in Copenhagen: the Thorwaldsen Museum contains a most interesting collection of the works of the great Danish sculptor; and the Museum of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, the formation of which has been achieved in little more than forty years, is not only a wonderful treasure-house, but fosters a national taste for the preservation of historical antiquities. The director of the museum happened to be able to give Mr. Marryat an example which could hardly have been anticipated. Seeing in the Ethnographical department three soldiers in blue, who, catalogue in hand, were examining the collection, he remarked that twenty years ago no soldier would have thought of quitting his beershop to visit a collection of art, and off he went to explain the contents of the cabinet to his humble visitors. The implements of the remote period known as the Age of Bronze, which are brought together in the Scandinavian collection, appear to belong to a period previous to the birth of Christ; and they are attributed to a nomadic Oriental tribe, a small-limbed race, who settled in Denmark, but had no connexion with their predecessors. And—à propos to thisit is curious to remark that in the island of Fano (nearly opposite the little seaport of Hjerting, whence in summer a steamer bears beeves destined for the all-devouring London market) the young girls are described to have quite an Oriental type of countenance, with long eyes and dark complexions; the women who tend the cows or work in the fields wear a black mask, and the place adheres to old customs and old habits, and is supposed to have remained stationary for a thousand years— things that are very suggestive of the people and customs of an Eastern land. In this island, by the way, the womankind wear an indefinite number, from seven upwards, of substantial woollen petticoats of various colours-a bride once wore thirteen! Even in the remote "Age of Bronze" the ladies appear to have possessed the requisites of the work-table, scissors excepted. The museum contains many needles in bone and in bronze, but some have the eye pierced in the centre. A pin or brooch, for fastening the dress or plaid, is described as precisely similar to the pins and brooches of the Scottish Highlands. Among the antiquities of later periods preserved in this most interesting museum, drinking-horns of glass and of bone are found; and the collection formerly contained two golden horns, which were accidentally discovered-the one in 1639, and the other in 1737-in the same locality, and were valued respectively at 500l. and 4507.* The mosses, or morasses, and the tumuli of the country (the island of Samso alone is a very Kensal-green of the early Scandinavian era) seem to hold golden. treasures in their dark oblivion: thus, three gold armlets of beautiful workmanship, now in the museum-for in Denmark no pernicious law of treasure-trove consigns such treasures to the melting-pot-were found in an ancient grave at Buderupholm. Accident has likewise disclosed many a hoard of coins. The Vikings. who settled on the eastern shores of England in the ninth and tenth cen These valuable objects were, unfortunately, stolen from the museum, and upon the event a funeral elegy was written, of so touching a character, as Mr Marryat facetiously remarks, that it brought tears to the eyes of all antiquaries. VOL. LI. P turies, coined money; but coin appears to have been first struck in Denmark in the reign of Svend, father of Canute, about the year 1000; and the first decent coinage Denmark ever possessed was that of Erik the Pomeranian. Large quantities of foreign coins have been discovered in various places-Cufic, Byzantine, Roman, German, and Anglo-Saxon, together with rings and bars of silver and gold, and beads and ornaments, gold-embossed, and apparently of Byzantine origin. Beads of glass, coloured and mosaic, probably likewise of Eastern manufacture, are also found. Mr. Marryat does not attempt to explain the occurrence of such exotic objects in Denmark; but it is to be remembered that Northern Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and even Angles, flocked by land through Russia to Constantinople in the tenth century, and took service in the imperial guard; and pure Old-Northern names occur in Byzantine writings. Northmen were ambassadors to the Greek emperors, and in those early times were much brought in contact with the East, which in ages still more remote had been the Northmen's home. Their love of change and wandering seems afterwards to have lived in the old Viking spirit of the Danes, and now their descendants, no longer seeking adventures beyond the seas, and circumscribed in the area for their wanderings, indulge a last remnant of the native restlessness by frequently changing their abodes. The Copenhagen people are stated by