xciv RICHARD CLEASBY. 1843.

On the 15th he went to Upsala, to see his old friend Schröcler, and inspected this time,
not the Codex Argcntcîis, but the Icelandic MSS. in that library, of which, as well
as those in the Royal Library at Stockholm, there are many pages of collation and
comment in the Diary. On the loth he enters : ' I passed the evening with Geijer,
and find, though age has in the last four years made considerable external impression,
yet his mind is as fresh and genial as ever.' On the iSth he was back at Stockholm,
and ' went to the library, and saw a very curious little Erse MS., of a few pages only,
which Sir W. Betham has pronounced to be poetry, and of the 8th century. There
is a curious Old English medical MS. of the i4th century, also one of the court rolls
and records of the reign of Edward the Third, and a beautifully-written and preserved
MS. on parchment, in Old French, being a History of the World ... in which the
Anglo-Saxon-English kings are treated very fully, and no doubt a work of English
birth. Mr. Stephens has had the merit of discovering these objects. Drank tea and
passed the evening with Mr. Hiklebrantl, the best specimen of the Swedish " Gelehrte "
I have seen ; really a sound, serious person, and zealous in his department. Mr. Stephens
gave me a memorandum, begging me to make inquiry among Icelanders at Copenhagen
as to any Folk-Sagor, Barn-Sagor, Folk-Visor, Barn-Visor, Vagg-Visor, and Folk-Gator,
etc.; and of any with melodies; also as to Danska and Norrska Folk-Visor and Folk-
Sagor from 1500 to 1800.'

After making the acquaintance of Dr. Retzius, the ethnologist, and seeing his
collection of skulls, Cleasby left Stockholm on the 2ist of September, and reached
Calmar by steamer on the 22nd. Thence he posted to Malmoe, stopping at a
parsonage called Floby on the way, to inspect the celebrated stone called ' Runamo,'
on which Finn Magnusen had read many Runes which no one else could decipher :
Nilson of Lund and Berzelius, as ' Naturforskare,' having, on the other hand, declared
the marks on the trapp rock to be the work of nature. After this inspection Cleasby
was not disposed to offer any decided opinion upon so short a survey, and left the
spot admiring Finn Magnusen's ' extreme boldness in making out of them a long
Runic inscription/ Before leaving the parsonage Cleasby heard a piece of superstition
which shewed the state of mind of the middling agricultural class. ' A bonde (farmer)
came to arrange for the clergyman's marrying him, and after all was settled, hastened
back to remind him on no account to publish the banns when the moon was on the
wane, but when it was increasing,—the expressions he made use of were " uy" and
"né&an'" At Lund Cleasby stopped to inspect some Icelandic MSS. which Professor
Schlyter, the veteran editor of the Ancient Laws of Sweden, had borrowed from the
Royal Library at Stockholm, and found very few of them of such an age and character
as to be worthy his attention; besides which they had been fully collated by Professor
Keyser. On the 2yth of September he crossed from Malmoe to Copenhagen in two
hours, where he found all in statn quo, ' pleased to get back again to the seat of my
labours, but at the same time satisfied to the last degree with my three weeks' trip/

Cleasby now settled down to work, and it appears from a letter to his father,
written on the iSth of December, that he did not intend to return home before the