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Dasent's delightful books have made acquainted with the prose tales of the Norsemen, will be struck with the stamp of a Teutonic nature in them; but the Norse poetry seems to have something which from Teutonic sources alone it could not have derived; which the Germans have not, and which the Celts have. This something is STYLE, and the Celts certainly have it in a wonderful measure.
In one feature only Tannahill's poems, and those later than him, except where pedantically archaist, like many of Motherwell's, are an improvement on Burns: namely, in the more easy and complete interfusion of the two dialects, the Norse Scotch and the Romanesque English, which Allan Ramsay attempted in vain to unite; while Burns, though not succeeding by any means perfectly, welded them together into something of continuity and harmony thus doing for the language of his own country very much what Chaucer did for that of England a happy union, in the opinion of those who, as we do, look on the vernacular Norse Scotch as no barbaric dialect, but as an independent tongue, possessing a copiousness, melody, terseness, and picturesqueness which makes it, both in prose and verse, a far better vehicle than the popular English for many forms of thought.
And they are one in the Chenoo, who, like Loki, illustrates or symbolizes the passage from good to evil, which a German writer declares is quicker than thought, or that very same Ilugi which the Norse myth puts forwards as swiftest of all runners. Loki, not as yet lost, gets the stone heart of a giantess, and becomes an utter devil at once.
They had accepted Christianity, intermarried with the native women, and forgotten their own Norse tongue. The race thus formed was the most brilliant in Europe. The warlike, adventurous spirit of the vikings mingled in its blood with the French nimbleness of wit and fondness for display. The Normans were a nation of knights-errant, with a passion for prowess and for courtesy.
Birds twittered in the bushes, adding sweetness to the wild music, and bright greens and purples, lit up by gleams of sunshine, threw a charm of softness over the somewhat rugged scene. The Norse boy's nature was sensitive, and peculiarly susceptible of outward influences.
The Indians, who imagined and selected so many wild and terrible tests to form the Shaman, or sorcerer, as well as the warrior, would hardly neglect that of de profundis clamari, the storm, the waves, darkness, and the roaring flood. If there is really any Norse influence in this tale, this river must be the one mentioned in the Vafthrudnismal,
The Valkyrs; and then that these Choosers lead the brave to a heavenly Hall of Odin; only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms of Hela the Death-goddess: I take this to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief.
I saw her look pass quickly over our dress, and minded that we were in no holiday trim. She saw Bertric in the thrall's dress, and Dalfin in his torn and scorched and sea-stained green hunting tunic and leather hose, and myself only in the Norse dress, and that war torn and grimed with the fight in the hall, which seemed so many years ago now, and with the long sea struggle that came thereafter.
To conquer the dead, or to fight terrible spirits, to thereby absorb their power, and finally to keep them in a struggle until the day shines on them, is both Norse and Celtic, if not, indeed, world-wide. But the grim spirit of this narrative is Norse; it is that of the hero wresting from a corpse's hold the sword of victory. "Farewell, daughter!
Harold of Norway knew as well as the King of England that the host of Normandy was on the point of sailing, and it was as essential for him to crush the English army before the Normans landed as it was for Harold of England to dispose at once of the Norse invaders. There were three claimants for the English crown, and both kings felt the necessity of having their hands free to meet the Normans.
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