The ballads in this volume are translated from the Works of OEHLENSLAEGER, (a poet who is yet living, and who stands high in the estimation of his countrymen,) and from the KIAEMPE VISER, a collection of old songs, celebrating the actions of the ancient heroes of Scandinavia.
The old Danish poets were, for the most part, extremely rude in their versification. Their stanzas of four or two lines have not the full rhyme of vowel and consonant, but merely what the Spaniards call the "assonante," or vowel rhyme, and attention seldom seems to have been paid to the number of FEET on which the lines moved along. But, however defective their poetry may be in point of harmony of numbers, it describes, in vivid and barbaric language, scenes of barbaric grandeur, which in these days are never witnessed; and, which, though the modern muse may imagine, she generally fails in attempting to pourtray, from the violent desire to be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness and unmeaningness.
I expect shortly to lay before the public a complete translation of the KIAEMPE VISER, made by me some years ago; and of which, I hope, the specimens here produced will not give an unfavourable idea.
It was originally my intention to publish, among the "Miscellaneous Pieces," several translations from the Gaelic, formerly the language of the western world; the noble tongue "A labhair Padric' nninse Fail na Riogh.'San faighe caomhsin Colum naomhta' n I."
Which Patrick spoke in Innisfail, to heathen chiefs of old Which Columb, the mild prophet-saint, spoke in his island-hold -but I have retained them, with one exception, till I possess a sufficient quantity to form an entire volume.
