These two little volumes present a small selection of mediaeval Scandinavian ballads translated, illustrated, and evidently also published by Ian Cumpstey. The first volume, Lord Peter and Little Kerstin, contains ten Swedish ballads, most of them featuring Little Kerstin and Lord Peter together or individually, sometimes as lovers and sometimes as siblings. The second volume, Warrior Lore, offers an additional ten ballads on mostly mythic and heroic themes.

The texts are, as the translator states, collages. In the more romantic volume Cumpstey selects particular Swedish ballads as his basis and supplements them with verses from other Swedish ballads in order “to create a reconstructed functional and coherent whole” (vii), and similarly in the warrior volume he begins with Swedish texts and adds verses from Danish and Norwegian ballads.

Poetically the songs consist for the most part of clusters of four lines with the rhyme scheme ABCB, or of two lines with two lines of interspersed refrain with the rhyme scheme ABAC. For example, the ballad “Lord Peter and Little Kerstin” begins as follows:

“Lord Peter and little Kerstin were sitting together,

The love we would begin,

So many glad words they spoke to each other,

My dearest, I can never forget you,”

where the first and third lines vary, and the second and fourth lines recur throughout the ballad.

Although these ballad renderings with their synthetic texts cannot be recommended for scholarly use, they make pleasant reading for themselves and can serve as a modest introduction to the pleasures of the mediaeval Scandinavian ballad. The volumes also feature watercolor and gouache illustrations by the author.

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[Review length: 265 words • Review posted on September 13, 2016]