III. Into the rise of the ballads on the Faroes and their exact relation of form and content to the Icelandic _FornkvÊi_[17], and to the _Viser_ of Norway[18], Sweden[19], and above all of Denmark[20], it is impossible to enter here. Perhaps the relationship between the ballads of the various countries of the North will never be fully understood. The ramifications are too many and too complex, while too many links in the chain have already been lost in the "scrubby paper books" such as that with which Bishop Percy found the housemaid lighting the parlour fire. And those who would too hastily dogmatise on the 'conveyance', translation, and borrowing of the various versions receive a wholesome warning from Dr Axel Olrik's analysis[21] of the ancestry and parallel versions of the Scots, Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish forms of the ballads of Earl Brand (Dan. _Riboldsvisen_). Moreover it is no easier to generalise about the sources of the Faroese ballad material than about the Danish. The motif of the Faroese _Tristrams T·ttur_, also found in the Icelandic ballad of _Tristram_ comes ultimately (through the Tristram's Saga one would suppose) from a French romance; that of Nornagest, changed though it is in form, is surely founded on the Icelandic Saga; _Olufu KvÊi_ comes no doubt from a Spanish story; and the motif of the Scots ballad of _Binnorie_ is "found also among the people of Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Faroes[22]." It would be pleasant to develop a theory that the purveyors of ballad material were the sailors and merchants who plied up and down the great trade routes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or even earlier. It has been suggested by Professor Ker[23] and others that Shetland _may_ have been "the chief meeting-place or trading station between the ballads of Scotland and Norway." The Shetland ballad of _Sir Orfeo_ actually has a refrain in Norn, the Norse dialect spoken in Shetland and the small neighbouring islands till the eighteenth century; while the ballad of _Hildina_ taken down by Low[24] on the Island of Foula off Shetland (cf. p. 217 below) is entirely composed in Norn. Indeed we know from Low's account[25] that many ballads and songs must have perished with the language: Nothing remains but a few names of things and two or three remnants of songs which one old man can repeat; and further on he continues: Most of the fragments they have are _old historical ballads and romances_.... William Henry, a farmer in Guttorm in Foula has the most knowledge of any I found; he spoke of three kinds of poetry used in Norn, and repeated or sung by the old men; the Ballad (or Romance, I suppose); _the Vysie or vyse, now commonly sung to dancers_[26]; and the simple song.... Most of all their tales are relative to the history of Norway; they seem to know little of the rest of Europe but by names; Norwegian transactions they have at their fingers' ends.