Note Footnote 31: — PART II

But it would be perilous to press too far what may, after all, be a mere verbal coincidence. And whatever gave rise to our poems as they now stand, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that they, like the rest of the Føroyja Kvæði, are first and last Ballads—rightly ballads. They have a form of their own, like other ballads, and are not a degenerate form of Rímur or a mere versification of some old Icelandic legends. Indeed what Professor Ker says of the Danish ballads31 may with equal truth be applied to the ballads of the Faroes: