Full brightly its four gold shoes, and thirty gold nails gleam, To his little foot page hastily thus then the youth did say, The first stroke on his harp of gold he struck so soft and clear, His second stroke on harp of gold it sounded all so sweet, "Methinks, young knight, thou playest now in much too hard a strain, "Yes, back again thou straight shalt get thy young bride rosy red, The variations of this fine ballad are not many, but we think the Danish versions on the whole superior to the others. In the Icelandic version (Gauta Kvaedi) music has a powerful influence, but only to the extent of restoring to the bridegroom the corpse of his spouse. In the Norse it is the father's curse which brings destruction to the bride: "Stolt Gudmand til festarmann du aldrig kan fa, For skal pa havsens botten rotne dit har." "Before ye win as bridegroom, proud Gudmand young and fair, As we are upon the subject of the harp's magic influence, we cannot find a more appropriate place for referring to the well-known ballad of the "Cruel Sisters," as it is termed in Scott's "Border Minstrelsy;" or the "Twa Sisters," as the ballad is named by Jamieson in his incomparably more perfect version. The ballad is well known by the refrain, "Binnorie o' Binnorie," and there is hardly one more beautiful and pathetic in all our Scottish collections. Perhaps no ballad has been so widely spread over the North as this. There are seven versions in Danish, six in Swedish, four in the Feroese dialect, three in the Norse, and two in the Icelandic; and in our own language we have five Scottish and three English versions. The argument of the ballad is probably known to all. Two sisters, the one beautiful, the other a sad contrast in every way, are courted by the same knight: There were twa sisters sate in a bower, Binnorie o' Binnorie; There came a knight to be their wooer By the bonny mill-dams o' Binnorie. He courted the eldest with glove and ring, The eldest sister invites the younger to walk down to the sea-shore to see their father's ships come in, and, while there, pushes her into the water. The drowning girl offers her jewels and her land, and finally to relinquish her lover, if her sister will save her life; but the jealous sister is obdurate, and the fair girl is drowned and carried to a mill-dam, where her body is taken out by the miller. A harper comes by, and makes a harp of her breast-bone and harp-strings of her yellow hair. Taking this instrument into the king's hall, he Placed his harp upon a stane, And straight it began to play alane, revealing the name of the murderer to the king and his court. Now, almost all the Scandinavian versions are as nearly as possible identical with the Scottish, and in some the alliteration is the same. But in one of the beautiful incidents they are all deficient. The Scottish versions all represent the harp as playing alone, not struck by human fingers, when set down in the king's hall.* The Scandinavian versions represent the harp as played by the harper who made it, and one of the Icelandic ballads makes the harper to be her lover. The incident of the mill-dam, too, is wanting in these more Northern ballads, and retributive justice overtakes the evil sister, who is burnt at the stake for her crime. The fine incident of the harp beginning to play alone is, however, not without its parallel in German and Polish legendary lore. Grimm has related a legend where a youth murders his brother in order to obtain the king's daughter, to whom his brother was betrothed. Many years after, a shepherd found a snow-white bone that belonged to the skeleton of the murdered man. He made with it a mouthpiece for his horn, and, when he blew upon it, it gave utterance to the following tones: "Ach du liebes Hirtelein, der bläst auf meinem Knöchelein, In a Polish legend given by Woycicki, there is a still nearer approach to the Northern legend. The eldest of three sisters, jealous that her lover should have turned his attentions to the youngest, murders the latter in the forest, and gives out that she has been destroyed by wolves. From the grave of the murdered one there sprouts a hazel-tree, from which a shepherd one day cuts a flute, but can get from the instrument no other tones but "Blase nur, du Hirt, Gott dir helfen wird, Die älteste hat mich todt geschlagen, die Jüngste that viel dagegen sagen." "Blow on thou herd, God will be thy help, The eldest sister slew me, the younger was against my death." And with this flute he came to the home of the sisters, at the moment when the murderess was celebrating her marriage with the victim's lover. The mother, and the father, and the other sister all try the flute, and it ever gives forth the same plaintive words. Then the father insists that the murderess herself shall try the instrument; and as soon as she puts it to her mouth, her cheeks are reddened with her victim's blood, and the flute repeats its tones, but with the addition of "God will avenge my death!" The murderess is torn to pieces by wild horses, and the lover marries the remaining sister. There is likewise an Esthonian legend of great beauty, and of nearly similar import. * In all the three Norse versions this incident is varied thus: "Dei slo den Horpa imot Golv, so staa der opp en Jombru bold." It may surprise some of our readers to learn that legends of the mines, and of the spirits that guard the precious metals, are comparatively rare on the northern side of the Baltic. Scandinavia presents us with very few, if any, of those precious legends that abound in Germany of the kobolds and fire-kings, the demon spirits that rule in the depths of the earth, meeting and terrifying the miner in the dark recesses he explores, or kindly conducting him to spots where rich veins of the precious metal reward his labours. At the time when these Scandinavian ballads were composed, mining was but in its infancy in that country. Still, among the Swedes, we meet with one or two exquisite old ballads of the mountain-king, whose dwelling is deep within the earth, and who, like his brethren of the sea and of the river, is not insensible to the charms of earthly maidens. The fine