Mr. Marryat to flit twice a year from one street of their capital to another! When ill, even the higher classes can rent rooms in the splendid hospital of Frederick V., and enjoy all the medical advantages of the establishment, without deranging or endangering their homes. Under the fostering care of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries (which has the king himself for its president), the national antiquities are now so well cared for in Denmark, that one reads with astonishment of the highly disrespectful treatment of the public records in the archæologically dark age of Frederick V. That monarch, wishing to celebrate the marriage of Prince Christian by a grand display of fireworks, and paper for their fabrication not being accessible, is stated to have ordered all towns and conventual bodies to forward their archives to Copenhagen. Thereupon records arrived in cart-load after cart-load, obediently forwarded by their unsuspecting custodians, and were sacrificed in a holocaust of royal fireworks. The folk-lore of the country and the ancient customs still observed are but incidentally noticed in Mr. Marryat's lively pages, but he mentions a few curious particulars. On one of the highest points of Zealand there is a blackened stone, on which the peasants light a bonfire on the eve of St. John-a relic (of course) of a very early pagan custom. The sunsetbell always rings as the sun goes down, recalling the ancient Curfew of Normandy and England still rung in some cathedral towns. At Liselund-a place whose quiet and repose is seldom broken save by the little rural fête at harvest-home, the church-bells "ring up the sun" (as the expression goes) and "ring it down" again; and, in the midst, nine distinct strokes are given, one for the Paternoster, seven for the seven separate petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and a loud booming ninth proclaims Amen. Nowhere are the good old Christmas customs more pleasantly observed than in Jutland. Even the little birds of the air are not forgotten, for a small wheatsheaf is laid in the garden over-night on Christmas-eve in order that they also may eat and rejoice. The peasants believe that at midnight on Christmas-eve the cattle all rise together and stand upright; and, on that day, the cows and horses, and the watch-dog in particular, are fed with the best of everything by these reverent, simple-minded, tradition-loving people. From the 24th of December to the New Year, no one works, and all the young people dance; but the new year-at least in Bornholm-is not danced in: it is shot in, for every one who can obtain fire-arms discharges them at his neighbours' windows by way of wishing a happy new year. On the festival of the Three Kings, a candle of three wicks is burnt in every house. Some of the superstitions, too, are noticeable. Second sight is as common in Jutland as in the Scottish Highlands, and is much believed in for the foretelling of fire. The huge Black Dog that haunts the ruined church of Skamm, quite recals the famous "spectre-hound of Man." Fairies of course, and the much less amiable trolls, seem to stand beside you everywhere. The trolls, however, are not invariably mischievous beings, and fortunately they can transform themselves only into maimed animals: thus his Satanic Majesty himself affects the form of a rat, but never can grow any tail. Superstition thrives in Falster-witness the custom of casting a pail of water behind, when a corpse leaves the door, so that no ghost may appear in the house. There are relics of strange customs connected with church-going: ex. gr. Christian V. placed "the yawning-stocks" at every church-door (the village stocks, though remaining in some places, are, as in this country, quite out of fashion), and in them the preacher's victims, when convicted of a second offence, had to stand with open mouth. Upon this, the people tried to protect themselves by going when the sermon was half over, for the early Lutheran clergy loved the sound of their own voices; but the authorities were a match for them, and placed the late comers in the stocks all the same. Then folks went early, and took refuge in sleep, but thereupon the churchwardens were charged to go round and stir them up continually. At length an hour-glass was fixed by the side of every pulpit. People go to christenings, at all events, merrily enough, for on a Sunday morning a stuhl-wagen may be seen to drive by, carrying a party of old-fashioned Jutlanders to the ceremony, and a musician with distended cheeks, playing vigorously on a flageolet, sits by the driver. Carriages appear to have been considered a luxury in Denmark down to a date as late as the last half of the seventeenth century. It would seem that even in England the use of coaches cannot be carried more than a century further back, that