The main building contained the principal living-rooms, and was adorned with carved beams projecting from the gables—which beams, in process of time, were replaced by weather-vanes. Access both to ground-floor and upper storey (højeloft) was obtained by means of an outside gallery-staircase (svalegang, højloftssvale), where the traveller was wont to hang up his cloak (axler sit Skind) ere he entered the hall.
Refuge from attack was to be found in another building, the Stone-hall (stenstue)—or, where this was lacking, in the nearest church tower. (The term “stenstue” is occasionally applied to the main building, should it happen to be built of stone, but this is exceptional.)
“A house have I walled round with stone
That stands my garth within;
I wot when I take refuge there
I fear not a hundred men!”
Another most important building was the Maiden’s Bower, richly adorned, and “locked right well” lest it be “broken” by over-importunate suitors. Those fathers were censured as “inexperienced” who built it in too remote a spot.
A few Ballads speak of castles with dungeons and fortified gates, but these were few and far between.
Towards the close of the Middle Ages manners underwent a change; antique simplicity was corrupted. These unpretentious knights were swamped by the rise of a more powerful nobility, who united their estates through intermarriages, and followed the fashions of the court. The round dance was driven from the castle to the farmhouse. Persons of quality, however, retained a certain amount of interest in the old Ballads; and to this interest the fact is owing that Ballads in Denmark were earlier written down than those of any other European country. The young lady of the sixteenth century was wont to keep an album, wherein verses were inscribed by her friends; and, amid love-complaints, compliments, moral emblems, and so forth, the old national folk-poems found their place. From these albums were gathered the first collections of Ballads. Every lady’s bower had its own collection—and the singing of the Ballads during the long winter evenings led to much disastrous dilution of the original texts.