er mother and her old home, and
goes from the mountain king with the promise not to mention her seven
sons. She tells her tale, however, and the elf-king straightway appears,
and strikes her till the life-blood flows. She then says:

'Farewell, dear father, and farewell, dear mother, too,
Farewell, my sister dear, and dear brother, farewell to you.
Farewell, thou lofty heaven, and the fresh, green earth, farewell!
Now wend I to the mountain where the mountain king doth dwell.'

And so they ride to the mountain, through the long, wild, black wood,
the mother weeping bitter tears, while the elf-king smiles. Her little
daughter reaches her a golden chair:

'Oh! rest thee, my poor mother, so sad and woe-begone.'

She takes the foaming mead in her hand,

'And scarce from out the mead-glass bright the first draught
does she take,
(The hour goes heavy by,)
Her eyes were sudden closed, and her weary heart it brake,
(Ah! well sorrow's burden know I.)'

That the Greeks had similar ballads and legends can not be doubted, but
to revive them from their present destruction is a task beyond the power
of science and antiquarianism. Hardly more than a quarter of a century
has elapsed since the first important steps were taken in the North of
Europe to preserve these ballads which had thus been orally handed down
from ages that vanish in the darkness of the past, and which in a few
years more, with the gradual disappearance of primitive simplicity in
Sweden and Norway, might have been, for the greater part, lost to us
forever. Who knows but that in some remote corner of Greece, in spite of
the revolutions and shocks which have convulsed it, there may still lurk
an occasional shadow at least of some good old popular song?

The refrains which accompany the Northern ballads, and which are, in
fact, found among all nations whose ballad poetry has been preserved,
merit some attention. Sometimes melancholy and sad, sometimes gay and
joyous, they impart character wonderfully to the piece. There is
something peculiarly mournful in the recurring of these sad, touching
thoughts and words, and as the interest of the ballad deepens, their
touching simplicity grasps more deeply into the soul, and affects us in
a manner which nothing else could. When they are joyous--a rarer form,
however--they impart to us also their own buoyancy and gayety. Sometimes
they convey the moral of the piece, some simple yet profound reflect