It was plain that Katrina's reminiscences of her stolen childish readings of the Frithiof's Saga were incorrect as well as fragmentary, but her eager enthusiasm over it was delicious. Her face kindled as she repeated, "Oh, it is our best story in all Norway!" and when I told her that the next day she should go to a circulating library and get a copy of the book and read it to me, her eyes actually flashed with pleasure.
Early the next morning she set off. A nondescript roving commission she bore: "A copy of the Frithiof's Saga in Norwegian, [how guiltily I feared she might stumble upon it in an English translation!] and anything in the way of fruit or vegetables." These were her instructions. It was an hour before she came back, flushed with victory, sure of her success and of my satisfaction. She burst into the room, brandishing in one hand two turnips and a carrot; in the other she hugged up in front of her a newspaper, bursting and red-stained, full of fresh raspberries; under her left arm, held very tight, a little old copy of the Frithiof's Saga. Breathless, she dropped the raspberries down, newspaper and all, in a rolling pile on the table, exclaiming, "I tink I shall not get tese home, after I get te oders in my oder hand! Are tese what you like?" holding the turnips and carrot close up to my face. "I vas asking for oranges," she continued, "but it is one month ago since they leaved Christiania."
"What!" I exclaimed.
"One mont ago since dey were to see in Christiania," she repeated impatiently. "It is not mont since I vas eating dem in Bergen. I tought in a great place like Christiania dere would be more tings as in Bergen; but it is all shtories, you see."
How well I came to know the look of that little ragged old copy of the grand Saga, and of Katrina's face, as she bent puzzling over it, every now and then bursting out with some ejaculated bit of translation, beginning always with, "Vell, you see!" I kept her hard at work at it, reading it to me, while I lingered over my lonely breakfasts and dinners, or while we sat under fragrant fir-trees on country hills. Wherever we went, the little old book and Katrina's Norwegian and English Dictionary, older still, went with us.
Her English always incalculably wrong and right, in startling alternations, became a thousand times droller when she set herself to deliberate renderings of the lines of the Saga. She went often, in one bound, in a single stanza, from the extreme of nonsense to the climax of poetical beauty of phrase; her pronunciation, always as unexpected and irregular as her construction of phrases, grew less and less correct, as she grew excited and absorbed in the tale. The troublesome th sound, which in ordinary conversation she managed to enunciate in perhaps one time out of ten, disappeared entirely from her poetry; and in place of it, came the most refreshing t's and d's. The worse her pronunciation and the more broken her English, the better I liked it, and the more poetical was the translation. Many men have tried their hand at translation of the Frithiof's Saga, but I have read none which gave me so much pleasure as I had from hearing Katrina's; neither do I believe that any poet has studied and rewritten it, however cultured he might be, with more enthusiasm and delight than this Norwegian girl of the people, to whom many of the mythological allusions were as unintelligible as if they had been written in Sanskrit. She had a convenient way of disposing of those when she came to such as she did not understand: "Dat's some o' dem old gods, you see,—dem gods vat dey used to worship." It was evident from many of Katrina's terms of expression, and from her peculiar delight in the most poetical lines and thoughts in the Saga, that she herself was of a highly poetical temperament. I was more and more impressed by this, and began at last to marvel at the fineness of her appreciations. But I was not prepared for her turning the tables suddenly upon me, as she did one day, after I had helped her to a few phrases in a stanza over which she had come to a halt in difficulties.
"As sure 's I'm aliv," she exclaimed, "I believe you're a poet your own self, too!" While I was considering what reply to make to this charge, she went on: "Dat's what tey call me in my own country. I can make songs. I make a many: all te birtdays and all te extra days in our family, all come to me and say, 'Now, Katrina, you has to make song.' Dey tink I can make song in one minute for all! [What a kinship is there, all the world over, in some sorts of misery!] Ven I've went to America, I made a nice song," she added. "I vould like you to see."
"Indeed, I would like very much to see it, Katrina," I replied. "Have you it here?"
"I got it in my head, here," she said, laughing, tapping her broad forehead. "I keeps it in my head."
But it was a long time before I could persuade her to give it to me. She persisted in saying that she could not translate it.