POPULAR SONGS. 



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proud of her national ballads, and Thomas Moore, who published them for 

 the first time, preferred them to the Scotch ballads. 



In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway the popular songs were for centuries 

 the only history transmitted from generation to generation : all these 

 countries had their national poets, named Scalds, who sang upon the battle- 

 fields in order to inspirit the combatants (Fig. 328). These poets, themselves 

 warriors, improvised to the sound of the harp rhymed songs in which they 

 related, after a fashion at once simple and striking, the great military 

 achievements of their heroes, whom they associated with the sombre deities 



Fig. 327. German Musicians playing the Lute and the Guitar. Engraved by J. Amman 



(Sixteenth Century). 



of the Odin mythology. The people drank deeply and incessantly from the 

 springs of this wild and warlike, yet pensive poetry, and these anonymous, and 

 in the true sense popular, works formed a collection known by the name of 

 " Kemperiser." M. Marmier points out the resemblance of the popular songs 

 of Sweden to those of Scotland, Germany, Holland, and Denmark. The 

 Danes, as he remarks, were long enough in direct communication with 

 England to interchange the legends of heroism, religion, and love. 



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