NOTES	387
International Interest. The older ballads are to be encountered in F. J.
Wolf and C. Hofmann, Primavera y Flor de Romances, as edited by
M. Menendez y Pelayo In his Antologia de Poetas Hrieos castdlanos,
viii-x; followed by the same scholar's Tratado de los zitjos Romances in
vols. xi-xii. References are to the ballads as numbered in the PrimaTcra^
or to the volume and page of the Antologia,
note F
Flecker's excellent translation will serve to show those who care to make
the comparison some of the difficulties of rendering Spanish ballads into
English. He cuts oft a syllable or two from each line; justifiably, because
there are more syllables in Spanish to the same number of words. As
my object Is to reproduce the form of the original, I have given the lines
their Spanish length, at the cost of a little padding. Flecker has not been
able to avoid some padding. Then there is the difficult matter of the
assonance. Several keywords suggest the assonance in ee which Is used by
Flecker as well as Longfellow: esea, he, she, cramasy, tree', &c. But
Flecker was unable to carry this assonance through the poem, and, on the
other hand, his rhymes are too perfect, being full rhymes. ! have
endeavoured to use a more sonorous assonance in o, and, In order to mark
its quality as assonance and not rhyme, I have gone out of my way to
break strings of rhymes when these offered themselves. The Spanish
poet was under no such necessity. Assonance was, and is, a device so
familiar that no inconvenience is suffered if a series of full rhymes appears
among them. But in English such a series suggests rhyme, and the
occasional assonances produce a wrong effect of imperfection. Assonance
In two syllables, as In many ballads, is more than 1 dare attempt
note G
Danmarks gamle Folkeviser (DGF), by S. Grundtvig and A. Olrik
(Copenhagen, 1853-1920), is not easy to obtain In England, and not often
complete. I have on my shelves Abrahamson, Nyerup, and Rahbeck's
Udvalgte Danske Viser (UDV) (Copenhagen, 1812-14), which Is sufficient
for the sort of general comparisons instituted In this book. S. Grundnig's
Danmarks Folkeviser i Udvalg (DFU) (Copenhagen, 1882), and A.
Olrik's Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg (Olrik) (Copenhagen, 1927), are
excellent anthologies, the latter having a valuable preface, R. C. A.
Prior's Ancient Danish Ballads, London, 1860, corresponds to the first
three volumes of DGF. E. T. Kristensen's Jyske Folkeviser og Toner, 100
gamle jyske Folkeviser, and Gamle Viser iFolkemunde (Copenhagen, 1871,
1889, 1891), give the living oral tradition.
For Sweden there are two sources: A. I. Arwidsson's Svenska Forn»
sdnger (Stockholm, 1834-42), and E. G. Geij'er and A. A. Afzelius*
Svenska Folk-visor, as revised by Bergstrorn (Stockholm, 1880), with a
volume of tunes by L. Hoijer. For Norway I have consulted M. B.
Landstad's Narske Folkeviser (Christianla, 1853), without having access
to S. Bugge's Gamle norske Folkeviser (Christiania, 1858). The Icelandic