Corpus Poeticum Boreale, Volume 1

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1, DECADENCE OF OLD LEARNING.

It has been long taken for granted that Iceland is and has been a land of antiquaries, a place where the old traditions, nay more, the old poems and myths of the Teutons have lingered on unbroken; and glowing phrases have painted its people as a Don Quixote of nations ever dreaming over the glorious reminiscences of the gods and heroes. It is to the credit of the Icelanders as a living people that it is not so. Yet such, if he had formulated his creed, would have been the Editor’s belief before he began to look for himself, some twenty years ago, into the state of literature and literary tradition in the middle ages and the post-reformation days of Iceland. In the Arna-Magnzan Collection, a vast congeries of all kinds of documents bearing on the subject, memoranda, letters, vellums, fragments of vellums, and paper-copies of vellums, there exists ample material for getting at some notion of the true state of the case. It was while working at this collection, making careful statistics of these vellums and the vellum fragments representing lost vellums, that the opinions now set forth forced themselves bit by bit upon the Editor. The following results came out from a minute © enquiry into the state of the MSS. of the classical literature—the Sagas touching Iceland, the Kings’ Lives, the Older Bishops’ Lives, etc.

After the fall of the Commonwealth, in 1281, throughout the next ensuing century, there was a great activity for collecting and copying the historical literature of the past. By far the greater portion of the Sagas have gone down in fourteenth-century MSS., some of which are in fact great collections of Sagas. This contained the great collections such as Sturlunga A and B, Hulda, AM. 61, Flatey-book, Waterhorn-book, Berg’s-book, which all belong to this epoch, as do also Cod. Wormianus, the Stiorn vellums, Hawk’s-book. It was in fact an age in which a marked amount of curiosity was taken by the survivors of the old families as to the history of the past. The great vellums speak, though no other records are left, for this was an unproductive though appreciative age. But that the public taste was far otherwise set during the next hundred years is proved by the rapid fall in the number of copies of classic works. Thus, as regards the number of vellums, the fifteenth century staffs to the fourteenth in a ratio of 1 to 3 or even 4. Not that writing or copying had b ‘9

XViii INTRODUCTION.

ceased, there are still many vellums, but they contain Sagas on subjects taken mostly from foreign or fictitious romances, or Skrék-Ségur [pseudo-Sagas] or Saints’ Lives or the like. The end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth are mainly marked by ‘ Rimur,’ and poems on saints in a cloister style, with a stray true Saga vellum now and then. At last we reach a period (1530-1630) of which hardly any Saga MSS. exist: no single copy taken of Landnama, or Edda, or Sturlunga, or Laxdzla, one transcript of Niala perhaps, and some stray antiquarian scraps.

In fact, after careful examination, we cannot point to any classic which had kept its place in popular favour or popular remembrance. For instance, has a fifteenth-century Rimur-maker to give a list of luckless lovers or gallant and unfortunate heroes (a favourite topic which at once set forth the wide knowledge of the poet and whetted the hearer’s hunger for another song), what does he do? Of course he turns to the woe of Gudrun, the proud sorrow of Brunhild, the devotion of Sigrun and Cara, the gallantry of Helgi! Not at all, he never mentions their names. Then he speaks of Nial and Gunnar, Egil, of Skarphedin, Kiartan, of Gretti! Not a whit more. The only Icelanders whom he remembers are Poet-Helgi and Gunlaug Snake’s-tongue. But he grieves for the grief of Tristram and Isolt, of Alexander and Helen, of Hector and Iwain, of Gawain and Roland, and of the heroes of a score of imaginary stories. Our friend Dr. Kélbing, who has collected passages! where such lists occur in his Beytraige (Breslau 1876), has been kind enough to send us a copy of the unpublished Kappa-kvedi, composed by a West Icelander c. 1500, from which we have extracted the following typical list: Hector, David, Mirmant, Karlamagnus, Otwel, Balan, Rolland, Walter, Bering, Errek, Ivent, Floris, Gibbon, Philpo, Tristram, Partalopi, Remund, Konrad, Asmund, Mafus (Maugis), Clares, Alanus, Florens, Belus, Landres, Herman, Iarlman, Victor and Blaus, Anund . and Randwe, Saulus, Anchises, Ahel, Helgi, Hogni, Hialmar, Arrow-OQdd, Anganty,.[llugi, An, Thori Highleg, Vilmund, Solli, Hagbard, Skald- Helgi, Finnbogi, Thorstan Bejar-magn, Einar, Elling, Bui Digri, Vagn, Ref, Oddgeir, the two Olafs, Harald, Ring, Ulf the Red.

Of all Islendinga Sagas Niala has been most copied: counting every strip of vellum which once formed part of a manuscript, we shall find out of some fifteen MSS., one of the thirteenth century, ten of the fourteenth, three of the fifteenth, and one of the sixteenth: This Saga was

1 Compare the list of heroes from Skida-rima, ii. p. 396; and the following from Hialmtheow’s Rimur (fifteenth century)—Arthur and Elida, Tristram and Ysolt, Hogni and Hedin, Philotemia, Ring and Tryggwi, Iwain, Alexander and Elene, David and Absalom ; ‘from Gerard’s Rimur (fifteenth century)—-Priamus, Mirman, Iwain, Flores and Blanchefleur, Samson and Dalila, Sérli, Earl Roland ; from Heming’s Rimur (fifteenth ‘century)—Godwine, Sérli, Parthenope, Raven and Gunlaug, Poet-

Helgi, Tristram and Ysolt.. For Gunnar and Hallgerd, or Gudrun and Kiartan, we look in vain,

DECADENCE OF OLD LEARNING. xix perhaps never utterly forgotten, though of a certain but little read. More statistics on this head are given in Prolegomena, where the history of the literature is more fully treated than suits our present purpose. The facts are however clear enough, that the taste of the times had completely changed by the year 1500, that there was neither interest in nor remembrance of the old life and old literature. This ignorance even went so far that the very constitution of the Commonwealth was forgotten, and it was the law of St. Olaf, not the law of Skafti or Wolfliot (whose names were clean perished from the popular mind), which had now become the ideal of the Icelandic patriot.

The English trade and the change of physical circumstances may have something to do with this rapid but complete oblivion of things past, this absolute neglect of history and tradition. To the Icelander of the sixteenth century, even the fifteenth century was a mythical, semi-fabulous age ; Lady Olof, Biorn her husband (d. 1467), the feuds with the English traders, were as legendary to them as Nial had once been to the twelfth-century Icelander. The pedigrees go no higher up. The Saga tide is not even seen looming behind. The legend of Semund Frodi as Virgilius, is the work of the Renaissance, grown from the story in Bp. John’s Saga. The difference between new and old was still more marked by the Reformation, which cut the last link that _ bound Iceland to the past—the Old Church. The change which about the same time affected the tongue itself is but an outward token of a deep and real: phenomenon.

And now the tide begins to turn. About the last ten years of the sixteenth century we notice symptoms of a Renaissance, the impulse for which came from abroad. There are only two marks of xzative interest in these matters, one provoked-by the re-discovery of Landnamabok, the other by the knowledge of the single vellum of Hungrvaka. The influence of the former is shown in the pedigrees compiled by Odd, Bishop of Scalholt 1589-1630, in his earlier years, which form the nucleus for our information respecting the families of the last Catholic and first Protestant bishops’. The latter is manifested by the Lives of Bishops, drawn up by John Egilson, at the instance of Bishop Odd, who also took down the life of the last Roman Catholic bishop from his living grandson, in imitation of the venerable model which had preserved the biographies of their Hungrvaka predecessors. The Lives in Hungrvaka were to Bishop Odd and John Egilsson what Suetonius was to Einhard.- Still, though here and there there may have been a possibility of a revival, the real motive power was actively supplied from abroad.

About 1550 there was found at Bergen a MS. vellum of the Kings’

1 These pedigrees, stretching back to about A.D. 1500, a few to 1459, were, after the re-discovery of Sturlunga, joined on by false links to the genealogies of Islendinga Saga, and so gave rise to the long fictitious trees of the eighteenth-century antiquarians, But in their pure state these sixteenthgcentury pedigrees form the well-spring of modern authentic family history, b2

xX INTRODUCTION.

Lives, all the great MSS. of which were (as we have noticed at length in Prolegomena!) in Norway. A Norwegian began to translate the Lives. They were published at Copenhagen in 1594, and being Lives of Kings, Royal interest was roused in the matter in Denmark, which led to the employment of Icelanders, who were better able to interpret documents the language of which they still spoke with little change.

§ 2, REVIVAL—ARNGRIM THE LEARNED, ETC.

‘The first two Icelanders who are drawn into the study of their own old literature are Arngrim the Learned and Biorn of Scardsa: their activity would extend from 1593 to 1643. To understand the character of the revival, of which they were the pioneers, we must put ourselves as far as possible back into their position, for till we have done so, it will be impossible to understand their views or interpret their statements.

ARNGRIM JOHNSSON? was born in 1:68. He was fostered by Gudbrand, the pious printer-bishop, whose life-long friend and right-hand man he grew up to be. He was priest of Mel and officialis or coadjutor of the Bishop for his diocese of Holar; hence his time was passed

• between his cure and the Bishop’s seat. He wrote four works: the Brevis Commentarius Islandiz, 1593, on the History of Iceland; the Supplementum, 1596 (which only exists in MS.), on the Lives of Kings; the Crymogza, 1609, a Constitutional History of Iceland; and Specimen Islandiz, mostly drawn from Landnama, printed 1643, written c. 1635. He was a correspondent of Ole Worm, the Danish scholar, survived his foster-father for many years, and died in 1648%.

1 See Professor Storm’s Essay for the details.

? He was the first Icelander who took a family name, calling himself Widalin, from his native place Wididale. All Icelandic Widalins, a goodly race of men, are descended from him. Yet he himself mostly goes by the name Arngrim, and so we designate him.

3 The story of his last marriage (for he was wedded more than once) is worth a brief note, for Arngrim was as famous for his family as for the learning which won him his eke-name. After the death of his friend Gudbrand (1627) he would naturally have been chosen bishop, but he was set aside in favour of Thorlac, the late Bishop’s grandson. Arngrim did not let his disappointment weigh upon him, but, though in his sixtieth year, he took to himself a fair young wife, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. They were a long-lived race. A son of his, Gudbrand, was burnt with his wife, both bedridden, in his house in 1719; and there was, according to the popular story, heard out of the fire a ditty (which we have given, vol. ii, p. 416, No. 63); a late version of the Skarphedin story! But it is with Gudbrand’s sister Hilda (who was the mother of the most learned Icelander of the following generation, as she was the daughter of the best scholar of the preceding one), that one is chiefly inclined to linger. She died on the 25th of October, 1725 (157 years after her father’s birth), John Olafsson (1705-1779) was brought up at her house, and has pleasant gossip about her. A Hamlet story he narrates from her dictation.

One pretty tale links her with the best man among her contemporaries, Hallgrim Petersson the Poet. In her youth she was staying at Bessastad with a Danish household as a humble companion, for her family were at that time not well off. Once on a time she set off with one of the Danish ladies on a journey. It was growing dark; they had still to ride across a rough hill or heath, and so on the way they

REVIVAL OF ICELANDIC LETTERS. xxi

Arngrim, from his influential position and from authority conferred upon by the King, had the best possible means of getting at what MSS. and remains were within reach, and he availed himself of his opportunities, so that, as he tells us, he had no less than twenty-six vellums in his care at one time’. It is therefore highly interesting for us to trace through his books what books he does not know at the different stages of his literary life. He never knew Sturlunga Saga, Islendinga-book, Bishop Arni’s Saga, Flatey-book?, all most important works for his peculiar study, the constitutional antiquities of his country. Snorri he only knows as ‘auctor Eddz,’ i.e. of the Gradus. Ari, as the great historian of the beginning, and Sturla as the chronicler of the later days of the Commonwealth, are wholly unknown to him. The older (Eddic) poems, of course, he was totally ignorant of. We must bear in mind the range of his authorities to judge his work fairly: considering the imperfection of the sources he had to work with, his books show high sagacity and good sense.

BiORN JOHNSON OF SCARDSA was born in North Iceland 1575, and died blind at a high age in 1656. He betook himself to the study of antiquities when about fifty years old. Though a franklin and farmer, self-educated (he had never been to the High School, or learned Latin), he had a poetic imaginative turn of mind, and also, it appears, a force of character and enthusiasm, which led his dicta to be eagerly called at Saurbye, Hallgrim’s manse, to get another horse. A tall man, wearing peasant clothing, came out in his shirt sleeves to see to their wants. As they were about to ride away he beckoned the girl aside, and said to her, ‘I knew your father well; he was indeed a good man, Do not be disheartened at your present lowly estate, better things are certainly in store for you.’ With that he gave her his blessing and turned away. The girl rejoined the Danish lady, and as they were in the dark groping their way across the stony heath, the latter asked her who it was that spoke with her, and when told that it was the good man Priest Hallgrim, she was astonished at having taken so little notice of him, saying, ‘How was it I didn’t kuow the priest?’ on which phrase she kept harping again and again during the ride, The words of Hallgrim proved prophetic, Hilda made a good match; her son Paul Widalin became Lawman in due time; and even our book bears witness of him, for many of the ditties, ii. p, 408, are his—From Fokn Olafsson’s autograph MS. at Copenhagen, which the Editor came across some twenty years ago.

1 Arngrim—Codices et volumina nostratium, in antiquissima membrana descriptos, habui ad manus xxvi. et certe longe plures, lectos enim subinde possessoribus restitui.— Datum Holar i Hialtadal, 1597.

2 When Arngrim wrote Supplementum and Chrymogwa, he knew the following works—Landnama, Heimskringla, Great Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga with its Ep'sodes, Harold’s Saga as in Hulda, Knytlinga, Orkney Saga, Iomsvickinga Saga, Skioldunga (mythical, but a fragment, yet fuller than at present extant), the great vellum Vatzhyrna. Of legendary; Thorstan Oxfoot, Kroka Ref, Orm Storolfsson, Heming. Farther, Fagrskinna Cod, A (while in Copenhagen one should think, for this MS. never was in Iceland), He did not know the Flatey-book, as seen from what he says of the Faro Islands ;—the Pedigrees and ‘Fra Fornidti’ he would have got from our present Arna-Magn. 309 (a late copy of parts of the Flatey-book). Of Annals he would have used our present Annales Reseniani; this we conclude from his not mentioning Bishop Maguus’ death; those Annal® being the sole ones that omit that fact, xxii : INTRODUCTION.

accepted by his contemporaries, as we shall find by and by. His style is euphemistic, and he coined many words.

Of the same generation is MAGNUS OLAFSSON, priest of Laufas (1574- 1636), well known as the author of a compilation or rearrangement of the Codex Wormianus of Snorri’s Edda, in which the Gylfaginning is turned into sixty-eight Demiségur (short Tales, like the brief apologues of Eastern story-books), and the Gradus-part into an alphabetical index. His book has superseded the original in popular knowledge and esteem; and it was through hearing it read aloud by his old friend, Jacob Samisonson [ii. p. 412, No. 8], that the Editor when a child first got to know the story of Balder.

§ 3. BisHop BRYNIOLF, ETC.

The name of Bishop BRyYNIoLF of Scalholt (born Sept. 14, 1605, bishop 1639-1675) will be for ever connected with the old revival of letters, with the Edda MSS., and other treasures which his care preserved for us. But this Icelandic Parker is a man whose personality was a striking one, and he was a little king in the island in his own day, looked up to and reverenced for his learning, his rank, and his force of character. He is brought vividly before the eye—big, tall, stern of face, with red hair close-cropped to the ears, and long flowing red beard, speaking with decision, and nodding his head as he spoke; a man of proud feelings, dwelling with satisfaction upon his descent from Bishop John Arason, his mother’s great-grandfather, and perhaps for that very reason void of the intolerance which was commonly felt at that time towards the old Church. He would neither speak ill of her himself, nor suffer others to show irreverence towards her ceremonies or hallowed images, saying that such things were well fitted to _waken feelings of religion within a man, and loving to pray with his eyes upon a crucifix. A shrewd saying of his on the Reformation is worth record: “The Church had a scabbed head, but Luther took a currycomb to it, and scraped off hair and scalp and all.”

He was a great observer of times and seasons (like Laud), refusing to start on a journey on a Saturday, and recording and prognosticating from coincidences, carefully keeping the birth-hour of his children and friends that their nativity might be accurately drawn, and regarding himself as possessing a certain prophetic gift. His learning was renowned as marvellous by his contemporaries, and remembered by tradition; but, save a few letters and annotations, it has gone; and the man who could talk Greek with a Greek, and keep up a correspondence with the learned world of the continent from his far-off see, has left but what he would have regarded as the fragments of his library as his enduring literary monument.

Several good anecdotes touching him are given by John Halldorsson (1665-1736), priest and dean of Hitardale, in his Biscopa A.vi (Lives of Bishops), a book of worth, with some pleasant biographic detail in it, mid . 44 7 "4 1

i P Fe Tee eae oS ees re ee ee a ee ee So

BISHOP BRYNIOLF. Xxiil which ought not to remain longer unprinted, for it contains the best historic material for the times of which it treats’. “I saw Bryniolf once,” says John; “I was then nine years old” [1674]: and he tells how he and other boys were outside the tent at the Althing [moot] one evening, holding the horses for their fathers and masters, like Shakspere’s ‘boys,’ and no doubt chatting and laughing among themselves, on the north side of the church at Thingvalla, as their elders were within, for the Bishop was taking leave of the priests and franklins, and the partingcup was going round, “ It was then that Master Bryniolf came out alone among us, somewhat suddenly. He was rather merry (gladr), and he asked the first of us, as he greeted him, about his family and his name and his forefathers, till he could get no further answer out of him; and he bade the boy to look him straight in the face while he spoke to him; and in the same way he questioned one after the other, and last of all me, John Halldorson, for I was the youngest. And to all of them he said something kind as he turned from them, but he patted my head and said, ‘Age is upon me, and youth is upon thee?; thou art very young, and I am grown too old for thee to get any good from me.’ Then he turned back again into the tent.”

He was unlike other men in many small ways; one notes his characteristic monogram l.. , i.e. Lupus Loricatus, still to be met with in an old book here and there in Iceland, the scattered jetsam of the writer’s fine library; and there is something royal about the Bryniolfus R. of his signature®, though R. does not stand for ‘Rex,’ but for ‘ Rufus,’ or more probably for ‘ Ragnheid’s son ;’ for he always had the deepest affection for his mother Ragnheid, and chose to use her name rather than his father’s (Sweyn) as his surname.

Bryniolf had two children, and their fate has a real bearing on the literary history of the Eddas and Sagas, for had they not predeceased him, the books and MSS. which he had collected would hardly have been scattered and destroyed as they were. His son Halldor (born 1642), the younger of the two, was not successful at the High School, and was accordingly removed by his father and sent to England to try his luck there,—for there was some trading, smuggling, and fishing still carried on between the two countries. Here however he fell ill and wished to start for home, but the Dutch war was going on, and there was a fair chance of an English ship being captured just at that time, when the Dutch were masters of the North Sea; so he died and was buried at Yarmouth, Oct. 1666. His father, when he heard the news, sent over an epitaph to be set on his grave :—

“ Hallthoris Yslandi cineres humus Anglica serua, depositumque bona quandoque redde fide !”’

1 The Editor, when a boy of fourteen, remembers listening to portions of it read from MSS. as evening entertainment.

2 An unconscious repetition of the Old Wicking’s Ditty, see vol. i, p. 362, No. 25.

8 We have never seen this signature, but the bioggaphers mention it; it was doubtless reserved for private confidential letters.

&xiv INTRODUCTION.

It would be good to know whether it was duly inscribed, and whether the poor boy’s tomb is still to be recognised. Sad as was this loss, the blow he had suffered four years before was far crueller and harder to be borne. His daughter Ragnheid (born Sept. 8, 1641) was the very apple of his eye, a beautiful and accomplished girl, the maiden to whom Hallgrim the Poet sent, in May 1661, one of the three autographs of his Passion-Hymns, then fresh from his hand. The Bishop had taken into his household one Da%i, a parson’s son, a clever, handsome, merry young | fellow, a fine penman and good at all bodily feats, but a man of no worth as it turned out. He was brought into contact with the Bishop’s daughter, to whom he acted as tutor, and being entirely unscrupulous he took advantage of his position to ruin the poor girl. He was clever enough to get out of the way before the Bishop should learn the news, and direct vengeance never fell on him. The Bishop was almost distraught at the disgrace that had fallen upon his daughter, and the very love he bore her served but to make the wound bite deeper. He was heard to repeat the words of Psammenitos, rd pev oixyia ny pelo Kaka 7) Sore dvakAalew, and it would seem that he never got over the melancholy which this catastrophe brought into his life. He obtained the king’s Letters of.Rehabilitation for Ragnheid (as is the use in Lutheran countries), but she did not long survive her trouble and the terror which her father’s rage and grief had caused her, but sank and died in Lent 1663, in her twenty-second year’. Her son was adopted by the Bishop, but he too died young (1673), so that there is no direct descendant of him who in his lifetime was held the highest and sorest tried of any man in Iceland. It was during the very year of this domestic tragedy, 1662, that Thormod Torfeus was in Iceland hunting after vellums for the king’s new-founded library, and it is highly probable that the MSS. he took back to Denmark with him as a gift ' from Bishop Bryniolf to the King’s Library [see Prolegomena, pp. 145, 146] were intended as a conciliatory present by which the royal favour he demanded might be the more readily taken into consideration, and so, along with other treasures, Edda, Cod. R, left Iceland for good. The Bishop felt that he had no more need now for the books, we may fancy; his interest for the time at least must have gone, for a collector does not send away so many of his choicest treasures (some of them he had had twenty years) without good reason. When the end came, Bryniolf prophesied the place and manner of his death ‘alone in the room,’ and appointed his grave outside the cathedral church at Scalholt apart from all the other bishops. But his heirs

1 The wretched fellow survived his victim well-nigh sixty years, and died 1719, aged 83, having passed forty-six years in holy orders, Tradition, however, with true popular justice asserts that nothing ever went well with him, and that he never came to any good. ‘The disgrace he brought upon the Bishop’s daughter was rendered greater by his having got one of the maids with child, who bore twins about the same time as Raguheid gave birth to her son.

(q eet i be ) 24

DANISH SCHOLARS. XXV

collateral', who cared so little for his memory as not even to have marked his grave, treated his books with scant reverence, and the Icelandic vellums, many of them, had disappeared before Arne Magnusson, thirty years later, came to rescue all that was left of vellum MSS. in the Island. Some of the Latin printed books may still be lingering on in Iceland, mouldering away, as the Editor saw one folio with his monogram twenty-four years ago. Most lucky it was that Bryniolf not only sent some of his best MSS. to Denmark, where all save one (Gisli’s Saga, see Prologomena, § 27, for the List) have safely reached us, but had taken care to have copies made of them by John Erlendsson, for these transcripts, being easy to read, were preserved by those into whose hands they fell, while the original vellums were left to positive ill-use or carelessness, which soon destroyed many of them. For instance, Libellus and Landnama, both old vellums once in the Bishop’s library, were copied by John Erlendsson in 1651, and somehow perished in the thirty years’ interval between the Bishop’s death and Arne’s arrival,

We have quoted from the correspondence of Bryniolf and the Danish scholar OLE Worm; a word or two upon the latter will not be out of place. Born 1588, he seems to have taken early to study,

.and as he was a man of good position and of great thirst for knowledge of every kind, he came into relations with most of the scholars within reach of his busy pen. His correspondence with his Icelandic contemporaries has been published. He was connected with the publica- tion of Peter Clausen’s translation of Heimskringla. Worm fell into the study of Runes, which he treated in his peculiar mystic way, and in his well-known Literatura Runica he makes mention of, and cites, the Poetic Edda, Arngrim sent him out the MS. of Snorri’s Edda, which has ever since borne his name, Cod. Wormianus, as Arngrim says 1629: “The Edda and the Scalda that is affixed to it, as it is my manuscript, I grant freely to Master Worm for as long as he will.” Worm also acquired other MSS. which did not pass into the University Library, but finally became Arne Magnusson’s property.

STEPHANIUS, Worm’s contemporary, born 1599 and schooled at Herlufsholm, was a great correspondent of Bishop Bryniolf, and really a fine scholar; his edition of Saxo is the first piece of true editing of a Northern classic, and shows at every page wide reading and sound criticism of a shrewd Bentleian quality. The Note Uberiores, which appeared in 1644, but which had necessarily taken some time to pass through the press, frequently refer to the help he received from Icelandic scholars. .

Stephanius became possessed of several Icelandic MSS., which (in

• His Icelandic MSS. he bequeathed to a kinswomanj Helga Magnusdottir of Bradratunga—a name that often enough recurs in Arne Magnusson’s slips,

XXvi | INTRODUCTION.

1651. were sold by his widow to the noble collector De la Gardie, whence they passed to the Upsala Library in 1685 (along with Codex Argenteus); the best of them is the Codex Upsalensis of Snorri’s Edda.

§ 4. THE HISTORY OF THE WORD ‘EDDA,’ a. Before A.D. 1642.

The word ‘ Edda’ is never found at all in any of the dialects of the Old Northern tongue, nor indeed in any other tongue known to us, The first time it is met with is in the Lay of Righ, where it is used as a title for great-grandmother, and from this poem the word is cited (with other terms from the same source) in the collection at the end of Scaldscaparmal. How or why Snorri’s book on the Poetic Art came to be called ‘Edda’ we have no actual testimony (the Editor’s opinion thereon is given at length in Excursus IV to vol. ii), but in the vellums of it which survive the following colophons are found; viz. in Cod. Upsalensis :—

“This Book is called Edda, which Snorri Sturlason put together according to the order set down here:—First, concerning the Anses and Gylfi. Next after, Scaldscaparmal and the names of many things. Last, the Tale of Metres which Snorri wrought for King Hacon and Duke Skuli 1.”

And in the fragment AM. 757: “The book that is called Edda tells how the man called Eager,’ etc.?

Snorri’s work, especially the second part of it, Scaldscaparmal, handed down in copies and abridgments through the Middle Ages, was looked on as setting the standard and ideal of poetry. It seems to have kept up indeed the very remembrance of court-poetry, the memory of which, but for it, would otherwise have perished. But though the medieval poets do not copy ‘ Edda’ [i.e. Snorri’s rules], they constantly allude to it, and we have an unbroken series of phrases from 1340 to 1640 in which ‘Edda’ is used as a synonym for the technical laws of the court-metre (a use, it may be observed, entirely contrary to that of our own days). Thus beginning with Sacred Poems between 1340-1400, Eystein says in Lilia, verse 97: “In all speech the substance is the thing, though the obscure rules of Edda may here

• and there have to give way; so I shall write plainly at all events*.” Again, Abbot Arni (c. 1380): “ The great masters of the Eddie Art,

THE WORD EDDA. XXvii who cherish the precepts of learned books, may think this poem too plain, but the plain words of Scripture are better suited in my opinion to the lives of saints, than the dark likenings which give neither strength nor pleasure to any one*.’”’ And Abbot Arngrim (1345): “I have not told my tale according to the rules of Edda,so my verses are not smooth to the tongue. I give you but poetastry. I am far from the good poets®.”” And in Nicholas Drapa, Hall the priest (c. 1400) says: “I am not equal to my subject, I lack wisdom, gentle breeding, etc., eloquence, the study of good poets, the knowledge of Edda’s noble laws *.”

From 1450-1550 we have numerous examples from the Rimur. *‘T have never heard or seen Edda,” i.e. I have never learnt poet-craft. ** Poets would do better not to be everlastingly fumbling over the Edda similes.” “There is no pleasure in speaking in riddles, according to the dark rules of Edda.” “Iam tired of Edda.” “Isend my poem forth though I have not learnt my words or art from Edda!” “TI have never learnt any of Edda’s figures.’ “No help of Edda have I got, she is thought hard to master, and she has never got into my brains!” Again, after 1550: “ The craoks or gambits of Edda;’ “1 have no help from Edda ;” “‘ Many sing though they know little of Edda ;” ‘I shall not fix my mind on Edda, the meaning is the important thing;’’ “ Edda is said to be a glorious book by those who study her;’’ “ The laws of the poets and the rules of Edda;’’ “ The similes or figures of Edda ;” and so on down to the times of Arngrim, and Magnus, and Biorn of Scardsa *.

It is their theories and beliefs respecting such ancient literature as they knew, and particularly the works of Snorri, that we must next consider. It must be borne in mind that Codex Wormianus [§ 6] was the MS. of Snorri’s work, which they knew; that it contains besides ‘Edda’ a number of additional treatises (a book on the grammatical figures by Olaf, and the alphabetic studies of Thorodd and his follower) which were known as ‘Scalda.’ The first occurrence of this latter word is in the Rimur of Valdimar, by a poet of the end of the sixteenth century [see at the end of Introduction], an allusion, we doubt not, to Cod. Wormianus itself.

Now Codex Wormianus does not contain the ascription to Snorri, and there is no evidence that the name of Snorri was traditionally lofi heilagra lizt mer hefa : lids ritninga setra vitni, mial-snild, aktan skyrra skalda : skil vegligrar Eppu reglu,...

• These references from the Rimur, being too numerous to put into a foot-note, ° are given at the end of the Appendix to vol. ii,

XXViii INTRODUCTION.

connected with the ‘ Edda,’ of which the Rimur-makers speak so often. For, though we have so many references to Edda’s rule, we have none to the rule-maker, a thing most strange, but which may fairly be taken as evidence that Snorri was clean forgotten in the popular mind at any rate.

The first person who gives Snorri as author of the Edda is Arngrim in Crymogza, 1609, most probably on the authority of some copy or fragment. It is not impossible of course that he may have heard of or had a glimpse at (the present) Codex Upsalensis of Edda, which, as we have seen, contains the ascription.

