636 - Transactions. 



38. " Yea/, let them long/ for me, while long/ they will !/ 

 They ne/ver again/ my arms/ shall fill "/. 



39. " Oh think/ of the stur/dy ! and think/ of the small !/ 

 The dear/ in the era/die, think of her/ most of all ! "/ 



40. " Nay, ne/ver will,' I think/ of them, stur/dy ones or small/. 

 Of her/ in the cra/dle will I think/ least of all "/. 



41. The Mer/man uplif/ted his/ right hand/ : 



" Dule/ and dark/ness be on all/ the land ! "/ 



42. Dark/ness came/ and hca/vj- cloud/, 



They lay/ on the mead/ and the town/ a shroud/. 



43. The dule/ and the dark/ness blind/ her, / 

 Agne/te no way/ can find/ her. / 



44. She pur/posed to have has/ted o/ver green-/growing shore/, 

 Then took/ she the path/ to o/cean's floor/. 



45. She pur/posed to have has/ted to her mo/ther's home/. 

 Then took/ she the path/ to o/cean's foam/. 



46. " wel/come, Agne/te, to the bil/low's blue day !/ 



Yet no/ more on/' the green-/growing earth/ shalt thou stray/. 



47. " No more/ shalt thou/ e'er stray/ on the green-/growing shore/. 

 And gaze/ upon,' thy chil/dren, the small/ things ! no more/. 



48. " But here/ shalt thou sit/ on the gra/nite"s hard stones/. 

 And here/ mayst thou dal/ly with dead/ men's bones/. 



49. " One thing/ to thee,'' I spare/, thy harp/ of red gold/. 

 To mur/mur the grief/ thy heart/ shall hold "/. 



50. Men heard/ a sad mur/mur in wood-/Iand's green ways/ : 



Singing the birds are. 

 Agne/te her harp/ in o/cean plays/. 

 . Lovely Agnete ! 



This ballad was very widely known and loved. At the time Gnmdtvig Avas 

 compiling his collection, in the nineteenth century, it was still sung in all 

 parts of Denmark, in Norway, Sweden, North Germany, and the neigh- 

 bouring Slavic lands. It often concludes at the 40th stanza, where 

 Agnete refuses to return with the Merman ; when continued, the part 

 from stanza 41 onwards varies considerably in different countries. The 

 47th stanza has a keen dramatic touch ; an exclamation' of pity rises in- 

 volmitarily to the lips. Beauty and pathos well from these two-lined 

 stanzas, rugged as they are ; and it is evident that here the story is all-in- 

 all — the Procrustean spirit has not yet become sufficiently powerful to 

 fetter the thoughts springing directly from the heart, and uttered wdth the 

 heart at the lips. But it is with the metrical form that we are at present 

 concerned. The name Agnete has been retained in the translation as more 

 conformable to the metre. The stanzas are the simplest possible — merely 

 one verse of two lines, being the simple single thought broken into its two 

 parts. Yet the " type " has even here so far evolved that the whole 

 of the stanzas at least suggest it. Occasional verses appear absolutely 

 luimetrical, yet in all can be seen the germ of the eight-stressed verse, the 

 Romance. Stanza 5, when falling from the lips of simple singers, would 

 still, probably, be a ten-stressed verse, as indicated by the division into 

 miits in the foregoing translation. To obtain conformity to type, the 

 second unit of the first line and the second unit of the second line, contain- 



