TRAVELS IN DENMAIIII. * DENMARK is not one of those countries

which are strong in allure- ments for the generality of tourists, and many of the tribe will wonder why Mr. Marryat, with all the world before him where to choose his place of unrest, should have been content to take his pleasure for two years under the harsh climate, and amidst the dull scenery and still duller social life of Jutland and the Danish archipelago. But Mr. Marryat did find much pleasure there, be- cause he knew how to seek it in the right way, and the proof of his success is here before us in these two most agreeable and in- structive volumes. Fallen as Denmark is from its high estate among the Powers of Europe, it is still a most interesting subject of study for those travellers who come prepared to contemplate it in the same spirit in which its people now regard it. They, in- deed, " live in the past, in the memory of their own glorious his- tory." From the King to the peasant, they are a people of ar- chaeologists. Every castle and manor-house in the land has its well-remembered legends and traditions ; so have its runic and sepulchral stones, its tumuli, and its battle-fields. Its very bogs give up the bodies, dresses, and ornaments of ladies murdered there 800 years ago. In the Copenhagen Museum of Northern Antiquities are preserved the black mummified body, the clothes and hair of a lady, which were discovered in 1835, three feet deep in a bog near the manor of Haroldskjaer, which is still called

" the bog of Gunhild." There are also the wooden hooks by which she was pegged down to allay all fear of her rising again to torment her murderer. The learned professor Peter- sen has pronounced the body to be that of the terrible Queen Gunhild, and though his opinion is now much disputed, there are the remains of the woollen shirt in which the corpse was enveloped, and they accord with the tradition that Gunhild came last to Jutland from the Orkneys, for the rags, after their long immer- sion, show plainly the square pattern of a shepherd's plaid tartan. Many more bodies of bogged ladies have turned up, and some may perhaps be yet discovered in our own island ; for "in ancient times the punishment of drowning women in bogs was frequent, not in Denmark alone but also in Scotland ; and from this is derived the right of the Scotch barons to have pit and gallows' on their estates, as is mentioned in old manuscripts," the pits being "ad condemnatas foeminas pleetandas." In one of the ancient bye-laws of Nyborg, in the island of Funen, it is enacted " that every quinde " (queen) detected in stealing or being in connivance with a thief, shall be condemned to be hanged, but the sentence on account of her " woman's modesty" shall be commuted to being " buried alive." But the remains of women thus tenderly treated for their modesty's sake are not the only things found in the bogs of Denmark. A few years ago, a man who was crossing a morass, in the island of Oxholm, sank deep in the mud. On withdrawing his leg with some difficulty, he felt something hanging to it, which at first he imagined was a snake ; but no, it was a massive neck-ring of solid gold, for which he received at Copenhagen, where it may now be seen, the snm of 500 dollars as its full value.

We have said that the minds of the Danish people are full of

• 4 Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Copenhagen. By Horace Mar- ryat. Two volumes. Published by Murray.

ancestral stories. A lady, who teaches in the poor schools of Copenhagen, told Mr. Marryat that, on the morning when the news arrived of Sir Henry Havelock's death, " she found the whole of her school dissolved in tears, weeping their very hearts out, for they looked upon him as their own countryman—the very Havelock the Dane of the popular ballad—the lapse of nine or ten centuries being nothing to an infant mind." As a sample of the stories current about the old manor-houses of Denmark, take that of Lady Ingeborg Skeel and the architect of Voergaard. This château, built in 1538, is a splendid specimen of the early Re- naissance, and of great historical as well as architectural interest. The Lady Ingeborg, who built it, found the timber for it on her own estate, baked her own bricks, and had sandstone over from the island of Bornholm.

