Aage and Else, the only true translation of the early Danish ballad, parallel to `Sweet William's Ghost`

Giving you my own translation of my favourite Danish ballad, Aage og Else. Not one accurate translation exists of this tale of a woman who mourns her dead beloved so hard, that he comes back from the grave.
Original language version: http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Aage_og_Else

Aage and Else, my translation

Three girls sat in their chamber
— two warped and wove the gold —
the third wept for her promised one
{Refrain}: For she betrothed the knight

It was Aage the knight
— rode land and sea —
promised himself to Else,
a fair girl

He gave himself to Elselille,
gave all himself and gold,
and by the Monday after
his body lay under mould

She wept, Else, so sore,
wrang her hands;
and Aage heard it
under black earth

Aage he got up
took his coffin on his back.
He trudged to his betrothed's bower,
weighed down under struggle

He rapped on the door with his coffin
— he had no furs, couldn't softly knock.
`You rise up, stately Elselill,
Let your beloved in.`

Else she spoke
with tears down her cheek,
`If you can name Jesus by name,
then you, you come in.`

`You get up, Elselill !
Unlock your door.
I can name the name of Jesus
so well as I could before.`

Up stood the stately Else
with tears down her cheek.
She opened up her room
and let the dead man in.

Then she took her golden comb
and combed and combed his hair.
For every strand of hair she combed,
there fell down a tear.

`Listen to me, Herr Aage my knight,
my most dear one.
How is it under the black earth,
How is it in your grave?`

`It's like happiest Heaven,
down in the black earth,
down in my grave with me.
So be glad.`

`Listen to me, Herr Aage my knight,
my most dear one.
Can I go with you into the black earth,
into your grave.`

`It's like blackest Hell,
down in the black earth,
down in my grave with me.
Make the Cross over you!

Every time you weep,
Every time your loving care is stirred,
My coffin stands full to the brim
with clotted blood.

Above by my head
the grass grows green,
But down by my feet
snakes lie coiled.

But every time you sing,
Every time your heart is glad,
My grave is all canopied inside
with twining rose-leaves.

Now the Black Cock craws
in the Dark Yard's Nook
and all the Portals open up
— I must away.

Now the White Cock craws
in the High Hall
— All living dead yearn for the earth
— I must away.

Now the Red Cock craws
on the Heathen Ground
— All living dead yearn for the earth
— I must go along with.`

Aage he got up
took his coffin on his back.
Trudged back to the graveyard,
weighed down under struggle

Her mind stirred with her love,
stately Elselille,
she followed her beloved
through the mirk woods

When she came through the woods
and to the graveyard,
there dimmed and faded Aage's
fair and golden hair.

`Look, look up to the skies,
see all the specks of stars.
See there, see with joy
how all Night passes away.`

She looked up to the skies,
saw all the specks of stars.
The dead man slipped into the Earth.
Him she never saw.

Else went home,
filled with sadness.
The Monday after
she lay in the mould.
{Refrain}: For she betrothed the knight

Dark Sister, Dark Water, Dark Cliff, Dark Donnybrookers, Dark Giants, Dark Bull, and the Watery Fair of Rogues!

The Latvian Sisters, the Unclimbable Cliff, the Lone Jew, the Atlantean Dock, the Dark-wearing Donnybrookers, the Lavatory on the Cliff, the Twenty-Feet High Highwaymen, the Black Gaelic Bull,  the Fair of the Rovers in the Bay
 
 
Reporting a dream of height, depth, frivolity, intimacy, song, and Giant Perils


Woke and slept many times today, in which a story was woven in the waking one knows when one is asleep. I came to a seashore, a place I'd been before and often with my sisters and two parents. But family had only travelled there (so far) in my sleep. There was a great reunion along the coast, where the ocean lay to the West. We met in a lodge inside a sea-side forest of elms, oaks, hollies and beeches. There grew very few pines or evergreens - it was not the Great Northwest. Lilija Pugasevich's many sisters were there, though Lilija herself was absent. One of her sisters, unusually dark-haired, kept asking me if I would set sail and visit the Land of the Jews. Her eyes were big and sad. I told her I'd no immediate plans or ability to do so, and she walked away, downcast. Another sister with hair like the sun kept having tea with me, and we shared many stories.


Over this ocean to the West was an island or more, and peninsulas jutting further west to the north. For a look outward over the sea, I climbed up a steep rock-cliff with a loghouse on top, but the residents behaved surly and I retreated down, avoiding a glut of cars and their rubber tires rubbing the pavement into smoke and fire. I had to jump aside to avoid getting run over. I flitted northward up the coast until I came to a quay of boats and sailed west onto a strange platform at sea. We floated upon it and spent the night. But recreationalists with motorised skis kept jumping over us, sometimes landing splat on the platform while we tried to sleep. I eventually erected a tent there - similar to the one I'd laid up in in Glencolmcille Donegal in 2004 and 2010. (https://www.facebook.com/nathan.p.hillman/media_set?set=a.430408248594.199938.695643594&type=3) But I could get no sleep, and travelling Germans begged me to harbour them in my tent.


We all headed back ashore, drifting northward then west again on the south shore of Glencolmcille's peninsula. We looped around the finger until we came to Glencolmcille, where Mary O'Donnell's hostel stood on the high hilltop abandoned, and converted into a hilltop cottage lavatory and tinker's bed.


I headed for company into Glen Head Tavern where the landlady told me with goodwill,


`Careful wearing dark colours now. 'Tis a contest between all dark-haired and dark-clothed ones to knock each other cold. If you're not playin, well, just mind you might get a Ka-NOCK on the head. Careful on the road.`


I looked at my clothes and hair and realised, `I am a dark one!` Then capered up the path to the highest hilltop where Dooey Hostel once stood, and walked into the lonely lavatory. No sooner had I shut the door then a man walked in, an African.


