marvellous imaginings. Thus the story of the devil in a nutshell (Act I. Sc. 3) figures in Asbjörnsen under the title of The Boy and the Devil.[1] The appearance of the Green-Clad One with her Ugly Brat, who offers Peer Gynt a goblet of beer (Act III. Sc. 3), is obviously suggested by an incident in Berthe Tuppenhaug's Stories.[2] Old Berthe, too, supplies the idea of correcting Peer Gynt's eyesight according to the standard of the hill-trolls (Act II. Sc. 6), as well as the germ of the fantastic thread-ball episode in the last Act (Sc. 6). The castle, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" (Act III. Sc. 4), gives its title to one of Asbjörnsen's stories,[3] which may be read in English in Mr. Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book; and "Soria Moria Castle" is the title of another legend.[4] Herr Passarge (in his Henrik Ibsen, Leipzig, 1883) goes so far as to trace the idea of Peer Gynt's shrinking from the casting-ladle, even though hell be the alternative (Act V. Sc. 7, &c.), to Asbjörnsen's story of The Smith whom they Dared not let into Hell;[5] but the circumstances are so different, and Ibsen's idea is such an inseparable part of the ethical scheme of the drama, that we can scarcely take it to have been suggested by this (or any other) individual story.[6] At the same
- ↑ Norske Folke-og Huldre-Eventyr, Copenhagen, 1896, p. 48.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 129.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 259.
- ↑ Not included in the Copenhagen edition. See edition, Christiania, 1866, p. 115. See also Sir George Webbe Dasent's Popular Tales from the Norse, Edinburgh, 1859; new ed. 1903, p. 396. More or less representative selections from the storehouse of Asbjörnsen and Moe may also be found in Tales from the Fjeld, by G. W. Dasent, London, 1874, and in Round the Yule Log, by H. L. Brækstad, London 1881.
- ↑ Copenhagen ed. 1896, p. 148.
- ↑ In this story, however, he probably found the suggestion of the "cross-roads" which figure so largely in the fifth act. In Asbjörnsen, they are explicitly stated to be the point where the ways to Heaven and Hell diverge.
