Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1987, Page 30

34
SANDOYARBÓK
Clemensen must have known about the
existence of this ballad cycle and was well
acquainted with both buyer and seller, he
did not succeed in obtaining a text, and it
remained in private hands until recent
years.18 Furthermore, Pállinshús was rent-
ed in 1822 to Hendrik Hansen, who does
not appear anywhere on Clemensen’s list
of informants even though he came to be
well known for his ballads.19
Although Clemensen claimed in the
postscript to »Sandoyarbók« that he had
collected all those ballads that folks there-.
abouts had any knowledge of, we would be
mistaken to think that he systematically
visited every household in Sandur. We
have already seen that the collector’s
knowledge of the sundry kvøldseta tradi-
tions operating in Sandur was limited.
More perplexing was his failure to include
in »Sandoyarbók« four ballads that he had
recorded in 1819 for Hentze’s collection:
»Gudbrands ríma« (CCF 80), »Pætur
Knútssons ríma« (CCF 160), »Fiska kvæði«
(CCF 191), and »Leivur Øssursson« (CCF
218). We are left wondering whether this
was mere forgetfulness on his part or
whether something else lay behind these
omissions.
Clemensen’s claim in his postscript gives
no hint of the fact that he and others in
Sandur censored certain of their ballads. In
this regard, it is striking to note how few
satirical ballads »tættir« were inđuded by
Clemensen in »Sandoyarbók«, especially
considering the texts we have reason to be-
lieve were then current in Sandur. He re-
ports only two: »Danials táttur« (CCF 196)
and »Sanda táttur« (CCF 204). The first of
these is a strangely fragmented text collect-
ed from Johan Michael Hentze, in which
only the first half of most quatrains has
been noted. This seems to reflect the phe-
nomenon so often encountered in later
tradition - informants are reluctant to dis-
close texts felt to be damaging to personal
acquaintances and their families.20 As a
result, a satirical ballad tends after its initi-
al performance to be held secret and re-
stricted to private kvøldseta tradition in the
village in which it was composed, surviv-
ing, if at all, in dance tradition elsewhere.
»Sanda táttur« offers a fine example of a
satirical ballad that was best known outside
the village in which it was composed. The
ballad, which scoffs at doings in Sandur in
the late eighteenth century, was sent to the
collector all the way from Tórshavn by
Jakob Nolsøe, despite the fact that it was
composed by two men from Sandur, the
church warden Christian Clemensen (1749-
1837), brother of the royal tenant at undir
Skarði, and Johannes Joensen (1741-1804),
brother of the royal tenant at í Trøðum.21
There were at least two men in Sandur in
the 1820’s who must have known »Sanda
táttur« and who could have given it to the
collector had they chosen to do so:
Christian Clemensen himself, who does
not appear at all as an informant in »Sand-
oyarbók«, and Hans Johannessen, the son
of Johannes Joensen and a singer who had
otherwise been very forthcoming with the
collector.
One satirical ballad that never made it
into »Sandoyarbók« was »Markusar táttur«
(CCF 230), composed in Sandur around
1815. This text was also the work of Chris-
tian Clemensen, but this time in collusion
with two of the collector’s closest neigh-
bors, his cousin Jakob Joensen of uttanfyri
Á and Joen Joensen of á Heyggi.22 It is in-