life were held by a man in the highest estimation, should accompany him to the tomb. The sort of visit which Orm Ungerswend here pays is a frequent occurrence in the sagas; and every reader must remember the similar dialogue between Hervor and Angantyr, derived by Mr. Gray from the Norse poetry. The recommendation of the following ballad, called "The Death of Sivard Snarenswend," is its brevity, which allows us, without, we hope, drawing too much on the patience of our readers, to give it entire: Sivard, he slew his step-father All for his mother's sake, And now he longs to court to ride, To try his fortune to make. So cunningly runs Greyman under Sivard. It was Sivard Snarenswend, He went to his mother to know "Thou shalt not go on foot from me, So cunningly runs, &c. They led Greyman from the stable out, His eyes they gleam'd like sparkling stars, The horse he ran through the wide Downs, Where the people were met in Ting,* The people in Ting astounded stood, To see a horse so spring. For fifteen days and fifteen nights, The doors were lock'd each one. "It is either a drunken courtier All under their scarlet so fine: To welcome his sister's son in. He rode in with all his might; It was Sivard Snarenswend, He allowed his horse to spring And so he came to his end. Sivard was cut by the saddle bow, And Greyman's back in twain; And all in the palace, who saw him, cried, And none were glad or fain, a So sorrowfully ran Greyman under Sivard. The ballads of this class are sometimes varied in a whimsical enough manner, by the propounding and answering of riddles, an exercise of ingenuity in which our forefathers took great delight, and which has also found its way into their songs. In a large volume of ballads, in black letter, of the latter part of Charles the Second's reign, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, there is one called "the Noble Rid dle wisely expounded, or the Maid's Answer to the Knights their Questions," beginning, There was a lady of the north country, One of the daughters, after some endearments had passed between her and a young knight, asks him to marry her The brave young Knight to her replied, &c. "Thy suit, fair maid, shall not be denied, &c. If thou can'st answer me questions three, The following passage from the Danish ballad of Child Bonved, is quite in the style of the above, though less polished: Child Bonved binds his sword by his side, Still longing farther on to ride, And he rode till he came to a mountain high, Where a shepherd with his sheep came by. "Now hear thee shepherd, tell to me, Whose are the sheep thou hast with thee? What is than a wheel more round? And where is the best yool-drink to be found? *Ting, a court or assembly, as Stor-Ting (great court), the name of the parliament of Norway. |