“The other, who was not so well read in the Bible as he ought to be—so much of his time was taken up in farming and such like unaandelig (un-spiritual) occupations—was not able to confute this argument. Indeed, the tuss-priest beat the Lutheran priest hollow in every argument, till at last they parted, and the latter was never known again to express a wish to have any further controversy with so subtle an antagonist.”
CHAPTER X.
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,