Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/140

122 real and exceptionally gifted poets. Of any direct share on the part of the people in the authorship of these ballads we can only speak in a relative sense, inasmuch as they in their transmission by oral tradition suffered various more or less radical changes, being now remodelled, now enlarged, and now shortened; of all which facts the copies now extant give sufficient proof. These changes were certainly in the most instances rather corruptions than improvements, so that the remains that have come down to us of this poetry are both in extent and form—and that not merely the rough, purely external or linguistic form—must be considered simply as fragments and ruins of this poetry. When we, therefore, speak of them as popular ballads it is not because the people have a share in corrupting them, but because their authors were popular poets in the true sense, imbued with the spirit of the people, and endowed with a talent for expressing the feelings and sentiments of the masses in such a manner that the people at once accepted them as their own. This was the first and most necessary condition for the development of a tradition which should be able to transmit the ballads from race to race. But it was not necessary that the popular poets should spring directly from the common people. On the contrary, when we consider the whole character of this poetry, it is evident that it owed its origin to men who moved in the higher circles. The burgher never appears in the ballads, and when the peasant occasionally puts in his appearance, it is only the poor wretched boor, whose lot was a sad one, one not apt to supply the conditions for the production of poetry of this sort. The entire scenery, all the images revealed to us in the ballads, are borrowed from the life of the knights; they display the nobles in all their splendor and magnificence, and to this social order they must accordingly owe their origin. Whether there were in the North as in other lands minstrels who wandered from castle to castle or remained at the court of a single master, and whether the origin of the ballads is to be ascribed to those or even to