Tjenare Mollberg, hur är det fatt?

Tjenare Mollberg, hur är det fatt? (Dear Mollberg, what happened?) is No. 45 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The epistle is subtitled "Till fader Mollberg rörande hans harpa, och tillika et slags ad notitiam at Mollberg led oskyldigt på Krogen Rostock" (To father Mollberg concerning his harp, and further a sort of ad notitiam that Mollberg innocently suffered at the Rostock tavern); the song is sometimes known under this name. It describes a fight in a tavern that starts when Mollberg innocently plays a Polska on his harp, leading his audience to assume it was propaganda for Poland.

Scholars have noted that the epistle is the clearest exception to the rule that Bellman avoided international politics. The Rostock tavern's location has been debated; the evidence favours a city centre site in Stockholm's Gamla stan. The sound of Mollberg's harp is indicated in the song with onomatopoeic phrases.

Music and verse form
The song has 9 verses, each consisting of 11 lines: 4 long, 4 short, 3 long. The rhyming pattern is AABB-CCDD-EEE. It is marked Allegretto, and is in time. The melody is an ariette from the comic opera Silvain with libretto by Jean-François Marmontel and music by André Grétry. This was first put on in Paris in 1770, and the French performers brought it to Stockholm's Bollhus Theatre that same year. The musicologist James Massengale writes that the "poetic possibility" was for Bellman to set up a humorous contrast between the melody and the reality described in the epistle.

Lyrics
The epistle was written sometime between 1773 and 1778. The song, subtitled "Till fader Mollberg rörande hans harpa" (To father Mollberg concerning his harp), tells how the musician Mollberg, a member of Fredman's Order of Bacchus, had gone to the Rostock tavern to play "Drottningens polska i Polen, G dur" (The Queen of Poland's Polska in G major); the lyrics include onomatopoeic phrases suggestive of the plucking of harp strings. A shoe-mender tells him not to allude to "Polens affärer" (Poland's affairs). He explains to "my Maecenas", he drinks and talks "helt högt" (out loud) about Poland, and how no monarch can forbid him from playing his harp, as long as he has a string left. Two notaries, an old sergeant, and a dragoon guardsman call out to Mollberg to stop. A "cross-eyed" woman steps up and smashes his harp, bottles and glass. The shoe-mender hits Mollberg, and the epistle ends with a lament for the world's injustice and his innocent suffering; he vows to keep better company, and to "play for Bacchus [god of wine] and Venus [goddess of love] — kling klang — ", and asks Apollo [god of music] to accompany him, "Pling, plingeli plang!".

Reception and legacy


Britten Austin calls the song a "famous ballad-epistle". The harpist Mollberg innocently plays a dance tune, which as the lyrics state is the "Queen of Poland, her Polska, in G Major". Britten Austin explains that this is "an action which is instantly assumed by a shoemaker, a sergeant, two notaries and a guardsman to have political innuendo". Mollberg replies that no monarch in the world can stop him playing; the result is that "his face is smashed in, and his harp, too". Britten Austin notes that Mollberg is accustomed to "rough nights" of this kind, as epistle 41 describes a morning after as Mollberg gets up "rubbing his bruises", while epistle 58 tells how a fellow member of the Order of Bacchus, Kilberg, meets his death in a tavern brawl, "His glass upset; / Beer from a barrel is dripping."

The Bellman Society comments that while international politics rarely inspired Bellman to song, this epistle is the clearest exception. Poland had been divided up by the great powers of the Russian Empire, Prussia, and Austria; Mollberg's choice of a Polska was interpreted by the tavern guests as "propaganda for Poland". The Society states that Mollberg's complaint represents one of the first calls for freedom of expression in Swedish literature.

The song was recorded by Fred Åkerström on his third album of Bellman interpretations, Vila vid denna källa in 1977. Åkerström accompanied himself on guitar (where Bellman played his cittern), with Katarina Fritzén on flute and Örjan Larsson on cello. An earlier performance by Sven-Bertil Taube on his Fredmans Epistlar och Sånger, recorded 1959–1963, was re-released on an EMI-Svenska CD in 1983.

The location of the Rostock tavern has been debated. According to the local historian Björn Hasselblad, the incident described in the epistle took place in Stockholm's city centre, at Källaren Rostock at Västerlånggatan 45 in Gamla stan. A different understanding is recorded by Stockholm Municipality's Stockholmskällan database; it states that the lithograph by Elis Chiewitz, illustrating the Epistle, shows the interior of the Råstock, Stockholm in Sätra, then to the southwest of Stockholm. This interpretation is corroborated by the Stockholm City Museum's card register for old tavern names, which contains a remark on the card for the Västerlånggatan "Rostock": "Do not confuse this [city centre] Rostock with that in Fredman's ep. 45."