St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-06-08
SONGS OF THE NORTH.


In the last number of the Scandinavia is
an interesting article by Mr.. GRAM ON the
Ancient Songs of the North, in which the
authors facile pen carries us back to the
illiterate ages when history was kept alive
through the oral medium Of poetry, song
and music Before the invention of the
printing press, when there were no books
and no one to teach the alphabet, songs
were the books and infections of the voice
were the letters, and thus myths 'and tradi-
tons were handed down from generation to
generation. The ringing sounds of times
tuning fork, forming themselves into
rhythns, tones and stanzas adhesive to the
memory, linked age to age and preserved the
records of the past. The Morse book-lore
is teeming with rhythmical illusions, and
as Mr.. GRAM carries us along among the
venerable ScaldS whose songs immortallZed
the daring deeds of ancient heroes, the his
tory of Norseland is before us. BRAGI the
Old, the !ong-bearded scald, with his harp,
was the Old Northman's god of poetry and
song. He typifed the ''scald" who for
centuries ana centuries was ever present
in the courts Of the kings OF the North
praising the deeds done and eulogizing the
strong performers of them, encouraging the
new ones, and immortalizing the heroes
who had fallen in their performance.
YDUN, the graceful goddess OF youth,
was the wife of BRAGI the Old, and in her
possession were the golden apples of re-
juvenating powers, through which the
youth of the gods of Valhal were perpetu-
ated. The Scald was often of great value
in critical emergencies, for in travelling
from king to king singing their praises he
frequently joined military expeditions, and
when the battle was raging would break
out in songs of rhythmic ecstasy and en-
courage the troops to deeds Of wondrous
valor. Thus the valiant BJoRKE, as King
Rolf and his men were sinking fast, and
he himself was moving down the victorious
enemy, struck up the mighty song OF
'Biorkemal," calling in the giving warriors
to honor and death. Centuries after, when
Saint OLAF at Sticklestad attacked the
rebel army that was to crush him and UNI
willingly give Christianity birth in Norway
the kings scald tuned up the ancient
'EBjorkemal." RAJNAR LADBROK. the
fiercest Of sea kings, when he had
been closed in among shields and captured,
put into loathsome British dungeon,
where venomous adders and a horrible
death faced him burst into wild, proud
chant called ''KrakalmaP'- his wife,
the great deeds of his
life and eXhorting his surviving sons to
avenge his death. A happy English trans
lation of part Of this song of defiance has
been rendered by LoNGFELLow. STARK
oDDER, the typical HERCULES of the
North, was great scald. GUNNAR lulled
the poisonous snakes in his prison asleep
by striking the harp, and when his hands
were cut off he played with his feet, until
one vicious reptile fastened itself to his
heart, and he died laughing. The maiden
HERvoR, who started out to avenge the
death of her father and his eight brothers,
who had fallen in combat with the two
illustrious foster brothers, ORvOR ODD and
HJALMAR, stood over her fathers burial
hill and with weird, enchanting rhymes
wrested from her fathers ghost the sword
which afterward became the medium of
the bloodiest tragedies. And so Mr..
GRAM takes us through the Drapas
songs, the swan songs, songs about
general historical events, incantatiOns
and prophetic songs until these heroic song
cycles bring us down to the times of CHAR
LEMAGNE, when the spirit of Christianity
approached the frontier of the Scandinavian
North, and the old viking spirit was
squelched. Still through all the middle
ages the Norseman kept hoping and sing
ing-all that was left to him that he could
call his own were his laws and his songs.
AS Mr.. GRAM says: ''We should know next
to nothing about these people, the great
singing crowd, but for these laws and
songs. The chronicles of the kings and
mobiles do but mention them in the loosest
manner, and the annals of the monks know
nothing of them. Still, they were there
With their sympathies and antipathies,
their loves and fears, their hates and tears,
their hopes. their games, their happiness
and their sorrows, they were there. While
magnateS were constructing history, they
were singing theirs. AT their work and at
their play. round the May-poles and at
the funerals, at their own wedding
and at the kings or his lordship's, by the
hearth OF at sea, in the field or at the forge,
through the woods or along the fiowery
hedges where swain was wOOing maiden,
they were singing. Their history is their
song, and if we had not that we should
have almost forgotten that they had any
history at all. The little gray peasant
he called himself; yet if gray and humble,
he was there, ubiquitous and watchful,
when the great era of printing broke upon
the world, when the culture that had been
brought by Christianity developed into an
era of books, when the changing of swords,
turned into a changing Of words, when
might ceased to be recognized as right, and
discussion entered the world as
a deciding power in matters of
happiness or damnation. He was
there then. His song hushed, he became a
listener, he listened for long while, he is
listening yet, but he is more than a listener.
His voice is heard he is in the midst of the
discussion. The little gray peasant. has be-
come a powerful part Of the common
wealth. In our own day the genius Of RICH
ARD WAGNER has caught their lingering
harmonies and swelled them into musical
masterpieces that have brought the memory
Of this generation back to the heroes and
herOines of the old Niflunga epochs and
4I,oi, fa+ lc+r with oil tbo ,1oo