jectives, the same kind of terminations (Fallendungen), the same freedom of metre, even the same favourite tunes, the same romantic plants, beasts, and birds." Rejecting, then, the hypothesis of any extraordinary antiquity, we incline to acquiesce in the opinion that none of our own, or the Danish ballads, are older than the thirteenth, and few are older than the fifteenth century. Next to the problem of their date and origin comes, the, question of their authorship. Of course it is quite impossible even to conjecture who were the individual composers. But Dr. Prior, Oehlenschläger, N. M. Petersen, and other critics, are of opinion that their generic authorship can be determined. We are indebted, they say, for most of them to ladies. To justify this decision they adduce two arguments-1. The manuscripts in which they are preserved, and many of which are three hundred years old, are almost every one of them in female hand-writing, which alone might lead us to expect that females had composed them." 2. "The wives of these poems invariably give their husbands the best possible advice, and men who are pictured as fine characters follow their advice;" a complimentary implica-tion which, as gallantry was not a characteristic of the Scandinavian, it is supposed precludes the possibility of a more energetic derivation. 66 This reasoning, however, appears to us inconclusive. For, first, the superfluous leisure enjoyed by the high-born dames and damsels of the middle ages would naturally enough be employed in making transcripts of the popular lays sung by the minstrel to his harp in hall or bower; the productions probably of various romantic poets, whose appreciation of the superior moral grace which it is etiquette to consider the peculiar appanage of the beautiful sex, induced them, in a period of deadly and unreasoning masculine outrage, to attribute to many a fair and gentle lady, who was all their fancy painted her, an instinctive wisdom denied to her wilful and impetuous lord. In the second place, the old Danes, however deficient in the practice of gallantry, may have been at least partial recipients of its theory, glorifying women in the abstract as so many embodied ideals of goodness, while occasionally giving women in the concrete very rough usage; in short, behaving like fetish-adorers in other ages and countries who first worship. and then "wallop" their divinities. Such conduct seems by no means incompatible with the veneration which, no doubt, in common with their chivalrous ancestors, they entertained for the sybils, priestesses, and prophetesses of the supernatural foretime.. Nor is this domestic inconsistency without a parallel. Their Teutonic relations in Germany habitually ascribed to the women of their country a something holy and prophetic, duly honouring the advice, and regarding the responses of these interesting oracles; and yet in startling contrast with this submissive and reverential state of mind, visiting with shameful expulsion and flagellation, such of these Sybilline ladies, as in that preShakspearian age had practically justified the nomenclature of the sarcastic Hamlet, when that accomplished misogynist took to calling frailty names! There is however one consideration that gives some show of probability to the assertion, that many of these ballads were really written by women. For in the ethical evaluations with which they present us, not only wives but younger sons, are at an enormous premium, while elder sons no less than husbands are comparatively at a discount. From such an appreciation, it might be inferred, that these small revolutionary epics were composed by the natural enemies of big brothers, namely, the little ones. But an alternative hypothesis is equally admissible here. The frequent preference of mothers for the latest edition of their own fair image is, we understand, an acknowledged fact. A presump tion is thus afforded, that the favourite younger son and the unpopular elder brother of these poems, are really creations of the maternal mind, which magnifies the virtues of one child, because he had the grace to be born last, and exaggerates the vices of the other because he was wicked enough to be born first. But whether the arguments adduced to establish the claims of women to the original copyright of the majority of these poems be accepted as conclusive or not, the pretensions of the sterner sex to the authorship of some of them is perhaps little likely to be disputed. The following ballad, for instance, intended to celebrate woman's ready invention and persistent power of response under the trying fire of cross-examination, will scarcely be suspected of emanating from the female Muse : THE READY REPLY. "But sister dear,' a brother said, 'And who was then the handsome knight, My stable-boy and his horse were here.' 'Twas but my slippers lay below.' 'No cradle; be not rash to blame, You've seen perhaps my broidery frame ; And if you, brother, more will know, With answers I shall not be slow. When women fail to make reply, Then look to see the ocean dry.' The frail heroine of this ballad probably fared better than some of her delinquent sisters. For the rough northmen had evidently no sympathy with the sentimental licentiousness of the southern Courts of Love. These ferocious moralists made short work with interesting lovers. They burned their offending wives at the faggot, and hanged their paramours. In the case of unmarried persons, but possibly only when betrothal, regarded as the equivalent of marriage, rendered the offence tantamount to a violation of matrimonial fidelity, the parties were subjected to the same punishment as conjugal transgressors. Thus in one of the ballads in this collection, Sedselille informs Medelwold of her mother's determination to send her to the faggot, and him to the gallows. So in the ballad of Sir Buris and Christine, King Waldmar calls for five heavy scourges, with which he lashes his sister to death. Death, in fact, seems to have been the recognised punishment of women who loved deeply, but not well, in other parts of Europe besides Denmark. In a Swedish ballad, called "Pehr Wattenman,” a son puts his own mother on the fire; in