Biorn of Scardsa, on the contrary, had evidently never heard of Snorri as connected with the Edda, and had already formed his own theory on the authorship of the two great sections (Edda and Scalda) of the Codex Wormianus. One he ascribes to Semund the Historian, one to Gunlaug the Benedictine Monk. But how in the world came he to place Semund and Gunlaug together? In this way we think. He only knew of one book that had come down from the old days in which there was mention of authors’ names, Bishop John’s Life. This Life contains the statement that it was written by Gunlaug the monk, and it also mund, of whom it relates the very interesting legend which pictures him as a disciple of the black art and a prodigy of learning. Biorn’s flighty fancy is fired, in one hand he holds the two anonymous. works, in the other two authors, and so he boldly pairs them off, as in a game of cards, giving Edda to Semund, Scalda to Gunlaug. For is not Edda worthy of Semund? And does not Scalda suit Gunlaug, who knew all about Semund and was a learned man in his day too?

With this satisfactory and pleasing hypothesis he rested in high content till he found that Arngrim confidently named Snorri in his list of Speakers as ‘auctor Edde.’ He will not surrender his pet theory, and he will not dispute Arngrim’s statement, so he coins an hypothesis of reconciliation, and holds that the Edda was begun by Semund and completed by Snorri; but he leaves Gunlaug as author of Scalda, which he remained till late in last century’.

In this final form we get it expressed in his Gronlandia [AM. 115, 8vo, autogr.], when, having spoken of the Scalda treatises as “‘ written by Monk Gunlaug, who lived under Waldimar the Second” (!), he proceeds: “he forbids one to draw the synonyms and likenings farther than Snorri permits [quoting from Olaf’s treatise]; that must have been Snorri Sturlason the Lawman, he lived in the days of Gunlaug; Snorri gathered the synonyms and many kinds of names

• We now know, certainly, that Olaf Whitepoet is the author of Scalda; yet Biorn could hardly be expected to have known what Cod. Worm. does not tell; he might have got at it by way of induction, but that was not his manner. Of evidence for connecting it with Gunlaug, or Edda with Semund, there is none, these theories are sheer bubbles of fancy, ee a ee ae eee a ees ila otis piece 5

ee a

THE BOOK EDDA. XxixX

and added them to Edda, which Priest Semund the Wise had compiled aforetime *.”

This theory Arngrim accepts and upholds as a tradition in his correspondence with Ole Worm, 1636, who is a little puzzled by his loose statements. “ Why do you speak of Edda as Semund’s, when you in Crymogza called Snorri its author?” Arngrim answers, 1637: “I can solve your difficulty; in our records these words are plainly to be read, ‘Snorri Sturlason lived in the days of Gunlaug the monk, he added to the Edda which Semund the historian had composed®.’” A striking statement! What are these ‘records?’ Nothing but the words of Biorn given above, written only ten years back, quoted almost letter for letter. Arngrim is anxious to be thought consistent, and we are afraid the ‘monumenta’ looks a little like an equivocation. Certainly two years later Arngrim is bolder, when he writes to the same correspondent: “Hence it is that Edda is found in old records ascribed both to Semund and Snorri, the plan and beginning being Semund’s, the additions and conclusion Snorri’s *.”

To show (in addition to these words of Arngrim), (1) that Biorn habitually spoke of the ‘Edda’ as Semund’s or Snorri’s, (2) that by this ‘Edda’ is always meant the prose Edda, (3) that he used the name of Semund wherever he wished to find an author for a great classic—the following extracts will be of use. In a Commentary on Law-phrases Biorn quotes Scaldscaparmal three times as Semund’s alone, once as Snorri’s and Semund’s, and the Thulor once as

The same author in ‘Commentaries yfir Fornkvedi’ [Court Poems]: ‘S& visi og versa hatt’ (sic),

• Worm to Arngrim, 1636: ‘Edd autorem videris constituere Semundum Froda, cum tamen Chrymogza [Arngrim’s work of 1609] Snorroni Sturlzo id opus attribuat. Quid sentiendum dissertius edoce, rogo,’

8 Arngrim again to Worm, 1639: ‘Hinc est quod Edda utrique, Semundo et Snorroni, in Antiquitatibus(!) ascripta reperiatur, ita ut Sgmundo initia et fundamentalia, Snorroni locupletatio et opusculi absolutio debeatur,’

XXX INTRODUCTION.

Szmund’s, twice as Snorri’s, sometimes citing word for word, so that there can be no mistake; e.g. “Saemund the historian says flatly that ‘the speech of these peoples is called the Danish tongue ;’” and ‘“ Semund the historian says, ‘next to the liege men or barons came they who are called holds.’” Which passages are to be found in Edda Sksk. ch. 53. He also cites from Scalda as Gunlaug’s. To Szemund he ascribes ‘Niala and the great Saga of Olaf Tryggvason’ in his notes to Landnama-bok*. Very interesting is the quotation given by Arne Magnuson (1696) from Biorn, Commentary on Gest’s Riddles, which wenow take to be lost, written in 1641 (observe the date) :—‘“ The prose Edda, which we commonly call Snorri’s Edda, Biorn of Scardsa attributes to Semund®.” Arne Magnuson (1696) has also preserved the statement :—“ M..'Thormod Torfisson (now 60) says, that.in his youth he had heard his father quote somewhat from Semuna’s Edda, which he said he had himself read in the book some time ago.” A notice easily interpreted in the light which we are now able to throw upon the invariable use of the words Semund’s Edda for the ‘ prose Edda’ before 1642.

We may now leave Biorn in 1641 with his theory on the one prose Edda with two authors known to him, and turn to Magnus Olafsson, who first conceived the idea of a second Edda having existed. He was not content with speculating on the authorship of the Edda, but boldly goes to the root of the matter, and holds that Edda, as preserved in Codex Wormianus, is merely a compendium of an archetypal Edda, a gigantic cyclopedia of ancient lore, composed by the Anses themselves,

1 ees a

1 BioRn oF SkaRDsA, Commentary on Law Phrases, c. 1626, Cod. Arna-Magn, 61, chart, autograph :—

8 Arne Magnusson, 1696: ‘Eddam illam Prosaicam, que vulgo Snorra Edda, Semundo Froda tribuit Biorno de Skardsa in Commentario suo yfir Gatur Gestz Blinda, skrifudum 1641.’ [I have not seen this Commentary. G. V.] (nokkru) lesid hafa.—Arne Magnusson.

THEORIES AS TO EDDA. XXxi or at least their grandsons. As he says: “From the poems of the ancients [the fragments of poetry in Snorri’s Edda], and also from certain titles of the Anses, and especially Woden, and indeed of. other things also, it appeareth that there hath been another older Edda, or book of stories, put together by the Anses themselves or their grandsons, which hath perished, and of which our Edda is, as it were, an epitome; for of very few of these many names, which are applied to Woden on account of divers adventures of his, as Edda itself declareth, can any account be given from the stories contained therein, yea, nor even of the names of many others, which are therein to be found’.”

The theory is grandiose, and not wholly fanciful. Snorri’s Edda stands to tradition in much the same relation which Magnus dreamed that it stood to his Arch-Edda;.and those names, in the Thulor, of sea-kings and ogresses, which we cannot identify, are indeed evidences of lost legends and faded myths.

Bishop Bryniolf accepts the theory, but he has heard of Biorn’s ideas on the authorship of Edda, and he effects a decent episcopal substitution of Semund for the ‘Anses or their grandsons.’ In a letter to Stephanius (1641) he expresses himself with a certain fervour; “ Where be those mighty treasuries of all human knowledge, written down by Semund the Wise, and in especial that most noble Edda, of which, beside the name, we have now left scarce a thousandth part; yea, and that which we have, had been altogether destroyed had not the compendium of Snorri Sturlason, which we have, preserved to us what I would call the bare shadow and foot-print of that ancient Edda, rather than the work. itself? Where too is that huge volume of histories, from Woden down to his: own day, which Ari, surnamed the Historian, compiled? [Alluding to another theory of the authorguessing Biorn.] Where be those most excellent writings of Monk Guniaug? Where be the royal poets’ songs that were held as marvels over the whole northern world??”

The last stage of the Magnus theory is reached by the poet Peter

1 Ex veterum rhythmis, ut etiam appellationibus Asarum nonnullis, ac in primis Odini, et aliarum denique rerum, apparet, aliam fuisse Eddam antiquiorem, aut volumen fabularum, ab ipsis Asis confectum aut eorum nepotibus, quod interierit, et cujus hec nostra Edda aliquale sit compendium ; quia nominum paucissimorum, que Odino ex variis casibus indita sunt plurima, ut Edda profitetur, ex ejus fabulis reddi potest ratio, nec etiam plurium, quz ibi occurrunt, appellationum.—Magnus Olafsson, c. 1629, ad calcem Edde Latina, which he presented to Chancellor Fries.

2 Bishop Bryniolf in a letter to Stephanius, year 1641: ‘Ubi enim ingentes thesauri totius humane sapientiz, conscripti a Semundo Sapiente; et in primis nobilissima illa Edda, cujus vix millesimam partem reliquam nunc preter nomen habemus; atque id ipsum, quod habemus, omnino fuisset deperditum, nisi Snorronis Sturlonis epitome umbram potius et vestigia, quam verum opus Eddz illius antique reliqua fecisset? Ubi vero ingens volumen historiarum, ab Odino ad sua tempora contextum ab Ario polyhistore dicto? Ubi prestantissima Gunlogi monachi scripta ? Ubi regiorum per totum arctoum orbem poetarum admiranda carmina?’ etc, ete.— [' ep oo in Epistola ad me sua ante brienniume Jere scripta,’ Stephanius in 1644. :

XXxli INTRODUCTION.

Thordsson, who says (c. 1650): “ The story goes, that in the old days in Gautland, there was a king’s daughter named Edda, who was held the greatest paragon for wise counsel and for her many accomplishments, but above all for knowledge and book-learning, of any maid or matron that was living in her day. She flourished a short time after Woden and the Anses came hither out of Asia to the latds of the North and took them under their rule. And because of her wisdom she wrote down in a continuous story the dealings between Woden and King Gylfi of Sweden, who was named Gangler, etc.... But I have never found that these histories have ever been put down in writing since Edda wrote the Beguiling of Gylfi till Snorri Sturlason wrote his Edda 1.”

In Stockholm there is an interesting MS. (Holm. Isl. 38, fol.) containing an Essay on Edda composed in 1641, a date to be noted”. This essay is an omnium gatherum of all kinds, and, amongst other things, contains the first written information respecting the elves and other popular legend-matter, for which the Editor (in 1861) made use of it in his preface to Mr. Arnason’s Icelandic Fairy-tales. The author’s name is not given, but his personality is clearly pointed out, for instance, in the following passage :—“ This book, like all my other things, I lost in 1616, whereof it is no profit to think.” Which is an allusion to the persecution that John Lerdi underwent for siding with some Gascon pirates in the west of Iceland in 1616, and for being suspected of sorcery, as he tells us in his autobiographical poem, called

‘Fiolmod’ (the Curlew). John draws his information from the few’

books which he knew—Snorri’s Edda and its two arrangements (Laufas Edda and Upsalensis Edda) and Hawk’s-book; and he quotes no poetry but what is found in these, save two verses from Wolospa, which do not occur in the prose Edda, but are found in Hawk’s-book |

(his favourite store-house), as we can tell by the reading he follows. He also tells the story of Giant Thrym*, but here again from the Rimur Thrymlor, not from any other source. Now Thrymlor is contained in the big Rimur vellum which was found in the west of Iceland, precisely the spot from whence John Lerdi came.

• Begins thus—‘ Her byrjar saman-tektir um skilning 4 Eddu. Su fyrsta fregn er

THEORIES AS TO EDDA. XXxiti

John accepted Magnus’ grand theory, with the same modifications as Bryniolf had supplied, as we see from such passages as: “Then the clerk Snorri Sturlason of Reykholt, the lawman of the south of the country in the days of Gudmund Arason the bishop, the fifth bishop of Holar, began to write somewhat out of the old books of the Anses., Some got more and some less; that is why there are such different Eddas about. But men think that the Edda of Semund the historian is the fullest and best, for he was the older in point of time*.”

Here the statement about Snorri’s age would be derived from a statement in the Life of Bishop John respecting Gunlaug, who is there said to have written it for Gudmund the bishop, whilst Biorn says that Snorri and Gunlaug are contemporaries: it is hence that Bishop Gudmund puts in an appearance here. Again, John Lerdi says that he is obliged to write from the shortest Eddas, for he has not yet been able to come across a larger one; he being evidently of opinion that there was, for instance, a far larger Gylfa-ginning than his [which is our text of to-day], but this he had never seen.

A further proof (if it were needed) that John knew Hawk’s-book well, is found in his imitation of Merlinus Spa, called Krucks Spa, a prophecy of Iceland’s fate and future history.

John,.with his cabalistic learning and happy love of popular superstition, is a figure of rather pathetic interest to one ; his works are a store- house of old words and phrases. He was a bit of a poet too in his own way; Ditty 51, vol. ii, is his, and it may well be that some of the fairy-tale poems, such as K6tlu-draumr, are by him. He was an artist too, a noted ivory-carver. Poor fellow! he lost most of his papers, which were taken and burnt, when he himself had a narrow escape from the mania for witch persecution which had reached Iceland too in the seventeenth century. He was what Johnson loved, a ‘good hater.’ He died in 1651, b. In and after 1642.

We have now traced the story of the Edda among the scholars of the Icelandic Renaissance down to the great year 1642. How the whole of their ideas and theories were changed by the important discovery of Codex Regius at that date, remains now to be pointed out. The theory of Magnus respecting a double Edda, paved the way for the acceptance of the new MS. as an Edda; Biorn’s phantasy supplied Szemund’s name (which, but for that, would never have been hit upon) as the author thereof.

1 Fohn the Learned, 1641: ‘pd t6k til nokkud Jitid ur peim fornu #sari, c

XXXIV INTRODUCTION.

Let us see how the knowledge of the new-found MS. affected Biorn. In the same MS. which contains John’s treatise, is an Essay by Biorn Runir), for the benefit of the learned, at Scardsa, 1642, B. 1. S.1’ [Biorn Johnson]. In this Essay for the first time appears the word Havamal, and quotations unmistakably drawn from the songs in the Cod. Regius MS. Hitherto there has been no citation from any one of the songs therein contained which one cannot point out as derived from other works. Here at last is sure and certain evidence that Biorn has seen Cod. Regius. How does he treat the songs? He speaks of them as dim, obscure, and difficult, needing interpretation, as of immense age, composed by the Anses, etc. It would seem as if he had come across the MS. while writing his Essay, for he stops to explain what he is talking about, and to make clear to his readers what he means by the words he is using respecting it. For of course he must account for the book in some way. How he does so is this,—he accepts the Magnus-Bryniolf theories as to a double Edda, and adapts them to this new find: this is the Edda we have all been talking about, the archetype or a piece of it, composed by Anses and heroes, and written down by Semund. This Song-Edda I shall call Semund’s Edda for distinction sake, and the Prose one I call henceforth Snorri’s. This is what we gather clearly from such passages as this: “There are two books (he says) here in Iceland, which men commonly call Edda [a characteristic sweeping statement]..... Now these books which are called Edda are very different indeed,.for the book, which priest Semund Sigfusson the Wise has composed, is a// in verse, and he has gathered together therein all the oldest, wisest, and most obscure songs which he could find in that tongue [the Danish tongue alluded to above in his Essay]. Many? have called the book Semund’s Song-Book’,” etc. [This last statement covers his own advance, or volt-face of theory, for it does not do to let people know one has not been omniscient, and a good broad assertion will always go down. There is of course no real intent to deceive here; it is only the old man’s flighty fancy, not to say pet vanity, instinctively saving itself.] Again we have: “ All that I have just stated comes from the Edda of Semund and its extremely old poems, prophecies and proverbs of wisdom, which are too long to insert here. This deep and obscure matter is treated of at great length in divers places of the old poems in Semund’s Edda.” Surely in such passages we catch old Biorn

2 *Many’ is here Biorn himself and nobody else; the national ‘ we’ of the Three Tailors of Tooley Street. .

er EE

THE POETIC EDDA CHRISTENED. _ xxxv in the very act of christening his new-found treasure. In the ‘same Edda he makes this final confession of faith as to Semund’s authorship, the last edition, in fact, of his theories: “These (he says) are his works which men know for certain that he has composed and written:

1. Niala, which he has composed with great brilliancy. 2. Edda, which we call the Song-Edda. Master Bryniolf believes that this has for the most part perished; however, its yet existing fragments yield clear testimony to the learning and eloquence of this author. 3. He was also the first to begin the Odd-Annals from the creation of the world right down to his own day’,”

' One more passage will show that it is unmistakably Codex Regius which Biorn now dubs Edda Semundi: “1 will first say something about that obscure prophecy which Semund places frst in his book, and which is named after the Wolwa’.”

We need not pursue the list of notices of the Edda-Songs any further. We have seen the state of opinion just before and just after the discovery of Cod. Regius. Subsequent scholars follow Bryniolf and Biorn’s theory, like sheep, without doubt or development [see Arni Magnusson below|* down to the present day.

As to the order in which single songs of Eddic type turned up later, a few words may suffice.

About the same time, or a few years later, the discovery of Cod. Regius was supplemented by the discovery of a fragment of a MS. (A) which contains Olaf Whitepoet’s Essay on the Figures of Grammar, Snorri’s Scaldscaparmal, the Thulor, and one sheet of poems, chief of which was the hitherto unknown Balder’s Doom. When Flatey-book came to light [in 1643] the one old poem it includes, the Hyndlo-liod, became known. In 1641 Bishop Bryniolf had bought a new second MS.

And—‘ Einnig finn eg i peim for-gamla, dul-mzita lidda hetti, sem kalladr er Hafa-

And—‘ Sem helzt ma lesa og skilja i peim dul-mzltu liddum, er Brynhildr Budia

8 The first notice out of Iceland of the two Eddas is in Stephanii Note Uberiores, 1644, ii. 93: ‘Docet utrague Edda, et illa genuina Rhythmica Semundi Sigfussonii, vulgo Froda, vel Polyhistoris, dicti, quam non ita diu e latebris eruisse nam illam priscam interpolavit,’ etc. [Here he falls back into the theory before 1642.} Stephanius cites ‘Edda’ about thirty times, meaning always the Prose one, exc-pt this once. Observe that most of the sheets of his bookwwould have been in type ere the news of 1642 had reached him,

Be ali. =

ae ee INTRODUCTION.

of Snorri’s Edda (r); in this the Mil] Song is preserved. The Sun’s Song is first mentioned in Biorn’s Essay of 1642: ‘as it is said in the old Sun’s Song’;’ we have no information as to its vellum original, only paper copies having come down to us. The Lay of Menglad and Swipday seems to have emerged later, as it is not cited by Biorn; it is in like case, as. to MSS., with the Sun Song. The first of all these early poems known was the Lay of Righ, as it is in Codex Wormianus, which was certainly known before 1609 (when it is first mentioned by Magnus:

Olafsson), for we gather that Arngrim knew it as early as 1596. Heidrek’s Riddles, to which Biorn made a commentary (1641), were known first from Hawk’s-book, one of the medieval MSS. which emerged earliest, quite as early as 1620. The introductions te the poems in Book iv note the earliest citations and the MS. authority of the other ‘Eddic’ poems; e.g. of Egil’s three great poems Hofudlausn was the first known, before 1640, and the indefatigable Biorn wrote a commentary on it.

When Eryniolf had found the Codex Regius he had a copy taken on vellum, and inscribing it ‘Edda Semundi multiscii,’ sent it abroad *. From it the title became spread on the continent, where scholars, as Arne Magnusson complains, accepted the superscription as an oracle not to be doubted. This vellum copy is lost. It came with the rest of Torfeus’ MSS. into Arne Magnusson’s collection, and has disappeared, probably burnt in the Copenhagen fire, 1728%.

Beyond the momentary stir among the little knot of scholars, the influence of the newly-discovered ‘ poetic Edda’ was not very great ; the scholars of the continent chiefly cared for them as throwing light upon ‘ Runic’ matters, and the complete ignorance of their real worth is shown by the fact that the Editio Princeps of the Mythic Poems of Codex Regius is of 1787, only scraps and stray bits having been printed before, and that the earliest edition of the Heroic Poems is that of von der Hagen, 1812. The first complete edition of the whole is Rask’s of 1818 [see § 15].

2 Arne Magnusson in Vita Semundi: ‘[{Brynolfus]| inter alia membranam quandam antiquissimam, carmina Islandica continentem, nactus est; que, ut lectioni commodius inservirent, in recenti membrana exarari fecit [this copy is los¢], ac ita transscriptis titulum “‘ Edda Semundi Multiscii” propria manu prefixit. Hane recentiorem membranam Brynolvi dono postea obtinuit .. , Tormodus Torfaus. [Arne now proceeds to narrate further compilations], . . . atque ita ex variis codicibus confarcinatum corpus “‘Edda Semundi” vulgo dicitur, fide scilicet Brynolfi Swenonii, qui titulum illum primo, ut ante dictum est, apographo prefixit. Que sententia, tamquam ex Appollinis cortina profecta, adeo invaluit, ut dictus liber eo nomine hucusque constanter venerit, nec ullus de ejus inscriptionis authentia questionem movere presumpserit, Sed tamen Eddam Semundi ante Brynolfi tempora ita vocatam fuisse, fide patris sui sexagenarius mihi retulit Thormodus Torfzus’ [in the

‘ pre-1642’ sense].

And again in Icelandic on a slip, see p. xxx. note 4.

a WH

Lo” ree re BS

st vate i ; ae

.

TCELANDIC MSS. XXXVil

In Iceland the influence is (beyond the lost copies alluded to, § 15) not very marked, Hallgrim Petersson’s Commentary on some of the verses in Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga, a quaint work, quotes one of the Helgi Lays {but as from Gudrunakvida),—the earliest citation from these poems. There are traces of an acquaintance with the Didactic poems in his Passion Hymns, and his Sam-hendur clearly show a knowledge of them.

Besides this, there is little or nothing save the forgery, Hrafnagaldr Odins [Hrevagaldr?], or Forspiall’s liod, intended as an introduction to the Doom of Balder, the oldest MS. of which goes back to 1670. See Introduction to Balder’s Doom.

§ 5. ICELANDIC DIPLOMATICS.

There are, as we noticed in the Prolegomena (§ 27), four great collections of Icelandic MSS. :—

First, MSS. collected by Bishop Bryniolf and presented to the king, especially those which he sent him in 1662, now in the Royal Library of Copenhagen (the old MSS. Collection, ‘Gamlie Kgl. Saml.’)—Codices Regii, about fifteen in all.

Secondly, the Collection of Arne Magnusson, made between the years 1690 and 1728. For the life of this Father of Icelandic Letters, see the Prolegomena (§ 27)—Codices Arna-Magnexani |= AM. or Arna-Magn.]

Thirdly, the Upsala Collection, which was formed by Stephanius, of whom we have spoken above: from the hands of the De La Gardie family these MSS. passed to their present locale—Codices Upsalenses.

Fourthly, the Stockholm Collection, of which the first part was brought together in Iceland in 1662 by Rugman; the second by John Eggertzson in 1682—Codices Holmenses.

There was formerly a j/té collection, that of the University Library of Copenhagen, many from the library of Resenius (Codices Reseniant). This collection was wholly destroyed by fire in 1728, save one MS. which had been lent out to Arne Magnusson. But luckily, under the auspices of Torfzus and other scholars, careful copies had been made of all the important Icelandic MSS. in this University collection, and these copies are now in the Arna-Magnean Library—Codices Academici.

These five collections absorbed all the Icelandic vellums and the best paper copies; and happily it was so, for the destruction of MSS. which went on in Iceland at the end of the seventeenth century would have left very little to be gathered if Arne had not come just when he did. As we have seen, all the vellums still in Bishop Bryniolf’s possession at his death were scattered or mutilated or destroyed within a few years, and Arne could only procure fragments of what had been the finest collection in Iceland. Besides careless keeping, ill-usage, and bookbinding (for which the vellums were cut up, the loose plies serving to cover the wooden boards of modern printed books), which we may rank as active agents, Icelandic MSS. had, owing to the absence of

XXXViil INTRODUCTION.

libraries and national buildings, much to contend with,—the damp and smoke of the houses, which blackens and rots the parchment itself, and accounts for the dark, grimy, mouldering state of most MSS.

Besides the dark, discoloured state of Icelandic MSS., there are other diplomatic signs which distinguish them. ‘They are written in a systematically contracted form, which is quite unique in European diplomatics; hundreds of the ordinary words, and nearly all proper names, are expressed by abbreviations. This we may well suppose to have arisen from lack of parchment, but it was continued as a matter of calligraphy long after vellum was generally available, for however costly the MSS., however large the margin, Icelandic scribes never wrote otherwise. In the Norwegian MSS., unless they were written by Icelanders, the fashion did not obtain. One of the results of this is, that it requires a long and special training to read blurred passages, or to restore from the misreadings of extant MSS. the original words of the archetype.

Again, we have to take into account the absolute disappearance of nearly all early MSS., so that there are far fewer than we should expect of the twelfth century, and those which do exist of such date are mostly on sacred subjects, translations from Latin medizval books, etc., of little worth for our purposes. So complete has been the destruction of early vellums, that hardly a deed or charter remains from the Middle Ages (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), the one exception, a most valuable one, being the Reykholt Charter, which we shall mention again. We therefore lack much diplomatic information, which fuller and earlier remains would yield.

It is also to be noted, that the collections of Copenhagen and the North, which are so rich in Icelandic MSS., are remarkably weak in early Latin, French, and English MSS. and charters of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries which could be compared with Icelandic MSS. Hence it has been, that in the absence of any date to be got at from internal evidence (and this is very seldom attainable), Icelandic vellums have been dated in a haphazard fashion, with- out sufficient knowledge, and without sufficient method. So that, as a rule, the judgment of editors as to a MS.’s age must not be accepted, and a fresh and searching investigation into the facts of each case is necessary. Down to the present day, indeed, editors of Icelandic MSS., only knowing one class of vellums, have been trying to judge of them by guess-work, by the same method as the now extinct Greek scholars who sought to find the etymology of every word and the explanation of every form in the Greek tongue itself. And the results of the intuition or guess method in the one case are about as trustworthy as those in the other. The only scholars whom it is safe to follow are the Norwegian editors, such as Munch and Unger, who have had not only a wide experience of medizval MSS., but have worked upon a scientific method; and among Icelandic scholars the late Mr. Sigurdsson’s wide knowledge of fourteenth and fifteenth

ICELANDIC DIPLOMATICS. XXXixX

century Icelandic MSS. and sagacious industry warrant one in relying on his verdict upon all /ate MSS. Where we have dissented from these scholars it has been with the fullest consideration.

It was after a long and minute study of the AM. collections, after some acquaintance with the MSS. of other countries and tongues, especially those of England, which are so important in this connection (for from Britain it was that writing originally came to Iceland), that the Editor drew up the Table in Prolegomena (p. ccxii), in which he has attempted to fix the dates of the most valuable Icelandic vellums. For this purpose it must be remembered that it is not enough to know and notice peculiarities of writing and changes of grammar and phonesis, but one must also look at the make of the vellum, the size and destination of the book, the needle-marks at the back of the sheets, the way in which the volume has been bound and rebound, and the like. Moreover, one must always be on the watch to look out for similarities of handwriting and physical resemblances between different MSS., for only so can one hope to light on a positive date.

A few examples of the mistakes in dating perpetrated by editors will show the caution necessary in accepting the ‘traditional’ dates.

The earliest Icelandic MS. is a translation of that well-known medieval book, the Elucidarius. Now the editors, who have an extraordinary and wholly unbased prejudice against putting any MS. earlier than the thirteenth century—the twelfth century, with Ari the historian, Thorodd the grammarian, and King Swerri, being a mere vacuum to them—have invented two bags, labelled Early Thirteenth Century and Early Fourteenth Century, into which they tumble all MSS. they do not know much about. Ifa MS. is evidently wery old, it goes into the former; if it is evidently rather old, it goes into the latter. Here, in the case of Elucidarius, no one could doubt but that a MS. which contains archaic grammatical forms such as, not only ‘es’ for ‘er,’ but even ‘an’ for ‘ pan,’ must be very old, so it goes plump into the first bag*. But a careful look at the book will soon convince one that it is at least a hundred years older than the editors will allow. Taking the actual verbal forms they are consistently early, the handwriting is of a wholly early type, the size of the letters, the absence of abbreviations, and the grouping of the page, all point to an early date. Thus, to compare it with foreign MSS., the Editor has seen a charter of Henry I of England, the penmanship of which he could hardly distinguish from it, and several English-written MSS. of similar dates which present exactly the same type of handwriting—a variety of the Latin round hand of England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

1 Professor Gislason of Copenhagen, in Arna-Magnzanske Haandskrifter, 1869. So again, AM. 677, Gregory’s Dialogues [clearly a twelfth-century vellum, though not so old as Elucidarius| is by the same authorggaid to be of ‘early in the first half of the thirteenth century.’—Frumpartar, p. xciv.

x] INTRODUCTION.

Let us allow a few years for this type to reach Iceland from England, and it is necessary to allow for this, for fashions of course reach Iceland slowly, and the date of 1130 will be found to suit all the evidence which it is possible for us to collect with regard to this MS., whereas the traditional bag-date means nothing, is based on no fact, and agrees with no external evidence.

