lent its first line as Burden to a Ballad of King Didrik:
“King Didrik sits in Brattingsborg,
And far and wide looks he:
Oh, none know I in all the world
Who may my equal be!
The King he rules the castle.”
Every Ballad, in time, came to have its own introductory stanza, calculated to arouse the hearer’s attention and attune it to the story which followed—had also its own Burden, which echoed the principal theme. But many have survived shorn of both adjuncts: and a few have borrowed Burdens, sometimes far from appropriate.
The Danish Ballads, like all others, deal with love, warfare, and witchcraft. Like all others, they are pagan at heart. Some of their themes are peculiar to Denmark, some common to all Europe. The similarity, for instance, between certain Danish and Scottish Ballads suggests that the one country borrowed them directly from the other. The editors of the C.P.B. (where a list may be found) give the lead in the matter to Scotland; but other authorities are of a different opinion. Generally speaking, it is acknowledged that Denmark’s literary output was influenced far less by Britain than by France and the other Latin countries.
But, be the themes what they may, the Danish Ballads inform them with their own characteristic spirit—the glamour and grimness of the North. The battle-scenes show us glimpses of Bersark fury, and weapons with demon souls. The Dark Powers in the Ballads of magic are those born of long winter nights and misty waters. Here and there we meet with the gods of Valhalla, and the heroes sung in Old Norse Lays. Woman, in the love-ballads, is no Troubadour’s divinity, but a human helpmeet of warriors—brave, shrewd, strong-minded, occasionally strong-armed to boot. As for humour, while we have rollicking man-at-arms fun of the “Kinmont Willie” type, and some dry, pawky, Scots-like wit, a few Ballads charm us with such a delicate, wistful archness as flowers again in Andersen’s fairy-tales. There are, indeed, a number of Satirical Ballads, whose characters—gaffer and gammer, wandering fiddler, Bishop’s Daughter, and Mighty Maid—burlesque the heroes and heroines of the Ballads of chivalry. These, however, from the poetical standpoint, are of little or no significance.
The social conditions depicted in these Ballads are, in many respects, peculiar to Scandinavia. The atmosphere is distinctly democratic. Denmark had no school of court-poetry, no minstrel-class corresponding to the Troubadours and Minnesingers. Her kings made foreign marriages, and imported foreign talent; no petty courts, princely or ducal, existed to serve as centres of culture.[1] The native singers found patrons among the native gentry, or lesser nobility—the Knights, whose position in many respects was that of the old-time English country squire. With the tastes, interests, and outlook of this class the Ballads as a whole are chiefly concerned.