Jens Billes visebog ('Jens Bille's song-book', Odense, Landsarkivet for Fyn, Karen Brahe E I,2, also called 'Jens Billes håndskrift' and 'Jens Billes poesiebog' and once known as 'Steen Billes Haandskrift') is the second oldest major collection of Danish poetry, after the
Heart Book
The so-called ''Heart Book'' (''Hjertebog'', Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, Thott 1510, 4º) is a 16th-century Danish manuscript (Thott 1510 4o), now kept in Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.
It is a collection of 83 Danish language, Danish ...
. It was compiled in the second half of the 1550s.
Format
The manuscript is a small quarto in size (20×14½cm), paper, with 162 folios, all with the same watermark. The manuscript contains 87 poems written in around 17 different hands of which the most important are those of
Jens Bille (1531–75),
Sten Clausen Bille, and
Anne Skave; they are numbered in pencil by
Svend Grundtvig
Svend Hersleb Grundtvig (9 September 1824 – 14 July 1883) was a Danish literary historian and ethnographer. He was one of the first systematic collectors of Danish traditional music, and he was especially interested in Danish folk songs. He ...
. It is from Jens Bille, who named himself in the manuscript as its owner, that the manuscript takes its modern name. Poems 1-86 were written in the period 1555–89, and poem 87, on the death of
Frederick II of Denmark
Frederick II (1 July 1534 – 4 April 1588) was King of Denmark-Norway, Denmark and Norway and Duke of Duchy of Schleswig, Schleswig and Duchy of Holstein, Holstein from 1559 until his death in 1588.
A member of the House of Oldenburg, Fre ...
, in 1589.
Contents
The book contains some of our earliest attestations of Scandinavian ballads, such as
Elvehøj
''Elvehøj'' (''Elf Hill'') is the Danish name of a Scandinavian ballad (''Danmarks gamle folkeviser'' no. 46), known in Swedish as ''Älvefärd'' (''Sveriges medeltida ballader'' no. 31), type A 65 ('knight released from elves at dawn') in ' ...
. Many of the texts it contains are edited in ''
Danmarks gamle Folkeviser
''Danmarks gamle Folkeviser'' is a collection of (in principle) all known texts and recordings of the old Danish popular ballads. It drew both on early modern manuscripts, such as Karen Brahes Folio, and much more recent folk-song collecting acti ...
''. In the words of Rita Pedersen,
:: Jens Billes Visebog har karakter af en typisk familievisebog. Adskillige genrer er repræsenteret i bogen: ridderviser, skæmteviser, historiske viser, aktuelle viser, salmer, adelslyrik - og muligvis nogle afskrevne skillingstryk. Endvidere taler meget for, at en del mundtlig, sungen tradition findes nedskrevet her.
:: Jens Billes visebog has the character of a typical family song-book. Several genres are represented in the book: songs of knights, historical songs, songs about contemporary events, hymns, aristocratic lyrics, and possibly some copied chapbooks. Moreover, there is a good case that a part of the sung oral tradition is found written down here.
History
How the manuscript came into
Karen Brahe's library is not clear, but it is likely to have been through inheritance: Karen Brahe inherited a large part of her library from her maternal grandfather's sister, the scholar
Anne Gøye; Anne's sister was married to a grandson of Jens Bille and one of her brothers was married to a granddaughter of Jens Bille.
[E. Kroman, 'Jens Billes Visebog', ''Danske Studier'' (1923), 170-79 (pp. 177-78). http://danskestudier.dk/materiale/1923.pdf .]
External links and sources
contents list* Kroman, E., 'Jens Billes Visebog', ''Danske Studier'' (1923), 170–79. https://web.archive.org/web/20130824064038/http://danskestudier.dk/materiale/1923.pdf
* Thuesen, Karen, 'Til Jens Billes Visebog', ''Acta Philologica Scandinavica'', 31 (1976), 58-69
References
{{reflist
Danish poetry
Love poems
1550s books
Ballads