And so they ride to the mountain, through the long, wild, black wood, the mother weeping bitter tears, while the elf-king smiles. Her little daughter reaches her a golden chair: 'Oh! rest thee, my poor mother, so sad and woe-begone.' She takes the foaming mead in her hand, 'And scarce from out the mead-glass bright the first draught does she take, (The hour goes heavy by,) Her eyes were sudden closed, and her weary heart it brake, (Ah! well sorrow's burden know I.)' That the Greeks had similar ballads and legends can not be doubted, but to revive them from their present destruction is a task beyond the power of science and antiquarianism. Hardly more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the first important steps were taken in the North of Europe to preserve these ballads which had thus been orally handed down from ages that vanish in the darkness of the past, and which in a few years more, with the gradual disappearance of primitive simplicity in Sweden and Norway, might have been, for the greater part, lost to us forever. Who knows but that in some remote corner of Greece, in spite of the revolutions and shocks which have convulsed it, there may still lurk an occasional shadow at least of some good old popular song? The refrains which accompany the Northern ballads, and which are, in fact, found among all nations whose ballad poetry has been preserved, merit some attention. Sometimes melancholy and sad, sometimes gay and joyous, they impart character wonderfully to the piece. There is something peculiarly mournful in the recurring of these sad, touching thoughts and words, and as the interest of the ballad deepens, their touching simplicity grasps more deeply into the soul, and affects us in a manner which nothing else could. When they are joyous--a rarer form, however--they impart to us also their own buoyancy and gayety. Sometimes they convey the moral of the piece, some simple yet profound reflection, which marks by itself the feeling that pervades the whole ballad; at other times they are merely descriptive of nature, and borrow their enlivening or heart-rending character from the assimilation or contrast they present with the groundwork of the poetry. The origin of this kind of refrain is evidently due to the manner in which the ballads were composed. Mainly extemporized, both words and music, by wandering scalds or minstrels, the refrain was a pause to enable the singer to compose the next line. The utter disregard of rhyme, alliterations the most slight and imperceptible, and words of no similarity of sound almost always taking their place, rendered this a very easy task. A thorough knowledge and mastery of legendary lore, and a little power and concentration of thought and imagery, were the only qualities requisite for a ballad-monger. Some of them bear the marks of superior minds, both by their wonderful vividness of description and by the tone of deep, genuine feeling which pervades them throughout.