SWEDISH INFLUENCE ON LONGFELLOW'S " EVANGELINE."

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 121, 20 May 1909, Page 3

SWEDISH INFLUENCE ON LONGFELLOW'S " EVANGELINE."

•■T. here have, been well-authenticated cases of supposed plagiarism in which musical composers have satisfactorily remonstrated that the criticised passages were written by them in complete unconsciousness of any external influence. The interesting question arises: "Can a poet unconsciously reproduce actual scenes, reminiscences of travel, in a poem admittedly fictitious?" An affirmative answer appears to be forthcoming in the case of Longfellow's " Ev&ngeiine," Nathaniel Hawthorne has recorded, 1 \in his "American Notebooks," that he supplied the poet with the theme;, but as regards Acadia, Longfellow himself admitted that he had never been in Nova Scotia, and that, as far as he remembered (at the time he was writing to a friend who had questioned him on the-subject), the sources he 1 relied on when describing Grand Pre were Judge'Haliburton's "An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia," and the Abbe Baynalfs work on the" settlements in the East ana ,^ Test Indies. Now, as Mr J. N. McIlwraith has pointed out in "A Book About Longfellow," the, inhabitants of the real Acadia were "wretchedly poor, ignorant, and priest-ridden. Not in the whole country; one might yen ture to say, was there a farmsteadmg so cpmfortable as that which the poet bestows on Evangeline's father.' Therefore "the picture he paints of ■the 'Acadian bliss thkt . prevailed at Grand Pife before the arrival of the British ships must have been drawn from some memory of his European travels." In the current number of Poefc Lore, -Mr Edward":' Thostenberg cites a number of passages .from ' 'Eyarigeline'' which, when compared with the facts regarding 1 the, poet's interest in Sweden, its people, and its traditions, "indicate that his memory of that country and his knowledge of its language and literature lent color to almost every scene in Part I. of tl\e poem." ~ ' ■„''■:■■'. As is well-known, Longfellow, soon he received his professorship of modern languages at Harvard (1835), sailed for Sweden, where he devoted the ensuing summer to Scandinavian studies. In the North American Review for July 1837, he published an article ,on Bishop Tegner's. "Frithiof's Saga," in the introductory portion of which some of the impressions of his stay in Sweden are recorded; ' •

His recollections centre : mainly about two thoughts: the thought of the gloom and solitude of a forest landscape in Sweden, on the one hand, andj on the other, the | "primeval simplicity," the idyllic life of thfe peasant population. A typical Swedish landscape is pictured in: these words: "You pass out from the gate of the city, and,, as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild, woodland landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Overhead hang the long-, fanlike branches ; trailing with moss, .mdheavy with red and blue cones. . . . On a wooden brideg you cross a little" silver stream. Anon you come forth into a pleasant and sunny land of farms.", ' Now this is precisely the kind of landscape described in the opening lines of "Evangeline": This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and ithe hemlocks, v Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand, like Druidf? of old, with voices sad and prophetic, # ■ i * : * j Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, /-•• * i * . . * ; Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed! In noticing the more prominent features in the religious life of a Swedish village, Longfellow says: "B'requent, too, are the village churches, standing by the roadside. .... Near . the churchyard gate stands a poor-box* . . . .with a sloping wooden roof to keep ou the rain." The "poor-box," sloping roof (pent-

house), and "roadside" are all met with in . the following lines of "Evangeline": , . : ' "Under the sycamore tree were hives overhung by a nenthouse, . ' . ,■ Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the roadside, Built o'er a box for the poor or the blessed image of Mary." , The significance of these parallels is obvious. Who is'the, "traveller," if not Longfellow himself, and what "regions remote" does he, have. in mind if not the' rural districts, of Sweden? ■ , It seems almost certain that another of Tegner's works, "The Children of the Lord's Supper," : - furnished material for some of the descriptive passages in "Evangeline;" A Father Felician in the latter poem and the parish priest in the former are. described in, almost identical terms. Again, when the English guard from the ships march up to the church at Grand l*re to: announce the king's manifesto to the villagers, the women are pictured as waiting in theehurchyara, decorating the graves of the dead—practically an adaptation of the following .lines from "The Children of the Lord's Supper" : Swept and clean was the churchyard. Adorned with a leaf-woven arbpr Stood its old-fashioned gate; and within'upon each cross of iron . Hung was a\ fragrant'garland; .newtwined by the. hands of affection. It is further to be noticed that: Longfellow makes use of cert'aiii worlds and phrases peculial* to'/ peasknt life i^ Sweden. For exaihple; thatchroofs, projecting gables, > the wooden la(fceh on the, house door; and the wooden bars on the barn doors, the horn bows on the notary - s glasses, the wooden shoes of Michael the fiddler, and the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle. Besides all these comparisons—Mr Thostenberg submits many which lack of space prevents reproduction here—there is Longfellow's own remark, made ten or twelve years before he wrote ' 'Evangeline" : ■'■ 'There is something patriarchal still lingering about rural life in Sweden, which renders it a fit theme for song. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over that Northern land, almost primeval solitude and stillness." . "Perhaps," says Mr Thostenberg, "he had waited all those years, for conditions to arise under :which{'he might most favorably carry out his thought of a song,on. the above theme." ' '■?■ .

Finally, the scene of the reunion of the lovers is laid, as we know, -in Philadelphia, hence in the immediate, vicinity of the very spot where the Swedes had planted their first colony, in 1638, and so close \to their church that from this place Evangeline could hear the singing of Swedish hymns as she entered the door of the almshouse: Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church, ;, While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were wafted Sounds of psalms, that were sung, by the Swedes in their church at Wicaco.i

The torture that is inflicted by the Chinese mode of punishment of pacing the culprit where a drop of water will fall on his head for hours is proved by an experience that Colonel Fred Burnaby had in Vienna several years ago. A school teacher bet him that he would not be able to let a j •pint of water, drop by drop, fall en his hand. Burnaby laughed at the very idea of his not being able to stand it, and the test began. Although the strong man talked and' jested gaily at first, it was not long before he began, to show signs of distress. At about the 200 th drop—for the school teacher kept talty—an expression of pain crossed his face. When the 300 had been entered his hand began to swell and grow r,ed. Then the skin burst, and the pain became more and more excruciating. Finally, at the 420 th drop, Burnaby gave it up and acknowledged himself beaten. Pig-hunting in South Canterbury ('says the Timaru Herald) is still not a thing of the past. - Mr J. W. Evans, of Woodbury, killed an immense boar at Waihi Gorge last week. The animal measured 7ft 4in from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail, had a girth measurement of 57in, and a shield 4in thick.