is to say, not beyond the time of FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel. Buckingham, King James's favourite, introduced sedan-chairs and the use of six horses for his coach-a novelty which then excited some wonder, and was taken as a mark of his extravagant pride. Such of the citizens of Copenhagen as could not afford to keep horses, were likewise carried about in sedan-chairs; and there was an Italian who contracted to supply the town with them. This article has extended to so great a length, that we can only notice very briefly, in conclusion, some of the natural features of Jutland and the Danish isles. That the waters are retiring on the Liimfiord, there can be no doubt: the names and the stranded appearance of such places as Tranders-holm and Eng-holm attest the fact; and the Mayor of Aalborg (Eel Castle) told Mr. Marryat that the bed of a little lake in which he used to fish eighteen years before was then cultivated land, although no process of draining had been resorted to. On the other hand, there are vast bogs, or mosses, the result of some ancient inundation of the sea, which have been reclaimed by draining, and in which the plough uncovers urns of black Jutland pottery with the zig-zag ornament, and containing bones. The draining of the Sjorring Lake is looked forward to by antiquarians as that of a Jutland Tiber. Level lands so open to the sea are of course particularly liable to be overwhelmed by the sands and the salt waves. What is now a plain of driving sand, was in living memory one of the most fertile meadows in Jutland; and in many wild mosses now inhabited only by the swarthy gipsy and the lapwing, ruins of cottages and remains of furnaces are found, and weapons are uncovered by the turf-cutters-memorials of a civilisation that the spot once knew, but which has long passed away. Wolves do not The naturalist finds much to interest him in Jutland. exist there now, any more than in England, but they seem to have lingered in Jutland to a later period than they did even in Scotland, for, towards the middle of the last century, it was a common thing to hear of their destroying cattle and doing other damage. The last wolf is said to have been killed only fifty years ago. Christian V. signalised his energy against wild-boars no less than against yawning Sermon-hearers, and is said to have killed sixteen of the former animals in one day's chase in 1671, but they are now quite extinct. In the manor of Asdal, great forests once stood, and lately the horns and bones of the wild buffalo and the elk, races long since extinct in Jutland, have been dug up. The storks arrive about old May-day (May 13). It must be curious to behold one of their gatherings before they take flight on the approach of winter. A friend of the author saw an assembly of four hundred perched on the eaves of farm-buildings in Zealand: the whole flock appeared to be mustered for inspection and review; and the aged and weakly being separated and pecked to death, the rest took their flight for Egypt. The birds are found to be quite right in their anticipation of summer, for vegetation suddenly breaks forth in a few days after their arrival. The larger falcon tribe abound. Everywhere in Denmark the swallow is a privileged bird; its nests are respected and preserved wheresoever built; and the reason given is, that the swallow was the most blessed of the three birds that came to our Saviour's cross. The Bohemian wax-wing (Bombacilla garrula), called in Denmark "silk-tail," a bird of sober plumage, with a beautiful little yellow tail, is stated to visit Denmark only once in seven years. It never lays its eggs farther south than Lapland. When the birds of spring have collected, and rich verdure waves above the carpet of moss; when "the fresh green earth is strewed with the first flowers that lead the vernal dance," and the lily of the valley, the Solomon's-seal, the hepatica, and other wild flowers, gem the woods, the country must be charming, and as attractive to the lover of nature as its old historic sites must prove to the gatherer of history and legend. W. S. G. 209 CHANT FOR LITTLE MARY. BY MRS. ACTON TINDAL. TRUANT gay was little Mary Glancing through her golden hair, Floating on the summer air: White-robed now in grave-clothes long. Do they fear the wind should chill her? In a trance from Hades brought; Brow and limb and shroud have caught Majesty and pomp angelic, Wondrous is the death-change wrought! Came she, between lilies lighted, Fragrant lamps of whitest flame, And when sunrise glowed before her, Through the distance none may measure, Deeps and heights we may not pass, Where none weep nor cry Alas! Till we yield the atoms borrowed For the weary frames we wear, For the house in which we've sorrowed, From the teeming earth and air; Free for ever, everywhere! |