old Swedish ballad of the maid that was carried away by the mountain-king, contains so much of the true spirit of ballad poetry, and so much, too, in illustration of the popular belief, that we shall give it entire in a rude, though literal translation : [DEN BERG-TAGNA.] THE MAID CARRIED OFF TO THE MOUNTAINS. And now to early matin song the maiden would away, Rise up At the mountain door she gently tapped, right small her fingers are, And thus for eight long years i' the mountain dwelt she there, And when at length she came where her home was full in sight, "And where so long, so long a time, dear daughter hast thou been, "Nay, surely nought of evil against thee I deplore, "Out pass from forth the gate, nor glance thou once behind, Farewell my dearest father, farewell my tender mother,, And now they six times journey the gloomy mountain round, A seat her little daughter brings, with gold it rudely shone, 66 Oh, rest thee here, my mother, so sad and wobegone!" "Oh, straight bring out the mead-cups, with mead them quickly fill, The first drink that she took, from the mead-cup brimming o'er, It is difficult to understand the motive here why the mountain-king forbade her to speak of her sons, while he did not oblige her to conceal that she had borne him a daughter. Some old and now-forgotten Northern or Eastern superstition is hereby indicated. In another version of the ballad, also from the Swedish, the termination is less tragic, but more touching : The one child bore to her the brimming, well-filled horn, The first drink that she drank, from out that foaming horn, Both Heaven she forgetteth, and the earth where she was born. The next drink she drank of the mead in that horn, The next drink she drank of that bright flowing horn, Her sister forgat she, and eke her own brother, DENMARK AND GERMANY. Ir is the nature of man to seek for motives of events in occult causes not immediately manifest. Almost every political quidnunc prides himself on his powers of seeing farther through a millstone than his neighbour. The Holstein and Slesvig question, which has now merged into one of Germany against Denmark, has been a godsend to such a class of persons. The astute discussions, the erudite disquisitions, and the oracular verdicts that have been indulged in, amidst the perplexity of the facts themselves, would have been confusing, if it had not been for the amusement which some of these Sybilline leaves have afforded in their wayward flight. One of the last theories which we have seen broached is, that the three eagles are leagued together for the overthrow of freedom in the North and East of Europe. M. Bismarck is reported in the papers, which it cost so much wrangling to obtain in print, to have said that the provinces of Holstein and Slesvig, and the harbour of Keil itself, were not the real objects of attack to the confederate forces of Austria and Prussia. Denmark might have retained her German Duchies had it not been for the free and liberal spirit of her institutions. It was the contagion of Danish liberalism which Austria and Prussia were determined to arrest. This may be all very true in as far as Prussia and Austria are concerned, but is it also true with regard to the movement of the liberal party of Germany, which first brought about hostilities, and to anticipate which the two powers banded together? Most assuredly not; and if the said powers are leagued against the free institutions of Denmark, they are quite as much leagued against the faint-hearted liberalism of Germany. And wherefore faint-hearted? Because, although differing on the question of the results of the so-called "execution" put into force against Denmark, in and without the Duchies, both parties have one common object in view the absorption of the Danish monarchy-and in the presence of this great eventuality they are willing to succumb for a while longer to the sole action and dictation of the two powers. Their turn they think will come by-and-by. In the mean time Denmark is sacrificed. "The newly-arisen ambition of Germany," says M. Francis Aubert, in a manifesto in the shape of a pamphlet now before us, duly timbré for distribution in the provinces, and intended at once to enlighten the little informed, and to steer political opinion in a course ready fashioned for it, "her aspirations daily more ardent for power by unity, still more especially the vain dream of becoming a first-rate maritime power, of fleets, coasts, and harbours, that carry her away,-such are the real causes of the Dano-German conflict. The question of the Duchies is the question of the invasion and of the absorption of the whole Danish monarchy by Germany." It is sufficient, the writer declares, to examine into the pretensions successively brought forward by the Confederation during the last fifteen years to be satisfied as to this great fact. Austria and Prussia demand that an independent and equal position be granted to the different parts of the monarchy, more particularly as regards Holstein and Lauenburg, which under the Danish rule constitute at the same time part of the German Confederation; in all that concerns their own affairs, and that in what regards common affairs, these parts shall constitute an homogeneous whole, in which none shall be incorporated with or subordinate to the other. The acceptance of such propositions by Denmark would, it is manifest, be disastrous in the extreme. The tendency of the two Duchies being German, they would always side upon every question of encroachment with the confederates, and not with their sovereign. An insubordinate power, within another power, is a flagrant anomaly. Again, it has been proposed by Prussia and Austria that the Duchies should be represented at the Rigsdag of the Danes, and the Rigsraad of the Germans; not according to the population, but according to the principle of legitimate influence-a very latitudinarian expression, but by which is meant, that the representatives of Holstein and Lauenburg, with a population of 544,000, shall equal in number those of all Denmark put together, and with the recalcitrant population of Slesvig shall have a majority. The |