O. T., A Danish Romance

Note: Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

14

Author’s Note: An old popular German song.

15

Translator’s Note: A pun which it is impossible to translate. The Danish word Portviin according to sound, may mean either port wine or the creaking of a door.

16

Translator’s Note: A select or shut-out company. We regret that this pun, like the foregoing one, is untransferable into English.

17

Note:

“We are the lords of the kingdom of mind!
We are the stem which can never decay!”

    —Students’ Song, by CHRISTIAN WINTHER.

18

Note: “Prie!… Pour les femmes échevelées Qui vendent le doux nom d’amour!”

19

Note:

“Ceux qui pieusement sont morts pour la patrie
Ont droit qu’à leur cerceuil la foule vienne et prie:
Entre le plus beaux noms, leur nom est le plus beau.
Toute gloire, près d’eux, passe et tombe éphèmere
Et, comme ferait une mère,
La voix d’un peuple entier les berce en leur tombeau!”

    —VICTOR HUGO.

20

Author’s Note: Holberg’s Jean de France.

21

Author’s Note: High smooth poles, to the top of which victuals, clothes, or money are attached. People of the lower classes then try to climb up and seize the prizes. The best things are placed at the very top of the pole.

22

Author’s Note: The convent was founded by Waldemar I., 1177.

23

Author’s Note: Anders-skov, by Oehlenschläger.

24

Translator’s Note: Rokkehoved, distaff, means also dunce in Danish.

25

Note: Odense house of correction.

26

Author’s Note: Byron’s Don Juan.

27

Note: People’s song.

28

Author’s Note: An exclamation among the common people of Funen, expressive of terror.

29

Author’s Note: The Bishop of Funen, who died in 1703.

30

Note: That of the Black Brothers.

31

Author’s Note: The remains of the body, as well as the skeletons of the cats, are still to be seen in a chapel on the western aisle of the church.

32

Author’s Note: A fishing village in Odense Fjord.

33

Author’s Note: On the removal of the church of the Grey Brothers, the remains of these royal parents and two of their children were collected in a coffin and placed here in St. Knud’s Church. The memorial stone, of which we have spoken, was erected afterwards.

34

Author’s Note: In Thiele’s Danish Popular Tradition it is related that she was one Margrethe Skofgaard of Sanderumgaard, and that she died at a ball, where she had danced to death twelve knights. The people relate it with a variation as above; it is probable that it is mingled with a second tradition, for example, that of the blood-spots at Koldinghuus, which relates that an old king was so angry with his daughter that he resolved to kill her, and ordered that his knights should dance with her one after another until the breath was out of her. Nine had danced with her, and then came up the king himself as the tenth, and when he became weary he cut her girdle in two, on which the blood streamed from her mouth and she died.