a Scotch one, entitled "Lady Maisry," a brother his own sister, and in a Spanish romance a mother threatens her daughter with the stake if "maid she is no more." The penal code in those good old days was extremely savage. The rack and wheel were in constant requisition. Criminals were sometimes buried alive. Admitting that the lawlessness of the times required a severe and even appalling treatment, it can scarcely be doubted that the ferocity of the punishments tended to augment the brutality they were designed to diminish. But turning from this frightful feature of the age, let us try to constitute ourselves the interested "spectators of a moving panorama," to call up a picture, however rude and unfinished, of that Scandinavian past with which our own is not unremotely allied, for the blood of the old Norse sea kings beats with a prouder pulse in their English descendants. It will be pleasant to get a glimpse, through what in some sort are contemporary documents, of that rude barbaric life of the Northernmen; to watch them in their homes, to "look into the dry schedule of their household effects," and take an inventory of their furniture, jewellery, wardrobe, and other valuables; to notice how they were lodged, clothed, and fed; how they lived, suffered and rejoiced; to observe, in short, the moral and material heaven under which they sunned themselves. We will begin with a description of the Borg or Manorhouse of the Danish country gentleman. In the widest extension of the term the Borg consisted of various detached buildings, ranged in the Borgegaard, or court-yard, access to which was obtained through the Borgeled, or entrance gate. The Borg, in the restrictive sense of the word, stood in front; the apartments for the ladies and retainers at the side; the stables, kitchen, and Stenstue, or lying-in-room, in other parts of the yard. This yard was the play-ground of the pages, and the place of exercise of the troopers. Many a scuffle came off here; and many a scolding was given and taken. From it, the visitor, drawing up his scarlet cloak as he crossed, approached the door of the mansion. Here he was received sometimes by the master, cup in hand; sometimes by one of the ladies of the house; with the courteous preliminary offer of mead or wine. Usually the guest ascends the stairs (Höielofts bro') to the ladies' chamber (Höieloft) on the first floor. Below, it would seem, sat the master with his troopers, at the broad table in the banquet room. The sleeping arrangements of the family are not easily understood. Perhaps they varied with the rank or number of its members. Sometimes they all seem to have slept in one room; sometimes the chambers are described as separate. The bride's apartment, called the Bridal House, was undoubtedly a detached room. Some of the usages of the dormitory were very primitive. The servant lads slept in the same bedroom with the ladies of the family. in the ballad called "The Wake” we find a page "in his red arrayed" quietly conversing with the queen as she lies in bed! Nor was this all but with a simplicity worthy of the earliest days of paradise, highborn lady and simple swain reposed in unadorned beauty, yet with apparent innocence, in that seemingly dangerous proximity. This fashion, imported from Eden, appears at one time to have prevailed in all the most civilized parts of the West. Thus Thus Dr. Prior quotes a Spanish ballad which tells us how Rosaflorida was heard weeping by "a swain that in her chamber slept :" and introduces us, in a French Romance, to a most amusing old woman, whose undisguised astonishment passes into transcendent admiration, when she sees some fair maiden, on retiring to her couch, retain, in defiance of all precedent, that delicate garment which, borrowing the pretty euphemism of Leigh Hunt, we will designate "The Gentle Armour." From the mansion itself we pass to its external environments. Running round the house, and having a covering over it, might be seen a terrace rising a foot and a half from the ground. This was called the "Svale," and formed the general rendezvous of the family. In these ballads we read often of the Rosenlund, the scene of so many adventures. The Rosenlund is supposed by Professor Vedel Simonsen to be a small park . . . between the entrance gate and the house, and to have had its name from the rosebuds, the young ladies, who frequented it! This explanation, however, is scornfully rejected by Dr. Prior, who substitutes for the "little cockney park" of the learned professor, the greenwood of our own ballads,-a coppice of small trees and bushes, through which a horseman could ride, as distinguished from a dense forest of timber trees. Such a wood of rose he thinks a very likely place to meet an Elfin maiden in! Personal distinctions of rank seemed not to have been very definitely marked among the ancient Danes. The ballads indeed relate principally to the fortunes and adventures of persons of illustrious birth; but the systematic chivalry of the south was perhaps but imperfectly recognised by the honest, rough, unsentimental men of the north. Accordingly, Dr. Prior considers the knights, of whom we read in these old lays, to have been "many of them men of great wealth and local power, in whose courts youths of gentle lineage were probably educated and brought up; destined to enter afterwards their patrons' service as valets or pages." The duty of the page was to attend on the ladies night and day; to run errands, and collect news for them. The svend, or swain, appears to have been the personal attendant of a knight, holding, unlike the squire of the south, a lower rank in life than that of his master. The ung or young is supposed to indicate a youth of family, perfectly independent, but neither old nor rich enough to be a knight. The Herr probably denotes the possessor of a house and property. Its English representative in this translation of ancient ballads is merely "sir.' دو Coming now to the heroes and heroines of these old songs, we find the king dwelling in a castle, presiding over fort and tower, feasting amid his knights and swains, or leading his gallant ehampions armed, and sword in hand. On his head he wears a |