" The first cargo arrives, and that she pays for, but when the second and third appear, her purse is empty, but her wit is sharp. A storm arises in the night ; she sends down her trusty minions, causes the cables of the vessels to be cut, an East wind drives them ashore, and she, lady of the manor, by the ancient law of flotsam and jetsum, claims the cargo as her own. The building now advances; rich and quaint are the stone carvings around the windows and portals. Never were such yet seen in Vendsyssel. At last, it is completed, but the architect must be paid ; and where is the money to come from ? Here's a puzzle again ! Don't be alarmed : trust the Lady Ingeborg. Where there's a will there's a way ; so she orders the architect to bring his bill receipted and prepared to receive his money. The archi- tect arrives with the massive keys of the castle, ready to hand them over to its noble mistress. But before we settle our accounts,' says she, we will first go together over the whole castle, and see that all is right. Leave your bill here, Knight of the Keys of Bronze,' sho playfully adds, passing the bunch weighing nearly half a ton round his neck. 'Leave them where they are, I insist ; you shall not take them off!' So they proceed together to examine the rooms one after the other, and then pass—the poor architect groaning under the weight of his burden—over the drawbridge which con-

nects the moat with the castle.' Stop !' she cries; look at that Eastern tower ; surely the piles have sunk. Lean over !' The man obeys. A push from the lady—he falls headlong into the moat, borne down by the weight of the keys, to rise no more. When Ingeborg feels sure he is drowned, she calls wildly for assistance. The body is drawn from its watery grave, but the receipted bill remains in her possession-

.. She was a fine old Jutland gentlewoman,

One of the olden time."

Denmark is also rich in tragic tales of more recent date. In the middle of the last century, a Russian man-of-war anchored one day in the fiorde off Rorvig, but its appearance excited no remarks, as Denmark was then at peace with all countries. That night, the parson was suddenly awakened by armed men in masks standing round his bed. With a pistol held to his head, he was compelled to dress and follow them to church. He found it bril- liantly illuminated, and many persons assembled round the altar, two of whom he was commanded to unite in marriage. The bride- groom, richly dressed, and evidently a person of consequence, looked gloomy and abstracted ; the bride, a young lady of great personal attractions, was sad and pale as alabaster. The cere- mony was performed, and its last sound was instantly fol- lowed by a pistol shot and one piercing shriek, as the scarcely- married bride fell dead. The horror-stricken pastor was immedi- ately hurried home, and locked up in his chamber until released in the morning by his servant. He rushed to the fiorde, but the Russian frigate was gone. A purse of gold left beside the pastor's bed—the blood still visible on the church floor—the extinguished lights in the corona—all affirmed the truth of the mysterious tale which he carried without delay to his bishop ; but it did no more, for the affair has never been elucidated to this day.

A still more horrible story is that of Long Margaret, a gipsy fortune-teller, who began in 1769 or '70 to wander about the woods and heaths near Torborg. She had not been long in the neighbourhood when it was filled wtth consternation by the dis- covery of many murders in succession. One after another, seven young girls were found dead on the roadside, their throats cut, their hearts torn out, but their bodies unrifled of the gold and silver ornaments usually worn by the peasantry. No one ever suspected Long Margaret of these deeds, for though looked upon as a witch, she was supposed to be otherwise quite harmless ; but at last, a peddler girl suddenly found herself seized and thrown down, and a knife in the old gipsy's hand was at her throat. The girl screamed and struggled. "Don't struggle so, little girl," cried the old crone ; " one little prick, and all is over !" The poor girl was growing faint, when her screams brought her the timely aid of two men who were driving their cattle along the

valley. Long Margaret escaped, but was taken afterwards. " Oh !" she exclaimed to her captors, " had I but devoured my tenth heart, I should have been far away beyond your reach! " At her trial, she coolly told her judges that she had meant no harm ; but, that finding herself growing old and infirm, she wanted to transform herself into a night raven and fly ; to which it was ne- cessary that she should eat " nine raw bleeding hearts " taken hot from as many maiden's bosoms—symbolical of the nine hearts of Denmark, respresenting the nine syssels or counties of Jutland. Witches have never been burned in Denmark since the end of the seventeenth century; so Long Margaret was only beheaded, and the authorities neglected the precaution of burying her with a stake through her body. The consequence is, that to this day she sometimes walks in the long passages of the wing of the château where she was imprisoned at Vosborg. Like most English travellers in Denmark, Mr. Marryat was much struck by the close resemblance which the Danish language bears to his own vernacular—a resemblance of which the ear is very sensible, but which is greatly disguised by orthography, for Danish abounds with consonants, many of which are never pro-