Another odd notion is the fixed idea that, “when two or more hands. are found in a single volume, they must be of different dates. Thus in the little Agrip MS. (which, by the way, bears a curious resemblance in some respects to the famous Digby MS. of the Song of Roland) there are two hands ‘nearly contemporary.’ Why not contemporary? There is no earthly reason. Of course there are instances of MSS. begun by one man and finished by another one or even two generations afterwards; but such cases are few and far between, and there is nearly always a reasonable amount-of internal evidence to be got at, either the hands present obvious marks of difference, or the character of the vellum changes, or something of the kind. ‘Thus in the facsimiles of Sturlunga Cod. B, given in the Oxford edition of that Saga (p.ccxix), there is absolutely no cause to doubt the contemporaneity of the hands employed, or to say that the MS. is ‘partly from the beginning, partly from the end of the fourteenth century?.’ The older-looking hand actually recurs after the more modern-looking one of the three, and the parchment and disposition of the whole vellum is one and the same throughout.

In the MS. of Graygoose, again, a solitary fossil alliterative phrase of old Norwegian Law, ‘churl’s or ear/’s land,’ has been taken, without further proof, to date the MS. to the days of Earl Gizur, who was earl from 1259 to 1268; for, say they, this phrase must refer to Gizur, the only earl who ever ruled in Iceland. But as doth our MSS. of Graygoose have it in a somewhat different version, their common archetype must have had it too, and as that must have been written in Gizur’s day, our MSS. could not be earlier than, say, 1280. Now the phrase does not bear the meaning attributed to it, and the MS. in which it is found, by every diplomatic test, must be at least half a century older than r280. We can also fix its upward date exactly, for it contains a ‘novel’ of Bishop Magnus’ first year. Now he was consecrated 1217, and the novel was, we take it, recent when the collection was made. It will not do to base a legal theory upon such a slippery foundation as this phrase has proved.

To give a final example of diplomatic shortcomings. It is proper to note here that Hawk’s-book, in which we have the hands of Hawk himself and several of his scribes, has been much misused as am authority. For editors have pitched upon Hawk’s peculiar and somewhat archaic penmanship as a standard, wholly neglecting to take also into notice the contemporary hands of Hawk’s scribes, one of whom is probably the

1 Gislason, Frumpartar, p. viii.

ae ee

CODEX REGIUS R. xli scribe of the first hand in Sturlunga, Cod. B,—an indication which may again serve as a stepping-stone to further date-equations *.

Only a comparative study can yield any security. Hence it comes, that the estimates of the late Mr. Coxe—a master in paleography, gifted with an intuitive eye, and, like the craftsmen of the Middle Ages, working out a method of his own, from his own wide experience—are borne out as true in almost every instance.

Before turning to the MSS. which are the bases of our edition of the ‘Eddic’ poetry, we need only dwell for a moment on the way in which the vellum books were made up and bound, for we shall have to know something of this to understand exactly their present condition. The skin was, irrespective of size, made up into a sheet of four folio, quarto, etc., have been borrowed from the sizes of parchment, which were ultimately fixed by the size of sheep), so that a MS. is just like a common 8vo book now-a-days. The leaves are never numbered in an Icelandic MS. The number of lines in a page of a MS. is nearly always regularly maintained. It varies of course in different MSS. according to size, from 25 of the Agrip 4to to 61 of the Flatey-book folio. The quire of four plies was pierced and sewn into strips of leather, which were then plugged into oak boards covered with sealskin or sheepskin, and the piercing of the plies all through the volume is of course uniform.

§ 6. THE MANUSCRIPTS USED IN THESE VOLUMES.

Chief of all Icelandic MSS., the treasure of the Royal Library at Copenhagen, is Codex Regius (R), No. 2365, the history of whose appearance in the learned world we have already spoken of; a narrow octavo, now in an eighteenth-century binding, with the royal arms of Christian VII (c. 1780). What its former binding in Bishop Bryniolf’s days was, is not known; its second binder did the vellum some harm by plowing its edges. We should have liked to have had its original cover, but that was probably lost before the worthy, but misguided, librarian ordered it a new coat. It consists of five complete sheets and one final sheet, from which three blank leaves have been cut; but between the fourth and fifth sheets a sheet at least is missing (the sheet of the Lacuna). This Lacuna existed when Bishop Bryniolf got the MS., for he has noted at the top of the fifth sheet, *Adyos dxépados.’ But for this the MS. is perfect. The first page, dark and grimy, is yet perfectly preserved, signed by the good Bishop’s monogram .. There is no superscription (Edda or otherwise) in the old hand.

The whole shape and character of the handwriting is of the transition

! There are in this connection three additions which may be made to the Table of Vellums given in Sturlunga, whence they were left out by inadvertence :—

In third column—‘ AM, 61, The two St. Olaf’s Sagas. c. 1360.”

In second column—‘ Wolsunga Vellum, Roy. Libr. @ 1380.’

In first column—‘A M. 557. ¢.1400.’ Eiric the Red’s Saga, given hence in the Reader..

xii INTRODUCTION.

period, and retains the marks of the twelfth century, to which, if it were English, one would unhesitatingly refer it. Though the Editor has had in hand and gone through probably every extant early Icelandic vellum or yellum-fragment (save those at Wolphenbiittel), he has never been able to find a shred of the same handwriting. Nearest, but a little older, are—the Placidus Drapa, AM. 673 (clearly twelfth century); the -

third hand of the Reykholt Charter (which dates between 1223 and 12401, most probably nearer the former than the latter year); and the first handwriting in Graygoose (Cod. Reg.),—which are all of the same type of hand, and cannot differ very far in age. The scribe must, in our opinion, have written it between 1220 and 1240, but certainly not later than the latter date, and in all probability earlier.

The writing is very yellow and faded: the scribe is careful and

• methodical, an excellent penman and even a corrector, for he underdots, in a fashion common elsewhere but rare in Icelandic MSS., words he wishes to alter; he sometimes leaves a blank, when he cannot make out or does not know a word, The facsimile in 1787 is not good, those of Rafn (Antiqq. Russes) and Bugge are good. The spelling of R is to be noted; a specimen of it, which is fairly representative of its style, is given in the Appendix to vol. i (pp. 375-377). The most noticeable points are the following :-—

‘f, d,’ in a few cases still the Latin form, instead of the later A.S. ‘F and 9.’

‘ér’ and ‘ pér’ alternately.

‘sk’ reflexive a few times, usually, however, ‘ z.’

‘r’ sometimes in a semi-A.S, type.

‘p’ throughout, as ‘inlaut’ and ‘ auslaut’ as well as ‘ anlaut.’

“p’ inflexive, (not t); for the rule, see Dict. p. 93 b, C. III. 2.

‘9’ and ‘@’ (¢) distinguished, or meant to be so, though the notation be often indistinct ; for the rule, see Dict. p. 761°b, I. 1-2.

‘#@° and ‘ce’ sometimes confounded.

‘h’ ina few instances dropped before ‘1’ and ‘r,’ Lavdvess for Hlodvess, Reidgotum for Hreidgotum. Could this be a remnant of the archetypus, an Orkney one? For all details, see Bugge’s account, in the Preface to his edition, pp. viii-xvii. —

It is very much to be wished that a facsimile printed edition, such as Stengel’s or Kélbing’s MSS. of Roland, were done by a careful scholar. A photographic edition, if practicable, would be most desirable, but the ink is-so faded, that even with it, a letter-for-letter printed edition would still be needed,

The contents of R are thus arranged ( | roughly marking the junctions of the sheets): (1) Wolospa, The Havamal Collection (a jumble of the Guests’ Wisdom, Havamal, Woden’s Love Lessons, The Old Ritual Song, etc. all mingled together in a formless mass), Walthrudnis-Mal, | (2) Grimni’s L., Skirni’s L., Hoarbeard’s L., Hymi’s L., Flyting of Loki, | (3) Thrym’s L., Wayland’s L., Allwise’s Lesson, The Helgi Collection (containing Helgi-and Sigrun A, Helgi and Swafa, Helgi and Cara, mixed

1 A photograph of which may be seen in Captain Burton’s Travels in Iceland, Hand 3 begins—Kirkia 4 en, .., and ends—crosar ij script.

ae ay pan a

CODEX A. xliii with fragments of the Old Wolsung Tale | (4) Helgi and Sigrun B), Gripi’s L., Old Wolsung Play down to 1. 283 |.

Now comes the great Lacuna: | (5) On the two sheets following it there stand, Short Brunhild’s L., Gudrun’s L., Long Brunhild L., Old Gudrun L. (with which Attila fragments are mingled), Ordeal of Gudrun, Ordrun’s L., Old Atli L, | (6) Greenland Atli Lay, the Chain of Woes and Hamtheow’s L., in one confused mass.

Our next MS. is Codex AM. 748, known as A. All that is left of it is four more or less complete sheets, twenty-two leaves in all, The first remaining sheet is entirely poetical, begins in the middle of Hoarbeard’s Lay, and goes on with the Doom of Balder and Skirni’s Lay; here, from one leaf being lost, only the first half of this Lay is left us, and the first part of Wafthrudni’s Lay which followed it has also gone. Then come Grimni’s Lay, Hymi’s Lay, and the first lines of the prose introduction to Weyland’s Lay. There is here at least one sheet missing, so that the end of Weyland’s Lay is lacking, and other matter at which we can only guess, The second existing sheet begins with the last few lines of a treatise of Olaf Whitepoet on terms of grammar, which is found nowhere else [Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. ‘p. 397, ll. 1-15]. Olaf’s other treatise » follows; there is one leaf cut out of this sheet, but otherwise it is perfect. It is followed by sheets three and four, containing Snorri’s Scaldscaparmal and the Thulor, which end on the top of the thirteenth page of the fourth sheet [Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. pp- 397-498]. A subsequent hand later on has added here Hawk’s Islendinga Drapa [ii. 419-421], which fills the rest of the thirteenth and the whole of the fourteenth page, and must probably have ended about halfway down the fifteenth page; but the rascal hand of the vellum-hunter has pounced on this partially clear leaf and hacked it out,

Hence it is evident that this volume must once have contained at least six sheets. There is an excellent facsimile of it in Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. iii. tab. v. As to its age, Olaf died 1259, so it must be subsequent to his death, but very little, not later, we should say, than 1280, This date would suit with other indications which (Phonetics, Grammar) make it plainly half a century younger than R.

As to the contents of the lacunas in A, and how big the MS. was, when perfect, we can make some guess. The first sheet remaining presupposes an earlier sheet, probably of poems. We can even with some degree of probability fix one of the songs. It will be noticed in the facsimile [ Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. iii. tab.v] that the scribe put his initial very far back in the margin, some distance from the text. Now for the Lay of Sweepday and Menglad vellums are lacking, but there are paper MSS. which curiously contain several false initial letters. The scribe, we take it, had been working from a MS. in which the initials set far back had been cropped off, as, igdeed, in our remaining leaves they have been, by the binder, May it not have been this very xliv INTRODUCTION.

vellum? Initial letters set in this way are not common in Icelandic MSS. The Sun’s Song, too, of which there are no extant vellums, may have come from the same MS. There were probably in the first sheet such poems as Woluspa, Allwise’s Lesson, etc., but not we think any of the Wolsung cycle [except the Runes of Brunhild?]. The order and contents being different from R, though it has followed the same authority in poems common to both, lead one to think that it may have been intended as a kind of florilegium of such poems as the owner fancied. The value of A lies, firstly, in its preserving Balder’s Doom, and, secondly, in the Thulor (best text), the small notices respecting Olaf Whitepoet, and Islendinga Drapa. Codex A was probably perfect when Bishop Bryniolf died, and was mutilated between that date and its being secured by Arne.

We next come to the MSS. of SNorri’s EppA, of which there are three—Wormianus (W), Regius (r), and Upsalensis (U). Of these the best and most important is certainly Wormianus, a finely-written square vellum; the only existing facsimile, in the Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. iii. tab. ii, is not quite good nor well chosen, the scribe not being here at his best. A facsimile edition (after Stengel’s model), and if possible a photographic edition, should be taken of this precious MS. The Editor made a copy for himself in December 1875, from which he has worked.

Its contents are, Gylfa-ginning, Scaldscaparmal (without the interpolations from the Sigfred Saga), the Kennings (but without the Thulor or the Okend heiti) down to ‘ Hilditannz hin milldi’ [Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. i. p. 464], followed by Thorodd’s Essay on the Alphabet, with the scribe’s own preface, the Second Grammarian’s Essay, Olaf’s Treatise on the Figures, with an appendix, which we believe to be by the scribe himself; it breaks off unfinished on the fifteenth page of the seventh sheet, leaving a blank page after it [Snorra Edda, édit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. pp. 1-278]. Hitherto there has been but one blank in these seven sheets, where a leaf (falling curiously in Olaf’s treatise where the leaf of Cod. 748 is missing) has been cut out.

Next comes a sheet (the eighth) containing Hattatal, but this has been copied, not from W’s archetypes, but from some poor and imperfect MS.; quite unlike the rest of the book. The first or outer ply of this sheet is gone.

The last (ninth) sheet begins with the Lay of Righ, with a large initial letter at the top of the page, which poem covers both sides of the first leaf; then a leaf is lost, containing the end of the Lay and the beginning of a section on the Synonyms, the middle of which is found on the third leaf, then a whole ply is gone, and the essay goes on upon the remaining sixth leaf, but is never finished, the writer, as once before, breaking off in the middle of his page and subject [Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. pp. 495-500]. The remaining leaves, the seventh and eighth of the sheet, were left blank; one is now gone, a ee ee, ee

CODEX WORMIANUS, xlv the other is scribbled over with the verses and notes of subsequent owners or readers’.

The whole MS. must once therefore have contained nine sheets, seventy leaves of which were written on. The scribe and writer left it unfinished in two places, where he was composing himself, not copying [Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. pp. 248 and 500]. The age we should put at 1320-30: the last king mentioned is Hakon V, the last person Arne Lawrenceson the poet, a Benedictine monk of Thingore, North Iceland, some of whose verses are quoted. Had the MS. been much later we should have had citations from Lilia and other Icelandic poets, Abbot Arngrim of Thingore and Einar Gilsson for example. The writing would suit the date we fix. The size of the vellum, the general air of wealth and perfection about the whole book, as well as its preservation, which is so far better than usual, would suit a book written and kept in a cloister, Indeed, the book may well have been made and kept at Thingore.

There was a bad copy (now known as AM. 756) of a part of this MS. _ taken in the fifteenth century, but it is of no use or value whatever.

That Wormianus was one of the first old MSS. that became known to the scholars of the Revival, Arngrim and Biorn and the rest, is to be carefully kept in mind; for it was on the basis of his knowledge of this very vellum that Biorn of Scardsa spun his wondrous theories upon

• Edda’ and ‘ Scalda,’ upon Semund and Gunlaug, etc., theories largely affected by the form and idicsyncracies of the MS. itself.

In 1609 Magnus Olafsson used it for his re-arrangement of the Laufas Edda, which he composed for and dedicated to Arngrim the Learned?, who lent him the vellum for_this purpose. Since then it has never been lost sight of; Biorn, as we have seen, having access to it till it left Iceland, in 1629*, as Arngrim’s gift to Ole Worm; from Worm’s grandson it came to Arne Magnusson in 1706. It is now numbered AM. 242. Its mark W might stand for ‘ Widalinus,’ Arngrim’s chosen name, as well as ‘ Wormianus.’

In Worm’s day several paper leaves were let into the volume after it was bound in its present vellum clothing, containing a worthless copy of the interpolations which are found in the Regius (r) of Scaldscaparmal, but which never did exist in W. These leaves are known

1 We subjoin the following verse in fifteenth-century handwriting :-— aud og seim og yfir-vald lyda : angri sviptur og dgiptu: lif og heilsu, lukku og goefu: lidi honum Kristr i himna vistu.

A father’s good wishes to his son (?)—somewhat aristocratic in spirit; we guess the young Arnor to be one Armor, son of Finn (surnamed Law-Finn), which Arnor appears in 1480-1510.

? Magnus’ autograph is extant in Arna-Magn. 743 chart., dated ‘ Audkula, 4 id. Martii, A° 1609,’ signed ‘ M. Olafs.’

• Arngrim to Worm, 1629: *Eddam et conjunctam Scaldam, quia meus Codex est, Domino Wormio libenter concedo, quamcunque volet diu’ [translated p. xxv].

xlvi INTRODUCTION.

as ‘ W chart.,’ and are entirely valueless. They have caused some confusion, as editors have ever and anon been quoting ‘ W chart.’ as ‘ W,’ or vice versa. ‘They should be henceforward wholly disregarded.

The value of W lies, first, in the careful and conscientious character of the scribe throughout, for wherever a blank or difficulty occurred in his archetype he has left a corresponding blank in his copy, a rare instance of fidelity in old copyists; next in that it saves for us the Lay of Righ and Thorodd’s Essay, both pieces which could ill be spared, being unique in their kind.

Codex Regius of Snorri’s Edda (r) is a small octavo, somewhat blackened and begrimed, bought by Bishop Bryniolf on the 31st of January, 1640, as his entry testifies, still extant on the first page’. Its contents are, Gylfa-ginning, Scaldscaparmal (with an interpolation of great interest which we shall discuss below), the Thulor (imperfect), Hattatal (the best text), followed by blank pages on which a subsequent hand has written Jomswickinga-drapa [ii. p. 301], and the Proverb-Song fii. p. 363]. The top lines of this MS. are often a little mouldered away, the first page is gone, and the writing is of the end of the thirteenth century; a very good facsimile of part of the ‘interpolation’ is given in the Arna-Magnzan edition of Edda, vol. iii. tab. i. The writer was by no means so careful as the scribe of W, he has slurred over all the blanks or defects of his original; thus in the second line of Haustlong one can see (though the page is a little injured) that though ‘r’ could read no more than ‘ W’ did, he simply runs on from “leggja’ to ‘ radd-kleifar’ without any break. The modern editions do far worse, and fill up the missing half-line with a frigid suggestion of the last-century. The ‘interpolation’ containing Sigfred’s Saga, part of Bragi’s Shield-Song, and above all the Mill-Song, is of the highest value, All the rest is of less importance, though the Hattatal text has some value, albeit, as Mobius has lately proved, by no means perfect, and one would not willingly have lost the Jomswickinga-drapa or the Proverb Song.

A sister MS. is 1 e B in the Arna-Magnzan Collection; a small folio MS. which must once have contained Gylfa-ginning, but now begins in the middle of Scaldscaparmal in the Sigfred interpolation and goes on to the end of Thulor [Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. pp. 573-627]. No more was ever written in it, for there was a page left blank after the last Thulor page. This blank was afterwards filled up by a genealogy of the Sturlungs [see Sturlunga, ii. p. 399]. The handwriting is of the former half of the fourteenth century. No facsimile of it has been taken.

A MS. by no means devoid of interest is the Codex Upsalensis, ‘U,’ which bears a certain relationship to W. It comprises Gylfa-

1 In the margin of ‘r’ in Bishop Bryniolf’s hand—‘ Anno 1640, d. 31 Januarii keypti eg Bryniolfr Sveinsson pessa bok af Magnusi Gunnlaugs syni { Skalholti.’

ey

HAWK’S-BOOK AND FLATEY-BOOK. xlvil ginning, Scaldscaparmal, several sentences from the philological treatise of Thorodd, and a few bits of the Anonymous Grammarian’s work, with imperfect broken text, but with the Tad/es referred to in ‘W,’ but not copied there, being probably missing in his original [see Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol. ii. pp. 364-369]. After this follows an imperfect and unfinished text of Hattatal. The value of this MS. lies, in the superscription, ‘This Book is called Edda,’ in its better readings in one or two places, and in the Tables belonging to the Anonymous Grammarian’s Essay, which, by the way, ought to be reedited. The whole MS. is printed, Snorra Edda, edit. Arna-Magn. vol, ii. pp. 250-396,

There is one Saga to which we are indebted for very fair texts of old poems, that of Herwor. It is preserved in two vellums; one, the best, Hawk’s-book, where it appears in the very hand of Hawk (who died at a high age in 1334); the other, of inferior type, a late fourteenth-century MS., Royal Libr. 2845. In this Saga are contained the magnificent Waking of Angentheow [i. p. 159], one of the first ° poems which attracted European attention to the ‘ Runick Muse,’ and the Death Song of Hialmar, both probably by the. Helgi poet.

Several interesting fragments of the Hun cycle [i. p. 348] are also comprised in Herwor’s Saga, one of which is paralleled in the prose paraphrase (attributed to other characters) of Widukind of Corbey, while another is put into Latin elegiacs by Saxo.

A third contribution is Heidrek’s Riddles [i. p. 86]. The compiler of Herwor’s Saga must have had access to a well-preserved collection of the old poetry.

Hawk’s-book, a perfect magazine of antiquities, also yields the text of Merlinus Spa [ii. p. 372]; this too in Hawk’s autograph. Hawk’sbook suffered, like so many other MSS., after Bishop Bryniolf’s death ; a full account of it and how it was parcelled into various nos. will be _ found in the Editor’s Introduction to Biskupa Sogor (1858). Amongst other lost things was a collection of fragments from Ari the historian’s work, which Biorn of Scardsa copied from Hawk’s-book, where they once stood probably next after Kristni Saga. From this copy they are printed, and are known as ‘ Mantissa.’ Excellent facsimiles of Hawk’s beautiful, delicate hand, and of those of his scribes, may be found in Antiquit. Americane, tables iii and iv.

Another gigantic vellum, far surpassing Hawk’s-book, is the Flatey-book,. which is still happily in the best of preservation. It is in many respects unique; thus it contains a kind of #it/e-page with the name of the owner and scribes. The last entry (save the Annals) is of the date 1387. It must have taken many years to write. It has been so well treated, because it was looked on as an heirloom in the well-to-do’family of Reykholar and Scard in the West Peninsula of Iceland. The head of the family, John Finnson (of Flatey in Broad Frith), would not sell it, but generously presented it, as a parting gift, to Bishop Bryniolf (1643), who sent it over to xlviii INTRODUCTION.

the King thirteen years after he got it, about 1656. In the last century (c. 1780) it was split up and rebound in two volumes, in a coarse inartistic way. A MS. of this type was a great undertaking, and one cannot but pay honour to the enterprise, courage, and intelligence which, in a poor country like Iceland, could produce such a colossal work. The book, as it stood, was of about 200 leaves, of large, fine vellum (probably English, it is ruled in foreign fashion with a sharp point), beau- tifully and elegantly, though not always over accurately, written, in such a highly abridged style, that the printed edition covers some 1760 8vo pages. John Haconsson the first owner (b. 1350, d. ?) also had the Vatz-hyrna vellum written, and perhaps others. We get some small knowledge of the family of John Haconsson from entries of the Annals contained in this very book. John’s grandfather Gizur (named after the Wicked Earl) was an extraordinary man, a traveller and adventurer who had many deadly wounds and hairbreadth escapes ; but, being of a fine tough breed, won through it all and managed to live

• to over a hundred (born 1269, died 1370), an almost unique instance of well-authenticated centenarism in the Middle Ages. John Haconsson’s two scribes were priests, perhaps his chaplains. {1) John Thordarson, who wrote the first Saga (Eric’s Saga) and the lives of both the Olafs, down to Orkneyinga Saga, St. Magnus’ death. (2) Magnus Thorhallsson completed the MS. [Fb. vol. ii. p. 434, 1. 12 to the end]. The task over, and the book being finished off by Annals, which should serve for future contemporary history, Magnus seems to have discovered somewhere some early mythical and royal pedigrees, and one genealogical poem of early date, which would form an extremely good introduction to the whole book. He accordingly adds tao leaves, which he prefixed to the forefront of the MS. Upon one of these is our Lay of Hyndla [see Book iv], in a corrupt state, it is true, but most likely very much as Magnus found it, for he sticks closer to his text than John; for example, his copy of Swerri’s Life is the best we have'. Something we must allow too for faded MS., and for the impossibility of his understanding it properly even if he had had a good copy. Magnus wrote down the Lay of Hyndla, as he tells us (Fb. i. 28), in the year 1387.

The huge MS. was afterwards (a century later, c. 1480) enlarged by the insertion of Harold Hardrede’s Saga between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth sheets, Fb. iii. pp. 249-441, where perchance a Saga ends just at the junction of a sheet,—some three sheets (not all filled). The Life of Harold (of the same type as Morkin-skinna) was not however followed by those of the intermediate Kings down to Swerri. Save these and Ynglinga Saga, the whole corpus of Kings’ Lives with all the appendices is represented; whole Sagas, such as Orkneyinga, Fereyinga, Fostbredra, being sliced up and worked into it chronologically.

’ Though there be errors enough in it; for instance, ok pottiz hann standa vid trapizo, read, ok pésk hann vid trapizo, Ib. ii. p. 537, 1. 13 from the bottom.

a, af

= See ee a

MSS. OF COURT-POETRY. xlix

The Editor copied the whole vellum himself, between the years 1858-1864, for the Norwegian edition [printed at Christiania under the eyes of his friend Unger], to the introduction of which the reader is referred for further detail respecting the huge book, which indeed must be confessed in worth and even in execution to surpass the contemporary English colossus the Vernon MS.

To Flatey-book, besides Hyndloliod, we owe Olafs-rima [ii. p. 392] and Konungatal [ii. p. 309].

Of the other poems of the older type the MS. authority is stated in the introduction to each; a fuller account of the MSS. themselves will be found in Prolegomena.

The various Icelandic Sagas and, best of all, the Landnamabok and Kristni Saga have contributed their quota, especially tothe Dittiesin Bk. vi.

As has been noticed before, there is no extant collection of CouRT- POETRY, but quotations from it are scattered throughout the Kings’ Lives, the Edda of Snorri, and Olaf Whitepoet’s “Essays. Of the Edda MSS. enough has been said above. The chief MSS. of the Kings’ Lives fall into several families of the Compendium Class; there were three MSS. of this :—

Kringla [Academicus primus], extant in copy, Arna-Magn. ;

35, 36, 63, chart., written

Jofra-skinna [Academicus secundus], extant in copy, Arna- +c. 1260—

Magn. 37, chart., [ato

Frisbok [Konungabok], Arna-Magn. 45, folio, vellum,

They alone preserve Ynglinga-Saga, and the poem Ynglingatal [i. p. 242] on which it is based, also Haconarmal [i. p. 262]. They also give better texts of the Court-poetry than our MSS. of the fuller and essentially older recension. Kringla has preserved Scaldatal [ii. p. 442]. The first ply of the first sheet was gone before the copy was taken; hence it had lost the title and preface and begun ‘ Kringla heimsins,’ whence the name Heims-kringla, given to this MS. and its sisters; Ynglingatal too has suffered, see i. 244. [The eighth leaf of the first sheet is here missing, as one is able to infer from the intervening text volumen, though the vellum is now lost.] Jofra-skinna was so called by Torfzus, from an illumination of St. Olaf and Tryggvason which it contained. Both these perished in the fire of 1728. The third, Frisbok, was so called after Chancellor Friis: its real title is ‘ Konunga-bok’ (in the sixteenth century we find it called so), and it is still well preserved. The title and preface [given in the Reader, p- 151] are duly found in this MS.

As for Olaf Tryggwason. The Lives of the two Olafs are ina full and largely appendiced text in AM. 61 (Gt.O. T.S.) Arni bought it in 1690, when it had lately left Iceland. Vols. i-v of Fornmanna Sogor are in the main founded on this vellum. This MS. was written about 1350, On p. 72 there are seven stanzas on Tryggwason, fh court metre scribbled in the margin in a hand which is very like that of the scribe of the d

• INTRODUCTION.

MS. but a little smaller. The verses are exactly of the same character as Einar Gilsson’s [for whom see ii. p. 393] poems, and are probably by him, he may therefore be the very scribe of the whole volume}.

MSS. of St.. Olaf’s Saga are very numerous; the oldest is the © Stockholm one, No. 2, and of the same family as the Kringla text. It was published by Unger in 1853, and is our main foundation, besides Kringla, for the Court-poetry in the texts of St. Olaf’s time”.

For the subsequent Lives of the Kings. from St. Olaf to Swerri. the two authorities are—

Hulda (AM. 66), 1320-30.

Hrokkin-skinna (Roy. Libr. Copenhagen, No. roto), fifteenth century.

The Editor (in Oct.-Nov. 1875) copied Hrokkin-skinna for the purpose of an edition for the Rolls Series.

Morkin-skinna (Roy. Libr. Copenhagen, No. 1009), middle of thirteenth century. From Morkin-skinna comes Ivar Ingimundson’s Dirge over Sigurd Slembi-diakn [ii. p. 261]. Of Hulda and Hrokkin-skinna and AM. 61 there are facsimiles in the Fornmanna Sogor.

Skioldunga Saga (Arna-Magn. Nos. 1 and 20, folio; both are parts of one vellum, as the Editor observed in 1875), the earliest part of which has furnished the paraphrase of Ivar’s Flyting [i. p. 123], the later part (the so-called Knytlinga) has preserved the lay of Eric the Good by Mark Skeggisson [ii. p. 235].

Fagr-skinna (both vellums perished in 1728, but copies are preserved in Arna-Magn. Library), an independent redaction of the Kings’ Lives, is a highly interesting MS, In it alone are found the Dirge of Eric [i. 259] and Hornklofi’s Raven-Song [i. p. 254], which are worth more than all the fragments of Court-poetry put together.

In the great Bergs-bok at Stockholm (No. 1), which has amongst much else the Lives of the two Olafs, the scribe has added Geisli [ii. p. 283] and Rekstefia [ii. p. 294].

Our general rule in treating these MSS. has been, to follow Kringla and Cod. Holm. 2, as far as they go; when that could not be, to prefer AM. 61 and 66, folio. The poems gleaned from these MSS. have been supplemented by those got from Snorri’s Edda and Olaf’s Treatise ; for which see Cod. Wormianus, above.

To every fragment and stanza the MS. authority is prefixed; and the

MSS. for such poems as Egil’s [i. pp. 266-280], the Dart Lay [i. p. 281], etc., are discussed in the introduction to each poem.

