Walter Scott’s patronage of Jamieson had something to do with the ungenerous petulance of Borrow’s references to the great novelist in Lavengro.

But Borrow’s attitude to the contemporary scholars of Denmark is still more surprising.  Without saying so in exact words, he gives us to understand that he translated all the kjæmpeviser from the original edition of Vedel.  It would be rash to say that Borrow was not acquainted with the Danske Viser of 1591, for he does, in one place, quote, whether at first-hand or not, from Vedel’s preface.  But it requires great faith to accept his own account of his approach to the poems.  In Lavengro, at a point which Knapp has dated 1820, Borrow tells with brilliant picturesqueness how he purchased, by permitting the wife of an elderly yeoman to kiss his cheek, “a strange and uncouth-looking volume” which had formed part of the kit of some red-haired fishermen who were wrecked on the Norfolk coast:—

It was not very large, but instead of the usual covering was bound in wood, and was compassed with strong iron clasps.  It was a printed book, but the pages were not of paper, but vellum, and the characters were black, and resembled those generally termed Gothic. . . .  And now I had in my possession a Danish book, which, from its appearance, might be supposed to have belonged to the very old Danes indeed: but how was I to turn it to any account?  I had the book it is true, but I did not understand the language, and how was I to overcome that difficulty?  Hardly by poring over the book; yet I did

pore over the book again, but with all my poring I could not understand it; and then I became angry, and I bit my lips till the blood came; and I occasionally tore a handful from my hair and flung it upon the floor, but that did not mend the matter, for still I did not understand the book, which however I began to see was written in rhyme. . . .  For the book was a book of ballads, about the deeds of knights and champions, and men of huge stature. . . . collected by one Anders Vedel.

This story of a vellum copy of the rare edition of 1591 thrown up on the shore of Norfolk with a common sailor’s effects is told in Borrow’s best style.  But how far is it true?  Whether it is entirely or only partly romance, the inference that Borrow translated the kjæmpeviser by the light of nature from this “Gothic” text must be abandoned.  He may or may not have handled a copy of Vedel, but he made his translations, as internal evidence amply proves, from the five volumes of Abrahamson, Nyerup and Rahbek, published between 1812 and 1814.  This was a cheap and highly accessible edition, and was in the hands of the booksellers complete at least six years before Borrow began to read Danish.  He accepted the text of these scholars and their arrangement; he translated their notes word for word,—and gave them out as his own; his volume of 1826 and the privately printed

later ballads are wholly founded upon Abrahamson, Nyerup and Rahbek, and yet, so far as I can discover, he never mentions their names in any part of his writings.  He professed that the public should believe his knowledge to be wholly derived from a mysterious black-letter volume washed up on the sands of his native county, and read by him with agonies of labour by the pure light of divination.

In January, 1830, a prospectus was put forth in which “The Songs of Scandinavia, translated by Dr. Bowring and Mr. Borrow” was offered to subscribers at the price of a guinea.  This was an attempt on the part of Borrow, languidly assented to by Bowring, to give publicity to some 70 kjæmpeviser which the former had