nounced. The d, for instance, is always silent except at the be- ginning of a word, or is pronounced as tie, and the g and j are slurred over in the moat inaudible manner. It was apparently for this reason that Mr. Marryat found the pronunciation " most irritating ;" and says that, " after reading aloud for half an hour, you feel a sensation in your mouth as though you had been eat- ing sloes." But he seems to have got on very well in conversa- tion with the Jutlanders, who speak very bad Danish, " quite incomprehensible," as the folk in Copenhagen assured him, but it was something which he found to be very like English. A lofty dolmen was pointed out to him by his postilion as " Stone- henge," the name given to all such structures by the peasants in those parts. Talking to his horses, he called one of them " ola ors," the other, " mare,"—hoppe is the correct word,—told them to " stande "—not to staar—" stille," was constantly inquiring the " vay," begged to know if the travellers would start tomor- row in the " forenoon" or the " atternoun," and said of a verii bad night that " sicken a one he'd never kenned." At Norlunif our traveller entered a cottage and asked for the key of the church. "Go thou to schoolmaster," was the reply as plain as ears could hear. As the names of those who fell at the battle of Aalborghuus, in 1634, were read off to him from the tombstones in Mariager, they sounded very English in his astonished ears— the Hogs, Broks, Lockes, Lawson, Galt, Benzon, and Crump. Elsewhere there are Knapps, Lovels, and Kjsers, pronounced Kerr. Bruus, pronounced Bruce, is still a common name in Jut- land ; and, be it said " with all due respect to the memory of Scotland's mighty Bruce, Bruce in the Danish tongue signifies nothing more nor less than ' muddle-headed.' "

One of the oldest families in Denmark is that of Grubbe, and their English cousins may claim the like distinction for a name that is certainly not imposing in its sound. " Many years since, when Lord Lansdowne, as Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire, neglected to place on the list of magistrates the name of a certain Mr. Grub, a perfect ferment was excited in the county. The then youthful Lord Kerry, astonished at the excitement, inquired somewhat sneeringly, ' Pray who is this Mr. Grub ?' The answer he received was, Mr. Grub possessed lands in the county of Wilt- shire centuries before Lord Lansdowne's family was ever heard of in Ireland." We cordially sympathize with Mr. Marryat in his contempt for the nonsense that is talked and written about the Anglo-Saxon race, and like him, we " have no patience with the party who wish to ignore the Northmen, and prove that the great- ness of England is to be derived from a fallen German race."

" Who in their senses will for one moment allow that the maritime glory of our country, the dominion of the waves, could ever descend to us from German forefathers—a race incapable of crossing a duck-puddle without being sea-sick ; or our love of colonization from a race who never pos- sessed a single colony of their own ? The Vikings of old—blackguards though they might be—were fine, bold, dashing fellows. They cared little to settle, but were ever ready to seek new adventures—to launch forth on the unknown seas in quest of prey and conquest ; they robbed—they pil- laged, murdered, burnt, laid waste—they struck terror far and wide. ' A furore Normanorum libera nos 0 Domine !' was added by the helpless Saxon to the Litany of the ninth century ; still, as they have long since passed away, let us forgive them their fallings, and only admire what was glorious and heroic in their deeds, the romance andoetry of their existence. Your stay-at-home people, full of ' sweet home' mutton 10d. a pound) and other

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like domestic comforts, may descend from nglo-Saxons, if you will ; but our sailors, our explorers, our missionaries, our adventurers of all sorts, have, depend upon it, running in their veins a dash of the Sea-kings of Scandi- navia."

One more extract, a brief one, by way of epilogue to this scanty notice of a book which is full of interesting matter from beginning to end. Says the author— "At Carbons, where we stopped to dine, the usual question—never-fail- ing—was asked me. Was I the author whose books they loved so much, and who made them pass so many a pleasant evening in the long winter season ? I believe Captain Marryat's books are still popular in his own country, but here, in the North of Europe, they excite a very furore ; scarcely a farmer, scarcely a publican, no less than those of a higher class, in the remotest part of Denmark, but put to me invariably the same ques- tion ; and when I, in my humility, have pleaded guilty—although I be no 'Naval Officer '—to being 'own brother to " Snarley low,"' I could not, were I the author himself, have met with greater civility and attention."