§ 7. Otp TruTonic Poems, LOMBARD, GERMAN, ENGLISH, ETC,

To begin from the beginning, we have many testimonies as to the fondness of the Teutons for heroic song. Tacitus tells of their mytho-

1 Some eighty stanzas of his in Court-metre, all on Bishop Gudmund, are preserved in Gudmund Saga by Abbot Arngrim (Bs. vol. ii, fasc. i),—a stiff half-renaissance style quite easily recognisable. ‘

2 The Catalogue of 1848 puts it ‘the beginning of the fourteenth century’ (bag No, 2 !), Unger and Munch in-1853 with.better reason to the early thirteenth century,

THE ALFWINE LAYS. li logical poems. “ In their old songs (he says), which are the only kind of history and chronicles they have, they tell of a god Tuiscon sprung from _ Earth, and his son Mann, the fountain-head and founder of their race’.” And he speaks further of their heroic poems on Arminius”, who had died two or three generations before (c. 90 years before the Annales); rude verse, no doubt, but we believe alliterative and of similar type to our older poems,

Einhard, in his Life of Charles the Great, tells how, when he was emperor, the great Frank took care of his native literature, ‘‘ Moreover the oldest barbarian Lays, in which the deeds and wars of the kings of old were sung, he had written down and committed to memory’*.”

But far more excellent is the record of Paul the Deacon (died c. 790), who, speaking of his hero Elfwine Eadwineson, the Lombard, king, who died 572, and was thus distant about six generations, or 200 years, from him (about the same space as from Ari to Harold Fairhair), says, “ But the famous name of Elfwine resounded so far and wide, that even down to to-day, as well among the Bavarian and Saxon folk as among [all] other men of the same tongue, his open hand and renown, and luck and bravery in warfare, are set forth in their songs. That the best of weapons were wrought in his days is also the common talk of many down to our own time*.”’ This passage is strikingly confirmed by the fame of Elfwine having reached even the English author of the Traveller’s Song, who says :—

heortan unhneaweste hringa gedales beorhtra beaga, bearn Eadwines.

But Paul does not stop here; he actually gives us very close prose paraphrases of two old Elfwine Lays (for no one familiar with the Eddic Songs can fail to see that they are Lays and not bits of mere history) which are contemporary with the poems of Czdmon, if we take the probable date as half-way between Paul and Elfwine. These Songs therefore are the earliest remains of epic Teutonic poetry we have any exact knowledge of. The first one is of the same type as the Helgi

1 Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriz et annalium genus est, Tuisconem deum, Terra editum, et filium Mannum, originem gentis conditoresque.—Germ. ch. 2.

• Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes,— Ann, ii, 87.

8 Item barbara et antiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bella canebantur, scripsit memorizque mandavit.—Vita Car, 29. The latter words are ambiguous: do they refer to learning by heart or to using for history ?

• Alboin vero ita preclarum longe lateque nomen percrebuit, ut hactenus etiam, tam aput Baioariorum gentem, quamque et Saxonum, sed et alios ejusdem linguz homines ejus liberalitas et gloria bellorumque felicitas et virtus in eorum carminibus celebretur, Arma quoque precipua sub eo fabricata fui§se a multis hucusque narratur.—Book ii (end).

d2

lii INTRODUCTION.

Lays, a noble heroic Lay with a flyting scene, which vividly recalls the fierce half-humourous bickerings of the heroes Sinfiotli, Gudmund, etc. The other is a royal tragedy of the same cruel, dreadful type as the Hunnish tragedy of Attila, furious passion and deadly reckless hate, with the fatal consequent Nemesis on all the actors. These stories we give here literally translated, in order that they may be compared as to length, style, and phrasing with the older epics of this volume. They are the best witness to the essential unity of Teutonic poetry, and exhibit many close parallels to our poems.

In the first, THE YouTH oF ELFWINE, after describing how the Gefids and Lombards came to fight, he turns to the words of the song, and goes on :—

And when the battle was joined, while both hosts were fighting mightily, neither willing to give way to the other, it came to pass that in this self-same fray Elfwine son of Eadwine and Thurismund son of Thuriswend met face to face. But Elfwine thrust Thurismund through with a sword, and he fell dead headlong from his horse. Now when the Gefids saw that their king’s son was dead for whose sake they had in great measure entered upon the war, their courage was melted and they began to fly. And the Lombards followed them up fiercely and smote them down. And when they had slain most of them they came back to strip the slain of the spoil, And when the Lombards came back to their own homes after the winning of this victory, they asked their king Eadwine to make Elfwine, by whose valour they had gotten the day, one of his Guests, that he might be his father’s companion at the banquet as he was his companion in the day of danger. But Eadwine answered them that he could not do this thing without breaking the custom of the Lombard folk. “For ye know,” quoth he, “that it is not the custom among us that the king’s son should sit down with his father, before he hath first received weapons [of a foe slain in fair fight] of the king of some other folk.” Now when Elfwine heard his father’s words, he took forty young men with him and no more, and went to Thuriswend the king of the Gefids with whom he had lately fought, and told him the cause of his coming. And Thuriswend welcomed him kindly, and bade him to the feast and seated him at his right hand, where Thurismund his dead son had been wont to sit.

And it came to pass while the servants were serving at the tables, that Thuriswend remembering how his son had been lately slain, and calling to mind his death, and beholding his slayer there beside him in his very seat, began to draw deep sighs, for he could not withhold himself any longer, and at last his grief burst forth into words, ‘ Very pleasant to me,’’ quoth he, “is the seat, but sad enough it is to see him that is sitting therein.” Then the king’s second son [Cynemund], who was present, was roused by his father’s words, and began to sting the Lombards with foul words, and he said they were like mares with white stockings,—for the Lombards are wont to wear white bands about their legs. “‘ White-legged mares are they ye take after!” said he. Then one of the Lombards answered him in these words: “Go to Asfield,” said he, “ and there thou shalt plainly learn, how hard they, whom thou callest mares, can kick, for there thy brother’s bones lie scattered about in the midst of the meadow like the bones of a wretched pack-horse.” When they heard these words the Gefids could nct bear the reproach and were mightily moved to wrath, and made ready to avenge the open scoff; the Lombards also on their part made ready for the fray, and every

THE ALFWINE LAYS. liii man laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. Then the king sprung up from the table and thrust himself between them, and withheld his men from anger and battle,

‘threatening that he would punish the first man who began the fight, saying that for a man to slay his guest in his own house was a deed unpleasing to God. And in this way he at last settled the quarrel, and they went on with the feast again with gladsome hearts. And Thuriswend took the weapons of his son Thurismund and gave them to Elfwine, and sent him back in peace and safety to his father’s kingdom. And when Elfwine came back to his father, he was made his Guest from that day forth. And while he was joyfully eating the royal dainties with his father, he told in order all things which had befallen him among the Gefids in Thuriswend’s hall. And they that were at meat marvelled and praised the boldness of Elfwine, nor did they bestow less honour upon the great good faith of Thuriswend!.

The second one runs thus :—

Paul the Deacon's Parapbrase of the Song of the MURDER OF ELFWINE, King of the Lombards.

Now this was the reason of his being slain. One day when he had been sitting longer than was meet at a banquet of wine at Verona, and was merry, he bade give the queen wine to drink in the cup which he had made out of the skull of King Cynemund, his father-in-law, and called upon her to drink merrily with her father.—Which thing, lest it should seem to any one impossible, I [Paul] protest I speak the truth in Christ, yea, I have seen Radgisl the prince holding the very cup in his hand on a certain feast-day, showing it to them that sat at table with him.— Now when Rosamund took heed of this thing, she conceived a deep grief at the heart which she could not lull. Wherefore her anger was swiftly kindled to the end that she might avenge the death of her father by the slaughter of her husband, and she made no tarrying, but took counsel with Helmgisl, who was the king’s shieldbearer and foster-brother, how she might put the king to death. But he persuaded the queen that she herself should win over to their plot Beartheow, who was a very mighty man. And, when Beartheow would not consent to such a shameful deed at the queen’s persuasion, she stole in by night and lay down in the bed of her rail-maiden with whom Beartheow was wont to lie. And Beartheow came thither unwitting and lay with the queen. And when the deed of shame was done she asked him whom he thought she was, and he answered naming his leman, for he thought it had been she. Then answered the queen, “It is not as thou thinkest; but I am Rosamund!” said she, “and thou now hast done such

-a deed, Beartheow, that either thou shalt put Elfwine to death therefore or he slay thee with his sword.” Then he understood the evil that he had wrought and saw that he had become bound in this way to slay the king, which thing he would not willingly have done, Then Rosamund ordered that deep silence should be kept in the king’s house, while Elfwine had fallen into his midday sleep, and she took away secretly all the other arms; but the king’s sword she bound strongly to the head of the bed, that it might not be taken down or unsheathed, Then according to their plan Helmgisl, crueller than any wild beast, brought Beartheow the murderer privily into the room. Elfwine being suddenly roused from his slumber,

• For a fuller discussion of this story, which is eviderftly only half told by the good Paul, see Excursus III [ii. p. 503), liv INTRODUCTION.

understood the evil that threatened him, and stretched forth his hand very quickly -

for his sword, and when he could not get it down, for it was full tightly bound, he caught up a footstool and defended himself with it for some time. But wellaway this man, albeit a mighty man of war and of the greatest valour, could not prevail against his foe, and was slain as if he had been a coward [in his house]: and he, who had become so famous in war for the overthrow of so many enemies, fell himself by the cunning of one weak woman. And his body was buried under the going up of the stairs which are nigh to the palace, with very great weeping and mourning by the Lombards, He was of high stature and fashioned in his whole body as was meet for a warrior. His tomb Gislbert, who was Duke of the men of Verona, opened in our days, taking away therefrom his sword and what else of his gear he found therein. Wherefore he was used with his wonted vanity to boast to unlearned men, that he had seen Elfwine face to face.

Now when Elfwine was dead, Helmgisl tried to enter upon his kingdom, but this he could by no means do, for the Lombards grieved mightily for Elfwine’s death and threatened to slay him. Rosamund therefore straightway sent to Longiaus the Governor of Ravenna, praying him to send a ship as quickly as might be to take them both away. Longinus was glad when he received her message, and he sent off a ship in haste, whereou Helmgis} and Rosamund, who was now his wife, embarked by night and fled, taking with them the king’s daughter Elfswintha and the whole hoard of the Lombards, and they reached Ravenna very swiftly. Then Longinus the governor began to try and win over Rosamund to put Helmgisl to death and marry him. And she being ready for any niding’s work, and desiring to become Lady of the Ravenna-folk, consented to the doing of the deed. And when Helmgisl was washing himself in the bath she brought him a cup of poison, which she gave him as he came forth from the bath-room, saying that it was a Cup of Healing; but when he felt that he had drunk of the Cup of Death, he drew his sword upon her and forced her to drink what was left of it. And so by the doom of God Almighty these two most wicked murderers fell at the same moment.

When these things were accomplished Longinus the Governor sent Elfswintha —

with the hoards of the Lombards to Constantinople to the Emperor. There be some that say that Beartheow had come with Helmgisl and Rosamund to Ravenna and that he was sent thence with Elfswintha to Constantinople, and that there in the sight of the people before the emperor he slew a lion of wonderful size. And, as they tell, Beartheow’s eyes were put out by the Emperors command, lest he should do any harm in the royal city, for he was a mighty man. After a while he made ready two knives and hid them one in each sleeve and went to the palace and said that he had somewhat to say to Augustus which would be for his good, if he were brought before him. And Augustus sent two noblemen of his servants to ‘him to hear his words and bring them to him. And when they came to Beartheow, he drew very nigh to them as if he had somewhat most secret to say, and gave each of them a mighty wound with the swords which he had hidden, one in each hand, so that they fell down straightway to the ground and gave up the ghost.

So, like Samson the strongest of men, in his vengeance as in his blindness, he avenged his wrongs, and for the loss of his two eyes slew two of the Emperor's most trusty gentlemen.

There are several other citations in Paul from poems, which he would no doubt have mentioned as his authorities had he lived to finish and prefix a preface to his book. There are, for instance, the phrase

OLD GERMAN AND ENGLISH LAYS. lv about Grimwald, ‘ For the lad was fairly shapen, his eyes glittered, and he had long milk-white hair,’ which answers to the description of the Earl in the Lay of Righ: the colouring of the whole charming Story of the brothers’ flight from the Avars, where the elder brother, rather than leave his young brother in the enemy’s hands, wants to kill him ; and the boy cries out, ‘Do not kill me! I can ride,’ and when he is caught manages to slay his captor with his little sword and rejoin his brethren to their great joy: the curious and humourous story of the Maidens who saved their honour even in captivity: the tale of the quarrel of the Two Warriors before the battle, and several more stories which he merely gives the gist of, are, to our mind, derived from lost Lays, etc.

There is only one GERMAN heroic song left, that of Hildebrand and Hadubrand, which is in a sad fragmentary state, and apparently weaker in style than the Lombard Lays. The Song of Walthere in the Chronicon Novaliciense is a later poem, but it has suffered from the hands of the paraphrast, who has turned it into bad Latin hexameters,

Muspilli is, save in metre and a few phrases and expressions, too fundamentally Christian and bookish in character to give one much help towards the reconstruction of the old German Epic, while the other old fragments in German are non-epic in character,

In ENGLAND an innovation appears, the 4arper who sits at the king’s feet (as we are shown in Beowolf), like Demodocos, and sings :— fore Healfdenes hilde-wisan efter medo-bence menan scolde Finnes eaferom 64 hie se-fer begeat :— . Leod wes asungen gleo-mannes gyd.—Beowolf, 1064 and 1160. In the Exeter MS. the following classic passages occur :— Sum sceal mid hearpan et his hlafordes And— Sum mid hondum meg hearpan grétan.; sum bid rynig, sum ryht scytte, sum leoda gleaw. . . .—Craftas, 49. See also Widsith, 105. There are unluckily only a few really pure typical Old English poems, such as the Bryhtnoth Lay, made after the fight at Maldon, about 995, and the fine bit of Finn’s Lay (which answers to our Biarcamal). The Waldbere fragment is apparently of an archaic cast and should be classed with these. Its action is brisk and its placing matterful. The Brunanburh Lay' is book-poetry of the same type as the later bits in the English Chronicle. Inthe Beoqwolfwe have an epic completely metamorphosed in form, blown out with long-winded, empty repetitions and comments by a book-poet, so that one must be careful not

1 It has several lines almost identical with Tines in Judith, lvi INTRODUCTION.

to take it as a type of the old poetry. Judith is a Christian epic, also of this long modified style, composed by a bookman, who, however, knew and used snatches of good old verse. Czdmon’s Rood Song and other sacred poetry were probably the first of their kind in any Teuton tongue. They had many imitators, down to Ealdhelm, the Boethiusparaphrast, and the bald prosy versifier of the Saints’ Lives. The Rood Song may also have given the impulse to the curious and really poetic half-lyrical compositions, such as the best pieces in the precious Exeter book, for instance, the Sailor, the Ruin, Fate, and the like.

The Riddles are late, and imitations from the Latin, as are, of course, Domesday and the Phenix.

Widsith* and Deor’s Lament, though highly interesting, are of a poorer type than the Lamentation Songs of our cycle (Book v), with which they are to be compared.

In the Genesis, and other poetry ascribed to Cedmon, we see a late *remaniement’ of Cedmon’s genuine short lays; line after line of his occurs untouched, and then come long stretches of verbosity and tediousness which belong to the good clerks, who stuffed out the old poet’s works to bring them to the fashionable size, and added their own prosy notions to complete, as they imagined, their predecessor’s treatment of his subject.

Turning from these to the Northern poems, we find among them older epics exactly parallel to the Alfwine Lays. For example, Hamtheow’s Lay, save for the language, which absolutely forbids its being set back before the ninth century, might be a sister lay to those collected by Charles the Great and paraphrased by Paul. Alongside of this, however, we meet a fresh song development, the Ethic Song, with its dramatic form, couplet-metre, and didactic intent.

§ 8. PLACE AND DATE OF EDDIc SONGS.

We are now face to face with the MS. Codex Regius and a small knot of poems which are of the same early character, bearing definite relationship to the early Teutonic schools of Song of which we have just been speaking, and the problem presents itself,—whence came these poems, who were their nameless authors, when and where were they composed? It is these questions we shall endeavour to answer. We have no information from outside, no one of the authors is even named, there is absolutely nothing to look to but these few sheets of parchment of the early thirteenth century; and if they had perished, there would really be not the slightest evidence that a noble school of poetry had ever existed in the North.

One is therefore forced to depend wholly upon such internal evidence as can be gathered from the poems themselves. Three facts are certain ; they are original compositions in a Scandinavian tongue, they were

• Widsith’s details of old Northern geography and notices of Epic heroes are of high worth,

DATE OF THE EDDIC SONGS. lvii composed for popular entertainment, and they cannot date earlier than the ninth century. To what branch of the Scandinavian race are we then to assign them?

Down to the present century, and far into it, the most extravagant views were held with regard to the ‘ Eddic poems.’ They are ‘monuments of hoar antiquity’ such as Tacitus might have heard, they were the ‘sacred songs and hallowed wisdom of the ancient sages of our

‘

race,’ the ‘Bible of the North,’ and the like. Even Grimm placed them long before Charles the Great. These opinions, however, a careful examination of the poems will show to be untenable and the positive evidence of language prove to be absolutely mistaken.

In the eighth century the tongue of the Northern Teutons underwent a mighty change, which severed it from the speech of the neighbour kinsfolk of the same stock, English and Germans, and left it a stamp of its own: a mere skeleton sketch of these changes is given in the Reader, pp. 464-65. Grammar was stamped afresh, words and particles were as it were thrown into the crucible and recast, initial letters and syllables dropped off—a fatal change for alliterative poetry. No poems, such as these we are dealing with, could have come through this metamorphosis: stories might and did survive, and myths remain. Besides this, a change so deep and widely spread speaks to great changes in life and customs and taste, which must have swept away the older poetry : while our poems are too spontaneous and fresh to be ever mistaken for such pieces of traditional lore as the Twelve Tables or the Song of the Arval Brothers. Then again, though there are deep differences between them, they are not more widely severed in speech, metre, and tone than one would expect from a succession of poets of three or four generations. And there is one wholé group of poems which, as we shall see, can hardly be set earlier than the eleventh century.

We have therefore the problem narrowed within these limits, 800— 1100. To what branch of the Scandinavians within that period can they most reasonably be assigned?

What was the state of the North during this period? First there was the great Exodus from all the Scandinavian lands on the North Sea westwards; fleet after fleet of rovers and colonists passed over to the British group and the neighbouring coasts. Then we have the consolidation and growth of a strong imperial dominion in Norway under Fairhair, and its effects upon the colonists and the colonies. Thirdly, in consequence of external force of a violent character, we see a certain portion of the Western colonists breaking away from the settlements they had made or were making, and going forth on a second farther and, as it turned out, jizal Exodus, leaving the Western Isles for Iceland and the Faroes, and thence penetrating even to Greenland and the American coast‘. We know now that, though the connection between Iceland

¥ About the same time they appeared in the Black Sea. The year 774 is the first mention of them in Eastern. history. See Howorth, The Sp¥ead of the Slaves, Part iv.

viii INTRODUCTION.

and the west of Norway was close, and though it is true that Harold’s stern rule had to do with the settlement of Iceland, that he did not drive the settlers so much from their o/d homes in Norway, as from their mew homes in the Western Isles},

Now there is a body of Norwegian poetic literature of the tenth century extant, and there is also a considerable mass of information respecting the tenth century in Iceland giving definite historical accounts of the life of the settlers and their descendants; and a regular Icelandic school of epic prose compositions, the Sagas, which have a very distinct character and complexion of their own. How do our Eddic poems stand with regard to them?

Had the older chronology, which placed the Eddic poems long before Charles the Great, ere the dawn of the Wicking Age and the Exodus, been possible, then there would of course have been but one answer to our questioning. They must have been from the Scandinavian mothercountry, for there was no Scandinavian colony then, and the distance in time would account for their great diversity from the Sagas.

The best way will be to examine what kind of life and thought, what subjects, and what style these poems exhibit, and then to see how far the claims of the various Scandinavian lands are agreeable to these certain indications.

But here some need for a classification of the poems will be felt, Our reasons for the one adopted will be given in due order, at present we shall merely speak of the earlier Didactic poems as the work of the Ethic poet, the Helgi cycle and its fellow poems as the Helgi-poet’s [Book iii, § 3], the Loka-Senna group as the composition of the Aristophanes-poet [Book ii, § 2], the Lay of Thrym and the Mill Songs as the Ballad poet [Book iii, § 2], the later Brunhild poems as the Tapestry-poet’s [Book v, §§ 2-4], the Ynglingatal and the Lays of Book iv as the Norwegian poets’, and so on.

If we take in turn the family-life, the law, the geographical indications physical and historical, the vocabulary, we shall see that the poems describe a social condition and natural circumstance of their own.

The family life is of the large heroic type, with a certain splendour and ease, which contrasts with that of the Icelandic Sagas. ‘Salr’ is the word for the great hall, the household is ‘ sal-drétt,’ the bondmaids are ‘sal-pyjar,’ ‘sal-conor,’ the cock is the ‘sal-gaukr,’ the cuckoo of the hall. But this word ‘sal’ is not found in Icelandic prose, the Norwegian and Icelandic terms are ‘sc4li’ and ‘stufa.’

The women’s room is the “bfr,’ the dower of our English ballads, Here in our Tapestry-poet, as in the ballads, the lady sits with her maids, working the tapestry (hlada, gull-béka, byr%a, spiold, bordi, script) with figures of swans and beasts, and ships and heroes, fighting and sailing, pre-

1 It was Fairhair’s expedition to the West that drove them from Caithness, the Hebrides, and Orkneys, to Arctic Iceland; but for that, Iceland, one may safely say, would never have been peopled, or would have been like the Newfoundland of the present day.

eA ee ae

CULTURE OF THE EDDIC SONGS. lix cisely like the toilette of Bayeaux. In Icelandic the word for this chivalric bower, ‘ bar,’ merely means the pantry or storehouse [whilst ‘dyngja’ or ‘stufa’ denotes the ladies’ room]. ‘ Baith bour and ha’ stood in a ‘ tin’ or court [in Iceland ‘tG@n’ means the homefield]; there is a ‘ta’ or forecourt, a broad platform probably on which the great hall stands or the space just before it [the word is unknown in Iceland]. In the ‘tin’ games go on and ceremonies take place. The Tapestry-poet speaks of a ‘borg’ or ‘fort,’ with high walls, a gateway (hlid), and a gate (grind) which enclose its garth (gard). On the wall by the gateway is a watch-tower (hlid-skialf), For all the world the picture of a late Irish ‘liss’ or ‘rath,’ and not very far removed, when we are told of ‘lofty walls,’ from the rudimentary ‘peel’ or ‘ keep and baily’ of a feudal age.

The hall inside is set with tables, ‘bidér’ [in Iceland tables are boards, ‘bord’]. Among the articles of furniture there is a cupboard, ‘v4’ [Dan. ‘vra’], on which stand cans (canna) and cups (kalkr or calcr), an oft-repeated word [Lat. calicem, through Keltic, but unknown in Iceland]. The cup is mounted, ‘varéir calkar’ of the Lay of Righ [‘hrim-calcr’ of the Aristophanes-poet we cannot explain]. In this the *biér’ [a foreign word] is drunk, and wine [foreign]. Among the dishes are roast birds [of land-birds there is only the ptarmigan eatable in Iceland], killed no doubt by the hawk, which is kept in the hall. Oats [‘ ti,’ a Gaelic word] are among the grains known, as are rye, bigg, wheat. The cooking-vessel and brewing-vat is ‘hver’ [which in Iceland means a hot-spring], an oft-repeated word. The bread is such as the Scotch bannock baked on the hearth. Dainties, such as boiled veal, are noticed in the Lay of Righ.

The fuel is peat, which is dug on the estate and stacked for burning. When one remembers the patriotic endeavours of Mr. Asbiornsen (a forester by business, better known in England as the collector of the delightful Norwegian Fairy Tales) to stay his countrymen from destroying their magnificent forests by their wanton misuse of wood, when peat was to be had in any quantity for the trouble of digging; and when one knows, too, that his beneficent crusade met with a sturdy resistance,—it is not easy to imagine for a moment that a poem in which such mention of peat occurs is Norwegian of the tenth or eleventh century, when there was far more wood-land than there is even now.

Then there is well-developed agriculture, carts (kart), wheeled wagons (hvel-vagn), ploughs (plégr) [all un-Icelandic entirely]. There are geese kept in the court; tame pigs who are fed with swill, goats herd on the hills, and the goat-keeper with his hazel stick, who guards them from the wolves, are vividly presented to us by the Helgi-poet ; sheep [so essentially Icelandic] are never mentioned; oxen and neat are frequent.

The dogs, of whom there are many, are kept for watch-dogs and hunting, and tied up at night [Iceland only knows sheep-dogs]. There is plenty of scope for hunting, wolves in the waste, harts on the hill, tallest of deer. Bears are rarely met with» but are mentioned; the white bear in the Greenland Lay is a piece of undoubted local colour.

Ix | INTRODUCTION.

The Helgi-poet mentions reindeer in the wilderness as wi/d [the old Ethic poet talks of them on the hill as tame], but above all he brings forward the hart with his towering horns, his dewy sides, his tall slender legs, and his gallant port. So the Tapestry-poet knows the hart. But these beasts are not Scandinavian, were not known save in Denmark so early as this’. They are highly characteristic of the Western Islands. They have never existed in Iceland.

Gulls and tame hawks are characteristic birds.

There is plenty of wood, oak for the pyre, yew and elm for the bow; similes are drawn from the lofty ash and the low broad thorn, the willow stripped of her leaves by the cruel wind or fire, the garlick lifting its tall graceful head above the other grass. Autumn is the Flax-cutter, ‘ hor-meitod;’ a lady is flax-shrouded, i. e. linen-wimpled.

Of positive geographic indications there are few. However one, which the Tapestry-poet gives, is striking indeed, ‘ Sudr 4 Fifi,’ South on Fife, as if viewed from Orkney. Norway and Denmark are mentioned a couple of times. Limbfrith (Denmark) is spoken of once. The Russian name ‘ larisgar’ is in the Tapestry-poet. The Helgi-poet’s geo- graphy is, beyond ‘ lorbasound’ [?], merely one of phantasy, Holy-river, Joy-bay, Sun-fell. The Morva-land (Oddrun), Havada-fiall (Heidrek Lay), and Jordan (Helgi Lay) look very like Moravia, the Carpathians, and Jordan. The pillars and shelves of the giant’s house and the stone cauldrons of our Hymi Lay wonderfully recall the chamber of the gianttomb at New Grange, Ireland, with its huge stone-slabbed chamber and broad stone bowls; a fit home indeed for a giant. See the pictures in ‘Sculptured Stones of Ireland.’

The Tapestry-poet has many words for dress, and stuffs, and metals, etc.: breech and blouse, ‘br6ék [Gaelic] ok bleja [bleaut];’ tresses, ‘tresc’ [Romance word]; twisted brooches, ‘hrodit sigle’ [Old Eng. gehroden sigl] ; ‘lfn’ [Lat. linum]. The harp is also mentioned by him [never in the Sagas]. Constant intercourse with Celtic people is evidenced by the Welsh-metal (Vala-malmr), Welsh-stuff (Vala-ript), Welsh swords (Volskom sverdom), Welsh-woman (Valnesk-vif).

The remarkable Lay of Alwise is the work of a man who had. had the means of seeing various men and manners, he has a few Gaelic words.

For wages and trade, rings of fixed weight are used, yet the Ballad Poet once speaks of ‘scillingar,’ English coined money, and the word ‘penny’ is found in Loka-Senna.

We find Gaelic words scattered throughout the whole breadth of our songs, though in no great number: krds, dish (Righ, Hymi, Helgi, Thrym, Sun-Song); eti, oats; niol, darkness (Alwise); bio, earth (Wolospa) ; lind, well, water (Old Wolsung Play) ; tir, earth (if we read it rightly in the Western Wolsung Lay, I. 85, etc.)

} The stag was introduced into Sweden in the sixteenth century. See Mr. Styffe’s (of Upsala Library) Scandinavia i Medeltiden,—a truly excellent book.

DIALECT OF THE EDDIC SONGS. Ixi

Several Latin words have been noticed above.

There are Old English words (though few), such as ‘hauk-staldr, hage-stalda,’ in our Tapestry-poet.

The Tapestry-poet uses Hunar (Huns), Hynskr (Hunnish), as a vague word for foreign, in a like way as Valir (Gauls) is used by the earlier poets; probably the East Baltic folk would have been ‘Huns’ to them.

In the Helgi-poet ships play a great part: the gallant fleet running out to sea, the bold captain carrying on before the gale, the waves dashing over the bows, the rattling of the shielded bulwark, and the groaning of the hull; the harbour with its marks (curious-shaped stones), the docks (‘ grindir’), [not ‘naust’ as in Iceland], a golden war-standard or gonfalon at the bows; the tents of the forecastle (stamn-tiold); the wicker shield (vig-nisting) hoisted to the mast as a war-token. There is the captain at the tiller, the pilot (‘sund-wordr,’ sound-warder) in the forecastle, ready to con the ship in, and to warn the captain of all danger—these are all non-Icelandic. The wicker shield is not Norwegian either, but characteristically Irish. It was an archaism in the North, where the good linden had replaced it. The very word for ship, ‘ ciol,’ is foreign.

