Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/517

 Reviews. 471

successor. They vie with each other in immense learning. Here, perhaps, Child, who could build on Grundtvig, attains the higher point. In any case he has with incredible perseverance got at the whole literature of Europe, including literatures hard to come at, such as the Slavonic. Grundtvig's work gives the impression of steady growth, Child's of a pause in the advance of knowledge, where, rich as are the additions he makes, they but seldom open out new views of his subject. Child had a passion for detail, to which he trusted to an extent which has seldom been shown by anyone else who had such colossal material to deal with. It is this, and his good fortune in being able to bring his work to an end himself, which makes the fruit of his labour so useful. If we ask for a single definite result which can serve as a mark to show how far he has carried us forward, it is harder to name one. One must rather look to the very ground-work of his publication, to the diligence with which he has traced out notebooks and manuscripts in private hands, dating from the time when there was still living tradition to garner from, records from the period of romantic poetry, and to the clearness with which he has sifted out bookish remodelling from true folk-work. But in going over the general field of folk-poetry Child is extremely cautious, his great collection of examples is material placed on record, but with the utmost caution he only draws the bare outlines of their relationship, and often hardly indicates them.

The contrast between them shows most strongly where both are working on the same ballad. Compare, for instance, Kvin- demorderen (DgF., 183) with Lady Isabel afid the Elf-Knight (Child, 4). Grundtvig's introduction is one of his most beautiful examinations of the indications to be drawn from the grouping of the material ; Child's is an extraordinarily close rendering of Grundtvig's, only with still fuller material, following him along the whole line, even on points which well deserved to be taken up as subjects for fresh investigation, such as the question whether the tempter-knight is thought of from the very first as a supernatural being.

But taking these two ballad-editors as they are, they serve to supplement each other. That two such men, with sub-