This sort of story need not be despised, and it is peculiarly valuable when it appears in the middle of one of the least refreshing seasons of literature, like this ballad in the age of the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark. In such an age and among theological tracts and controversies, the simple ballad measures may bring relief from oppression and desolation; and call for thanks to the Danish ladies by whose care this ballad and so many others were written down. But gratitude need not conceal the truth, that the style of the ballad is unlike the style of an heroic poem. The older poem from which _Child Sveidal_ is derived may have left many poetical opportunities unemployed; it comes short in many things, and makes up for them by mythological irrelevances. But it is composed in a style of which it is impossible to mistake the gravity; it has all the advantage of established forms that have been tested and are able to bear the weight of the poetical matter. There is a vast difference between the simplicity of the ballad and the stately measure and rhetorical pomp of the original:-- Svipdag is my name; Sunbright was my Father's name; The winds have driven me far, along cold ways; No one can gainsay the word of Fate, Though it be spoken to his own destruction. The difference is as great as the difference between the ballad of the _Marriage of Gawayne_ and the same story as told in the _Canterbury Tales_; or the difference between Homer's way of describing the recovery of lifted cattle and the ballad of _Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodheid_. It happens fortunately that one of the Danish ballads, _Sivard og Brynild_, which tells of the death of Sigurd (_Danmarks gamle Folkeviser_, No. 3), is one of the best of the ballads, in all the virtues of that style, so that a comparison with the _Lay of Brynhild_, one of the best poems of the old collection, is not unfair to either of them. The ballad of _Sivard_, like the _Lay of Brynhild_, includes much more than an episode; it is a complete tragic poem, indicating all the chief points of the story. The tragic idea is different from that of any of the other versions of the Volsung story, but quite as distinct and strong as any. SIVARD (_O the King's Sons of Denmark!_)