Harpans kraft

[a] Noted for its resemblance to the Greek myth of Orpheus, a harp-player with mystical powers, it may be related to medieval versions of that story such as the Middle English Sir Orfeo.

The man has his golden harp brought to him and plays so beautifully that the "merman" (Danish: trold; Swedish: neck[b]) is forced to return his betrothed.

[1][c] There exist Danish, Norwegian and Swedish variants where the water spirit restores the bride's two other sisters (or however many) who had been previously taken by the creature.

[15] Geijer and Afzelius's first variant (GA 91.1=SMB 22 H[16]) localized in Östergötland has been translated as "Power of the Harp" by Edward Vaughan Kenealy (1864).

), the hero and bride are anonymous and merely called "young swain" (ungersven) and maiden, whereas in the third variant (Keightley tr.)

[15] A version explains the bride's guardsmen abandoned her side to go hunting when they spotted a "hart with gilded horns" in Ringfalla woods (GA 3, Keightley's translation).

The motif of harp-playing which forces a supernatural being to act in a certain way is also found in Sveriges Medeltida Ballader 21 G of Ungersven och havsfrun (which also ends happily).

[23] The version most often met in Norwegian songbooks today is Knut Liestøl and Moltke Moe's 32-stanza reconstructed text (1920).

Villemann og hass møy så prud, dei leika gulltavl i hennar bur.

Villemann perceives that his beloved Magnill is weeping as the dice is cast while playing the board game (stanza 2).

She cries because she knows she is destined for imminent death: her fair skin lying in the "darkling mould" (earth), her yellow hair rotting in "Vendel's river", having fallen from the "Blide bridge" like her sisters (7 ~ 9).

Thus the hero's promise to fortify bridge with pillars of lead and steel, and men riding alongside her, her protest of futility (10 ~ 15), her horse (shod with horseshoes and nails of red gold) rearing up on hind legs, her fall into the river (16 ~ 18),[h] Villemann's playing golden harp from golden case, his playing mounts with ever more wondrous effects on nature (19 ~ 26).

Villemann og hass møy så prud, dei leika gulltavl i hennar bur.

"Eg græt'e meir fyr mitt kvite hold, at det må kje koma i svartan mold."

"Eg græt'e meir fyr mitt gule hår, at det må kje rotne i Vendels å."

"Eg græt'e så mykje fyr Blide-bru, der sokk til bonns mine systrar tvo."

"Og alle mine sveinar skò ride i rad — eg vaktar deg nok for det kalde bad."

Villemann tala til smådrengjen sin: "Du hentar meg horpa i raude gullskrin!"

Fram kom horpa så vent ho let alt sat Villemann, sårt han gret.

Villemann leika så lang ein leik: då rivna borkjen av or og eik.

Dei fysste ordi som Magnill tala: "Sæl er den mo'er slik son må hava!"

However, Espland likes to class "Villemann og Magnhild" as a type that features "interior refrain" and a "final burden" (in italics below):[28] Villemann og hass møy så prud, hei fagraste lindelauvi alle, dei leika gulltavel i hennar bur.

Villemann and his maid so fair, Hey, all the leaves of the sweet linden tree, They played at draughts in her bower there.

The "interior refrain" and "burden" are repeated in the second and last lines of each quatrain stanza, a common formula found in other ballads.

[28] Earlier transcribers heard these words as "dragonerne" (meaning "dragoon" or "firearm-bearing type of soldier"),[j] and the contention has been made that this may have been the transmitted form, nonsensical as it appears to be.

[38][m] The analogue in Iceland is known as Gautakvæði "Gauti's ballad", for which Grundtvig and Sigurðsson printed a critical text based on variants A–D (Íslenzk fornkvæði no.

[40][41][42] In the Icelandic version, the main characters are Gauti, a fine knight, and his wife Magnhild, wearing much gold jewelry and clad in black dress.

6),[o] and Gauti asks his swain (youth) about what has happened to Magnild, and receives report that just as she reached the midpoint, the iron bridge broke into pieces.

[q] She is dead, and with much pain he kisses her, buries her flesh in consecrated ground, and takes strands of her gleaming hair to make into harp strings (str.

In variant D, he kisses her and his heart shatters into three pieces, and three bodies went inside the stone-coffin together: Gauti and his wife and his mother who died of grief.