Plays by August Strindberg, Fourth Series

by August Strindberg

No matter from where the inspiration of their utterances may come, the Dalecarlians are apt to express themselves picturesquely, and this inclination to lapse into rhyme and alliteration is noticeable—sometimes in quoting old saws dating back to heathen times and sometimes in improvising. Strindberg has used this tendency in both ways. When the old grandfather says to the bride that she is "comely as he is homely," he is merely repeating a phrase dear to the heart of a people strongly bound up in traditions. When, on the other hand, he lets the fisherman in the last scene answer, "Krummedikke's castle and Krummedikke's lake, Krummedikke's church, and soon it will break," he is probably illustrating the tendency toward roughly rhymed improvisations.

A typical feature of Dalecarlian life has always been the sending of the cattle to upland pastures during the summer months in care of young men and women, who, in communication among themselves as well as with the people at the home farm, have availed themselves of the ancient alpenhorn, or lur, made out of wood and birch bark, as well as of the horn made out of the natural horn of the ox. And instinctively they have realised that melodious utterance carries farther than ordinary speech, and so they have come to sing or hum their communications. Furthermore, they have grown accustomed to use some song already familiar to the listener rather than what they might improvise, and have thus learned to pass on simple pieces of news, or a mere mood, perhaps, in what might be called a code.

Throughout Sweden such songs and snatches and tunes, made up in olden days by some more than usually audacious village genius, survived until far into the past century, and in Dalecarlia and a few neighbouring provinces they have survived to the present day in actual use. With the flaring up of a true historical interest that followed the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century came a recognition of the beauty and value of those old songs and tunes. The first man in Sweden to make a systematic collection of them was Richard Dybeck, who, during the years 1842-50 published a periodical for lovers of the old which he called Runa—"The Rune." In 1846 the same man published a separate collection of the folk-material just referred to under the name of Svenska Vallvisor och Hornlåtar—"Swedish Herd-Songs and Horn-Melodies."

Both this little volume and the issues of "The Rune" must have come under the attention of Strindberg at an early period, and to both he remained strongly attached throughout life. In the pages of those two Dybeck publications he found almost everything that makes "The Bridal Crown" what it is—a remarkable picture of the external life and internal spirit of the Dalecarlian people. The musical duet between Kersti and Mats in the first scene is the basis of the whole play. It is found in Dybeck's work just as Strindberg has used it—both the music and the words. The legend has it that a young man and a young woman, herding cattle in adjoining pastures, fell in love with each other. The girl bore a child, which they nursed together as they best could, having tried to legitimise it by going through a simple wedding ceremony of their own improvisation. Once, when the girl could not get back to the pasture at night, she used her alpenhorn to communicate that fact to her lover and ask him to look after the baby. This legend is found all over Sweden in very slightly modified form.

To the old legend Strindberg has added the still more ancient Montecchi and Capuletti theme from "Romeo and Juliet," making the two lovers the offspring of mutually jealous and hostile families, and thereby giving the play the tragical twist which his mood required. How he was turned in this direction I don't know, but his work on the historical play, "Gustavus Vasa"—it was written in 1899, and "The Bridal Crown" seems to have been completed in the winter of 1900-1—had taken his mind to Dalecarlia, where its first act is laid. And the idea of a play built on Swedish folk-themes seems to have been long present in his mind.

For folk-colour as well as for local verisimilitude, he drew freely both on Dybeck and on other repositories of old Swedish lore and legend and superstition. One of the beauties of the play is that so many of the extranatural figures and elements introduced are common to the whole country. The Neck, or the Man of the Rapids, or the Brookman (Necken, Forskarlen, or Bäckamannen) exists in popular fancy wherever a peasant has put his plough into Swedish soil. He is a creature of the thousand rivers and brooks that beribbon the land from the arctic circle down to the fertile planes of Scania, and always he is associated with an unusual gift of music and with the fallen angel's longing for the lost Paradise. From Norrland to Scania is told the anecdote of the tot who heard the Neck sing the song used by Strindberg—"I am hoping, I am hoping that my Redeemer still liveth"—and who called out to him: "There is no Redeemer for you." On returning home, the child told his parents of what had happened and was ordered to go back with a less discouraging message to the wailing spirit of the waters.

The Midwife, half human, half extranatural, is another familiar figure, mostly called the Wood-Imp (Skogsrå). The queer snatches uttered by her from time to time are old Swedish riddles or "guess-rhymes," which Strindberg also found in Dybeck's work, and which he has employed very effectively as spells or incantations. That quaint dualistic revenant, which is called the Mewler as an apparition, and the Mocker as a bodiless voice, exists in the imagination of the people all over Sweden. It is a creation of the moral instinct, designed for the discouragement of poor maidens who have born a child "in hiding," as the old phrase puts it, and who may be tempted into ridding themselves of such a burden—a crime that has figured too frequently in the criminal annals of the country.

The word Myling, which I have had to translate as Mewler, is said to come from a verb meaning to kill, to choke, to bury, or to cover up. It is related to mylla, mould, however, and when we find the same term, mylingar, Mewlings, applied to the relatives of Kersti, this characterises them not as "murtherlings," as Strindberg's German translator would have it, but as "mouldings," as people delving in the soil. In the original text, the name applied both to the apparition of Kersti's dead baby and to her relatives is the same. I have thought this too confusing for English-speaking readers, and have made two terms to get the needed dearness and distinction.

It remains finally to say a word about the keystone to the whole dramatic conflict in the play—the desire of Kersti to wear a crown at her wedding—to be a "crown-bride," as the Swedish phrase and the name of the original text both have it. The chief ornaments of a Swedish bride have always been the crown, the wreath, and the veil—and so they are to this very day. The wreath is generally made out of myrtle. The crown is nowadays almost invariably made out of the same material. But it used to be of metal, richly ornamented, and kept ready for use in every country church throughout the land. It was another device meant to encourage morality, the convention being that only a chaste young woman could wear the crown at her wedding—only one "worthy" of it, as the old phrase had-it. To go to church without that ornament was, of course, a most humiliating confession, and tended to detract largely from the riotous joy of the festivity which the Swedish peasants have always placed above all others—the wedding. Originally the crown also served another purpose, however. It was, as I have already said, kept in the church and lent only with the sanction of the clergy. In other words, it was reserved for the bride whose relatives consented to have a church wedding at a time when the sacramental character of the ceremony had not yet become popularly recognised. For ages the Swedish wedding was wholly a secular ceremony based on the old custom of bride-barter, and it took the Catholic Church many centuries to turn it into a religious rite.

There are a few minor points that need some clearing up, too. The position of Kersti's father, the Soldier, must be a puzzle to non-Swedish readers. The presence of the picture of King Charles XV on the wall of the Soldier's cottage indicates that the action takes place in the eighteen-sixties, before the reorganisation of the Swedish army on the basis of universal conscription had been carried out. At that time each province had to furnish one or more regiments. The maintenance of this soldiery fell directly on the small landholders, and from two to ten of these formed a rote or "file" having to employ, equip, and maintain one soldier. Each soldier had a cottage and a small patch of soil furnished him by the men responsible for his up-keep. Under such circumstances the soldier would seem likely to fall into the position of a servant living under his masters, but that was not at all the case. The warlike qualities and traditions of the nation probably counteracted tendencies in that direction. Instead the soldier became one of the recognised honoratiores of his district, ranking next to the sexton and often filling the place of that functionary when the office was vacant.