DR. DASENT'S TALES FROM THE NORSE.*
TH:EbT Popular Tales, selected and translated from the " Norske Folkeeventyr " of M.M. Asbjornsen and Moe, have a more learned and elaborate introduction than usually heralds fairy or popular stories, at all events in this country. The views and information may not be original, though they are to a great extent new in Eng- gland ; the opinions, whether ethnological or critical, may not always be sound, or at least not received by everybody. The reader, however, is carried to the great central plain of Asia, "now commonly called Iran," as to the cradle of the "Un- do°' and the more important European races—Greek, Roman, Teutonic, and Scandinavian. He accompanies their respective emigrations, he is told that their languages all originate front the Sanscrit ; and further, that all popular tales, whether of the nur- sery, or of a somewhat more advanced kind, also originate from the East, or at least Eastern races in an early stage of their pro- gress. The discrepancy traced in different popular stories arises either from changes wrought by lapse of time, the engrafting of national characteristics on the originals,—as physical features, animals, and even superstitions, or the imagined improvements, and even reproduction effected by writers, as soon as the ex- tension of learning had called up the race of literary men. Hence Dr. Webbe Dasent is inclined, with the usual zeal of philological critics, to trace a particular origin where we can only see a com- mon idea. The ignorant longing for all things vulgarly desirable without earning them, is too general to the human mind to have a sole expression in " Fortunatus's wishing-cap." Many of the tales, however, are dearly from some common origin, though mo- dified in their persons and incidents, or altered 111 their circum- stances.
This fact forms one of the most interesting features of the forty- six tales which Dr. Dasent has translated. There is a curious in- terest in tracing the likeness to similar tales which have appeared to us in nursery, French, German or Other national forma, and are here modified by northern nature, both outward and in man's characteristics. There is throughout the stories a singular sim- plicity, and an ignorance amounting to childishness, on which we cannot but think the interpolations of a much later age are some- times engrafted. We hear of hundreds of dollars in a state of society which knew as little we imagine of that coin, as Beau Popular Talca from the Norse. By George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L. With an Introductory Essay on the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales. Published by Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh. Brummel knew of a penny. We see, moreover, a charming in- consistency ; a hero with his pockets stored with money is at a loss for clothes to appear in, and is compelled to gain his garments by fairy aid. With this simplicity and credulity there is a primeval vigour of invention. We cannot, however, rate the genius or the art of these tales very high. Like many other tales of a similar kind, they have great value as pictures of the human mind, and of literature in a very early form ; perhaps from their primitive age these stories have more value. But though Dr. Da- sent rather sneers at classicality, we cannot prefer young, vigor- ous, but everyday nature, to instructive art and lofty genius. What purpose the stories have is accidental; or where they seem to aim at a lesson it is often not felicitously impressed. There is a want of continuity in the action, and though there are miracles enough, they are not exactly " speciosa miraoula." The nearest resemblance they have to classicality is in a certain unsophisti- cated idea of morality. However, they have the interest already spoken of, and are readable always, often laughable. There may be exaggeration (which is allowable in satire) in the story of the man who undertook to mind the house, but there is fun, and a moral.
"Once on a time there was a man, so surly and cross, he never thought his wife did anything right in the house. So, one evening, in hay-making time, he came home, scolding and swearing, and showing his teeth, and making a dust.
"'Bear love, don't be so angry ; there's a good man,' said his goody ; tomorrow let's change our work. I'll go out with the mowers and mow, and you shall mind the house at home.' " Yes ! the husband thought that would ',do very well. He was quite willing, he said. "So early next morning, his goody took a scythe over her neck, and went out into the hay-field with the mowers, and began to mow ; but the man was to mind the house, and do the work at home. "First of all, he wanted to churn the butter; but when he had churned a while, he got thirsty, and went down to the cellar to tap a barrel of ale. So, just when he had knocked in the bung, and was putting the tap into the cask, he heard overhead the pig come into the kitchen. Then off he ran up the cellar steps, with the tap in his hand, as fast as he could, to look after the pig lest it should upset the churn ; but when he got up, and saw the pig had already knocked the churn over, and stood there, routing and grunting amongst the cream which was running all over the floor, he got so wild with rage that he quite forget the ale-barrel, and ran at the pig as hard as he could, He caught it, too, just as it ran out of doors, and gave it such a kick, that piggy lay for dead on the spot. Then all at once he re- membered he had the tap in his hand ; but when he got down to the cellar, every drop of ale had rim out of the cask.
"Then he went into the dairy and found enough cream left to 811 the churn again, and so he began to churn, for butter they must have at dinner. When he had churned a bit, he remembered that their milking cow was still shut up in the byre, and had'ut had a bit to eat or a drop to drink all the morning, though the sun was high. Then all at once he thought 'twits too far to take her down to the meadow, so he'd just get her up on the house top—for the house, you must know, was thatched with sods, and a fine crop of grass was growing there. Now their house lay close up against a steep down, and he thought if he laid a plank across to the thatch at the back he'd easily get the cow up.
"But still he couldn't leave the churn, for there was his little babe crawling about on the floor, and if I leave it,' he thought, the child is safe to upset it.' Sobs took the churn on his back, and went out with it; but then he thought he'd better first water the cow before he turned her out on the thatch ; so he took up a bucket to draw water out of the well ; but, as he stooped down at the well's brink, all the cream ran out of the churn over his shoulders, and so down into the well. "Now it was near dinner-time, and he hadn't even got the butter yet; so he thought he'd best boil the porridge, and filled the pot with water, and hung it over the fire. When he had done that, he thought the cow might perhaps fall off the thatch and break her legs or her neck. So he got up on the house to tie her up. One end of the rope he made fast to the cow's neck, and the other he slipped down the chimney and tied round his own thigh ; and he had to make haste, for the water now began to boil in the pot, and he had still to grind the oatmeal. "So he began to grind away ; but while he was hard at it, down fell the cow off the house-top after all, and as she fell, she dragged the man up the chimney by the rope. There he stuck fast ; and as for the cow, she hung half way down the wall, swinging between heaven and earth, for she could neither get down nor up.
"And now the goody had waited iteven lengths and seven breadths for her husband to come and call them home to dinner; but never a call they had. At last she thought she'd waited long enough, and went home. But when she got there and saw the cow hanging in such an ugly place, she ran up and cut the rope in two with her scythe. But as she did this, down came her hus- band out of the chimney ; and so when his old dame Caine inside the kitchen, there she found him standing on his head in the porridge pot."
Previous page
