APPENDIX TO PART I

THE COMBAT AT SAMSØ AND HJALMAR'S DEATH SONG

The following passage is taken from an early text of the Saga of Hervör and Heithrek (ms. 2845 in the Royal Library at Copenhagen) where it occurs immediately after the earl's speech ("The death of mighty men" etc.) on p. 92¹.

When the brothers came home they made ready to go to the combat, and their father accompanied them to the ship and gave the sword Tyrfing to Angantyr, saying:

"I think that you will have need of good weapons now."

He then bade them farewell, and so they parted.

And when the brothers came to Samsø they saw two ships lying in a harbour which was called Munarvag. The ships were of the kind called 'Ash.' The brothers concluded that these must be the ships of Hjalmar and Odd the Far-travelling, who was called Örvar-Odd. The sons of Arngrim then drew their swords and gnawed the rims of their shields and worked themselves up into the berserks' fury. Then they sallied forth, six against each 'Ash,' but so brave were the men whom they encountered on board that they all drew their weapons, and not one fled from his post, and not one spoke a word of fear. And the berserks made their way up one side of the ship and down the other and slew them all. Then they landed and began to howl.

Hjalmar and Odd had landed on the Island to find out if the berserks had come. And as they made their way from the forest to join their ships, the berserks were leaving the ships with bloody weapons and drawn swords. But by this time the berserk fury had passed away from them, and at such times their strength is reduced like that of people who are recovering from illness of some kind.

Then said Odd:

Then said Hjalmar to Odd: "Do you see that all our men are fallen? It is my belief that we shall all be Othin's guests tonight in Valhalla."

—And it is said that that was the only word of fear ever uttered by Hjalmar.

Odd replied: "My advice would be that we should make off to the wood; for we shall never be able to put up a fight, being only two against twelve—and twelve too who have slain the twelve bravest men in Sweden."

Then said Hjalmar: "We will never flee from our foes. Rather will we suffer the worst that their weapons can inflict. I am going to fight against the berserks."

"Not so," replied Odd; "I have no mind to visit Othin tonight. It is all these berserks who must perish before evening comes; but you and I will be left alive."

An account of their dialogue is found in these verses which Hjalmar chanted:

But Odd replied:

Hjalmar and Odd saw that Angantyr had Tyrfing in his hand, for it flashed like a sunbeam.

Hjalmar said: "Will you fight against Angantyr alone, or against all his eleven brothers?"

"I will fight against Angantyr," replied Odd; "He will give mighty strokes with Tyrfing; but I have more faith in the protection of my shirt than in that of your mail-coat."

Then cried Hjalmar: "When did you and I ever go to battle and you took the lead of me? You want to fight Angantyr because you hold that to be the deed of greater prowess. I am the leader in this combat, however, and far other was the vow I made to the daughter of the King of the Swedes than to let you or anybody else come before me in the fight. It is I who am going to fight Angantyr."

And with that he drew his sword and stepped forth to meet Angantyr and they commended one another to Valhalla². Hjalmar and Angantyr then made ready for the combat, and mighty strokes fell thick and fast between them.

Odd called to the berserks, saying:

Then Hjörvarth advanced, and he and Odd had a stiff encounter; but Odd's silken shirt was so strong that no weapon could pierce it. And so good was his sword that it cut through iron as easily as cloth; and few strokes had he dealt ere Hjörvarth fell dead.

Then Hervarth came on and the same thing happened;—then Hrani, then each of the others in turn. And with such force did Odd encounter them all that he slew every one of the eleven brothers. As for the combat between Hjalmar and Angantyr, the upshot was that Hjalmar was wounded in sixteen places, and then Angantyr fell dead.

Then Odd went over to where Hjalmar lay and cried:

Hjalmar made answer³:

Then Hjalmar died⁴. Odd brought the tidings to Sweden; and the King's daughter could not bear to live after Hjalmar, so she took her own life. Angantyr and his brothers were laid in a barrow in Samsø with all their weapons.

Footnote 1: Printed in Wimmer's Oldnordisk Læsebog (4th ed.) p. 29 ff. The poetry is also found, though with many divergent readings, in Örvar-Odds Saga, ch. 14 (Fornaldarsögur, Vol. ii, p. 217 ff.).

Footnote 2: In late (paper) mss. the following passage is here added.—"Angantyr said: 'It is my wish that if any of us escapes from here we should not rob one another of our weapons. If I die, I wish to have Tyrfing in the barrow with me. Odd likewise shall have his shirt and Hjalmar his weapons!' And they agreed that those who were left alive were to raise a barrow for the others."

