Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/223

 Rh progress with his books, and was fortunate enough to attract the attention of the parish clergyman, who took charge of his education, evidently intending to prepare him for the university. To this plan, however, his step-father was quite opposed, and young Kristensen finally, in 1858, went to a training college in Lyngby. The education there does not seem to have been more inspiring than usual; none of the teachers were particularly interested in the lad; he found little to attract him in his fellow-students, and the whole course of instruction proved pretty tiresome to him.

After obtaining his teacher's certificate in 1861, Kristensen became schoolmaster in Husby, a village close to the North Sea, a little south from Nissum Fjord, and thus again came under the spell of the desolation which characterises the western coast of Jutland. Moving afterwards to the eastern side of the peninsula he was for three years in Helstrup, to the west of Randers, his salary there amounting to the magnificent sum of 180 rigsdalers, or £21. As might be supposed, he had to live alone and do all his own housework; yet he also found time to study music and botany, and to compile twelve manuscript volumes of songs, with their melodies. These were copied from books; he had not yet discovered the living sources that he afterwards found to be so rich around him. In 1866, he removed to Gjellerup, near Herning, in the district of Hammerum, a locality eminently suited to awaken that interest in folklore which for thirty years has been Kristensen's favourite occupation.

The children attending Gjellerup school knew a large number of riddles, and the noting down of these was his first step in the way of collecting. But for this there was little time at first. His home had to be set in order, the school-land cultivated in the summer, and in the autumn the conscription laid hold of him and brought to him the most unpleasant experiences of his life. However, this