Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/162

154

The same. Neue Folge. 1891.

thirty years ago Messrs. Powell and Magnusson gave to the English public a translation of a number of Arnason's Icelandic tales, in two scries, namely, sixty-six in the first and eighty in the second. More recently, J. C. Poestion issued in German a translation of vidrchen from the same source. These were the only portions of Arnason's great collection accessible to a reader un- acquainted with Icelandic. The work before us is a German version of a selection of the sagas, drolls, and superstitions. The stories are two hundred and twenty- two in number, many of which are identical with stories translated by Powell and Magnusson. None, however, of those comprised in Poestion's selection are included. The translator's plan is to give specimens of each division of the collection except the mdrchen ; and as twenty-six of the nidrdien are included in the English version, the total of all other stories given in the latter is not much more than one-half the number in the German translation. It is obvious, therefore, that the student of folk-tales who is ignorant of Icelandic will find the Isldndische Volkssagcn valuable. A comparison of the two versions with one another also leads to the conclusion that the German is quite as literal and forcible as the English, and probably often represents the original better. Sometimes it repro- duces from Arnason's text details that are entirely wanting in the English. Thus v/e miss in the English version the paragraph introductory to the story called by Powell and Magnusson " Goldbrow" — from the heroine's name. It is given by the German translator ; it describes the exact situation of the scene, and introduces the tale as a legend