Scandinavian origin of Old English and Border ballads--Nursery
rhymes--A sensible reason for saying “No”--Parish
books--Osmund’s new boots--A St. Dunstan story--The
short and simple annals of a Norwegian pastor--Peasant
talk--Riddles--Traditional melodies--A story for William
Allingham’s muse--The Tuss people receive notice to quit--The
copper horse--Heirlooms--Stories in wood-carving--Morals and
match-making.
It is well known that some of the old English and Border ballads,
_e.g._, “King Henrie,” “Kempion,” “the Douglas Tragedy,” the “Dæmon
Lover,” are, more or less Scandinavian in their origin. In the same
way, “Jack the Giant Killer,” and “Thomas Thumb,” derive many of their
features from the Northern Pantheon.
Mr. Halliwell, in his _Nursery Rhymes of England_, and _Popular
Rhymes_, quotes some Swedish facsimiles of our rhymes of this class,
and states, further, on the authority of Mr. Stephens, that the
English infants of the nineteenth century “have not deserted the
rhymes chanted so many ages since by their mothers in the North.”[18]
It struck me, therefore, that in this store-house of antiquities,
Sætersdal, I might be able to pick up some information corroborative
of the above hypothesis. It was some time, however, before I could
make Solomon understand what I meant by nursery rhymes. At last he hit
upon my meaning, and I discovered that the word here for a lullaby or
jingle, is “börne-süd.” Elsewhere, it is called Tull, or Lull-börn,
whence our Lullaby.
“What’s the use of such things?” said Solomon; “they are pure nonsense.”
But, on my entreaty, he and others recited a few, in a sort of simple
chant. The reader acquainted with that species of literature in England
will be able to trace some resemblance between it and the following
specimens, which have been in vogue in this out-of-the-way valley
several hundred years. The oldest people in it have inherited the same
from their forefathers, and they are in the old dialect, which is, in
a great measure, the old Norse. While what is very remarkable, like as
is the case with us and our nursery rhymes, the people in many cases
recited to me what appeared sheer nonsense, the meaning of which they
were themselves unable to explain.
Börn lig i brondo,
Brondo sig i haando;
Kasler i krogje,
Kiernet i kove,
Hesten mi i heller fast,
Jeita te mi i scaare fast,
Saa mi spil langst noro Heio.
Bairn it lies a burning,
Burning itself in the hands;
Kettle is on the crook,
The churn is in a splutter,
My horse is fast on the rocks,
My goat is fast on the screes,
My sheep play along the northern heights.
Here is another, which would remind us of a passage in “The Midsummer
Night’s Dream,” only that the squirrel is now reaper instead of
coach-maker:--
Ekorne staa paa vaadden o’ slo
Höre dei kaar dei snöre;
Skjere laeste, kraaken dro,
O, roisekattan han kjore.
The squirrels they stand on the meadow and mow,
Hear how they bustle the vermin;
The magpie it loads, and who draws but the crow,
And the waggoner, it is the ermine.
A similar one:--
Reven sitte i lien,
Hore börne grin,
Kom börne mine, o gaer heim mi ma,
Saa skal wi gama sja.
Han traeske, hun maale,
Kiessling knudde, kjette bake,
Muse rödde mi rumpe si paa leiven.
The fox, the fox, she sits on the lea,
Hears her bairns a-crying:
Come, bairns mine, and go home with me,
What games you shall then be seeing.
The fox he thrashed, the vixen she ground;
The kitten kneads, the cat she bakes,
The mouse with his tail he sprinkles the cakes.[19]
Another:--
So ro ti krabbe skjar,
Kaar mange fiske har du der?
En o’ ei fiörde,
Laxen den store;
En ti far, en ti mor,
En ti den som fisker dror.
Sow row to the crab-skerrys,[20]
How many fishes have you there?
One, two, three, four,
The salmon, the stour.
One for father, for mother one;
One for him the net who drew.
Now and then a different course of treatment is proposed for the
fractious baby, as in the following:--
Bis, Bis, Beijo,
Börn will ikke teio,
Tak laeggen,
Slo mod vaeggen,
So vil börne teio.
Bis, Bis, Beijo,
Baby won’t be still, O,
By the leg take it,
’Gainst the wall whack it,
So will baby hush, O.
This reminds me of another:--
Klappe, Klappe, söde,
Büxerne skulle vi böte,
Böte de med kjetteskind,
Saa alle klorene vend te ind,
I rumpen paa min söde.
Clappa, Clappa, darlin’,
Breeches they want patchin’,
Patch them with a nice cat-skin,
All the claws turned outside in,
To tickle my little darlin’.