As regards Jaw there are strange words, unknown in Icelandic, used instead of the familiar terms. The judge is ‘miotud’ [measurer], or ‘forseti’ [fore-sitter]; the daysmen are ‘iafnendr’ [eveners]; the inheritance ‘o%al-torfa’ [ethel-turf, an Anglicism one would say (extinct inheritance)]; the escheated estate, ‘aldau%Sa arfr;’ headmoney or tax is ‘nef-giold’ [neb-gild]; boot-money is ‘munda-baug’ [manus aurum]; to summon to wage of battle is ‘stefna til eyrar’ [not the Icelandic ‘scora 4 holm’]; ‘ ganga til hvers’ or ‘ taka til ketils’ is to go to wager of law—ordeal; the sacrifice or victim is ‘ tifor;’ to wed is to go under linen, ‘ ganga und lini;’? the woman is said ‘at breida blzior,’ to spread the coverlet for her husband. Husband and wife are ‘wordr and wer’ [ward and were],—words peculiar to these poems.

Traces of a peculiar vocabulary are frequent, not only foreign words (see above) but Teutonic words, not met with in the North: hloa [to hiufra [to bewail], varn [warren], etc.

The kind of life to which all these indications witness is very different indeed from that of Iceland, as preserved for us in the Sagas, not only in details but also in the whole tone and spirit. The real flesh and blood characters, the homely incident, the faithful presentment of a scene by small sharp touches, which are so patent in the Sagas, are absent here, while, on the other hand, these poems discover an ideal of beauty, an aerial, unearthly fairy world, and a love of nature, which we do not find in the Sagas. We are not depreciating Icelandic genius; the Saga is the true child of Iceland; were it so that but one could be preserved, the Eddic Songs or the» Sagas, the Editor, at least, would unhesitatingly pray for the Sagas; for Ballads there are lxii INTRODUCTION.

in other countries or were at other times, but the Icelandic Saga is a.unique plant.

Nor, if we turn to the remains of the’early Norwegian poets [Book iv, §§ 2-4], do we find in them either the vocabulary, or the style, or the spirit of these poems; they too have high qualities of their own, but not those which are so marked in the Helgi or the Tapestry-poet. To take more prosaic, but perhaps clearer considerations,—the fora and fauna of the poems, yew-trees, harts, wolves, for instances, are certainly non-lcelandic. Hunting with hounds, bird-clubbing, can never at any time have been pursued in Iceland. The geographical con-. siderations and the vocabulary are also wholly non-Icelandic.

On the other hand, putting Iceland out of the question, the life is not of a kind which we can fancy to have existed in Norway or Scandinavia at the period when these poems were certainly composed. Ladies in bower, working at their tapestry of gold, lofty castles or forts, are quite medizval in tone, and Scandinavia was not medievalised till far later than this. On the contrary, in the early Ethic poems, such as the Guests’ Wisdom and the admitted Norwegian poems, the life depicted is singularly primitive and archaic, and the early Kings’ Lives testify to this in every page (notice fetching the reindeer on foot in a thawing fellside). But the quantity of foreign words used by the Helgi, Aristophanic, and Tapestry poets, the foreign customs, the peat-digging, the flora and fauna, are altogether unsuitable; hazel and oak and ash and thorn and willow are certainly un-Norwegian; the fir and birch are its characteristic trees.

Nor do the conditions of life, the budding chivalry of the Helgi poems, the Gaelic vocabulary of our Aristophanes, the air of luxurious plenty of the Tapestry-poet, the strong Christian influence of Celtic cast in the strophic prophetic poems, fall in at all with what we know of Sweden and Denmark in.the ninth and tenth centuries.

Where, then, shall we find a place to which the conditions of life depicted in the poem shall apply—a temperate country, with Kelts in or near it, with a certain amount of civilisation and refinement and foreign trade, with Christian influences, with woods and deer and forest trees, with a fine coast and islands, where there were fortified places’, where there was plenty of rich embroidered tapestry”, where

' The Roman towns, Chester for instance, where Ingimund the Ostman and Etheldreda’s men fought, are, as may be seen from Pevensey or Richborough to this day, very striking fortifications of the burg kind, Note too the later forts of /Elfred (London-burgh, etc.) and of his son and daughter, who built the chain of stone and stockaded holds which kept their kingdom safe and enabled them soon to absorb all the Danish settlements and kingdoms in the south of the main island, In Ireland there are the Round Towers; in Scotland many a ‘camp,’ old and new, was manned against the invaders. .

• England is pre-eminently the home of fine needlework, as Ireland of intricate illumination, at this period. The tapestry of Ely (Brihtnoth’s deeds), of Bayeux (the Conquest), the rich cope which Eadmer saw with pride on the Beneventan archbishop’s back at the Council [see the story told at length in English in Dr, Freeman’s

PLACE OF THE EDDIC SONGS. xiii hunting, hawking, bird-clubbing went on as common pastimes’, where slavery was widely prevalent? (the slaves being often of a different racial type to their masters), where harping*® and carping went on in the hall to the merry clink of cup and can kept filled with beer and wine, where there was plenty of ‘ Welsh’ cloth, ‘ Welsh’ gold and ‘ Welsh’ steel, where the Scandinavian led a roving life, fighting and sailing, and riding and feasting by turns? Where but in the Western Isles?

Again, where could those curious mythologic fancies, which created Walhall, and made of Woden a heavenly Charlemagne, which dreamed, like Cadmon, of the Rood as a tree that spread through the worlds, which pictured the final Doom as near, and nursed visions of an everlasting peace, holier even than Cynewulf’s Phoenix figures,—where could such ideas as these, alien as they are to the old Teutonic religion and ritual and thought, have been better fostered than in the British Isles, at a time when the Irish Church, with her fervent faith, her weird and wild imaginings, and curious half-Eastern legends, was impressing the poetic mind on one side, while the rich and splendid court of Eadgar or Canute would stimulate it on the other?

But after all, we must remember that, however mixed in blood and however changed in circumstance and life, the authors of these poems were Scandinavians in the heroic age of the North. To what particular tribe of Scandinavia are we to assign their authorship? When we consider the choice of subject (Helgi, Frodi, Craki, Angantheow, etc.), certain curious phrases (Woden called the Gauts’ patron, ‘ Gauta spialli’), the knowledge of the Huns, Iarizkar, etc., slight indications of language, the retention, in a few instances at least, of the ‘w,’ word [word], wreidr [O. E. wrath], the discrepancy in words for the commonest household objects, the different law terms, which neither fit West Norway nor Iceland,—we are inclined to hold that the authors must rather have been connected with the Southern Scandinavian emigration. And is not this what was to be looked for? The Wick [Scage Rack] is the very centre of the district whence came the first Wickings [named, most probably, from. #/is Wick, not merely ‘men of the bays,’ but

William Rufus], the panegyrics which the rich dress of the English nobles extorted from the Norman populace, as William of Malmesbury notices, the splendid embroidery on the robes of saints and kings in the paintings of Old English MSS., are all evidences on this head.

1 The prohibition, 81 in Cnut’s Dooms, the frequent mention of hounds and hawks in early documents, the hounds, huntsmen, etc, of Domesday, the passionate love of the sport, which actuated Eadgar and the Confessor as well as the Normans, are to the point here.

2 Wulfstan’s sermons, the Conqueror’s law itself (a repetition of Ethelred’s), the plain words of William of Malmesbury, the manumission-lists of the MSS., speak loudly here. Mark further that the greatest slave-trade was with Ireland.

8 The harping of the Irish, Welsh, and English poems, the special love of minstrelsy, which is marked in the tales of the tenth and eleventh centuries, Beda’s story of Cedmon, Dunstan’s musical skill, and many other examples which might be collected, point to the British Isles, and especially the Keltic parts thereof, as essentially musical, and more than that, as especially skilled in harping, lxiv INTRODUCTION.

‘men of te Bay’], the centre and natural outlet of the dales of South Norwegian tribes, of Gauts, of Jutes, the land from whence Godfred and Ragnar and Guthrum, aye and Harold Fairhair and his sons, and Cnut also, sailed West, whence certainly came the leaders of the greatest kingdoms the northern emigrants raised in these islands. These emigrants were a mixed body, and that would account for discrepancies here and there, but it seems to be pretty clear that the composers of these poems were not so near to the North and West Norwegian colonists whom Harold did his best to drive from the Western Islands, as they were to the men who won Waterford and Limerick and kinged it in York and East England?.

It is well to remember, in this connection, that among the first poets we really have any personal knowledge of, the majority are of mixed élood, with an Irish ancestress not far back in the family tree. Their physical characteristics, dark hair and black eyes, like Sighwat and Cormac, their reckless passion and wonderful fluency [cf. Helgi-poet and Tapestry-poet], are also un-Teutonic and speak to their alien descent.

§ 9. CLASSIFICATION OF Eppic Lays.

To determine the chronology of the poems within a year or two is hopeless, we can only point out a few considerations which may help to give some reasonable results. With regard to their relation to the older Teutonic poems the reader is requested to turn back to § 7, and for a detailed discussion of the evidence afforded by metre to look forward to Excursus I in this volume.

The Songs of the Ethical Group [Book i, §§ 1-4] are clearly in spirit, culture, evidence, and metre older than the Helgi Cycle or the Tapestry Poems. They bear many resemblances in style and spirit to the Older Epics, with which we have therefore classed them.

The Helgi Cycle, while clearly later than these, yields every appearance of being composed in the seething days of the Wicking-tide, rather towards the end than to the beginning of it. There is one little piece of evidence, which, if our reading be correct, would almost surely fix an eminently satisfactory date. Eywind (c. A.D. 970), we take, uses the word ‘ vig-ro%i;’ now he was a noted plagiarist, and the word is unmistakably a characteristic word of the Helgi-poet, who loves and affects those wig-compounds, so that it is not at all unlikely that Eywind has

1 Critics have pleaded the weak state and medley tongue of the Scandinavians of the West. But here we are speaking of the tenth and eleventh centuries, when they were a mighty imperial race. Where records are silent, the very stones speak, In the Hebrides, Captain Thomas, a safe authority on ancient West Scottish geography, has (as he informs the Editor) collected all the names of places in the Isle of Lewis, and finds that out of every four, three are Norse, under various disguises, but still recognisable, even after having had to pass through the Gaelic tongue of centuries past. Captain Thomas notices that Munch, in the last years of his life, was much struck by this fact; even he did not expect so great a ratio in the Hebrides. Munch’s premature death hindered him from working out the results to be drawn from his English friend’s researches,

HELGI POEMS—TAPESTRY POEMS. Ixv

‘conveyed’ the word from him. We know roughly the date of other poems Eywind borrows from, Ynglingatal, c. 930, and Erics-mal, soon after 950; the Helgi poems would not be farther removed from him than these (he certainly would not copy old-fashioned poems), and ¢. 950, leaving a margin of a score of years, would fit admirably with their mefre, spirit, and internal evidence [note the Fair-hair allusion, Wak. |. 93]. But even if the word ‘ vigro%i’ were out of the question, the peculiar réle of the Walcyria in Haconar-mal is doubtless of a piece with that played by Helgi’s amazon heroines; and after all is not the exact scene, fine as it is, where Hacon is sitting war-weary and wounded on the field amid the dead, and Gondul and her maiden-mates armed and helmed ride spear in hand to greet him, copied from the interview of Helgi and his ‘Helmed Fairies?’ Even the turns of phrase, the Helgian ‘asides’ (which no other poet employs), recur in Eywind’s Lay. In saying this, we do not deny Eywind’s talents,—he ‘imitates like a man of genius,’—but simply wish to point out his attitude to the earlier poet, and establish this anonymous poet’s date.

The Tapestry-poet (one might also dub him the Monologue-poet, or ‘the Lamentation-poet) is undeniably later than the Helgi-poet; he is living in an age of greater culture, of more sentiment, of refinement, of luxury, when ladies worked tapestry instead of serving the household, leaving that to slave-women. He bears all the marks of the eleventh century, its chivalry, its brutality, its passionate weeping [compare the Song of Roland on this head]. Then the style, the prevalence of narrative, the falling off in dramatic power, the Euripidean similes, and love of doleful and harrowing situations, the special study of female character, the constant harping on sorrow, Gudrun’s, Brunhild’s, Ordrun’s, etc., whole poems being built on a ‘chain of woes,’—would all be impossible in an earlier age, and would not be tolerated by those who lived the rougher life of the earlier settlers. That they are written for entertainment their epilogues declare plainly, and this is suitable to a gene- ration of ‘gluttons and winebibbers,’ such as Wulfstan’s sermon and Malmesbury’s jeremiads portray (with considerable animus of course). The Helgi-poet is a heathen evidently at heart: while there is nothing in the Tapestry-poet to vindicate his faith or creed, he is more unreligious than the Court-poets, for they use heathen figures in abun- dance, though they were good Christians enough. The date of r1o50, all things considered, would suit the Tapestry poems well enough.

The Greenland Poem cannot be older than the discovery and colonisation of Greenland, c. 984, and would reasonably fit to some time early in the next century, say roz0. It is more archaic and naive, and composed for a sterner and more simple public than the Tapestry poems.

The Ballad-poet is harder to deal with. In high poetic gift he does not stand far from the Helgi-poet: in elaboration of form, in dramatic treatment, in the regular character of his phrasing, in his minute and select vocabulary he has analogies’ with the Norwegian school of poets. It does not do to lay too much stress on a phrase e€

lxvi INTRODUCTION.”

in-an epilogue, but still we may note the coincidence between the ‘That is how Thor got back his hammer’ of the Ballad and the ‘ This is how Gudrun was cleared of the charge against her’ of the Tapestry school. Both poems are confessedly for entertainment. We should certainly incline to put the Ballad-poet earlier than the Tapestry poems, say about 990. He may be older, but that is probably the safest date. We have noted his marked Western characteristics. The trick of Thor dressing as a bride is the same as the legend of Thorgils’ death in Ireland, when the young heroes dressed themselves up as women to get access to him and slew him.

A poem which presents a very delicate problem is the Weyland’s Lay. On the one side there are such deeply-cut archaisms, such a Homeric spirit breathing through it, so many lines with the ring of the Hamtheow Lay in them, that it was not without long consideration and careful discussion that its present place in this volume was decided on; for, while these traits would claim it as a fellow to the older Epics, there are traces of later phrasing, e. g. Il. 107-110, and of such modern metre, structure, and wording as show certain resemblances to the Ballad-poet. Perhaps to suppose that it is an old poem, which has gone through a remodelling by some admirer of the Ballad style, would be the most reasonable theory. It is an especially fascinating Lay and deserves minute study.

Biarka-mal, unless the legend lies, is older than 1030, the day when the martyr-king heard it sung as the last sun that he was to see rose over his waking host. But we must not pin our faith to this too tightly, for we know that round Sticklestead-battle, as round Senlake and Alcazar, stories have clustered which really belong to older and later events, The extraordinary resemblance between it and the fragment of the Finsburgh fight, amounting even to the identity of parallel lines, must be pointed out!, There must be some transfusion of legend

1 Of such parallelisms mark, e. g.— And onwacnigead nu wigend mine. And— Vaki ok vaki vina-héfud. Compare too— Da ards menig gold hladen degn gyrde hine his sworde, da to dura eodon drihtlice cempan, Sigeferd and Eaha hyra sword getugon, ond zt oprum durum Ordlaf and Guplaf, ond Hengest sylf hwearf him on laste, etc. And this sentence from the Paraphrase in Rolf’s Saga— Compare too— Da gewat him wund hzled on weg gangan sede pet his byrne abrocen were here-sceorpum hror and eac wes his helm dyrl: with the paraphrastic—viat af mer eru hoeggnar allar hlifar, fést-brdédir, ok

ARISTOPHANIC POEMS. WOLOSPA. “Axvii here. To support the Fin story there is Beowolf; to support the Biarka-mal story, Saxo, a good and untainted witness, There is a riddle to solve here.

The Aristophanic poems are not to be hastily dealt with. All three (Ls., Skm, Hbl.) appear to be the work of one poet’, There is an archaic smack about them; they are by a heathen certainly, a man who is at home in his religion, who treats Thor and Woden, as many a good medizval churchman did the Abbot or the Pope, with a humour which has in it no hate or abhorrence, but rather sympathy. He takes care too to avoid irreverence, by putting his flouts and jibes in Loki’s mouth. That biting mischievous scoffer always says more than he means. There are traces also of a deep religious feeling, which must have vanished at the later date when Christendom and Heathendom stood out clear face to face. This nameless Aristophanes is a high poet too, with a beautiful restraint, an antique grace in his metre and phrasing, and a vigorous homely pith that belonged to the Ethic school. His love for Thor is Norwegian-like, but the pictures of wild roving life, the bold buccaneer fighting and plundering and carrying off women and lying feasting on an island for days together, or even a whole winter, are as unmistakeably of the wicking-tide. He may well be a contemporary of the Poet of Helgi; later he could not, earlier a little he might possibly be.

In Wolo-spa [Bk. iii, § 3] the fine flexible melodious metre, which has here reached its highest pitch of development, the careful logical divisions of the whole into burden-bounded strophes, would forbid any thought of ‘hoar antiquity,’ of ‘ primeval utterances,’ or the like. And on a closer examination, the refinement and spirituality of thought which show throughout, the philosophical character, one might almost say, of its conceptions, are positive indications, which tend still more strongly to confirm our conviction that we have here a poem of about the same age as the Ballad poems, with which indeed it bears clear marks of likeness, The apprehension of the near crack of doom, too, points to a date near A.D. 1000, The source of the poet’s inspiration has been ably pointed out by Dr. Bang of Christiania. The western locale of it is rendered certain by the occurrence of ‘ bio%,’ earth, the use of the harp, and the eschatology. There are Irish compositions on Domesday still extant which would serve as links between its Scandinavian author and the wild eastern fancies of the Sibylline poems,

1 See the parallelisms, e. g.— And— Heill ves pu nu heldr sveinn ok tak vid hrim-kalki.—Skm. And— Hyvat es pat hlym hlymja.—Skm, Ok péttiska pu pa Pdrr vesa,—Ls. 244 and Ls, 82.

Rare and peculiar words, used in these Lays only, are—Gamban-reidi, Skm, 136; gamban-teinn, ib, 131 and Hbl. 63; gamban-sumbl, Ls. ¥2,. The Old Wolsung Play alone presents parallelisms to them ; is that, too, or parts of it, by the same poet ?

€ 2

Ixviil INTRODUCTION.

Balder’s Doom [Bk. iii, § 2] has ‘ballad’ character in its framework, but is more heathen and antique in spirit than the Wolospa.

Hyndlo-liod [Bk. iv, § 2] is a valuable but sadly mangled poem. Our arrangement of it in the text is by no means definitive, though we have been able to restore the framework of the genealogical part. Hence we have given a complete reconstruction of the whole poem in Excursus IV, vol, ii. There are in fact two poems in it, each with its own burden. (1) A Genealogical Lay; an heroic encyclopedia, taking in all the famous men of old. This poem is the Hyndla-Lay proper. (2) The other part, which well deserves the title by which Snorri cites it, the Short Wolospa, is an eschatology, bearing many points of resemblance to that of the great Wolospa and the Doom of Balder, but in a little more archaic and less ideal vein. Here there are traces of a second framework, Wodin calling up a Sibyl or Wolwa by enchantment and threats, and extorting answers from her, as Woden does from the Sibyl in the other poem; and finally the Wolwa sinks to sleep again, having ended her prophecy with a distinct intimation of the coming of the Greater One, a more clearly Christian phrase than any even in Wolospa. These two poems have, for reasons we know not, been run by the reciter into one jumble. The fragments are so mangled, the lacune so evident and so serious, that it is often hard to get matter for a complete reconstruction. We would propose the following rearrangement—

Verses 147-166 on Heimdal should stand at the head of the Genealogical Lay, immediately after our 1. 45, for Heimdal is the progenitor of all royal races. 7

Lines 20-28, 171-174, and 187-192 are the epilogue to Othere’s Genealogical Lay.

On the other hand, lines 175-176, 183-184 belong to the Introduction to the Necromantic Sibyl Song: while lines 185-186 are part of the prophecy to be inserted before line 159.

One indication of date we can perhaps get: Wolf Uggason’s House Poem, iv. 9, yields a distinct echo of our corrupt lines 147-155, where we should read—

and render— The mighty warder of the bridge of the Powers.

The ‘ nadd-gaofgan’ is evidently some allusion to the ‘ Brising necklace’ over which Heimdal and Loki fought at Singa-stone’.

Wolf's poem dates from c. 980; so that 950, say, would be a fair date for our poem.

The Sun’s Song and Christian’s Wisdom [Bk. iii, § 4], which are probably

1 Note that ‘mann,’ the word used here of Heimdal, recalls Mannus the ‘ conditor gentis Germanorum’ in Tacitus’ day. Compare also the pedigree of Ermanric as given by Jordanis.

THE CHRISTIAN POEMS. lxix by a single author, would, we take it, be fitly allotted to the early part of the eleventh century. They are frankly Christian, both in spirit and subject; they contain passages of a more romantic character than we should expect in very early poems. There seems almost an echo of the Helgi-poet [i.l. 59, 60] in the line 166, and the Sun’s hart and other touches remind one of the Grimnis-mal mythology.

It is an idle fancy to think that one of the Christian Wise-man’s examples is founded on the Adventures of Gunlaug and Raven. The fact is that Gunlaug’s Saga, as we have it, is a romance’. Thorrod Kolbeinsson, in his Dirge on Gunlaug [ii. p. 105], says nothing about the duelling; but makes Gunlaug slay two men, Olaf and Grim, ere he struck Raven down,—evidently a fray or battle, not a set combat. Again, Landnama-bok, which names Gunlaug and Raven, does not tell of any Helga the Fair as Raven’s wife, but does give Raven a sister Helga. That Gunlaug and Raven fought a wager of battle is historical, but the cause of it and the manner of Gunlaug’s death we do not know. The Saga, which is of a distinctly non-Icelandic romantic type, has received some of its finest scenes from foreign stories, perhaps even this very tale which the Christian Saga alludes to, of the unhappy passion of Swafod and Scart-hedin, who really did slay each other in wager of battle for the unnamed lady’s love. There are several indications which point to the Western Islands as the locale of the author. Ryedale etc, is non-Icelandic; ‘cras’ is a Gaelic word; ‘ Vanar-dreka’ is paralleled by Snorri’s word ‘ Vanar-gandr,’ of the earth-serpent, a quotation no doubt. The origin of the N.E. ‘gow-sun’ is given s. vy. ‘gygjar-sol’ in Dict. 222 a. The early Visions, such as Adamnan’s, which was widely celebrated, were well known to our author; also the ‘burdens of lead,’ Dante’s cowls, which King John is said to have used to torture a living man. The later classification of the Seven Sins [the earlier arrangement has Eight] had not reached the Christian Sage, or he would certainly have adopted it, for he is very methodical and symmetrical in his poem, It is, one would say, upon the model of the Guest’s Wisdom and such old poems that the Sun’s Song and the Christian’s Wisdom were composed.

Grimnis-mal and Wafthrudnis-mal [Bk. ii, § 1] offer little internal evidence; we have been guided by their general spirit and style to place them as we have. They were composed for entertainment we have little doubt. Wafthrudnis-mal is probably the older of the two.

Allwise’s Lessons [Bk. ii, § 1] is obviously by a western poet. It is clearly composed by one who, like Widsith or Odusseus, ‘ unlocked his word-hoard,’ having seen many men and states; there are two certain Gaelic words at least [zti, niol, etc.], and several English words [barr=bear or barley, etc.]. The trick, by which the dwarf is here out-witted, is applied with equal success to a giantess in the Flyting

-.

=

1 See Excursus III, vol. ii.

Ixx INTRODUCTION.

of the Helgi-poet [cf. also the Bard-dale ogress of Gretti’s Saga]. We take the Wafthrudni and Allwise Lays to be by one poet.

Gripis-spa [Bk. v, § 1] is the one poem which might possibly be Ice- Jandic ; its regular form, prosaic and business-like tone, and plain wording are akin to its neighbours in this volume.

The Lay of Righ (Bk. iv, § 2} is a fine and elaborate poem, clearly of Western origin: the mixed household, elaborate dress and food, foreign words, and the peat-digging, which indeed was the point that first led the Editor to the Western hypothesis; the Earl is the highest authority, the King is to be sought over-sea; the curious popular etymology—con ungr [Kon the young]. Is it casual that Conn is an Irish name? ‘The ‘j’ must needs have been dropped from ‘ ungr’ ere such an etymology could have been proposed. ‘That ‘ Righ’ is connected with ‘Ri’ is evidently also the author’s theory. The line and style (not archaic), the tendency to philosophise on subjects which would hardly have struck a pure Northerner, and the metre, would all lead one to conclude that the poem could not be older than the generation which produced Wolospa,

The Lay of Darts, Darradar-liod [Bk. iv, § 5], is dated, according to tradition, by the great battle of Clontarf, to which it refers. There is every reason to believe this tradition to be true, though no name be given to the king or earl of the poem. In the notes to the ‘ Four Masters,’ an Irish tradition referring to this same fight is cited: “ Moling delivered this prophecy: ‘Tonndurgen and the royal bard of lances shall violate friendship at Glinngerg; mutual oaths shall not prevent bloodshed,’ ”—which calls back lines 130-134 of Wolospa.

The Irish poem relating to Dunlaing O’Hartigain, who was warned by the Fairy Spirit of his race, contains this striking prophecy, which is parallel to our lines 28-34: “ Brian shall fall! Murchad shall fall! They shall fall in the field in rows! the plain shall be red to-morrow with the blood of many brave men!” See Annals of Innisfallen and Annals of Kilronan.

For Hymis-kvida |Bk. iv, § 1] it is obvious that the verse is rather of the Norwegian type, in metre and synonym, though we cannot name the author. There are striking incidents in it, which point to a Western origin; and as we have said the stone cauldrons in Hymi’s hall remind one forcibly of the stone bowls in such big Irish tumuli as those of New Grange and Sliath-na-Calleigha, The poem too is, like other Western poems, for recitation at an entertainment; it is in a humorous vein, which is quite foreign to Norwegian poets,

With regard to the other early poems in the Fourth Book of this volume (the Norwegian poets), they are dated by their subject or contents clearly enough, and we have spoken fully on their authorship and time in the introduction prefixed to each piece. Egil’s poems [Bk. iv, § 4] naturally fall in with the rest of the Norwegian Encomia of Bk. iv,

—

HISTORY OF THE EDDIC COLLECTION. _ Ixxi he being in life and career practically a Norwegian, but one image, though that is a very touching and characteristic one, being drawn from Iceland,—the cauldron of tears.

The early Norwegian Encomia are marked off pretty distinctly from those of the Western school.

They are all Aistorical in subject, addressed not to the guests at a festival, but to the king himself. They are really rhymed chronicles,

§ 10. COLLECTION oF EppIc LAYS WHEN MADE,

Having [§ 6] by the evidence of a diplomatic kind arrived at about 1230 as the latest date for our Codex Regius, what evidence have we towards getting at the state of things with regard to the poems it contains before this MS. was written?

It is evident that R and 748 are sister texts; there was also another sister text, now lost, from which the paraphrast of the Wolsunga Saga worked, But it must be noticed that the paraphrast’s text [P] need not have comprised the Mythic poems, nor 748 the Heroic, though both collections are found in R. So that the evidence stands thus— |

LO — ——

[A] _[E] Mythic Heroic aot L

: rete

748 R [P] Mythic. Mythic-heroic, Heroic. And we may either fancy two archetypes [A] and [E], or one [4], which is probably more likely.

Allowing a fair amount of time for the copies to be made, etc., would be at least as early as the end of the twelfth century; and to any one who notices the peculiarities of the prose passages [they are given in Appendix to vol.ii, p. 524 sqq.] which are interspersed among the heroic lays, this will not seem a whit too early. There are few specimens in any tongue of such archaic lapidary style as this, which contrasts in the strongest way with the classic twelfth-century Icelandic prose, polished by generations of story-tellers, who had developed its capacity to a singularly high degree. Yet here, by the side of tales as well told as the best of Herodotus, are legends given in rough, broken, uncouth sentences, to which there is nothing parallel in Greek, and which in their primitive form recall the fragments of the old Roman Laws and Carmina.

There are two hypotheses to be drawn from this curious phenomenon; viz. that the collection must be very early in date, or else that the prose came from the mouth of some one non-Icelander, who was not used to the highly-developed Saga-style. The existence of words in it not known in Icelandic speech or literature, supports the latter explanation. It is also noteworthy that, though our R and 748 are certainly Icelandic MSS., i.e. written by Icelanders, there are places here and there where ‘1’ and ‘r’ age not aspirated, which we might fairly interpret as a sign that A was written at a non-

Ixxii INTRODUCTION.

Icelander’s dictation [see § 6]. It is impossible to fix a date for the writing down of A, We can only hope to establish a probable time. The question really is, how long were these poems preserved by the people from among whom they were collected; for it is clear that the collector was only just in time (as so often has happened in other cases) to take down the last and most precious remains of a whole body of literature. Now, from Swerris Saga we know that these old poems were still fairly known in the Western Islands in that king’s youth (1150-1170), so that it is probable they were well remembered in 1100. There is therefore no need to carry the date of our collection further back than 1150, for if it had been made much earlier, the poems would have been far more perfect in all probability.

As to the state of the collection itself, we have seen that it falls into two great bundles in R, Mythic and Heroic.

Here again we feel the want of a facsimile page for page reprint of R, for it is only from such a text that the reader can get a fair idea of the state of the poems in these collections. However, we have (pp. xlii—xliii) given the list of their contents as they stand in R, and on p. 376, vol. i, will be found some specimens of the jumbled text in one of the chief poems.

