Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was made.
THE GOLD HORNS
translated by
GEORGE BORROW
from the Danish of
ADAM GOTTLOB OEHLENSCHLÄGER
Edited
with an Introduction by
EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.
London:
printed for private circulation
1913
Copyright in the United States of America
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for Clement Shorter.
INTRODUCTION
Early in the present year Mr. Thos. J. Wise discovered among the miscellaneous MSS. of Borrow a fragment which proved to be part of a version of Oehlenschläger’s Gold Horns. His attention being drawn to the fact, hitherto unknown, that Borrow had translated this famous poem, he sought for, and presently found, a complete MS. of the poem, and from this copy the present text has been printed. The paper on which it is written is watermarked 1824, and it is probable that the version was composed in 1826. The hand-writing coincides with that of several of the pieces included in the Romantic Ballads of that year, and there can be little doubt that Borrow intended The Gold Horns for that volume, and rejected it at last. He was conscious, perhaps, that his hand had lacked the
skill needful to reproduce a lyric the melody of which would have taxed the powers of Coleridge or of Shelley. Nevertheless, his attempt seems worthy of preservation.