It being now noon (noni), or Solomon’s meal-time, he left me, promising
to give me a call in the evening.
“Yes, and you must take a glass of finkel with me; it will refresh your
mind as well as body.”
“Not a drop, thank you. If I begin, I can’t stop.”
“That’s the way with these bonders,” observed the Lehnsman to me, when
we were alone; “even the most intelligent of them, if they once get
hold of the liquor, go on drinking till they are furiously drunk.”
This then is pre-eminently the country for Father Mathews!
“By-the-bye,” said the Lehnsman, “our parson has left us, and his
successor is not yet arrived; but I think I can get the keys from
the clerk, and we will go to the vicarage, and look at the kald-bog
(call-book), a sort of record of all the notable things that have ever
happened at the kald (living).”
Presently we found ourselves seated in the priest’s chamber, with the
said book before us.
The following curious reminiscence of the second priest after the
Reformation is interesting:--
“One Sunday, when the priest was just going up into the pulpit
(praeke-stol), in strode the Lehnsman Wund (or ond = bad, violent),
Osmund Berge. He had on a pair of new boots, which creaked a good
deal, much to the scandal of the congregation, who looked upon this
sort of foot-covering as an abomination; shoes being the only wear of
the valley. The priest, who had a private feud with Osmund, foolishly
determined to take the opportunity of telling him a little bit of his
mind, and spoke out strongly on the impropriety of his coming in so
late, and with creaking boots, forsooth. Bad Osmund sat down, gulping
in his wrath, but when the sermon was ended, he waited at the door
till the priest came out of church, and in revenge struck him with his
knife, _after the custom of those days_. The priest fell dead, and the
congregation, in great wrath at the death of their pastor, set upon
the murderer, stoned him to death a few steps from the church, and
buried him where he fell. Until a few years ago, a cairn of stones, the
very implements, perhaps, of his lapidation, marked the spot of his
interment. After this tragical occurrence, the parish was without a
clergyman for three years; till at last another pastor was introduced
by a rich man of those parts, on the promise of the parishioners that
he should be protected from harm.”
I found, in the same book, a curious notice of one Erik Leganger,
another clergyman. When he came to the parish, not a person in it could
read or write. By his unremitting endeavours he wrought a great change
in this respect, and the people progressed in wisdom and knowledge.
This drew upon him the animosity of the Father of Evil himself. On one
occasion, when the priest was sledging to his other church, the foul
fiend met him in the way; a dire contest ensued, which ended in the
man of God overpowering his adversary, whom he treated like the witch
Sycorax did Ariel, confining him “into a cloven pine.”
A later annotator on this notable entry says, the only way of
explaining this affair is by the fact that the priest, although a good
man, had a screw loose in his head (skrue los i Hovedet). But this
Judæus Apella ought to have remembered the case of Doctor Luther, not
to mention Saint Dunstan.
The good Lehnsman, who entered with great enthusiasm into my desire for
information on all subjects, now commenced reading an entry made by a
former priest, with whom he had been acquainted, of his daily going
out and coming in during the period it had pleased God to set him over
that parish, with notices of his previous history. His father had been
drowned while he was a child, and his widowed mother was left with
three children, whom she brought up with great difficulty, owing to
her narrow means. Being put to school, he attracted the notice of the
master, who encouraged him to persevere in his studies. Finally, by the
assistance of friends, he got to the University, earning money for the
purpose by acting as tutor in private families during the vacations.
At last he passed his theological examination, but only as “baud
illaudabilis;” the reason for which meagre commendation he attributes
to his time being so taken up with private tuition. At the practical
examination he came out “laudabilis,” so that he had retrieved his
position. He then mentions how that he was married to the betrothed
of his boyhood and became a curate; till at length he was promoted to
this place, which he had now left for better preferment, expressing the
hope, in his own hand-writing, “that he had worked among his people not
without profit. Amen.”
At this moment, the good Lehnsman--whether it was that the heat or his
fatigue in my behalf was too much for him, or whether it was that he
was overcome by the simple and feeling record of his former pastor’s
early struggles--turned pale, and became deadly sick. Eventually he
recovered, and, in his politeness, sat down to dinner with me in his
own house.
In the evening I took my fly-rod, and went down to the river with a
retinue of forty rustics at my heels. The flies, however, having caught
hold of one boy’s cap, nearly breaking my rod, the crowd were alarmed
for their eyes, and kept a respectful distance, while I pulled out a
few trout; an exploit which drew from them many expressions of by no
means mute wonder.
After this I sat down on a stone, and had a chat with these fellows.
They had evidently got over the feeling so common among the peasantry
of being afraid at being laughed at by the stranger and by each other.