One gathers from a careful consideration of the MS. that the collection must have been put together somewhat as follows :—The Collector, interested by hearing one or two of these old poems, which were entirely new to him, but of which he knew the plot in a vague way, got the reciter to dictate to him all he knew. The reciter’s memory fails him in the less impressive parts of the poems, and he substitutes a plain, rough, clumsy bit of prose, giving the thread of the plot, to fill up the gap. We notice that the more broken the song is the more bits there are of prose. In a few instances—for instance, the Helgi Lays, the Hamtheow Lay, Havamal, the Old Wolsung Play, etc.—all is a jumble: in one place we have obviously a double text, A, B; in another an old fragmentary song has been interlarded with bits of a younger one. We may picture the Collector, having written down all the reciter could give him, trying another man, who knows some more; he recites his little collection to him, and this second informant is able to give him a few fresh verses; but more often he says, ‘ You haven’t got it quite right here; I always heard it so,’ giving him what is really a parallel text of bits he has already; or else he says, ‘I remember some lines you haven’t got about that matter,’ and cites fragments of a fresh poem on the same subject. The good Collector puts down all his new friend tells him in rough chronological order alongside of what he has already got, according to the thread of the tale, so that e.g. in the Old Wolsung Play we get in R two separate poems of different style and age mixed together.

We may even fancy how the Collector came to take down the poems now in R. It was in the Saga-time, and even till lately, the fashion for traders on Iceland to sail about mid-summer or early autumn and put up

THE COLLECTION OF THE EDDIC LAYS. Ixxiii there through the winter, to avoid the terrible equinoctial gales, boarding with the franklins of the district, and going away in the spring next year. Suppose a Western Islander, skipper of a trading vessel, lodging (as we know many an Orkneyman did) with an Icelandic franklin or priest through the winter. At Christmas-time Saga-telling and reading is a favourite pastime, the guest is well entertained, and in his turn is asked to tell a story; he recites one of the poems he has heard at entertainments in his own land, where poetry, and not saga-telling, is the popular pastime. His host is pleased with the poem, and begs him next day to dictate all the verses he knows to him. Or if any one prefers it, he may imagine an Icelander, such as Ingimund the priest or Hrafn Sweinbiornsson, passing a winter in the Orkneys or Shetlands, and there writing down the poems he had heard recited at festal gatherings.

The collection of Saxon poems, made in Norway by the compiler of Theodrick’s Saga, shows that it was not an uncommon thing to gather poems from foreigners.

The Collector has had better luck with the Mythic poems than with the Heroic lays, which are in a far worse state; but still, even in the Mythic poems there are great gaps and extraneous pieces wedged in.

Of the Helgi poems and their state in R we have spoken in the introduction. The Havarnal Collection is a formless mass of all the gnomic verses the collector could get, put down in blocks, one after another, as he got them. Then there are the common errors and mistakes of reciters, verses from one poem slipped in to fill a blank in another, transpositions, mixings of separate poems of similar plot or personages. Such phenomena in fact as occur in Mr. Campbell’s Collections of Highland Tales and Poems, and which are sure to be found wherever a conscientious collector takes down oral songs or stories.

It has been our first task throughout this edition to clear the separate poems of the mass of extraneous matter that has been left solongto . cumber them; to separate parallel texts and verses; to put the sequence of the lines right; to extricate the fragments of the older poems from the newer poetry in which they are imbedded; to mark the hitherto unnoticed gaps which but too often mar and deface the most beautiful poems. And it is necessary to do this before we can apply the needful process of textual criticism; to begin mending the text before one has a clear idea of what one is working on is but working in the dark. It is the neglect of these preliminary operations, the dull way of looking at and treating the poems as so many pages in a book, not as separate entities, composed with a definite aim by reasonable men for the pleasure of their fellow-human beings, that has caused the slough in which Eddic studies have so long lain. We must, on the contrary, be ever ready to draw comparisons from the experience of Ballad collectors of our own time, and not look on the old days as something outside or above ordinary human life.

We have, in accordance with these ideas, endeavoured to restore the original state of the poems that were jumbled in the Havamal mass, to

Ixxiv INTRODUCTION.

set in some order at least the beautiful Helgi Trilogy and the grandly planned Old Wolsung Play, and are able to show the double texts (which have hitherto passed undetected) in the Gudrun and Hamtheow Lays.

Now our collector (or collectors) of A® account for the existence of a good many poems; but there are others in exactly the same state as his, corrupt not from scribes’ mistakes, but from age and decay and reciters’ confusions and forgetfulness. The Hyndla Lay and the Mill Song, for example, evidently show the same symptoms as Weyland’s Lay or the Wolospa. Can there have been a collection, which stood to Flatey-bok, to the compiler of Codex Wormianus and to the scribe of ‘r,’ as # stands to R, to 748, and to[P]? Such a collection would among other things have comprised the Mill Song, Righ’s-mal, Hyndluliod, Biarka-mal.

We know that there were collections of poems, dealing with Danish tradition, known to Saxo or his Icelanders [Thylenses]; such poems as the lost Lay of Amlodi [Hamlet], Hagbard and Signy, Starkad’s Death Song, a Proverb-song [which Saxo makes great use of], Biarkamal, Rolf Craci at Upsala, the Lodbrok Lays, etc. .

That some Lays were separately preserved one might also expect, and one finds from Ynglinga that Ari knew the Old Ritual poem in a different text to ours. Snorri knew the short Sibyl Prophecy separate from Hyndla Lay. The genealogical portion of the Lay of Hyndla has, when in a much purer and completer state than we possess it, been paraphrased (see Flatey-bok, i. pp. 24-25).

Snorri, no doubt, had access to some collection of old poems, now lost, whence he cites fragments and paraphrases of incidents throughout his Gylva-ginning. It must have been a mythic collection [see Bk. ii, § 3], for he speaks of a Heimdal’s Charm (‘Heimdalar galdr’), paraphrases a lost song on Balder’s Funeral, cites from lost Lays of Grow and Gua, and must have known some more bits of Lays which he has used to draw upon for material for his tales, the d//legory on Hel] and her abode for instance [vol. i, pp. 125-127]'.

Snorri used for the Beguiling of Gylfi a different text of Wolospa to ours, a text in which the order was distinctly better than ours. It is not certain however that he had not also our text; for the ‘ Dwarf interpolation’ (vol. i, p. 79) is in W, r, and U; and he may have borrowed these lines from our text. We can hardly suppose any text earlier than ZE to have contained them.

1 In this connection it is well to note that the discoveries of ‘ Odinic fragments’ in the Shetlands are utterly illusory. A poem in a fragmentary and corrupt condition, in fact in an advanced stage of decomposition, is taken down in the twelfth century just as it is fading out of tradition; and it is believed that this very fragment (covering, it is to be observed, by a miraculous coincidence, a space included in the fragment we already have) can be still on record in the nineteenth century, a fragment which yields nothing new, no fresh word or idea,—Credat Judzus Apella ! Let us remember, putting aside all other possibilities, that Resenius’ printed text, with a Latin translation, has been accessible for more than two hundred years.

LOST EDDIC POEMS. Ixxv

As to other lost Songs of which we can gather some evidence :—

. In Ynglinga Saga, ch. 40, 41, there is a paraphrase of a lost song of the Helgi-type.

The compiler of Scioldunga Saga, a work which is unfortunately in a terribly imperfect state, paraphrases a song of the Aristophanes-type, The Flyting of Iwar [i. 123, and Reader, p. 191]; a Lay of Gorm’s Death [see Reader, p. 193], which, we take it, was of the type of the Weyland Lay; a Lay of Hrolf’s visit to Upsala [i. p. 190], known also to the interpolator of ‘r;’ Starkad’s Death Song, a rather late poem which Saxo knows and paraphrases; the Biarka-mal [i. p. 188]; a Ragnar’s Lay, the old song on whose fragments—such phrases as ‘I will die laughing ’—the late poem Kraku-mal was afterwards built up in the West, In the lost portion of Scioldunga would have been the paraphrase of the Amloda Lay, and the Lay of Harbard and Signy, a once popular poem, the story of which is frequently alluded to. Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, wherein Biarka-mal is paraphrased, is just, to our mind, a diluted paraphrase of a lost chapter of Scioldunga, which itself was founded on an old cycle of poems early lost.

In fact, the DANISH CYCLE seems to have been the biggest next to the WOLSUNG CYCLE; and, if we could have sat at the court of Eadgar with the Danish emigrants and adventurers which he gathered round him, we should have heard other poems of this cycle and have seen perhaps some of the composers of those very Lays we still have. Yet, it must not be supposed that we would derive all tradition from lost poems; there is, in every instance we have named, either an alliterative phrase, a peculiar turn of the story, an imagery or poetic word or simile, or some more or less evident token, which forbids one’s assigning a prose tradition or Saga as the source of the story. Thus, Thor and Outgarth Loki is distinctly a story; there is nothing unproselike in its form or phrase. But the Death of Gorm, with its alliterative ‘Denmark is drooping, dead is my son!’ its characteristic touches, the good wise queen, the fiery warm-hearted old king [reminding one of Goethe’s Es war ein Kénig im Thule], the dark hangings in the hall where the scene passes, the pure poetry of Thyra’s apologue, the stern brevity of the phrase which tells of Gorm’s death and lights up the speechless heart-broken figure sitting bolt upright dead in the royal seat—all point to the ‘sacer vates.’

So again the similes in Amlodi’s madness, as calling the sand on the shore the ‘meal ground by the gales,’ the rudder a ‘monstrous knife gashing the huge flitch-like waves,’ mark the story as having passed through the crucible of song, and received the stamp from a poet.

We have menticned the [P] text which the Wolsunga paraphrast used, This P text was perfect, whereas in our R there is a great lacuna. We have therefore from the Paraphrast a means of finding out something about the Lays which once steod in the now vacant spot. We have therefore translated literally such chapters of Wolsunga

Ixxvi INTRODUCTION.

Saga as contain matter no longer found in R, and printed them in appendix to vol. i. [pp. 391-399], and the text itself is appended to vol. ii.

How much is lost from R, one sheet or two? The Editor now believes that only one is gone. The poems in the lacuna were all certainly of the Wolsung cycle, the greater part by the Tapestry Poet, as is manifest from several scenes and treats in the paraphrase. From the one sheet in R represents; taking the one sheet after the lacuna as an example, it is roughly about ro4o lines, besides the average prose stuflings. We can hardly imagine that there were rooo lines more of Wolsung Poems, especially as the amount of poetry underlying the Wolsung prose need not have exceeded 1100 lines. The prose of the lacuna is a little above the average sheet, for instance, of the sheet following after the lacuna; the reason we take is, that in the lost sheet the paraphrast stuck a little more closely to the text than is usual with him; for we have also to make allowance for songs or bits of songs not paraphrased, since there are sure to have been some lay of which no trace is left, just as in the post-lacuna sheet the Lay of Ordrun and the Lay of the Weeping Gudrun and the end of the Great Brunhild Lay have been passed over; because there was too little action in it the paraphrast thought, or that it was too poetical, or that it was a double text, like the two Atli Lays. For all this one has to leave some margin.

The age of the unique MS.! (No. 1824, New Collection, Royal Library, Copenhagen) of Wolsunga is of the end of the fourteenth century, but it is not by the original compiler, for two reasons. (1) There are Rimur, Wolsung’s Rimur (ed. Mébius) of the fifteenth century, which are founded on the first eight chapters of the Wolsunga Saga, but in a detter text than ours, so that 1824 is not a first generation MS. (2) There are many evident scribe’s errors in our text, not owing to the poems, but to false copying of the prose. Dr. Bugge in his last edition has not observed this; yet the mistakes are obvious; we have tried to put right the most glaring ones, so as to make a translation feasible. See the foot-notes to the translation, vol. i, Append. p. 391 sqq., and to the text, vol. ii, Append. p. 532 sqq. The original MS. was probably compiled about the year 1300.

There is another paraphrase, Norna-Gests Thattr, found in Flateybok, which cites the Old Wolsung Play with the interpolation, and the end of the Long Brunhild Lay. The compiler (whom we take to be the Wolsung paraphrast) must have had our text.

Hromund Gripsson’s Saga we shall speak of in the next section.

§ 11. CITATIONS OF Eppic Lays.

In tracing the history of the poems a word may be said on the citations of them which can be discovered, bearing in mind the distinction between quotations made from the living poems and from them when

1 It was a gift of Bishop Bryniolf to the Danish king. See Prolegom. and § 3. _

Pi

“nl

2a —— +,

THE EDDIC POEMS CITED. Ixxvii collected and written down. We noticed above the quotations of Eywind and Wolf Uggason, c. 980. Next comes Arnor’s quotation from Wolospa in a Dirge made in the Orkneys on an Orkney Earl, c. 1064. Eighty years later, in Iwar’s Dirge on Sigurd Slembi, a Western Islander, are three lines which echo the Helgi Lay. About the same date, in the Orkneys, Earl Rognwald in his Hatta-lykill says, echoing the Helgi Lays,— .

Hafdi Helgi i hidrva gny ged-stein hardan?, gott drengja val, hialm hard-sleginn, hid! mundrida, fello fyrdar i flogi vapna, ato ernir af iofurs dolgum,

King Swerri, who was born in the Faroes and brought up in the Western Islands, cites in his speeches the Old Wolsung Play, Il. 83-84, and from the lost lays, i. p. 314, ll. 1-2. And this implies evident familiarity with the poems, which we may fancy him learning in his youth in the West. We have his speeches from his own report, so that it is not necessary to believe that the snatches he cites were as familiar to his hearers as they were to him. The ‘remanieur’ of Fostbrodra Saga cites a ditty of the Guest’s Wisdom, calling it a snatch of song, ‘ kvidling,’

Besides these few direct quotations, there are several instances in the Icelandic Sagas where one is struck by a slight departure from the normal treatment, by a more romantic colouring and an unrealistic air, which are in direct contrast to the true spirit of the Sagas. In such cases one can hardly fail to recognise the influence of epic traditions, often no doubt derived from lost poems, but sometimes directly drawn from extant sources. We have treated this subject separately [Excursus III, vol. ii].

But there are a certain number of places in which we have paraphrases taken straight from Songs, and these may be enumerated here :—

Ari shows knowledge of several Eddic poems,—stray Lays one would say,—the Ritual Song, detached, not as we have it now, and from a better text than ours (see Ynglinga Saga, ch. 6-7); the Lay of Righ (see Ynglinga Saga, ch. 21, ‘Sonar Rigs er fyrstr var konungr kalladr 4 Danska Tungo’).—Not to speak of the songs referred to in Edda, Gylfaginning, the staple of which treatise are the three Lays, Wolospa, Watfthrudni, and Grimni, and a few fragments of lost songs already mentioned.

Of Scioldunga Saga we have spoken above.

Gisli’s Saga has a lost Lay of the He/gi type twisted into relation with its Icelandic hero’s fortunes (see ii. p. 331).

Hromund Gripsson’s Saga contains a paraphrase of the third part of the Helgi Triology (i. p.148), an incident copied from the second part

1 Helgi, i. 1, 223. % Id, 1, 105.

Ixxviii INTRODUCTION. °

of the Angantheow Cycle [see i. p. 348], and a pretty close prose version of some Dream Lay, in which the two doomed men, Blind the Balewise and King Harding, talk over the former’s dreams. (Whether this Dream-Lay was originally concerned with these two heroes or others we cannot even guess.)

The following extracts from Hromund Gripsson’s Saga will give the reader all the help that can be got out of it. The first treats of HELGI’s LOvE Cara.

“Said Hromund [Helgi’s brother in this Saga, really Helgi himself here]: ‘I had bad dreams last night, and all will not go as I could wish, wherefore I shall not go into the battle to-day.’ .. , They came into the battle and went forward boldly, and every one of the host of the Haddings that met them fell before them. There was a witch-wife came there in the shape of a swan; she chaunted with such mighty spell-songs that none of Olaf’s men thought of defending himself. She flew over Gripsson, singing loudly; her name was Cara. Helgi the Bold met the brothers at that very moment, and slew the whole eight of them together,” And again :—

‘*Helgi the Bold had ever gotten the victory, and he won it by sorcery. His mistress was called Cara, she that was in the image of a swan. Helgi brandished his sword so high above him that it cut asunder the leg of the swan [so Cara dies, and Helgi’s luck is gone].” See Griplur.

[A piece about a MAGIC sworD Mistletoe—an echo of the sword in the Angantheow and Herwor Lays down to its loss and recovery from the maw of the pike—now comes in, then follows the episode of the Seancu For HeEtel (here called Hromund), an episode from which the Niala compiler has borrowed the motif of his escape of Thrain, an episode even more nearly copied in another Icelandic Saga. |

‘* Blind goes with some men to Hagal’s house and asks if Hagal is stowed away there. The old woman said that they would not find him there. Blind sought carefully and found him not, for she had hidden him away under the cauldron. Blind and his fellows went off, but when they were come on their way Blind said, ‘Our journey has not been glorious, let us turn back again,’ They did so, got back to the house, and met the old woman. Blind said that she was full of wily tricks, and had stowed away Hagal under her kettle. ‘Seek and catch him then!’ said she. But she said this because as soon as she saw that they were turning back she had put Hagal into a bondwoman’s dress, and set him to grind and turn the hand-mill. While the maid was turning the mill they were all about, but she kept looking fiercely at the king’s men. Then they went away without having found anything; and when they were come on their way, Blind said that the old woman must have wished to beglamour their sight, and he thought it very likely that Hagal might have been there turning the mill in woman’s clothes.”

‘*‘ Blind dreams that a wolf ran from the east and bit the king, and wounded him. The king reads the dream, that a king should come to see him, and that their meeting should be fierce at first, but end in peace. Blind dreams a second time of a number of hawks sitting in a house, and among them the king’s falcon, all featherless and stripped of his skin. Says the king, ‘ There shall come a wind out of the clouds and shake our burgh.’ In Blind’s third dream he saw a herd of swine running from the south to the king’s hall, rooting the earth up with their snouts, ‘That means a high sea, wet weather, and great crop of grass, which shall grow lush from the damp of the water when the sun shines upon the ground,’ says brie hail . F = 5

THE LOST PARTS OF THE CARA LAY. | Ixxix the king. Blind’s fourth dream—* I saw an awful [some beast *] come from the east ; he bit you and made a great wound.’ The king answers, ‘ Heralds shall come to my hall; they shall....all their weapons, and I shall be angry.’ ‘ My fifth dream,’ says Blind, ‘is that I thought I saw a grimly snake living in Sweden,’ ‘A great war-ship shall come ashore laden with treasure.’ Sixth—‘I thought I saw a black [gull?] with claws and wings, which flew away with thee, O king, and there was a snake at Hagal’s, methought, which ate me up and all the king’s men.’ But the king answers, ‘I have heard of a great bear lurking in the wood by Hagal; I shall hunt it, and it will bite me.’ ‘I thought,’ went on Blind, ‘that a dragon’s skin with Hagal’s belt on it was drawn through the hall.’ ‘That is the sword that Hagal lost with his belt in the water.’ Blind goes on, but the king always reads the dream for luck, till Blind says, ‘I thought an iron ring was put about my neck.’ ‘This dream foretells thy being hanged, and I believe we are both fey.’”’

[Hagal soon after breaks suddenly upon the king and slays him, hangs Blind, and marries Swanwhite, daughter of King Olaf.]

The Rimur Griplur (of c. 1480) is taken from a text better than ours, which certainly contained some of the original verses; we therefore give a few citations (from Prof, Kolbing’s notice, for we have no complete copy at hand). It would be worth while to publish the whole of Griplur, simply for the chance of recovering a word or two to eke out the scanty fragments of the third part of the Helgi Trilogy :-—

pa skal pegn sem piddin fregn i Dyjar kledin fera.—Helgi and Kara, 4.

• Mindul’ dré af magni své matti ei orku stilla—JZb. 11 and 13.

The Saga compiler appears to have larded some bits of the Lay into his Saga, whence the Rimur maker again took these words.

With this may be compared the prose of R :—

“King Sigmund Wolsungsson had to wife Borghild of Bragrove. They called their son Helgi also, after Helgi Hiorward’s son. Hagal fostered Helgi. Hunding [read Harding] was the name of a mighty king after whom Hundland is named, He was a great warrior, and had many sons who were a-warring. War and feuds there were between King Hunding and King Sigmund [read Harding and Sefi]; they slew each the other’s kinsmen. King Sigmund and the men of his race were called Wolsungs and Wolfings. Helgi went and spied secretly at the court of King Hunding. Heming, the son of King Hunding, was at home.... The name of Heming’s son was Hagal, King Hunding sent men to Hagal’s to seek Helgi, and Helgi had no other way to escape than to take a bondmaid’s clothes [pyiar kledi above] and betake himself to the mill.... Helgi got away, and went aboard a war-ship. He slew King Hunding [Harding], and was afterwards called Hunding’s Bane [Harding’s Scathe]. He lay with his host

_ ESS 1 Hriki, unknown what beast is meant, See Dict, s.v,

Ixxx INTRODUCTION.

in Bruin Bay, and held a ‘strand-slaughter’ there, and ate raw flesh there. There was a king named Hogni [Halfdan]; his daughter was Sigrun [Cara]. She was a Walcyrie, and rode over air and water; she was Swafa born again.”

The prose has also preserved the name of the Lay :—

“ Sigrun was short-lived for the sorrow and woe [that she had]. It was the belief in the old days [heathendom] that men were born again, but that is now called an old wife’s tale. Helgi and Sigrun are said to have been born again; he was then called Helgi Harding’s Scathe, and she Cara Halfdan’s daughter—as it is said in the Lay of Cara—and she was a Walcyrie.”

Though unknown even to the minstrel from whom the bits in R were taken down, the identity is as apparent as day at noon (Hagal, Hamal, Blind the Bale-wise). As for restoring the names—the alliteration of some is the same: for Sigmund read Sevi(?): for Hunding read

In Bosa Saga, ch. 12, one of the latest and worst of the mythical Sagas, is a notice of a lost Hiarranda Lio, Hiorrend’s Lay, the hero of which, the mighty harper, is a prominent figure in some of the later North German poems of the Gothic Cycle. He is earlier mentioned in

§ 12. THE ORIGIN AND OBJECTS OF COURT-POETRY.

We now come to the CourT-PoEMs. On this head there will be found some information in the introductions to the various poems; as to their metrical peculiarities, their curious synonym system, these are treated in a separate Excursus.

The Court-poetry is a species of poetry distinct and peculiar to the Norwegian court, whence it afterwards for a short time spread to Denmark and England, but not further’. It is the outcome of the Wicking- tide and the growth of the great Norwegian kingdom. It will be necessary, in order to understand its peculiarities, which are at first so unfamiliar and even repulsive to the student, to see how it arose and what were the intentions of its creators. Only by doing so is one able to appreciate their ingenuity and estimate the worth of their work.

• The first Court-poems are the Shie/d-Songs [Book vii], poems recounting a series of- mythical incidents, and dedicated to a king or

1 The poems on Swedish kings are of very doubtful character.

rg

ORIGIN OF COURT-POETRY, Ixxxi patron. Of the like type is the Lay of the House [ii. p. 22], in which Wolf tells over the tales depicted in his patron Olaf Peacock’s new hall. From such poems the transition was comparatively easy.

We have two early species of Lay dealing with kings and princes, and no doubt composed for their pleasure: the Genealogies, such as Ynglinga-tal [Book iv], and the Praises and Dirges of epic character, such as Eric’s-mal, Haconar-mal, and that remarkable poem the Raven Song of Hornclofi [Book iv], in which a Walcyrie questions a raven about the deeds, warriors, champions, poets, wife, and jugglers of Harold Fairhair— a significant poem, openly praising a /ive king, which hitherto had not been done. For the older encomia and didactic heroic poems, like the older epics, are always the traditional praise of the mighty dead, Lays made on. exploits that were magnified by the haze into which they would soon have vanished altogether had not the poet appeared and put down, what he could discern, in immortal verse. But it is not to the flattery of poets nor to the vanity of monarchs that this change is to be put down. It was the desire of endless fame which led such a king as Harold Fairhair or Hacon to wish that his deeds should be preserved for ever. And how could this be done? Writing was unknown for any*historical or descriptive purpose: songs were, as Tacitus says, the only chronology and the only history that existed. It is to song, ‘ which never dies,’ that the record must be entrusted,—song, which had preserved the deeds of Sigfrid, of Sighere, of Attila, of Angantheow, of Waldhere, and Weyland, and Alfwine, and many more.

Accordingly the king commands the poet to put the Annals of his reign into regular order, in the same way as he would the myths on a shield ora cup. Theresult is the regular Encomium ; which is addressed to a king or prince, opens with a statement of the poet’s motive in composing, contains a series of strophes, dealing in strict chronological order with the patron’s exploits, in the form of simple direct statements, full of names of persons and places, and even of dates, and often winds’ up with a request for largess. The burdens which divide the strophes are short laudatory sentences, after the model of those in the Shield Songs. The poet, having composed his poem, now goes to the king and begs to be allowed to deliver it; and this is done publicly in a loud voice in the hall or at the moot (almost as a piece of evidence before witnesses). The king then gives the poet a gift as guerdon for his song, such gifts being often kept long and treasured by the donee. Our introductions to the various Court-poems, to which we beg to refer the reader, contain many lively and dramatic scenes of this poem-reciting,. The poet is then bound to ¢each his poem, we can hardly doubt, for only so could the king’s fame be securely established, and an elaborate Courtpoem would want to be repeated several times in order to fix it in the hearers’ memory. It must also be smooth and flowing and pleasant to the ear, or no one would or could learn it.

Who made the first Court-poem we cannot say Glymdrapa [ii. p. 27] is so unsafe we can build little on it. There are similar fragments on f

Ixxxii | INTRODUCTION.

Hacon the Good (in a terrible state now), though the finest poem on him is in the old epic form. The first really sound Court-poem is Glum Geirason’s Dirge on Greyfell, c. 976 [ii. p. 37]. After this, curiously enough, the craft soon falls almost wholly into the hands of Icelanders. Why, is not quite clear; but we know that the kings loved to attach foreigners to them—and these men were unaffected by Norwegian politics or ties, and noted for their fidelity. Young Icelandic gentlemen going abroad, as was the practice, to take service with the king or to trade, found it to their advantage to practise poetry; and the poet’s position at court grew into a kind of regular office held by an Icelander [Book viii].

Beside regular Encomia, the poets would compose an Ode, ‘ flockr,’ on any great occasion, and these ‘ flockr’ were remembered, and would no doubt afford materials as regards facts for the Dirge-Encomia so frequently recited to the young king after his accession, poems which were in reality the verse chronicles of his father’s reign.

The height of Court-poetry was reached in the days of Harold Hardrede (d. 1066), who was as ambitious of fame as he was of wealth and power, and had a great love for this kind of composition. It is, we can hardly doubt, owing to him that the Encomia were so well remembered, for he would, as the story of Stump shows [ii. p. 221],—a tale which of course is not to be taken literally,—listen to old poems with pleasure, and a poet in his day was bound to have by heart a consider= able number of Encomia, Odes, and the like. Thus the eleventh century was ‘bridged over’ in tradition, so that by Ari’s time these poems were not lost, but he was able to collect a sufficient number of such as he could use for the basis of his great history, whereby the desire of the good old kings for everlasting glory was in a way realised.

And this is no small matter, for every line of the Court-poetry embodies a fact, an annal, which would else have perished. One might, if one had seen only one of the Embroidery-poems, form a very good guess as to the age, style, and even matter of the others; but where a Courtpoem has been lost, a number of real facts has disappeared for ever. Without the Court-poets Ari’s work would have been impossible.

§ 13. STATE OF TEXT AND REMANIEMENTS OF COURT-POETRY.

We have now merely to deal with the question of the text of the Courtpoems, summing up the results arrived at by a careful and minute con- sideration of the poems themselves.

The results here put forth are entirely new, and go to the root of the old historiography, affecting as they do the main questions of the authority and authorship of the Kings’ Lives.

To Ari’s preface to the Book of Kings, which he compiled, we have first to turn for information. He therein says, speaking of the authorities he has used: “ Somewhat [also I have written] that is found in the Genealogies, wherein kings and other men of great race have drawn up their family-relationship. And somewhat is written according to old traditions, or poems [Court-poetry], or epic lays, which men haye used ee

THE TEXT OF THE COURT-POEMS. _ Ixxxiii for entertainment. Though we have no proof for such matter as this

[the epic tales, etc.], yet we have this evidence [authority] thereon, that old historians [not necessarily writers] have taken them to be true.” Ari here mentions the Genealogies, prose or verse we know not; if verse, such poems as Ynglinga-tal are meant: ¢raditions, court-poetry, and epic tales, Eric’s-mal or Haconar-mal would perhaps represent this last species of composition. Further on he says: “ Attached to Harold [Fairhair] there were poets, and men still know their poems [on him], and the poems or encomia of all the kings that have been in Norway since. And we draw the greatest part of our facts from what is said in these encomia, which were delivered before the princes themselves or their sons, We take all that is found in these encomia about these princes’ expeditions or. battles to be absolutely true. Now it is the way of poets to praise their patrons most highly; but this will never lead them to attribute to a man himself deeds which all who are listening know to be imaginary and false, not to speak of the patron himself. For to do so would be mockery and not praise.” [See Reader, p. 14.]. Now these Encomia have not been preserved in their integrity, but there are inserted piecemeal in the text of the Kings’ Lives and in Scaldscapar-mal and Skalda a considerable number of stanzas from them. As to those in the Kings’ Lives they are put in as citations.

_ €Such-and-such a thing happened, as it is said in So-and-so’s poem,’ is a standing phrase of Ari’s, coming over and over again. Ari’s words in his preface are positive enough; he'was going to draw his facts from these poems, and he has done so.

