Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/221

Rh are written is one so seldom studied as to make the volumes sealed books to many who would find interesting material in them.

The mention of Danish folklore will probably suggest two names, those of Thiele and Grundtvig. The former published a collection in 1820, afterwards expanded into three volumes [Danmarks Folkesagn, 1843-60). Grundtvig, besides his monumental work, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, into which the great harvest of Danish ballads was successfully garnered, also published three collections of general folk-lore during the years 1854-61 (Gamle danske Minder), and two small collections of Æventyr in 1876-78. But neither Thiele nor Grundtvig could be properly described as a great collector; the work of both was almost exclusively literary. They worked, the former largely and the second almost entirely, on material already existing in either a printed or written form. Indeed, as will be seen, Grundtvig's work owed not a little to the collector who forms the subject of my paper, and the dealings between them show clearly how little progress Grundtvig ever made towards bringing himself into direct contact with the living sources for his favourite study.

In the light of some of the facts mentioned in the following pages it is not strange that Denmark has had so few real collectors of folklore. It is the peculiar merit of Evald Tang Kristensen, of whose life and work I propose to give some account, that he has not been deterred either by physical or social barriers from searching out his material in its native haunts, and that no considerations of personal comfort or advancement in his profession have weighed with him in comparison with the self-chosen task of saving the fast-dying memories of a bygone age. To bring out the peculiar conditions under which his work has been done, some amount of biographical detail will be necessary, although the variety and range of his labours would be remarkable enough under any circumstances.