Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/238

 212 interesting variants of ballads already known. Times had changed so far as the harvest of ballads was concerned. "I have now the greatest difficulty to find them," Kristensen writes in his appendix, "and have to look on it as a piece of good luck when, once or twice a year, I come upon a good source, although I go much wider afield now than I did sixteen years ago. . . . But I must nevertheless be glad. No other living man in Denmark has heard so many of the old ballads as I have, borne to us from times past by means of the ear and mouth, and no other man has written down so many of them, destined to be borne down to the future by means of paper and the eye."

The fourth volume is in some respects perhaps more interesting than the others, as nearly half of it is occupied with matter of a much later date than the usual ballads, matter too which stands in a much closer relation to the mental attitude of the people themselves, even if it does constitute a kind of descent from Parnassus. Taken together these four collections are a remarkable piece of work, and their compiler may well be allowed the satisfaction of remarking that no one will be able to do the same thing again; the ballad as a living tradition is practically no more.

While searching for ballads, Kristensen gradually accumulated a good deal of other material, part of which he published in 1876, under the title of "Popular Legends of Jutland" (Vol.iii.of the Popular Traditions). The introduction to this volume gives a very clear exposition of his own view of folklore as something which formed a real part of the mental life of the past generations. To recover the exact form of this world of fancy is his main object; and hence it is his desire to lay before others the complete materials from which such a re-construction may be made, without alteration, omission, or arbitrary combination of different versions. The stories fall into six divisions, and a similar arrangement is adopted in some of the later volumes of the series First come stories of Bergfolk and Elves, these two