“Deformed with breakers then the ocean grew,
The water spirted in the ship’s sides through;
Perched on the mast the wild Death Raven yells,
Whilst deep the vessel downward he impels.”“The billows clad with foam he tames with ease,
And at his glance the savage tempests cease.”“Above her head its boughs the aspen spread,
Like her it quaked, like her cold sweat it shed.”
This ballad is a translation from Œhlenschlaeger, and produces an eerie effect of magic forces acting in the natural world—the Death Raven as the spirit of Evil bargaining with its victim and wreaking hideous woe and bloody tragedy till it is finally overcome by the vengeance of a pure maiden who calls to her aid the supernal powers against the infernal. But Borrow is in literal difficulties all the time, and the story hitches and tears on the irregularities and ugly angles of his verse. In the ballad of “Aager and Eliza” (from the old Danish collection of Heroic Romances edited by Vegel in 1591), it is hard to choose between the banalities of his two versions:
Original.
“Have ye heard of the bold Sir Aager,
How he rode to yonder isle?
There he saw the sweet Eliza
Who upon him deigned to smile.”
Revision.
“’Twas the valiant knight, Sir Aager,
How he to the island hied.
There he wedded . . . [334] Else,
She of maidens was the pride.”
The best thing in the book is the ballad of “Swayne [or Svend] Vonved,” of which we have heard a good deal from Borrow, Leland, and others. This is also from Vegel’s collection. Borrow quotes as a preface to it Grimm’s account of the legend. Svend Vonved was a terrible fellow, minstrel and warrior, sent out to avenge the death of his father, and the poem relates his desperate deeds of valour and blood, his victories over “knights of pride,” his short way with the female magicians, and his last characteristic action—the destruction of the harp on which he had twanged accompaniment to his songs, so that “no sweet sound shall in future soothe his wild humour.” One manuscript alteration only in this ballad is of interest; it occurs in the episode of the fight with the Brute Carle:
Original.
“They fought for a day, they fought for two,
And so on the third they were fain to do;
But, ere the fourth day reached the night,
The Brute Carle fell, and was slain outright—
Look out, look out, Svend Vonved!”
Revision.