But when one comes to look a little closely into the relations between his clear matter-of-fact statements inthe prose and the verse which is

_ cited in support of the statement, we are struck by the inexplicable but constant fact that the prose is not supported by the verse cited. The verse is hazy, nebulous, full of ingenuity and mouth-filling phrases, but its modicum of fact is of the very smallest. How is this? Is Ari’s preface merely a pretence? It is incredible that he, whom the ancients call the ‘truthful’ [sann-ordr], should speak of basing his history on the poems, if he had not done so, Yet how reconcile the discrepancy between the prose statement, purporting to be drawn from the verse, and the empty worthless verse standing by it, in which no such statement occurs? Again, if Ari did not get his minute facts—the exact plan of a battle, the exact numbers present, the exact day it took place, the boundaries of a nobleman’s domain, the distance of a day’s march in a foreign land, and the like—from these poems, whence on earth did he get them? Tradition does not busy itself with such matters; and from local tradition, the most exact of traditions (though that is vague and untrustworthy enough too, as Ari very well knew), he was far removed. He must either therefore be a Defoe, capable of making a story minutely exact to impose on his reader’s credulity,—a thing utterly alien to his age, his character, and his other work, and in reality impossible,—or we must seek some wig explanation, 2

Ixxxiv INTRODUCTION.

This problem had long puzzled the Editor, but he had not been able to solve it, till, when engaged upon the text of the Court-poems for the present volumes, and comparing carefully the parallel prose and verse, he hit upon what we take to be the true solution. It was a startling and unexpected one’, for so smooth and regulat is the verse, so uniform in style and manner, that not a doubt has ever been cast upon its purity, Yet the greater bulk of it has been entirely remodelled. It once did indeed contain all that Ari says it did, it really was his storehouse of facts, and even now under the smooth palimpsest phrases of the ‘remanieur’ one can again and again detect the very word (usually a name or place) which Ari has cited. The text, as we have it in the Kings’ Lives, is in fact a textus rescriptus. It is beneath it we must look for the original one. And we have done so with regard to the Court-poetry throughout the present edition, printing the text as it is in the vellums, but noting in every case by inverted commas the places where the text is demonstrably a falsified one, and translating as far as possible in accordance with the prose, drawn from the verse when it was in its perfect and unadulterated state. Often too, where the prose failed us, we have been able to see merely that the text was unsafe, but have had no means of determining what its original sense was. In such cases we have simply obelised the doubtful matter and given a version of what little fact remained in the verse,

It is notable that this deliberate falsification (for there is no question of decay or corruption here, the verses all read evenly, all in good metre, will construe, but are completely bald, empty, and exenterate) extends from the Court-poems of the days of Harold Greyfell down to those of the reigns of Harold Hardrede and of Olaf the Quiet (c. 970-1070), when it abruptly stops. It is notable also that it only . extends, as a rule, to those in Court-metre, and that it does not so seriously affect the stray verses or loose epigrams (Visor) and the like, but is universal in the Encomia, both Drapa and Flock. Notable too it is that the tone of the Kings’ Lives, founded upon these corrupted Courtpoems, down to Olaf the Quiet’s reign, is distinctly epic and archaic, while the Kings’ Lives after their period are wholly different in tone and style”.

Every page of our text in the second volume, down to p. 226, abounds in examples, but we may give a few of the most capital at the cost of a little repetition. In Vellekla (which has suffered terribly from the leprosy of ‘remaniement’) there is a verse referred to as. authority for the fact

1 The. supplementary entry on ‘tla’ in the Dictionary, p. 760a, merely dealt with what the Editor believed to be an isolated fact. He ‘had not then (early in 1873) arrived at the present conclusions.

2 We believe we have here a clue to how far Ari’s Lives of Kings did go—jnst as far as the remaniements. The ‘ water-shed or division line’ between the ‘remaniements’ and the untouched poems and between the Archaic Sagas and those of the new style coincide.

(= EEF St

SPECIMENS OF FALSE TEXT. Ixxxv that ‘ Earl Hacon by the strength of his kindred held Throndham three winters, so that Gundhild’s sons gat no hold in Throndham; he waged great battles against the Gundhild’s sons, and there were slain many men on both sides.’ But the verse merely says that the prince had a fleet, that he was joyful in battle and waged war—a hazy, factless, invertebrate sentence, which might refer to any prince in any war ;—the sort of stuff that no poet would compose, no patron would pay for, no one would listen to, and surely no one remember as a piece of history. But under these meaningless words lurk the very facts Ari has learnt: ‘Svaf%i bil’ conceals ‘ Swafni’s bél’ [ winters, years], and under ‘ etjo-lund’ lies ‘ ztt- 16nd’ [his native soil—Throndham]. The ‘remanieur’ has changed all that was concrete into ideal, altered the simple factful phrases into long commonplaces, elegantly expressed; but he has not obliterated all traces of the past; an ingenious alteration of a letter or two in the stressed words has often been sufficient to serve his turn, the rest of the verse of course he has treated much more freely. Ari, again, quotes the stanza of Vellekla in support of his statement that Hacon ‘had a great levy from Haloga-land and Naum-dale, so that the whole way from Byrda to Cape Stadt he had the levy from all the coast-countries.’ The verse says nothing about any places, but contains a vague phrase, ‘the earl went north to Sogn, he had with him a levy,’ but underneath the silly synonym words ‘sto’ and ‘byrjar’ are hidden from us Ari’s ‘Sta’ and ‘ Byr%éa,’ well-known places on the marches, the bounds of Hacon’s power.

Again, the fact, referred to by Ari, of the earl’s sacrifices and throwing the holy twigs for an oracle. ‘ At the mouth of the Gaut-skerries he cast the holy lots’ is hidden under the empty phrase ‘ He sought the lives of the Gauts.’ Then in the verse which tells of the fighting at the Dane-work, the momentous struggle between Otho the Second and the Danish king, in which Earl Hacon played a not undistinguished part, the emperor’s very name ‘Odda’ is hidden in a common phrase beneath the word ‘ oddom’ [edge].

The Encomia on Olaf the Saint are in just as bad a state as those on Hacon, as a specimen or two will show. The verses which tell of the dispositions and numbers of the king’s army, details of no small interest, and of the clothing and arms of the king himself, are metamorphosed.

• He had dirty bodies of forty men’ is turned into ‘he had fought tqventy pitched battles;’ ‘the Swedes from the East stood on his left hand’ is turned into ‘the Swedes waded in blood;’ ‘the stout king bore a golden helm’ is buried beneath the words ‘ Olaf felled many a man victoriously.’ Everywhere it is the same; smooth vapid phrases, whichtell us nothing new, are substituted for the rougher original lines which once bristled with hard facts.

Another good instance of the way the poems have been treated occurs in the famous Dirge on Erling Skialgsson. There are statements in the prose of the Kings’ Lives that he wasa great husbandman, a man of quaint words, of peaceful disposition, who never, probably, fought a battle

Ixxxvi “INTRODUCTION.

in his life’, that he was brother-in-law to Olaf Tryggwason, and that he was the most mighty of Western barons, swaying the whole land from Sogn to Rygiar-bit or Naze. But the Dirge says of him that ‘there never was a baron who fought more battles, that he went in first and came out last,’ etc. (which is commonplace enough, and which besides we know to be untrue), and leaves out all about his wide domain, which we know it once contained; and in fact under this very palimpsest phrase we can discern the words ‘stodir runno undir... til Sogns sunnan...

So it is at every step. In poems relating to England and Denmark, which Ari has not cared, or was not able, to make such minute excerpts from as he has from those which relate to Norway, the Old English Chronicle and the Map are our best guides. Some future Munch, with as marvellous an eye for historical geography as the Norwegian historian possessed, will no doubt be able to identify places which we have failed to discover. A local knowledge of parts of Denmark has helped the Editor to light on one or two concealed place-names—Ramunlausa, Helsinge, Saurar, Grip-skogr, Andverdo-skog, etc. See vol. ii, pp. 203, 217. One more instance of this will be found in vol. ii, p. 89, where the important statement ‘the battle was fought on the wide sound of Hedinsey’ is turned into a simple battle synonym, and the ‘swirl of Hedin’ into ‘ Bellona’s champion.’

Further illustrations would be fruitless; it is time to take up the questions which these phenomena force upon one. How, when, and why, and by whom was this ‘remaniement’ effected? The bigger MSS. of the Kings’ Lives, Hulda, Hrokkinskinna, Morkinskinna, the big St. Olaf Saga, and the Heimskringla MSS. carry one back to the middle of the thirteenth century, about the time of the death of Snorri. These all are of the same type, and yield only the same overdaubed adulterated verse-text. And of the few MSS. which go back beyond this, Agrip (which contains amid its few verse quotations a typical line or two) shows the same text also. So with the verses in Snorri’s Scaldskapar-mal and Olaf’s Essay,—all are in the same case, which carries us back to or even Jeyond Snorri’s lifetime.

Hence we may conclude that Snorri did not, and could not have gathered any facts from the corrupt text he knew ; ergo, he was not the author of the Preface, or the early Kings’ Lives. Was he then the ‘ remanieur’ himself? Hardly; he was an historian, and had no reason, as far as we know, to change good evidence into useless balderdash ; and lastly, he wrote verse of a wooden, awkward, hard type, very unlike in style to the smooth, regular, even-flowing lines of the remodelled poems. It was all done 4fore his time, we have no doubt,

1 He did not fight at Nesia; the Earls in fact lost the battle by his neutrality, a fact which adds pathos to Erling’s fate. The phrase in ch. 44 of St. Olaf’s Life is an insertion, we have no doubt; his whole course and family position forbid its acceptance.

Seana ate at

DATE OF TEXT-CHANGE. Ixxxvii but how soon after Ari’s, for, as we have established, Ari had the pure text before him?

Who did it is a matter of comparatively little importance. The Editor has {ii. 258] given his reasons for thinking it to be Einar Skulason who did this miserable work. He was a smooth, polished versifier, a man of ready skill and great industry, leader as it were of a poetic school, just such a man as @ priori one would pitch upon as a likely person to set up and carry out a strict canon of poetry, improving the old poems in accordance with his ‘new and better way,’ just as the Restoration poetasters polished the ‘rude blank verse’ of Shakspere and Marlowe and Massinger into heroic rhyming couplets, or even ‘elegant and correct prose.’

Einar may very possibly have made a first draught of Scaldscaparmal; a bare gradus of classified synonyms one would think. The inserted stories are evidently in Snorri’s style, and the dialogue form, with the framework—in short all that is beautiful therein’, Snorri did not however finish his work, and the annotator (Olaf the Whitepoet or another) has not added all the illustrative verses, for there are in the lists of the gods’ names, for instance, several synonyms for which there is no corresponding verse, though in some cases we still have the verses from which these synonyms were evidently culled.

When were.the verses first added to the Kings’ Lives? Ari we cannot fancy to have put in any verses at all; he had distilled what was good out of them; he had cited his authority; what need had he then to put them in? They must have been added afterwards. The first Kings’ Lives, where verses seem to occur naturally, are the Gilchrist’s Sagas, and it is perhaps in imitation of these very Lives that there grew up a fashion of putting in verses to break up the level prose of a Saga. Hrafn’s Saga, which we can date c. 1220, has genuine verses put in by the author, and the Icelandic Sagas edited in the thirteenth century are filled with spurious verses to suit prevailing fashion. What has happened to them has happened to the Old Kings’ Lives, When the great Corpora of the Kings’ Lives were formed, the references of Ari were glossed by thé scribes with quotations from the poems, which quotations were taken from the remodelled text known to the glossators.

Not all the verses of every Encomium cited were inserted into our Saga texts, and so we need not try to find every statement in the few ‘remanied’ fragments that are left us: only the staple verses are inserted, and Ari knew and used and extracted facts from a great deal more. All this he appears to have done in a critical, sober, sagacious way; a mere hint was often enough to a historian like him.

Our solution of the problem we have had to attack happily brings us to the conclusion that the Early Kings’ Lives are even of greater authority than was formerly imagined, for they are dri’s own work Sounded on contemporary documents. We are as confident of his good

• Seulement le beau !’—M. Renan’s quiet answer tothe antiquary who wished to show that the Greeks were not original, that they discovered nothing new in art.

Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION.

sense and authority in dealing with verses now perished, but which he knew, as we are of his faithful presentiment of the facts he has gathered from sources which we still have access to. It would be a worthy task to extract from the Lives all annalistic matter-of-fact statements likely to have been extracted from the poems.

§ 14. TEXTUAL EMENDATION.

For dealing with the errors of the existing MSS., which are in the most important cases unique, the qualities absolutely necessary are, a thorough sympathy with and knowledge of the poems, so that one.can be continually comparing line with line, epithet with epithet,— for the poems are their own interpreters, when their indications are patiently listened to and carefully followed,—and also an accurate acquaintance with all the phenomena of the MSS. in question, so that a graphic picture can be formed of what the scribe must have had before his eyes as he wrote. Then it is necessary to note the exact style and position and relations of the poem one is working on; so as to look in the right quarters for help from analogy, imitation, and the like. It will not do to emend Egil on the same principles as one would ‘ Reynard’s Story’ or ‘ Merlinus Spa;’ and the Court-poems, as we shall see, require wholly different treatment from that which can be applied to the Eddic poems. A Aybdrid clause, lame in grammar, inane of sense, and unfitted to the context, is, in our poems and in Icelandic MSS., an unmistakable mark of a corrupt text. The key-note to a correction is an outward resemblance either in sound or in appearance [observe, in shorthand vellum writing (p. xxxviii), for words, utterly unlike in modern print, will in a vellum often deceive the eye]. But this resemblance is uzreal, for it is an essential mark of a true emendation, that the sentence which comes out of the crucible has no resemblance in sense to the false one. This is easily accounted for. It is like a popular etymology, as Shotover for Chateau Vert, where the sound is alike, but the meanings are wide apart. The sham resemblance is either one to the ear; in that case the error is owing to the minstrel, the listener, the collector; or it is to the eye, in which case it is due to the scribe. But in either case, scribe or listener, eye or ear, the brain or fancy has been at work; the man who makes the mistake coins a sense out of the words as the delusion of eye or ear prompts to him. Icelandic is very rich in word doublets.

An editor must try to catch the key-words of a corrupt passage, the rest of the phrase will then come out clearly. Emendations so found are the safest of all, paradoxical or bold as they may look; indeed, there are many we take to be absolutely certain: in most cases, there is but one possible way out of the difficulty, so, strictly speaking, it is not conjectural emendation; we must either take that or, missing the cue, leave the passage in its degraded state.

An emendation should be thorough; a cheap emendation is worse than none. Unless an emendation cuts deep and to the core of the ill, bin os Rae ¢ “

Sey

GOOD AND BAD EMENDATIONS. Ixxxix unless it be a pregnant one, which lights up the text, ten to one it is fallacious, a mere semblance of emendation, one possible reading out of a hundred’. We have preferred in such instances to obelise the text rather than put in a feeble and worthless suggestion. Thus—

In the Old Gudrun Lay, |. 99, one might insert an ‘ok’ between ‘hregifr’ and ‘hugin ;’ this would be a cheap emendation, and, as it destroys the rhythm, it must be a false one: the evil lies deeper; but if, in ‘hugin’ we suppose an adjective meaning ‘greedy,’ a word ‘hekin’ suggests itself at once; it meets all requirements, it resembles hugin (in sound here); it is a rare or even unknown word in Iceland, though well known in Scandinavia— hekjen’ in present Norwegian, ‘hige’ in Danish. The Icelandic scribe could not catch it, whilst hugin (Woden’s raven) here suggested itself to him.

In Volsunga Saga, p. 150 (Bugge’s Ed.), which is full of errors, Gundhere retorts on Brynhild, who had chided his mother. The context requires, ‘ She was never false to her husband like thee, nor did she,’ etc. Here the MS. has ‘ eigi yndi hon ver sinu, sem pu gorir’ (the scribe was thinking of, ‘She was not worse pleased with her lot than thou art,’— a feeble, lame sentence). Now ‘ver’ is usband and ‘undir’ under; here is the resemblance and here is the key; we at once recognise the law term ‘taka mann wadir ver sinn,’ to cuckold one’s husband; hence we dation, where no other is possible.

A few specimens of the way in which we have worked will make the matter clearer.

Taking first emendations founded on scridal errors, good instances are the Hyndlu-liod, 1. 94, where the_scribe has ‘ani 6mi,’ but his copy undoubtedly read ‘arn g’mi.’ A spot of ink, a scratch, or a faintness of the curves below the body of g being practically all the difference between the senseless and the true reading.

In Hus-drapa the MS. has ‘ge% nifpar,’ which is a simple mistake for ‘geS mtkar’ (Wolf was thinking of Egil’s mun-strandar). Yet all the difference in the MS. is the prolonging of a down stroke.

In Egil’s Sons’ Wreck, 1. 49, the scribe has ‘m biarnar,’ which is an easy misreading of ‘ari biarnar,’? one stroke more making the whole difference.

? A good instance of the fallacy of cheap emendations occurred to the Editor. In the printed edition of Heidarviga Saga occurred the words ‘ verksmid mikinn,’ which were evidently wrong, for ‘smid’ is a feminine word. In the Dict., p. 698, the correction ‘mikla’ (fem. form agreeing with smid) was (in 1872) put forward, and seemed satisfactory enough. But two years afterwards (in 1874) the Editor had for the first time the opportunity of seeing the MS. of the Saga at Stockholm. He looked at the first page (very bleak) for a few minutes, and a few lines apart he found two errors; one was our word in question. The MS. really read ‘ verksnvé mikinn.’ So that this easy correction, far from healing the text, would really have removed the omly letters which could have led to the discovery of the true reading. Now the editor of Heidarviga Saga was a man of sterling accuracy, but if he could pass mistakes which bear contradiction in their fac®j how much more often must such errors have arisen and been present in the work of scribes of the old days?

me et INTRODUCTION.

In the same poem, 1. 2, the MSS. give two readings, ‘lopt uzi’ and ‘lopt ztt;’ the real reading is ‘lopt uzt,’ the dotted ‘t’ for ‘tt’ béing misread by one copyist for ‘i,’ by the other a letter being dropped.

A marvellous instance of the danger of blindly accepting words of nonsense as a true reading, of trying to crush meaning out of a passage which is certainly corrupt, is found in Menglad’s Lay, where the paper copy reads ‘ kristindaud kona’ [a Christian dead woman]. This is simply the scribe’s perversion of ‘ kuelldridW kda.’_ ‘ Kveldrida’ (witch, nighthag) was abracadabra to the scribe, it only once occurs in any literature he could have known [Eyrbyggia], while it is easy to see how little difficulty there was in reading ‘krist’ for ‘kuell,’ and ‘daud’ for ‘ drid’ [Loddfafni’s Lay, ver. 2]. Observe the two d’s, distanced by two letters. The emendation we hold absolutely safe, yet what conclusions have not been drawn from this ‘dead Christian woman!’ ‘ This (it is said) is manifestly the youngest of Eddic songs, yet here we find a Christian dead woman detested as a fiend; hence the poet was a heathen. How much older then may we suppose such lays as Wolospa,’ etc. etc.? Arguing in false premises, however well and cleverly, is but building a strong castle on sand.

In Sonatorrek, |. 50, Ketil Jorundson, who always writes ‘ei’ for ‘ ey,’ has the words ‘ bre%ra leisi’ where the MS. we think had ‘ bre%ra leyti.’ The latter word is a rare one (spelt in a Norwegian fashion, / for 4/), which he did not understand, and has therefore turned by the change of one letter, ‘s’ for ‘t, One can see how the acute over the following i made the preceding ¢ look like s (f), for ‘ bredra leysi’ would easily suggest itself to an Icelandic scribe.

In the end-line is the meaningless ‘torvelldt tveggja boga;’ and strange words editors have squeezed out of this, ‘ Tveggi’ = Woden, or tveggja baga=‘double misery!’ Now, the Egils Saga tells us that the poet called his song ‘Sona torrek,’ Sons’ Loss, and that the sons were two; this title must (according to the use of the older poets) have stood in this very end-line when the Saga-man knew it. But in the meaningless jumble of words we see the syllables tor and tveggja (two), and boga, slightly wrenched from ‘bura’ or even ‘suna.’ This cannot be an accident, we are on the scent of the true reading—‘ Torrek .. . tveggja bura’ (or ‘svna’), the loss of two sons, The very name of the poem reappears before our eyes, and the noble poet’s words breathe again.

The alliteration often helps one. In the last line of the Ordeal a word is clearly dropped; an s-word it must needs be, and ‘sykn’ meets the requirements of metre, sense, and grammar. So again in the Raven Song, logondom /fifom for Gfom.

The other class of corruptions, arising from imperfect memory or bad hearing, is even harder to deal with. The Sound semblance is our guide here, often assisted by a good analogy from another poem, an imitation in a later poet, a prose paraphrase, or the like.

A ludicrous instance of the way reciters will turn phrases they do not understand into /ike-sounding phrases, which convey a meaning, but a ee =.

EXAMPLES OF EMENDATION. xci do not make real sense at all, occurs in the Long Lay of Brunhild, ll. 309-12, where for the proper words which mean ‘I dwelt with Hami [Heimi] eight years in Lymdale and led a happy life,’ there is a likesounding phrase substituted with the ridiculous meaning, ‘The noble king had the skins [‘hami’ for ‘ Heimi’] of us eight sisters taken under an oak!’ [‘und eik’ for ‘ unéak’], a phrase which has not the slightest reference to any other words in the poem, or indeed justification of any kind. It is one of the lost lays of the lacuna that here gives the key.

As instance of emendation from another poem, the Greenland Lay of Attila was composed by a man who knew the Old Attila Lay and imitated it. The word ‘dag-megir,’ ]. 231, makes no sense; the real word, an uncommon one to the people who later on repeated the poems, was the Old Attila Lay’s word ‘drott-megir.’? Here the younger poem is corrected from the older. In Arinbiorn’s Lay the reverse process may be exemplified; 1. 93 reads in the MS. ‘mal pion,’ which . is certainly wrong, but in Geisli the expression ‘mal-tol’ is found, which is plainly founded on his, remembrance of the old poem, and directs one to the right reading in Egil’s poem, ‘ mal-porn.’

An instance in which the text can be restored from the paraphrase, where the reciter has forgotten the right word and simply put in another with the needful alliteration, is to be seen in Wolospa, ‘ go%in Gll gildi’ being substituted for ‘ gislar oc gildi,’ which is seen from Ari’s paraphrase (Ynglinga Saga, ch. 4) to be the right reading. The postponed article alone would condemn the corruption in the MS. Note, that the /eague and the 4ostages between the Wanes and the Anses were the two important facts, and that the alliteration remains unchanged in the corrupt text.

In the Long Lay of Brunhild the MS. reads ‘pvi-at Iormunrecr oparft lifir,” i.e. ‘for Iormunrec leads a useless life,’ which certainly construes, but is neither idiomatic nor sensible. Hamtheow’s Lay here gives the key to the phrase we want, ‘for Eormunrec shall tread her to death with his horses,’ i. e. ‘ pvi-at hana Iormunrecr idm of troe%r,’ which has some sound and even eye resemblance with the corrupt text, and gives the right sense.

With regard to the COURT-POETRY, the treatment pursued has been necessarily different. The corruption here is of such a peculiar character that full textual emendation is in most cases impossible, though in many cases we can clearly point out where the poems are corrupt, and even see the underlying names of place or person which have been scribbled over as it were. As in the Court-poems we are dealing with annals, not literature, that is sufficient, nor would it be possible to do more; we have therefore obelised the corrupt text1, and translated according to the original contents of each verse [as pointed out at the foot of the page].

» Té avoid confusion, the inverted commas have in both volumes been solely used for marking corrupt text, head and foot-stones as it wef€ over a buried verse which we could not disinter, xcii INTRODUCTION.

§ 15. Past EDITIONS AND COMMENTARIES.

Between the discovery of R and its arrival in Denmark (1642-1662) several copies were no doubt taken, but none of those of the first generation have been preserved, though some of the later copies which we possess are certainly derived from them.

As we know that Arne Magnusson used to collect, not only vellums, but also paper copies of the Revival time (1640-1700), this complete absence of Edda copies of that time would be very striking, save that it is explained by certain memoranda in Arne’s own hand, which the Editor disinterred. In one he says that there were ‘ plenty of copies of Semund’s Edda;’ from another we know that he possessed the early vellum copy which the Bishop had taken; and a list of his, first printed in Prolegomena (p.149), gives the names of a number of copies of Semund’s Edda (none now extant). There is little doubt but that they all perished in the great fire*. And here it is fortunate that we have Arne Magnusson’s distinct statement, that ‘ All the copies [of the Poetic Edda] which I have seen are younger than the beginning of the episcopate of Bryniolf [that is, A.D. 1639]%.’ From their descendants, now in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, we can form a good idea of their character. These paper MSS. are little Corpora Poetica, each comprising, besides the Lays of Cod. Reg., many other old pieces which, either in style or subject, were consonant with them. In fact their owners wished to make for themselves a collection such as is put forth in our vol. i. Each collector followed his own fancy; thus there are Luxdorph’s Edda, Suhm’s Edda, etc. Not one is of any value, and it is absurd to collate them alongside of the vellums R and A. There are many late copies of the last century, well written, but often badly corrupted.

wy % f ' 4 ‘ |

EARLY EDITIONS OF EDDIC LAYS. xciii

It is curious that, in spite of all the interest and pride felt by the early scholars in the ‘Edda’ Codex Regius, it was not printed for a long time. Resenius put forth Hava-mal and Wolospa in 1665, with learned notes and a Latin translation by Stephen Olafsson the poet (several of whose ditties are given in our vol. ii, p. 408 sqq.) This is all. His version is interesting to read, it shows him as an intelligent and gifted young man; it was done for Ole Worm in the year 1644, for Stephen Olafsson went home to Iceland in 1648. Of his invitation from Mazarin to come to Paris we have spoken in the Prolegomena. From this time for more than a century there are only a few fragmentary quotations (e.g. those in Bartholinus De Causis Contempte Mortis, etc.) given here and there in different books, through which some knowledge of the stories and striking phrases from the poems themselves became known to the ‘learned world.’

At the end of last century there was a large and complete edition projected at Copenhagen, the first volume of which came forth in 1787, containing the Mythical Songs with a Latin version and notes, There is also a smaller separate reprint of Wafthrudnis-mal by the same editors, dating 1779.

In 1812 Van der Hagen edited, in a neat little octavo, the whole of the heroic Wolsung-lays, an unpretending but useful book, giving a faithful text by no means far removed from the MS,

In 1815, on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, there came out a charming volume by the Brothers Grimm, then in their bright youth and at the height of their literary powers. It contains the text of Weyland’s Lay, Helgi and Swafa, the two parts of Helgi Hunding’s Bane, the prose paraphrase of Sinfitela’s. death, the Prophecy of Gripi, the Old Wolsung Play (cut up into sections on Regin Hnikar, Fafnir, and Sigrdrifa), the Short Brunhild’s Lay, the Long Brunhild’s Lay (broken into Sigurd’s Lay and Brunhild’s Death-ride), Facing the text is a literal translation, and there are a few good notes below. But the great beauty of the book lies in the version at the end (with fresh pagination), in which the story of the poems is told in the inimitable style which has made the Marchen a classic work for ever. Lexicons, Grammars, Comparative Mythologies, however good, must, like men, die when their time comes, but there is a spark of immortal fire in the Marchen. And these few pages on the old legends of Weyland and Helgi and Sigfred are worthy to be reprinted and prefixed to the Marchen, to go down with them to be the pleasure of the young and the wise of all time '.

But when this delightful book came out, it was apparently not received as it should have been, for the projected edition, of which it was to be the first instalment, was never finished. In the Bodleian copy there is

• • The first volume of Marchen appeared in 1812, the second in 1814 ; the Miirchenfrau died in 1816; a collective edition (the first re-toldfin part from the Mirchen- frau) appeared in 1819, So this Edda and the Mirchen are nearly contemporary,

Xciv | INTRODUCTION. —

a letter to a (Dutch?) friend, in Wilhelm Grimm’s autograph, which we give as bearing on the subject :—

‘ Wohlgeborner Hochgeehrtester Herr und Freund.

‘Ewt Wohlgeb. sende ich hierbei die eben fertig gewordene erste Abtheilung des Iten Bandes unserer Edda mit der Bitte solche als ein freundschaftliches Geschenk anzunehmen, Wir wiinschen daz Ihnen das Buch nicht ganz missfallt, seyn Sie aber so giitig uns Ihr Urtheil itber die Behandlung zu schreiben und tiberhaupt, wie Ihnen das alte nordische Epos gefallt. Auf diese erste Abtheilung wird eine andere folgen die den Urtext vollig mit theilt, der II Band enthallt dann das Glossarium, der dritte den Commentar.

‘Die Einlagen an H* Hoekstra und Hr Bilderdyk bitte ich gefalligst auf die Post geben zu lassen, da ich die Adresse des letztern nicht genau kenne, bitte ich gleichfalls sie zu zu fugen. ‘Mein Bruder wird Ihnen von Wien aus selbst geschrieben haben, ich hoffe ihn bald hierzusehen. Behalten Sie uns in freundschaftlichem Andenken, ich bin mit der vollkommensten Hochachtung. *Ewt Wohlgeb.

‘ Erbgebenster, ‘CassEL, 18 May, 1815. ‘W. GRIMM.’

But there were still some Eddic poems in MS. unprinted, and they did not see the light till three years later, in 1818, when Rask published the two ‘Eddas’ in two volumes at Stockholm. Rask was then in health and strength, full of hope and zeal, preparing for his journey to the East. Ere starting he passed a winter at Stockholm, and there he prepared his edition. His friends saw it through the press after he left for India, and these volumes are really the editiones principes of the two collections. Rask’s visit, and the appearance of this edition, is the first sign of a dawn of philology in Sweden. The notes are fresh and straightforward, and testify to Rask’s colloquial knowledge of Icelandic, which he had acquired on his recent journey to Iceland. Here again we have the names of Grimm and Rask associated as pioneers of Teutonic Literature and Philology.

