Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/137

Rh silent, but, instead, the historical views of the middle-age were expressed in broad outlines in the contemporary ballads. They are not of course historical sources in the sense that the details which they furnish may be relied on; they are primarily poems in which the facts are modified and adapted with admirable skill to the poetical idea which the poet wished to work out. Moreover, the oral tradition which handed down these poems—far more interesting on account of their poetical than on account of their historical contents—from generation to generation, could not fail to have an altogether unfavorable influence on the preservation of the historical details. Nevertheless these ballads are of great historical value, first as pictures, which may have been sketched not very much later than the events they describe occurred, that is to say, while the events in their general outlines were still vividly present to the mind of the poet; and, secondly, as an expression of the popular opinion of the event and of the persons connected with it. Thus we have in the ballads not only a number of exquisite poems, but also pictures drawn from the life of the middle age, and the latter are of great value to history, although it can in many instances be pointed out that their description of events does not tally with the results yielded by other strictly historical sources.

Besides the ballads relating to historical persons, we have numerous so-called, in which the plot is chiefly pure fiction. Many of them possess great beauty. They introduce us into the different walks of life in the middle age and furnish very interesting pictures of the daily activities of men at that time. We see the castles with their halls, their bowers for ladies and for maidens, the orchard and the game-park, the towers above the gates, from which the watchmen sound their horns before the draw-bridge is lowered when strangers arrive on horseback. We see the busy life within their portals: how the ladies and the waiting-women ply the loom or study their prayer-books;