The Danish ballads divide into two classes, principally distinguished by their employing or not employing of the artifice of wax children. (There is but one of these in #N#, #R#, Kristensen's #E#, #I#, II, 116, 122, and in the oldest Swedish ballad, as in the Scottish: but children in Scandinavian ballads are mostly born in pairs.) Of the former class, to which our only known copy belongs, are #F-I#, #N-T#, #X# (Grundtvig, 84 #F-I#, Kristensen, II, No 35, #E-L#, I, No 74 #D#). #N# and #I# furnish, perhaps, the most consistent story, which, in the former, runs thus: Sir Peter married Ellen (elsewhere Mettelille, Kirstin, Tidelil, Ingerlil), and gave her in charge to his mother, a formidable witch, and, as appears from #F#, violently opposed to the match. The first night of her marriage Ellen conceived twins. She wrapped up her head in her cloak and paid a visit to her mother-in-law, to ask how long women go with child. The answer was, 'Forty weeks went Mary with Christ, And so each Danish woman must. 'Forty weeks I went with mine, But eight years shalt thou go with thine.' The forty weeks had passed, and Ellen began to long for relief. Sir Peter besought aid of his sister Ingerlin. If I help your young bride, she said, I must be traitor to my mother. Sir Peter insisted, and Ingerlin moulded a fine child of wax,[103] wrapped it in linen, and exhibited it to her mother, who, supposing that her arts had been baffled, burst out into exclamations of astonishment. She had thought she could twist a rope out of flying sand, lay sun and moon flat on the earth with a single word, turn the whole world round about! She had thought all the house was spell-bound, except the spot where the young wife's chest stood, the chest of red rowan, which nothing can bewitch! The chest was instantly taken away, and Ellen's bed moved to the place it had occupied; and no sooner was this done than Ellen gave birth to two children. In the ballads of the other class, the young wife, grown desperate after eight years of suffering, asks to be taken back to her maiden home. Her husband's mother raises objections: the horses are in the meadow, the coachman is in bed. Then, she says, I will go on my bare feet. The moment her husband learns her wish, the carriage is at the door, but by the arts of the mother it goes to pieces on the way, and the journey has to be finished on horseback. The joy of her parents at seeing their daughter approaching was quenched on a nearer view: she looked more dead than quick. She called her family about her and distributed her effects. A great wail went up in the house when two sons were cut from the mother's side. (#C#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #W#: Grundtvig, 84 #C#; Kristensen, II, No 35 #A#, #B#, #C#; I, No 74 #C#.) The first son stood up and brushed his hair: 'Most surely am I in my ninth year.' The second stood up both fair and red: 'Most sure we'll avenge our dear mother dead.'[104]