Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/501

Rh a memory mingled with the tears and mirth of far-off days. To none, or to few, could so charming a presentation of the traditions of their native land be indifferent.

has put together (translating from the originals Icelandic, Færoic, Danish, and Swedish) an orderly selection of folktales and folklore that will be found extremely useful for comparative purposes and for students who wish to get a comprehensive view of the great field of Scandinavian popular belief and tradition. He has used Sagas and Eddie collections, later medieval documents, and the great modern gatherings, especially that splendid monument of Icelandic industry and skill, Jón Arnason's noble miscellany of his country's folklore, the excellent Færoic Anthology, the materials collected by Grundtvig, Afzelius, Thiele, Asbjörnsen and Moe (known to us in Dasent's Popular Tales), Faye, Kristensen (both for Jutland and other parts of Denmark), Berg and Gædecken, Kamp, Eva Wigström and Ólafur Davidsson. The selection made from this rich store is arranged under ten heads: the Old Gods, mere remnants of heathen beliefs, of which the best are connected with special localities or with folk-charms; trolls and giants, characteristically Scandinavian in treatment; berg-folk (i.e. hill-folk) and dwarves, the people of the mounds and rock-dwellings and metal-workings; elves or hulder-folk, our fairies, who seem to survive best in Iceland and the Færoes, where they are not so tiny as in England since Shakespeare's time, but as big as they are in Ireland. In the Faroes they are tall and dark-haired, great at the fisheries; in Norway they are famous musicians, and one of their tunes is commonly played, but they have tails; in Sweden and Denmark the wood-fairies are yellow-haired and hollow like troughs at the back, white-vested, and always keep their backs to the wind (though to this hollowness there are some charming exceptions, as appears