Then follows a long description of the fighting.

Footnote 3: This poem is given more fully in Örvar-Odds Saga than in Hervarar Saga. The strophes which occur only in the former are marked with an asterisk. I have re-arranged the order of the stanzas, in regard to which there is considerable variation between the two texts.

Footnote 4: In paper mss. the following passage occurs here:

"Odd remained there all night. In the morning he brought together the bodies of all the berserks and then set about building barrows. The islanders built chambers of great oaks as Odd directed them, and then piled up stones and sand on the top. They were strongly constructed, and it was a great achievement. Odd was busy at this work for a fortnight. Then he placed the berserks in with their weapons and closed the barrows. After this Odd took Hjalmar's body and carried it to a ship and conveyed it to Sweden."

PART II

BALLADS

BALLADS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

I. The ballads of the Faroe Islands aroused the interest of Ole Worm as 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 Peder 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 Percy³, thought it necessary to apologise in his preface 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. Indeed 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 realising 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 of Bishop 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 his 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 and 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 day⁴. The sifting of material is wisely left to the trained scholar, and, one hopes, to a later and less intrepid generation⁵.

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 folklore, which he published under the title of Færöiske Kvæder in the Nordiske Literatur-Samfund, the Antiquarisk Tidsskrift, 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 1887⁶. Before beginning the work Grundtvig 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. Hammershaimb 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 Faroensium⁷. 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 unwieldy, 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 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 ordinary 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 Faroese 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 '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 distinction⁸, 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 Sigurth⁹.

In his description of his travels on the Faroes 1847-8, V. U. Hammershaimb¹⁰ 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 year¹¹ 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' (stigingar stev) and the more rapid measure 'Tripping Verse' (trókingar 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 refrain (viðgangur, niðurlág, stev). This round dance is characteristic of Sumbø¹².

For the most part the dance is now performed with the same speed in both verse and refrain¹³, 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 dance¹⁴. 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 Thorshaven 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:

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:

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

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 writes¹⁵:

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 movements of the dancers.

A much closer parallel, however, is furnished by the Ҳороводъ or choral dance of Little Russia. The Ҳороводъ, according to the account of an eye witness¹⁶, 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 first direction. Here too, however, it is interesting 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 Fornkvæði¹⁷, and to the Viser of Norway¹⁸, Sweden¹⁹, and above all of Denmark²⁰, 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 'conveyance', translation, and borrowing of the various versions receive a wholesome warning from Dr Axel Olrik's analysis²¹ 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 the Icelandic ballad of Tristram comes ultimately (through the Tristram's Saga one would suppose) from a French romance; that of 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 Faroes²²."

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 Ker²³ 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 Low²⁴ on the Island of Foula off Shetland (cf. p. 217 below) is entirely composed in Norn. Indeed we know from Low's account²⁵ 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 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 dancers²⁶; 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 they have at their fingers' ends.

One would like to have known 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 Europe²⁷.

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 external, for assigning a much earlier date to the historical ballads at least. It has been suggested by Olrik²⁸, 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 origin²⁹, and were based on either Sagas or Rímur, is conclusively established by the opening lines of many of the ballads themselves, notably that of the Olufu Ríma:

("This story is come from Iceland, written in a book so broad.")

And Tröllini í Hornalandum:

("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 notices³⁰ 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:

and Rísin í Holmgarð also begins:

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 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 ballads³¹ 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.

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 saying³² 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 realises in all these ballads the truth of Sidgwick's epigram³³: "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 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 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 fate³⁴." 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 'partakers³⁵.'"

Footnote 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.

Footnote 2: Færoa 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 Jörgen Blochs Føroyjakvæði og færøske ordbog, in Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi (Lund, 1890), p. 249.

Footnote 7: Sv. Grundtvig, Færøernes Litteratur og Sprog, in Aarbøg 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. 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.

Footnote 10: Antiq. Tidsk., 1846-1848, pp. 258-267.

Footnote 11: 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.

Footnote 12: It is also occasionally danced in Andefjord, but only very rarely nowadays (cf. H. Thuren, Dansen paa Færøerne, 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 Jón Sigurðsson, Islenzk Fornkvæði, 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 Sörla Tháttr, 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 Kvæði, and less frequently Ríma.

Footnote 27: 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, 11, 1900.

Footnote28: Axel Olrik, Introduction to Danske Folkeviser í 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.