Full brightly its four gold shoes, and thirty gold nails gleam,
And quickly down the virgin falls, amid that rushing stream.

To his little foot page hastily thus then the youth did say,
"My gold harp bring me hither, and make thou no delay."

The first stroke on his harp of gold he struck so soft and clear,
That Necken on the water'sate, and smiled such notes to hear.

His second stroke on harp of gold it sounded all so sweet,
That Necken on the water sate, and bitterly did greet:

'Methinks, young knight, thou playest now in much too hard a strain,
Thy fair young bride nathless thou soon shalt get thee back again.

red,

"Yes, back again thou straight shalt get thy young bride rosy
As though, where those deep waters roll, she'd ne'er been lying dead."

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,
Far down beneath the tide shall rot thy golden yellow hair."

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,
But he loved the youngest above a thing.

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,
Mein Bruder hat mich erschlagen, unter der Brücke begraben."
"Alas! good shepherd, the mouthpiece is one of my bones,
My brother has murdered me, and hidden me under the bridge."

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."

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They struck the harp against a stone, a maiden fair arose thereon."

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,
So took she that dark path where the lofty mountain lay.

At the mountain door she gently tapped, right small her fingers are,
"Rise up thou king of the mountain, and lock and bolt unbar !"

The mountain-king rose up, and drew both bolt and bar,
To his silken couch so blue, he led the bride had come so far.
And thus for eight long years i' the mountain dwelt she there,
And seven sons she bore him, and eke a daughter fair.
And then before the mountain-king she stood with words of woe,
"Oh, would to God once more to my mother I might go!"
"In sooth, and to thy mother thou forthwith may'st repair,
But I warn thee ne'er to name the seven sons ye bare."

And when at length she came where her home was full in sight,
She spied her mother standing with loving eyes so bright.

"And where so long, so long a time, dear daughter hast thou been,
I fear me thou'st been dwelling 'neath the rose-decked hill so green ?"
"No, never was my dwelling 'neath the rose-decked hill so green,
This long, long time away with the mountain-king I've been.
With him for eight long years I lived in the mountain there,
And seven sons I bore him, and eke a daughter fair.”

With hasty steps the mountain-king now strides within the door,
Why stand'st thou here, about me such evil speaking o'er ?"

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Her lily cheek then struck he, her cheek so pale and wan,

That o'er her slim-laced kirtle the gushing blood it ran.

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Nay, surely nought of evil against thee I deplore,

'Twas of the good thou'st shown me I was but speaking o'er."

"Out pass from forth the gate, nor glance thou once behind,
Ne'er again thou'lt see thy mother, nor aught of kith or kind."

"Farewell my dearest father, farewell my tender mother,
Farewell my sweetest sister, farewell my kindly brother;
"Farewell to thee, high heaven, and green earth too, farewell,
Now must I to the mountain where the mountain-king doth dwell."
So rode they forth all through the wood, the wood so dark and wild,
Right bitterly she grat, but the mountain-king he smiled.

And now they six times journey the gloomy mountain round,
And then the door flew open, and in they quickly bound.

A seat her little daughter brings, with gold it rudely shone,
"Oh, rest thee here, my mother, so sad and wobegone!"

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Oh, straight bring out the mead-cups, with mead them quickly fill,
I'll drink to soothe my sorrow, till my weary heart is still!"

The first drink that she took, from the mead-cup brimming o'er,
Her heart hath burst, she sank to rise again no more.

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 second child dropped in the cup a single gilded corn.

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,
Both God and His Word she forgot on that morn.

The next drink she drank of that bright flowing horn,
Her sister forgat she, and brother so lorn.

Her sister forgat she, and eke her own brother,
But never forgat she her sorrowing mother.

DENMARK AND GERMANY.

IT 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