Tales from the Fjeld — Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
W. Dasent, D.C.L. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales Author : Peter Christen Asbjørnsen Translator : Sir George Webbe Dasent Release date : June 11, 2011 [eBook #36385] Most recently updated: January 7, 2021 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36385 Credits : Produced by Delphine Lettau, Clive Pickton, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net *** START OF A SECOND SERIES OF POPULAR TALES, FROM THE NORSE OF P. Chr. ASBJÖRNSEN. BY G. W. DASENT, D.C.L. AUTHOR OF "TALES FROM THE NORSE," "ANNALS OF AN EVENTFUL LIFE," ETC. LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1874. [ All Rights Reserved. ] PREFACE. The Tales contained in this volume form a second series of those "Popular Tales from the Norse," which have been received with much favour in this country, and of which a Third Edition will shortly be published. A part of them appeared some years ago in Once a Week , from which they are now reprinted by permission of the proprietors, the Norse originals, from which they were translated, having been communicated by the translator's friend, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen, to various Christmas books, published in Christiania. In 1871, Mr. Asbjörnsen collected those scattered Tales and added some more to them, which he published under the title "Norske Folke-Eventyr fortalte of P. Chr. Asbjörnsen, Ny Samling." It is from this new series as revised by the collector that the present version has been made. In it the translator has trodden in the path laid down in the first series of "Tales from the Norse," and tried to turn his Norse original into mother English, which any one that runs may read. That this plan has met with favour abroad as well as at home is proved by the fact that large editions of the "Tales from the Norse" have been printed by Messrs. Appleton in New York, by which, no doubt, that appropriating firm have been great gainers, though the translator's share in their profits has amounted to nothing. It is more grateful to him to find that in Norway, the cradle of these beautiful stories, his efforts have been warmly appreciated by Messrs Asbjörnsen and Moe, who, in their preface to the Third Edition, Christiania, 1866, speak in the following terms of his version: "In France and England collections have appeared in which our Tales have not only been correctly and faultlessly translated, but even rendered with exemplary truth and care,—nay, with thorough mastery; the English translation, by George Webbe Dasent, is the best and happiest rendering of our Tales that has appeared, and it has in England been more successful and become far more widely known than the originals here at home." Then speaking of the Introduction, Messrs. Asbjörnsen and Moe go on to say, "We have here added the end of this Introduction to show how the translator has understood and grasped the relation in which these Tales stand to Norse nature and the life of the people, and how they have sprung out of both." The title of this volume, "Tales from the Fjeld," arose out of the form in which they were published in Once a Week . The translator began by setting them in a frame formed by the imaginary adventures of English sportsmen on the Fjeld or Fells in Norway. "Karin and Anders," and "Edward and I," are therefore the creatures of his imagination, but the Tales are the Tales of Asbjörnsen. After a while he grew weary of the setting and framework, and when about a third of the volume had been thus framed, he resolved to let the Tales speak for themselves and stand alone as in the first series of "Popular Tales from the Norse." With regard to the bearing of these Tales on the question of the diffusion of race and tradition, much might be said, but as he has already traversed the same ground in the Introduction to the "Tales from the Norse," he reserves what he has to say on that point till the Third Edition of those Tales shall appear. It will be enough here to mention that several of the Tales now published are variations, though very interesting ones, from some of those in the first series. Others are rather the harvest of popular experience than mythical tales, and on the whole the character of this volume is more jocose and less poetical than that of its predecessor. In a word, they are, many of them, what the Germans would call "Schwänke." Of this kind are the Tales called "The Charcoal Burner," "Our Parish Clerk," and "The Parson and the Clerk." In "Goody 'gainst the Stream," and "Silly Men and Cunning Wives," the reader, skilled in popular fiction, will find two tales of Indian origin, both of which are wide-spread in the folklore of the West, and make their appearance in the Facetiæ of Poggio. The Beast Epic, in which Jacob Grimm so delighted, is largely represented, and the stories of that kind in this volume are among the best that have been collected. One of the most mythical and at the same time one of the most domestic stories of those now published, is, perhaps, "The Father of the Family," which ought rather to have been called "The Seventh, the Father of the Family," as it is not till the wayfarer has inquired seven times from as many generations of old men that he finds the real father of the family Mr. Ralston, the accomplished writer and editor of "Russian Popular Tales," has pointed out in an article on these Norse Tales, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine for December, 1872, the probable antiquity of this story, which he classes with the Rigsmal of the Elder Edda. That it was known in England two centuries ago is proved by the curious fact that it has got woven into the life of "Old Jenkins," whose mythical age as well as