he was anxious to emphasise the novelty and rarity of his literary adventures. But his attitude to Jamieson is very strange. As early as 1806 Robert Jamieson (1780–1844) had published a volume of Popular Ballads, in which he had translated several of the kjæmpeviser and had pointed out their value in relation to the ancient Scottish poems of a similar kind. Sir Walter Scott paid much flattering attention to Jamieson’s work, which also attracted a good deal of notice in Denmark and Germany, and inspired the Drei altschottische Lieder of G. D. Gräter (1813). It is scarcely possible that Borrow was not aware of all this, yet he never mentions the name of Jamieson, and in 1826 he spoke boldly of himself as breaking into “unknown and untrodden paths.” It is not impossible that Sir Walter Scott’s patronage of Jamieson had something to do with the ungenerous petulance of Borrow’s references to the great novelist in Lavengro.

p. 11But Borrow’s attitude to the contemporary scholars of Denmark is still more surprising. Without saying so in exact words, he gives us to understand that he translated all the kjæmpeviser from the original edition of Vedel. It would be rash to say that Borrow was not acquainted with the Danske Viser of 1591, for he does, in one place, quote, whether at first-hand or not, from Vedel’s preface. But it requires great faith to accept his own account of his approach to the poems. In Lavengro, at a point which Knapp has dated 1820, Borrow tells with brilliant picturesqueness how he purchased, by permitting the wife of an elderly yeoman to kiss his cheek, “a strange and uncouth-looking volume” which had formed part of the kit of some red-haired fishermen who were wrecked on the Norfolk coast:—

p. 11

CONTENTS

It was not very large, but instead of the usual covering was bound in wood, and was compassed with strong iron clasps. It was a printed book, but the pages were not of paper, but vellum, and the characters were black, and resembled those generally termed Gothic. . . . And now I had in my possession a Danish book, which, from its appearance, might be supposed to have belonged to the very old Danes indeed: but how was I to turn it to any account? I had the book it is true, but I did not understand the language, and how was I to overcome that difficulty? Hardly by poring over the book; yet I did p. 12pore over the book again, but with all my poring I could not understand it; and then I became angry, and I bit my lips till the blood came; and I occasionally tore a handful from my hair and flung it upon the floor, but that did not mend the matter, for 

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