`My friend,` I said. `You are dark as I am dark, though we are dark in different ways. Do not hurt me!`



He pulled a €10 note from his pocket, handed it to my hand and whispered,


`Take this as a sign of my peace! And in payment for interrupting you!`


I took the €10 out a backdoor onto the sheer cliff-face and looked over the 500-feet cliffs down into the sea. I ran as fast as I could back into Glen Head Tavern, €10 richer, my chest to the bar.


`You're for the pub after all?` the landlady asks. I look right and a man comes beside me and stands 20 feet high, ruddy-haired and ruddy-skinned in a ruddy-brown sweater. I nervously give the landlady my note for a drink, and she gives me *€20* in change.


`Is that enough?` she asks.


`Das reicht!` I reply, in German, because the joy of old friends and European community surged in me and I felt like leaping. `Germans say this to mean, "It's plenty!"`, I told her, and I sidle to another side of the inn. Another 20-foot donnybrooker walks inside, shot with ravenblack hair. I scamper out for a breath of stout air.


Needing some privacy again, I run at a fenced pasture, thinking how wonderful to be outdoors hidden from the eyes of priers, lookers and donnybrookers. But as I roll under the fence cables, I get entangled in the barb and nylon and fear an electric shock. `Thank goodness it's not live,` I say to myself. But once inside the pasture, I remember that Ireland is known for bulls and cattle and get too nervous. I leap over another spot of fence, only to find myself in an even narrower fenced pasture with oak-trees and oak-mast. A positively gigantic and intolerant black bull stands 50 feet away next to cows, and lowers his horns and sets straight at me!


In my dreams, quadruped bulls are my greatest enemies. His horns fly toward my ribcage and I suck in my belly and hurl down my hands upon each horn in a tight grip, arcing my body up as he heaves me upward. I fly a hundred feet through the air and land next to the Hilltop Cottage i.e. Dooey Hostel.


I bowleg my way down the wet-grass hill, crouching on the salty slick stone, till I reach the bay far below. A huge tractor ploughs the water and I hear rolling song. Every rover in Glencolmcille is on a sea-tractor, sea-boat, or sea-cattle, riding furiously in the bay while singing songs to echo in your bedroom. The Lost Fair is reinstated, as it was for the first time in 50 years in 2010 when I lived in Donegal, and now is enacted in the waters of the very ocean. The giant tractors and Clydesdales and heavy-hulled boats pull up and down the cove, ringing with the furious delight of local song.


I wake up.


I go back to sleep.


Now I'm with my father, and I tell him I've been filmed in a movie in Donegal. I set him down and begin to play for him the spools which unfold the experience of my above dream.


`Who's the protagonist?` he asks. `Are there any villains?` `Who is the forlorn woman - is she herself a Jew, a Gypsy, or one of the Dark Irish?`


I wake up and write down the dream.

To speak is to sing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-G_v6-u3hg&feature=related

Dennis Gerrolt asking John Ronald Reuel Tolkien dense one-dimensional questions on BBC 4 and getting deft replies.

I've listened to this clip of a BBC interview of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien about seven times today, mostly to take in the cadence and music of his speech, which I find as compelling as Middle-earth itself. But I consider Tolkien's grasp of the cosmic refreshingly...rooted. The interviewer is so narrow and unidimensional in most of his queries, trying to peg down and reduce Middle-earth to author-sourced trivia. Tolkien easily defies, outwits, evades him. The man simply sees longeval and further, was not born in our media-box.

Fainly Wearing the Day

" Thus then lived this folk in much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately nor desiring things out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves; and they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry: to-morrow was not a burden to them, nor yesterday a thing which they would fain forget: life shamed them not, nor did death make them afraid. "

- The Roots of the Mountains, William Morris, 1889

Smaug Smells a Bold Smiter

' Then Smaug spoke.

"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!"

But Bilbo was not quite so unlearned in dragon-lore as all that.... "No thank you, O Smaug the Tremendous!" he replied. "I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say. I did not believe them."

"Do you now?" said the dragon somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it.

"Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities," replied Bilbo.

"You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon. "You seem familiar with my name, but I don't seem to remember smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from....?"

"....I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen."

"So I can well believe," said Smaug, " but that is hardly your usual name."

"I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number."

"Lovely titles!" sneered the dragon. "But lucky numbers don't always come off."

"I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me."

"These don't sound so creditable," scoffed Smaug.

"I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider," went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling.

"That's better!" said Smaug. "But don't let your imagination run away with you!" '

-The Hobbit, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Lithe English writhes, twists a wreath

Middan-geard /mId.dan-yayrd/ = Middle Enclosed Region, Middle Garth, Middle Earth

Below follows excerpt from J.R.R. Tolkien's narrative poem The Lay of Leithian (an early Tale of Tinúviel) as it appears in The Lays of Beleriand in The History of Middle Earth III :

All eyes were quenched, save those that glared
in Morgoth's lowering brows, and stared
in slowly wandering wonder round,
and slow were in enchantment bound.
Their will wavered, and their fire failed,
and as beneath his brows they paled,
the Silmarils like stars were kindled
that in the reek of Earth had dwindled....

Then flaring suddenly they fell,
down, down upon the floors of hell.
The dark and mighty head was bowed;
like mountain-top beneath a cloud
the shoulders foundered, the vast form
crashed, as in overwhelming storm
huge cliffs in ruin slide and fall;
and prone lay Morgoth in his hall.
His crown there rolled upon the ground,
a wheel of thunder; then all sound
died, and a silence grew as deep
as were the heart of Earth asleep.
. . . .
....Morgoth groaned
with voice entombed, like wind that moaned
in hollow caverns penned and bound. [4086-4168]