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The Norwegian folk-songs, spring dances, hallings, and wedding marches, have been well characterized as the outpourings of the inner lives of the common people, the expression of their dauntless energy, their struggles and aspirations. The folk-song of Norway, more than in any other land, embodies the character and expresses the tendencies of Viking life, ancient and modern.

Otto Winter-Hjelm, who, with Grieg, attempted to establish a conservatory of music at Christiania after their return from Germany in the sixties, contributed much to the national art of Norway by his excellent arrangements of hallings and spring dances for piano and violin. Johan Severin Svendsen, while a Norwegian by birth and training, has expatriated himself by his long residence in Denmark.

Forsooth the hall was nought light and lovely, and gay with gold and bright colours, as that other, but beset with huge round pillars that bore aloft a wide vault of stone, and of stone were the tables; and the hallings that hung on the wall were terrible pictures of battle and death, and the fall of cities, and towers a-tumbling and houses a-flaming.

One is led to believe that tapestries were used as church adornments before they were introduced into dwellings; for it was said, when Queen Eleanor of Castile had her bedroom hung with tapestries, that "it was like a church." At Westminster, a writer of 1631 alludes to the "cloths of Arras which adorn the choir." Sets of tapestries to hang entire apartments were known as "Hallings."

The walls were bare that evening, but folk were wont to hang up hallings of woven pictures thereon when feasts and high-days were toward; and all along the walls were the tenter-hooks for that purpose, and divers weapons and tools were hanging from them here and there.

But the homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after to-day, because thou art so madly fond of dancing jigs and hallings." Then she clapped her hands aloud, and straightway was full of fear lest she should have awakened the old man. And she was gone.