Many of them blurted out something. Riddles (Gaator or Gaade, allied to
our word “guess,”) were all the go. These are a very ancient national
pastime. They were, however, of no great merit. Here are specimens:--
Rund som en egg,
Länger end kirke-vægg.
Round as an egg,
Longer than a church-wall.
_Answer._ A roll of thread.
Rund som solen, svart som jorde.
Round as the sun, swart as the earth.
[_i.e._, the large round iron on which girdle-cake is baked.]
Hvad er det som go rund o giore eg?
What is that which goes round o’ gars eggs?
_Answer._ A grindstone. A _double entendre_ is contained in the word
egg; which means either “edge,” or “egg.”
I know a wonderful tree,
The roots stand up and the top is below,
It grows in winter and lessens in summer.
_Answer._ A glacier.
Four gang, four hang,
Two show the way, two point to the sky,
And one it dangles after.
_Answer._ Cow with her legs, teats, eyes, horns, and tail.
What is that as high as the highest tree,
But the sun never shines on it?
_Answer._ The pith.
What goes from the fell to the shore
And does not move?
_Answer._ A fence.
These country-people are not deficient in proverbs--_e.g._,
Another man’s steed
Has always speed.
Much of what they said was spoken in an outlandish dialect, and what
made it worse, when I asked for an explanation, they all cried out
together, like the boys in a Government school in India. Indeed, when
they were once fairly afloat it was difficult to curb the general
excitement.
Moe, a Norwegian writer, who has penetrated into many of the
out-of-the-way valleys of this part of the country and Thelemarken,
states that the peasants are provided with a large budget of
traditional melodies; but more than this, these genuine and
only representatives of the ancient “smoothers and polishers of
language” (scalds), not only use the very strophe of those ancient
improvisatores, but have also a knack of improvising songs on the spur
of the moment, or, at all events, of grafting bits of local colouring
into old catches.
The peasants around tipped me one or two of these staves. When the
company are all assembled, one sings a verse, and challenging another
to contend with him in song, another answers, and, after a few
alternate verses, the two voices chime in together. What I heard was
not extempore, but traditional in the valley.
One young fellow commenced a stave which seemed to be a great
favourite, for directly he began it, the others said, “To be sure, we
all know that; sing it, Thorkil.”
In the evening, true to his promise, old Solomon appeared. He had
called to mind a tale that would perhaps please me.
“There was once on a time a shooter looking for fowl on the heights
(heio) above Sætersdal. Well, on he went, doing nothing but looking
up into the tree-tops for the fowl, when, all of a sudden, he found
himself in a house he had never seen before. There were large chambers
all round, and long corridors, and so many doors he could not number
them. He went seeking about all over till he was tired. Folk he could
see none, nor could he find his way out. At last he came to one chamber
where he thought he could hear people, so he opened the door and looked
in; and there sat a lassie alone (eisemo); so he spoke to her, and
asked who lived there. So she answered they were Tuss folk, and that
the house was so placed that nobody could see it till they got into
it, and then one could not get out again. ‘That’s the way it went
with me,’ said she, mournfully; ‘I have been here a long time now, but
don’t think I shall ever get out again.’ The shooter on this got very
frightened, and asked her if she could not tell him some way of escape.
‘Well,’ answered the girl, ‘I’ll tell you how you can do it, but you
must first promise me to come back to the gaard and take me away.’ This
he promised at once to do without fail. ‘Now, then, follow me, and
open the door I point out. They are sitting at the board and eating
(aa eta), and he who sits at the top is the king, and he’s bigger and
brawer than all the others, so that you’ll know him directly. You must
take your rifle, and aim at the king--only aim, you mustn’t shoot.
They’ll be in such a fright they’ll drive you out directly you heave
up the gun; so you’ll be all safe, and then you must think of me. You
must come here next Thursday evening[21] as ever is, and the next, and
the third; and then I’ll follow you home--of that you may be certain.’
So she went and showed him the door, and he opened it and went in, and
saw them all eating and drinking, and he up with his gun and pointed
it at the one at the top of the table. Up they all jumped in alarm; he
sprung out, they after him, and so he got clean out and safe home. On
the first Thursday evening away he went to the Fell, and the second,
and talked each time with the girl; but the third Thursday, on which
all depended, he didn’t come. I don’t know why it was he did not keep
his promise. Perhaps he thought if he took her home he should have to
marry her. Anyhow it was base ingratitude. Some three or four years
after the shooter was on the heights again, when he heard a girl’s
voice greet (gret), and lament that she was so dowie (dauv) and lonely,
and could not get away to her home. He knew the voice at once--it was
the girl he had deserted. He looked round and round, and about on all
sides, but could see nothing but rocks and trees, and so nothing could
be done for the poor lassie.”
