clergyman on Sudero, himself
a keenly interested ballad collector, and, incidentally, the first to
make a collection of Faroese folk-tales in prose. Partly from these
men, and partly from oral recitations and material supplied by Provost
Hentze, Lyngbye was able to gather together a considerable body of
Faroese ballads which, with the support and encouragement of Bishop
P. E. Mueller, he published at Copenhagen in 1822, under the title of
_Faeroeiske Kvaeder om Sigurd Fofnersbane og hans AEt_.

Unfortunately Lyngbye knew no Icelandic and very little Faroese, and
his work necessarily suffers in consequence. Still more unfortunate
was his unscientific handling of material and lack of literary
conscience, which permitted his cutting out, adding and transposing
stanzas--and again we are reminded of the _Reliques_--till the
original form of a ballad is sometimes entirely lost. Fortunately,
however, most of the material that he had at his command is still
preserved. It is to be noted that the qualities which go to make an
ideal _collector_ of ballads do not always imply an ideal editor of
the material collected. The great collector of Jutland ballads and
folk-lore, Evald Tang Kristensen, has started a new and sounder
tradition by a reverent in-gathering of all that formed part of the
common stock of peasant lore in his day[4]. The sifting of material
is wisely left to the trained scholar, and, one hopes, to a later and
less intrepid generation[5].

The tradition started by Svabo and Lyngbye was carried on by V. U.
Hammershaimb, himself a native of the Islands and a great lover of
Faroese folk-lore. During the years 1847-8, and again in 1853, he
visited the Faroes expressly to study the dialects, and to collect
the native ballads and folklore, which he published under the title
of _Faeroeiske_ _Kvaeder_ in the _Nordiske Literatur-Samfund_, the
_Antiquarisk Tidsskrift_, etc.

Like Svabo, Hammershaimb eventually returned and settled on the
Faroes; but unfortunately, owing to the pressure of his administrative
duties, he was never able to spare time for a final revision of his
collection, though urged repeatedly to the work by his friend Svend
Grundtvig. Ultimately, however, when Grundtvig himself undertook to
make an exhaustive critical edition of the Faroese ballads in all
their variant forms, Hammershaimb placed all his material in his
hands.

Svend Grundtvig and his colleague J. Bloch, of the Royal Library
staff, comple