Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/245

 Rh what he has learned by heart, but has to some extent creative power over his materials. This fact, it seems to me, renders the task of comparing fairy-tales a more delicate operation than one might assume it to be, and perhaps deprives the conclusions drawn from such comparison of much of the weight they may seem to have. At least, the invention of each narrator is a factor which it is not safe to leave out of account.

In his earlier printed collections, Kristensen has sometimes worked together two or three closely related versions, especially where this process resulted in producing a more complete form of the Æventyr in question than could be got from the separate copies. This editorial method he has now quite abandoned, considering it better to give the best versions in the exact form in which he received them. More popular in character than the volumes above named, are three small collections published in 1896 and 1897 (Fra Bindestuen og Kölle I., II., and Bindestuens Saga), the titles of which recall the old knitting-parties which once formed centres of social life in the winter evenings, and by which much of this traditional literature was kept alive and in full vigour. (The scene has been well described by another Jutlander, Steen Blicher, in his Bindstouw.) In these three little volumes there are some 90 versions of Æventyr, both serious and humorous, but for the most part of a less elaborate type than those in the larger collections.

It is of course impossible within the limits of this paper to go more closely into the contents of these Æventyr, which naturally to a great extent run parallel with those found in every country. If the Danish ones have any special feature, it perhaps lies in the homely colouring and the humorous tone of many of the tales. Taken as a whole, Kristensen's collections amply demonstrate what Grundtvig's had already indicated, and what H. C. Andersen's stories have somewhat obscured, that in wealth of fairy-tales Denmark can easily match itself with either Norway