“Now I think of it,” continued Solomon, “there is a tuss story I’ve
heard about this Rigegaard where you are stopping.”
“Delightful!” thought I; “I never did yet sleep in a haunted house--it
will be a capital adventure for the journal.”
“It’s a long time ago since, though. The ‘hill-folks’ used to come
and take up their quarters here at Yule. It was every Yule the same;
they never missed. They did keep it up, I believe you, in grand style,
eating, and drinking, and clattering till they made the old house ring
again. At last, Arne--he lived here in those days--gave the underground
people notice to quit; he would not put up with it any longer. So off
they went. In the hurry of departure they left some of their chattels,
and, among others, a little copper horse, which Arne put out of sight,
though he had no idea what it was used for. Next day, a Troll came down
from the hill above yonder, into which the whole pack had retired for
the present, and claimed the property. Arne, however, had taken a fancy
to the horse, and would not give it up. They might have that little
drinking-beaker of strange workmanship, but the copper horse he was
determined to keep. ‘Well,’ said the Troll, ‘keep it then; but, mind
this, never you part with it. If ever you do, this house will never be
free from poverty and bad luck to the end of the present race.’[22]
‘Good!’ replied Arne, ‘I’ll take care of that, and my son will keep the
horse after me, and hand it down as an heir-loom.’
“After this, the house went on prosperously, and no more was heard of
the Trolls. Many years after, when Arne and his son were dead, the
grandson parted with the horse. He had heard of the story, but he did
not care; he did not want such trash--not he. After this, nothing went
well with him. Poverty overtook him, and the family fell into the
utmost distress.”
“But,” interposed I, “the people seem very well-to-do. I see no
symptoms of poverty. The woman is a filthy creature, and that towel is
disgusting [all travellers in Norway, mind and take a towel with you],
and the food she gives me is uneatable; but I hear they are rich.”
“Yes,” said Solomon, “but this is quite another branch of the family.
The other one died quite out, and then the destiny altered. The present
people have risen again in the world.”
Talking of heirlooms, there is no copper horse now, of course, but
there are several quaint things about the gaard, mementos of ancient
days. Among the rest were two curious old hand-axes, used, as
above-mentioned, by the Norwegians as walking sticks, when not applied
to more desperate service, the iron being then used as a handle. The
door-jambs of an out-house, moreover, are of singularly beautiful
carving. These are a couple of feet in width, and formerly adorned
the entrance to the old church of Hyllenstad, and give an idea of the
great taste displayed by these people in ecclesiastical ornament in the
Roman Catholic days. A tale is told here in wood, which I could not
make out. It is most likely connected with the building of the church.
Sundry figures appear with bellows and hammers, and the implements
of the carpenter. But these are afterwards exchanged for weapons of a
more deadly nature. A man with a sword drives it right through another,
while on the corresponding jamb a gentleman is seen in hot contest with
a dragon, whose tail is artfully mingled with the arabesques around.
All these figures are carved in bold relief. The work was no doubt by
Norwegian artists, for the interlacing foliage is in that peculiarly
graceful and broad style (mentioned by Mallet and Pontoppidan), which
always seems to have been at home in this country. These beautiful
panels, together with the slender pillars joined to them, sold at the
auction of the old materials for one dollar!
So little has this valley been modernized, that I find in almost every
house specimens of the Primstav, or old Runic calendar, handed down
from father to son for centuries. “It is the same with those tales you
have heard,” said the Lehnsman; “the oldest people in the valley got
them from the oldest people before them, though not in writing, but by
oral tradition.”
“And what is the state of morals up here?”
“The Nattefrieri is very much in vogue, but the evil consequences are
not so great as may be imagined.”
I must own that the revelations of the Lehnsman stripped those
people, in my eyes, of a good deal of the romance with which their
literary tastes had invested them. Nor was my idea of the artless and
unsophisticated simplicity of these rustic Mirandas enhanced, when I
was told that match-making was not uncommon among the seniors, and the
juniors consented to be thus bought and sold. Hear this, ye manœuvring
mammas!
“With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.”
Yes! marriage here, as among the grand folks elsewhere, turns upon a
question of lots of money--a handsome establishment. Perhaps, too,
the jilts of refined and polished society will rejoice, to hear that
they are kept in countenance by the doings in Sætersdal. It sometimes,
though rarely, happens that a girl is engaged to a young fellow, who
means truly by her, the wedding guests are bidden, and she--bolts with
another man.