In 1818 came forth the second volume of the ponderous Copenhagen edition, and in 1828 the third and final volume, which contained the remainder of the poems, and the bulky, but not unwelcome, Lexicon Mythologicum of Finn Magnussen, which is a work of considerable labour and diligent reading, though not of course of high philological value. ) In 1838 Dr. Bergmann put forth his Poémes Islandais (printed at Paris),—an edition of Wolospa, Wafthrudnis-mal, and the Flyting of Loki, which marks an epoch in the study of the Eddic poems. It was the first attempt to apply the higher criticism to them. The Editor can remember as far back as 1852, at evenings in the house of Niels Mathias Petersen (Rask’s friend and school-fellow; both were born within a mile of each other), how the Danish historian used to speak of Bergmann’s Wolospa, and declare that he found new and true ideas in the book. y

MODERN EDITIONS OF EDDIC LAYS. XcV

Then follow a series of hand-editions ; that of Munch and Unger, in 1847 (Christiania), deserving of note, as containing a few important text emendations; it was intended for use as a class-book. That of Mobius was issued in 1860, a neat and handy volume. That of Liining of the same year was published at Zurich; a grammar and glossary accompany the text; an industrious and careful book.

In 1867 came out the best edition that has yet appeared, that of Dr. Bugge, the Norwegian philologist, which in a faithful and accurate way follows the MS. spelling, etc., and is indispensable for the scholar. There is much cumbrous irrelevant matter (notices of former scholars’ often inane opinions, etc.) in the notes, but ever and anon among these there glitters out the gold of the editor’s own brilliant textual emendations. In fact this book is the first in which the art of textual criticism was applied to the Eddic poems. The reader will find in our first volume several valuable corrections which we have adopted from this genial scholar, marked by his name.

Bugge’s edition has been the staple out of which subsequent editions have been, especially in Germany, manufactured. The only books on the subject, since his, which are deserving of notice are the Danish edition of 1874 by Dr. Grundtvig, the well-known compiler and editor of the Danish Kempe-viser; and the German 1875 edition of Hildebrand, a promising young scholar, whose premature death is to be regretted. In the latter edition the distinction between ‘i’ and ‘j’ is first made aright, a distinction which we have adopted in the present book.

We must here mention Mallet’s work. Mallet was born in Geneva, 1730; lived at Copenhagen, 1751-1762, as tutor in French to the Danish Crown Prince. Here, in 1755, he published his book. It contains, in a French translation, (1) The Gylfaginning, divided, on the scheme of Magnus Olafsson, into thirty-three legends; (2) Prose translation of the Havamal group, of Krakomal,-Harold’s Love Song [ii. 228], the Doom, and Hakonarmal. The book had an influence quite out of proportion to its merits. Percy, Scott, and those who wrote on Northern subjects in English, all read and were inspired by it, and it is hardly too much to say that the ordinary notions of the Northern Mythology, both here and in America, are based solely upon it. It was a revelation of a new world even to such spirits as Goethe’s, the precursor of the medieval or ‘Gothic’ Renaissance of the beginning of this century. It acted directly upon Macpherson and Chatterton, and many more of less note.

Dryden’s Miscellany contained the Waking of Angantheow, text and translation, possibly the first English rendering of any Old Norse poem, Gray, Herbert, Cottle, and others used the Latin translations of the Danish antiquaries for their versions. But the enumeration of English imitations, translations, and paraphrases belong rather to English bibliography than to our province, and we are the more willing to relinquish the task, as, with the exception of Gray’s lines¥rom Darrada-Lio® and Aytoun’s yersion of Krako-mal, few of them are of any real merit.

ae eee 1, 4

XCVi INTRODUCTION,

Tennyson, Swinburne, and Longfellow are perhaps the best known modern poets who have sought subjects from the Eddic poems.

The history of the critical treatment of the poems is not a very lengthy one. The Icelandic scholars of the seventeenth century began by —

Commentaries upon single Lays. Biorn of Scardsa wrote Commentaries on Hofudlausn, Heidrek’s Riddles, parts of Wolospa, etc. (1625-42). Magnus Olafsson interpreted the verses of Orkney Saga and some verses from Scalda (which he calls Scioldunga-visor). Hallgrim Peterson wrote upon some thirty-one stanzas of Olaf Tryggwason’s Saga (c. 1650). All these are in MS. Philologically they are almost incredibly worthless, and will speedily convince any one, who chooses to take the pains to peruse them, of the idleness of supposing that any ‘living Icelandic tradition’ of the old heathen days had survived the Middle Ages, and prove how thick and black was the wall of darkness which separated Snorri from Bryniolf, Gunlaug from Biorn.

In the eighteenth century Gunnar Paulsson (d. 1791) headed a second school of commentators, to which Eggert Olafsson (d. 1768) and many other scholars at Copenhagen belonged. With them began the ‘ Skyringar,’ a mode of dealing with the Court-poetry which is copied from the French plan for translating Greek and Latin poets: each stanza is re-arranged in the ordinary prose order, and then it is commented on where necessary and translated.

This methodical but practical treatment was not very fruitful in results; but it at all events was carefully applied, and sufficed in almost every instance in which the text was sound. Unhappily for the commentators this was rarely the case. The crowning work of this class of interpracy is the twelfth volume of Fornmanna Sdégur (1838), which is a masterpiece of its kind, brief, sensible and clear, containing an explanation of the verses of the Kings’ Lives by Dr. Sveinbiorn Egilson. One feels that wherever it was possible to arrive at the truth by the methods then employed, the truth has been ascertained; that where Dr. Egilson has failed, some other means than his must be employed. His Lexicon Poeticum, which is the last work of this now departed school, is a work of great industry and ingenuity, but it is unsafely based, as it wholly neglects textual criticism and the comparative method’. It is not however upon either of these works, meritorious as they are, considering the time and circumstances of their production, but upon far higher work that the name of Dr. Egilson will rest—his beautiful prose translations of the Odyssey and Iliad. This version of Homer (especially that of the Odyssey) has to our mind not been surpassed by any, prose or verse, in any tongue with which we are acquainted. The translator’s heart was in the work; it was a labour of love; and the fine sympathy between the two tongues, Greek and Icelandic, is thoroughly well brought out

1 Owing to the ‘remaniements’ spoken of in § 13, a large percentage of its vocabulary and phrases must, as mere medizval fabrication, clean disappear from future Lexicons,

TF eee a ae

—_ =

-_——WTSSWSE A.

THE GROWTH OF THE PROSE EDDA. xecvii in it. His commentaries on the Court-poems, etc. were faithfully performed, but his mind was really too bright, his sympathy too fine to be content with such arid toil. For in the days of these old commentators the field of Northern scholarship was a vast plain, filled with dry bones, and up and down there walked a company of men, doing their best to set these bones in order, skull by skull, thigh by thigh, with no hope or thought of the breath that was to shake this plain with the awakening of the immortal dead. Since that day Philology and History have transformed the whole aspect of scholarship; but it is with deep gratitude that one looks back upon the progress, small but real, which the scholars of the prescientific days made in spite of so many difficulties.

§ 16. THE TRUE POSITION AND VALUE OF THE PROSE EDDAS.

One of the chief results of our work at the text of these Eddic poems has been the Editor’s late discovery with respect to the relations of the prose and verse glosses in the Prose Edda, and the conclusions that are to be drawn from these observations.

‘Tout savant est un peu cadavre’ said a good judge, and it is because those who have handled our ancient Songs and Sagas have been content to remain in a lifeless routine-bound condition of mind, that the real state of the matter has not been perceived long ago. Editors and commentators have been content to look upon our Lays and Stories and like books precisely as if they were books of their own day, the creation of one man, handed down mechanically from age to age, nothing changed, nothing omitted, like a printed volume.

With regard to all such works, however, it is, and must necessarily have been, far otherwise. The great Books of old time are accretions, our Psalter is such a one, Homer is such a one, the Sagas are such. An inspired beginning is made by one man of genius, and accepted by all hearers; his work, as it passes from hand to hand, gathers bulk, another man of genius adds his masterpiece, perhaps even a third makes a contribution to the mass, then the Era of Production is closed, the Age of Commentators, Copiers, Glossators begins, and we are happy if we can get the book as it then stands before the Age of

Neglect and Decay has come on and the work has partly perished.

The men of antiquity were not (in such societies at least as that of early Scandinavia) antiquarians, they were rightly delighted with the great works of their predecessors, and they handed them on, but they were men of flesh and blood, dealing with spiritual things, not mummified Alexandrian grammarians anatomising dead matter. It is, indeed, impossible in the course of the three or four generations, which must have elapsed between the age of creation and the age of committal to paper, but that great changes even of word, order, and phrase must have

&

xevili INTRODUCTION.

been suffered by such poems as Wolospa, not to speak of the alterations caused by forgetfulness, confusion, repetition, and the like. .

To take the particular case of the Prose Edda, here in Gylfa-ginning is a prose paraphrase, clear and consistent with itself, fringed and glossed with citations of poems. At the first glance all looks smooth and plain enough, but directly one begins to look into the relations between paraphrase and citation precisely the same phenomenon appears. As we have observed [§ 12] with regard to the prose and verse of the Kings’ Lives, the verse-citations do not contain the facts, which in the prose is supposed to be drawn from them. Our conclusion must be the same, the citations are added later, and are from a corrupt and maimed text. ' Numbers of instances which might be adduced to support the premisses of the argument will, as far as feasible, be found in the notes to the two Wolospas, but among the most striking a few may be given.

1. There is a long piece of prose-text relating to the Doom of the Gods, containing a clear and striking account of the Last Battle and the signs that preceded it, evidently derived from a poem; and there is a long citation from Wolospa in support of its statements,—a confused, pell-mell jumble of broken, distorted verses, as if the lines of the poem had been shaken up together in a bottle; and, though there are names and phrases enough in the prose to show that it is Wolospa that is meant and no other poem, there are several striking incidents about which the verse, as it has come down to us, says absolutely nothing.

2. In the account of the Creation of the World, the prose is orderly and right, the verse gloss is obviously disordered in an absurd way— light from the sun defore the sun is set in heaven, and so on.

3. In the account of the Golden Age, the prose is straightforward enough; but the lines of verse containing the phrase ‘smféa ... or golli’ are evidently dislocated, so that as it stands the passage is uncompe and impossible.

. In the notice of the Birth of the oe maggots kindling in die diets of the cosmic Titan Ymir, there is a distinct reference to a myth drawn from some poem; but the citation, in its present state, is poor and pithless, and does not give the cited fact at all, though under its corrupt ‘morg’ one can see the original ‘or mo®écd’ plain enough when once attention is directed to the verse.

5. The account of Sigyn sitting over her husband Loki with her bowl, catching the poison that would drip on him, and the writhing of the tortured Titan which causes earthquakes, when the venom burns him, as the faithful wife turns away for a moment to empty the bowl, all this is no doubt drawn from Wolospa, but we have only a mangled fragment of a colourless verse remaining in the glossators’ text. That Loki is bound by the guts of his own son is noticed in the prose, and mention of it can be detected beneath the corrupt text in R.

6. In the description of the Holy Ash and the Norn’s brook, the verse is mangled and misplaced, and can only be rearranged and restored by the help of the prose paraphrase. However the one word ‘ priar’.

adie rn ee erm

CONDITION OF EDDA TEXT. Xcix proves that these lines have been dislocated, that the three Midwife Norns were once mentioned in it, and that Wolospa is indubitably the paraphrast’s authority here '.

There are besides many names which, from their type and connection with extant verses, we cannot but suppose to be taken from the Wolospas, though no trace of them be left in our mutilated text.

The texts of Grimnis-mal and Wafthrudnis-mal, also paraphrased, do not appear to have suffered so much by corruption, though here too, as can be seen by the omissions in our present texts, verses or strophes have fallen out and perished between the time of the paraphrast and the days of the glossator.

The glossator we may pretty confidently put to the date of the glossator or glossators of the Kings’ Lives, and so dismiss him; but with regard to the paraphrast, who knew and used the perfect text of these great poems, who was he, and when did he live? Was he Snorri or another?

In style the paraphrase looks rather more complex and scientific than those parts of the Prose Edda that give its chief beauty to the book— the tales of Thor and Utgard-Loki, with their bright humour and their sly fun, which one unhesitatingly puts down to Snorri. Again, one notices, that the dialogue frame-work is not of the same style as the paraphrase, indeed it rather hinders than helps the course of the narrative, while it seems to belong to the humorous part of Edda. One would fancy, that the paraphrast belonged to an older generation than Snorri; that he made out of the old heathen poems, which he collected, a little treatise in prose; that this book came into Snorri’s hands, and was enlarged, added to, and re-edited, so to speak, with a new framework, which fitted it for entertainment, breaking up the prose treatise into little sections, which could be recited one by one, and spreading out the incident, exactly as is done in the later versions of the Icelandic Family Tales (Islendinga-Ségur). The glossator who added the citations, and the theory-monger with his Trojan-myth, etc., are subsequent to Snorri®; of a generation later at least, one would think.

These views must be carefully considered; the question is ripe for study. We have tried at all events to state and describe the difficulties. It is a great pity that no man of talent has ever really taken up and studied the Prose Edda. Jacob Grimm, who was a genius, only used it as a help to his other work, and never attacked the book itself. Niels Matthias Petersen alone felt and expressed to the Editor long ago that the conventional beliefs respecting it could not be true. The Prose

• With these Norns compare the Casmenta of Professor Nettleship’s article, Journal of Philology, No, xxii,

• The article on Snorri, in connection with Edda in Prolegomena, though right in direction, will have to be corrected in detail in the light of our present standpoint ; for instance, the distinction between Snorri and the Gl@ssator, which was not then known to us, must now be definitely made.

£2

c INTRODUCTION.

Edda is not a ‘ Livy,’ mechanically written by a learned man for learned men in a literary age, and transmitted with learned accuracy; it is a complex work, stamped with the mind-marks of the several men of genius who worked at it one after another, and transmitted it with that royal carelessness which has let so many unworthy works perish, and preserved, as if by accident, those which were the finest and best.

The authority of the book is enhanced by the view now first put forth; and it may be added, that the best evidence we can gather seems to place the date of the paraphrast about the beginning of the twelfth century, for the text of Wolospa used by Ari in Ynglinga is evidently the full and pure text, while of subsequent use of this pure . text, save in the Prose Edda, there is no further trace whatever.

It is perhaps well to note here, that throughout these volumes we take for granted the conclusions which we long ago arrived at and have fully stated in Prolegomena with respect to the authorship of Kings’ Lives—namely, that ARI THORGILSSON (1067-1148) was the author of the first draft of the Kings’ Lives down to Magnus Bareleg, and that SNORRI STURLASON (1178-1241) re-edited this work, putting into dramatic form, with great beauty, pathos, and humour, those stories which have made the ‘Heimskringla’ so justly famous. These conclusions resting, as they do, not only upon the scanty external evidence left us by antiquity, but also upon numerous historical and literary inferences, drawn from the documents themselves, have been amply confirmed by the new and unexpected mass of evidence, which have been the result of our work upon the old poems in these two volumes, And these views give a fixed and stable basis, upon which to build up further conclusions. It is of little value to have a statement referring to Harold Fairhair, or even to St. Olaf, if we cannot tell when, or where, or by whom it was recorded; or, if we are to suppose it first set down in the thirteenth century: whereas to know that a fact, or date, or genealogy was set down by a painstaking, truthful scholar of the eleventh and twelfth century is a great gain. The old vague use of Snorri’s name (still a blot on Scandinavian histories) must be definitely given up; it is not Snorri, but Ari, that is the authority for the data of the early Kings’ Lives: to Snorri, on the other hand, let us give full credit for those masterly dramatic touches, which have kindled and quickened Ari’s sober facts into breathing life, and turned a chronicle into a drama of the highest form and beauty. ‘Suum cuique tribuere’ is even in literary ways, on high authority, the essence of human duty; it is also a high pleasure, for, as Jacob Grimm pertinently observes, schrift-steller aus dem recht herauszuweisen, in dessen besitz er unzu sichern und zu erneuern’ [KI]. Schr. vol. vi]. So much it was ne- cessary to say to warn the reader against the slipshod use or rather abuse of names of authority, idle statements copied from one book into another by that laziness of mind, which has led to the survival ease

MINGLED MYTHS OF THE EDDIC LAYS. ci of such baseless statements as—‘Saemund wrote the Poetic Edda,’ which we have now refuted for the second time (though we find it still repeated in books which purport to be authorities, by men who should know better), and this, that ‘Snorri wrote Heimskringla,’ which, as has been shown in Prolegomena, is every whit as groundless, taken in its bald every-day sense.

§ 17. SoME MyTHOLoGIC ASPECTS OF OLD NORTHERN POETRY.

Throughout these volumes we have consistently tried to adopt a chronological basis, and to keep clear of the old, but persistent, error of viewing all Teutonic mythology as a complete system, which it never was and never could be. Carlyle never forgot that myths were Jeliefs, and that they enwrapped the deepest and wisest thoughts of sages of old—dumb inarticulate modes of expression, it may be, but tokens not to be mistaken of the true and fervent thought that produced them. He saw clearly, that there are not one but many mythologies in the Eddic poems—

‘All this of the old Norse belief which is flung out for us, in one level of distance in the Edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, does not at all stand so in reality. It stands rather at all manner of distances and depths, of successive generations since belief first began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of them, contributed to that Scandinavian system of thought; in every new elaboration and addition, it is the combined work of them all’ [ Heroes, Lecture I].

True of all mythology this, and a very precious lode-star in the dark journey along the far-stretching roads and wandering by-paths of the myths, which these Eddic poems testify to. As one goes through the poems, one is ever and anon face to face with a myth of the most childish and barbaric type—the world a giant, slain by the gods, who make heaven out of his skull, sun and moon from his eyes, earth out of his flesh, ocean out of his blood, clouds out of his brains, dwarves out of the worm that bred in his body, and so on,—a story that carries one back to pre-Aryan days, and must, one would fancy, have rather suited the imagination of the Ivernian thrall, than of his Keltic lord, or his Scandinavian conqueror.

Another almost as archaic is the early myth of the holy cow—firstborn of things, a figure common to Indian and Teutonic fancy. But side by side with these old out-crops of primeval granite rock comes the latest strata, a wholly new system of beliefs, coloured through and through with Christian ideas,—a heaven with a supreme God, angels, demons, a Holy Tree, a hell, and a doomsday.

Of these beliefs, so diverse in time and degree, some are indigenous, some are borrowed and grafted more or less completely on the native mythology. And, though there will always be a halo of glory about the late Walhall and Walcyrie system,—albeit ig was simply a wickingfaith, lasting some three generations at most, the outcome of a notable cli INTRODUCTION.

age, but never a universal or family religion at all—yet it is still more interesting to deal with the earlier myths of home-growth, or, at all events, of. such vast age, that they have become completely assimilated. We may briefly touch here upon ‘one or two of those archaic beliefs, which it has been a pleasure to us to try and draw forth from the obscurity in which they have been left; for they, and not the Walhall system, are really the substance of our forefathers’ religion, from Tacitus’ days to St. Olaf’s and Ari’s.

First of these we would notice the belief, on which we have treated at length in our commentary on Hyndla’s Lay, of the divine descent of the pure race of kings, sprung from the God and Mother Earth.

Another, of which one can only just catch a glimpse as it vanishes into the darkness, is the old myth of the great bird that laid the world, the beautiful fancy which Aristophanes in his most noble chorus sets forth with such delight :—

Upon what proofs we are now able to say, that this myth was once known to our forefathers also, is worth recording. There is a story of the creation of man by three wandering gods, who become in medizval stories Jesus and SS. Peter and Paul walking among men, as in Champ- | fleury’s pretty apologue of the Bonhomme Misére, so beautifully illustrated by Legros. In the Eddic legend one of these gods is named. Hene, he is the speech-giver of Wolospa, and is described in phrases taken from lost poems as ‘the long-legged one’ [langi-fétr], ‘the lord of the ooze’ [aur-konungr]. Strange epithets, but easily explainable when one gets at the etymology of Hoene’=hohni= Skt. sakunas = Gk, cficnos=the white bird, swan or stork, that stalks along in the mud, lord of the marish—and it is now easy to see that this bird is the Creator walking in Chaos, brooding over the primitive mish-mash or tohu-bohu, and finally hatching the egg of the world. MHohni is also, one would fancy, to be identified with Heimdal the walker, who is also a creator- God, who sleeps more lightly than a bird, who is also the ‘fair Anse’ and

1 The long diphthongic vowel co bespeaks an assimilation, a guttural or palatal: our Teutonic # or Greek-Aryan #, which brings one to the true etymon of this hitherto unexplained name—the Greek xv«vos.

A tae

THE SCANDINAVIAN SOMA-MYTHS. ciii the ‘ whitest of the Anses, the ‘waker of the gods,’ a celestial chanticleer as it were.

But beside the myth of the creation of the material universe, there was also the myth of the origin of the spiritual universe. This was the subject of many legends, which told of the breathing of the true ghostly life into this upper world, under the figure of the adventurous god getting the Holy Drink. This drink—blood, wine, mead, beer, grain, or whatever it be called—was brewed by the Dwarves (nature’s creative forces) before the beginning of time, stolen from them by the Giants, who concealed the precious treasure in their deep caverns, locking it up unproductive and useless for eons, till Woden came and won it by his superior craft at the risk of his own life. From him it passed to gods and men, and became the inspirer, under whose influence all wisdom, learning, knowledge, and poetry were produced. Of this myth, so thoughtful and deep, there are many variations. In one, the god beguiles the giantess daughter of the Titan, in whose charge it is, and so stea/s the drink. She is described like the guardians of the holy water of the Accadian legends, as sitting on a golden throne.

In another, the wine is kept by a witch, who enchants and spell-binds men; but Woden breaks from her spells and carries off his prize.

In a third, the god hangs from the gallows over the abyss, and lowers himself into Hades, whence he brings up the gift of knowledge, of which Giant Midvitnir, the father of Bestla, was the warder.

In a fourth, deeper and more philosophic perhaps than the rest, there is a sacred Burn of Wisdom in the earthly Paradise under the Holy Tree at the garden of the Norns', whence Mim, the giant-judge, quaffs every day huge draughts of knowledge in the magic horn. But Woden gives up one of his eyes to buy a single draught, and so the giant is able to see, as well as know, everything that goes on in the world; but Woden’s one draught has been sufficient to give us all the wisdom that is in mankind or the gods. The solar bearings of this myth are evident, but there is more to be got from it. What better emblem could there be of the disparity between man’s drop of knowledge and the boundless ocean of the Unknown, than the contrast between Woden’s cupfull and the bottomless well-spring of the Wisdom of the Universe!

In a fifth kindred tale, Woden visits a giant in quest of wisdom, and risks his head to get answers to his questions, destroying the giant in the end by his craft and cunning. In all these myths Woden is the type of the sage and seeker of all times, a single-eyed, hooded, bearded figure, who has drunk once of wisdom but is still filled with a quenchless thirst for it, and is ever wandering pilgrim-like up and down the world, seeking to lure the boon he craves for from the blind, dull, dangerous, and relentiess forces of nature. The very name ‘ Woden’

1 Cp. the ‘ Garden of Okeanos’ in Aristophanes,

Civ INTRODUCTION.

tells the same tale, being, we hold, an appellative akin to the Latin ‘uates,’ a prophetic singer or bard. Cf. O.N. 66-r, inspiration".

This myth, in its various forms, was evidently a favourite with those unknown thinkers and philosophers, who were the parents of a race that has since given great poets and great thinkers to the world; and we seem to catch even faint echoes of their thoughts on the subject in the words of Tacitus: ‘ Ulissem quidam opinantur, longo illo et fabuloso errore in hunc Oceanum delatum, adisse Germaniae terras, Asciburgiumque, quod in ripa Rheni situm hodie incolitur, ab illo constitutum nominatumque. Aram quin etiam Ulissi consecratam, adiecto Laertae patris nomine eodem loco olim repertam monumentaque et tumulos quosdam graecis litteris inscriptos in confinio Germaniae Rhaetiaeque adhuc extare.’ Here we can see that the wandering god’s adventures had induced the Roman traders to talk of him as ‘ Ulisses.’

And after all, may we not go a little further, and look to the various adventures of a god, in search of wisdom, for the origin of the adventures of Odusseus himself. The toils of the god are given to the hero, as the Sun’s labours to Herakles, or the Moon’s to Psyche. Odusseus goes down to the Unseen World to win knowledge, outwits the witch Kirke, beguiles the daughter of the Sun, risks himself with a giant, Poluphemos [Much-talker ?], all adventures parallel to those of our Woden, and varieties of the Soma-myth. The adventures of Odusseus have in their turn not only furnished Persian story-tellers with some of their most thrilling tales, but inspired Vergil, and through him the ‘highest poet’ of Italy, the greatest voice of medizval Europe. So fruitful, true, and enthralling has been the very tale of the Quest for Wisdom.

These archaic myths, with that vast mass of beliefs and superstitions which enwrapped the subject of Death and the Dead and are summed up under the term Aucestor-worship, and that system of Divination and sacrificial observances on which we have written a separate Excursus, made up the religion of a Teuton sage of the days of Tacitus, and of his successors down to the days of Charlemagne. For it will be clear and patent to every observer, that this Wandering God, as well as the different tribal deities (deified kings and priests), and the rude Nature-myths are quite incompatible with the Walhall pantheon, in which Woden dwel/s, with his host of Amazons and Heroes.

And now to glance at these /ater myths, the last Act as it were of the

• The phonetic change is analogous to that in mater mddar; ¢, d following Verner’s Law; heona (a hen) is a cognate word,

? The original form of the myth seems to be clouded here in the Greek. Poluphemos is intoxicated himself, which may or may not be part of the original; the real essence of the story is the false name, the clever escape under the ram’s belly, the folly of the presumptuous giant ; all found also in Woden’s case, he never gives his real name, and always outwits his cumbrous foes. Odusseus takes away the Giant’s eye, as Mim took Woden’s. Can the mythic names Hallinskidi or Heimdali, given to the Ram in the Thulor, have been culled from a Northern Poem, telling the story of this escape in some form ?

ee Tee er ee ee ee a ee

LATER CHRISTIANISTIC MYTHS. cv heathen religious Drama. The effect of the contact with a new civilisation upon the English cannot be clearly made out, for there are no data left from which to draw evidence; but in the Walhall system one can clearly see the effect upon the Northman of the Roman civilisation, the Christian religion, and the Carling organisation, with which he was brought suddenly face to face. This warrior religion, with its gross heaven of fighting, feasting, and drinking, its creed of dauntless fatalism, its scorn of death and peace, reminds one of the practical working faith of the followers of the Prophet, who were at that very time running a somewhat parallel course in the south of Europe to that of the Scandinavians in the north. But though the Northman’s creed was far lower than that taught by Mohammed, the Northman was the ‘heir of progress,’ and he flung away his fighting faith of his own free will, and accepted the higher teaching as soon as it was worthily put before him.

The Wicking religion will always be a noble memory to us, as representing one aspect of the master-minds of the Scandinavian peoples at a period when they were helping to mould modern Europe. Its armed angels are splendid figures; its unselfish, single-hearted, fatedefying heroes are of a noble type; its god, albeit bloody and boastful, is yet not beyond our sympathies as he sits feasting in heaven with his friends, ever ready for the final death-grapple, in which he must fall, as he knows, before the fiends of hell.

But there are also among the Eddic poems records, happily preserved, which tell us how the new world of thought and life looked to the Northern sage (just as Walhall shows the impressions of the Northern sea-rover). In the strange, beautiful myths of the gallowstree, that fills the whole universe, holy, life-giving, sprinkled with the

. white ooze, there is indeed plainly to be seen the reflection of the Cross ; while in the eschatology, with its Doomsday and battle of Armageddon, and the glorious myths of the golden age that has gone, but will come back again with the new heaven and new earth, we can feel the very echo of the mighty vision that has inspired poet, and painter, and thinker ever since it was told by the seer who had seen the fate of Jerusalem.

These later myths, so largely tinged with foreign hues, are purely Scandinavian, whereas the older strata of myths are really the common Teutonic religion. ‘There can however be traced among the very oldest myths one set which bears a distinctly northern stamp, namely, that of Thunder (Thor), who seems to have been the favourite god of the west Scandinavian tribes, as Frey was of the Swedes. These myths are of most archaic type, simple nature myths—Thunder slaying and driving away the foul mists and clouds, and protecting his mother earth and her children from all harm; but they, in some special way, caught the fancy of the Northern farmers and fishermen, and they have put into them that simplicity, observation, and keen an@ broad humour, which seem to have distinguished them among the sister Teutonic tribes.

evi INTRODUCTION.

Just as the Burgundians were the most good-natured, and the Saxons the cruellest, so the Reams, and Theles, and Throwends, and their companion folks seem to have been the most humorous of the Teutons. We have also the great advantage in the case of the Thor myths, of having them told by Snorri in his best style, with that inimitable mixture of naiveté and humour, strong sense and fun, which has its only parallel in the best of Grimm’s Marchen,

One must not pass over without mention the occurrence in Wolospa of the old myth of the frst murder and the first woe, brother slaying brother, and the hapless mother weeping in the waters for her beloved son. A story which most probably sprung from Accadia, like other primeval legends, though, of course, it may be here merely a distorted view of the later Hebrew scriptural Cain and Abel, borrowed directly through Christian sources from the Jews.

The reconstruction of Wolospa has brought out very clearly, what the very use of the preterite ‘I saw’ not ‘I see’ had hinted at, namely, that the death of Balder does not precede immediately Doomsday, but is on the contrary the jirst crime. The Achilles parallels of Professor Bugge and even the Christ-parallel (save so far as Abel is and must be the type of Christ) thus vanish and fall away. In the medizval myths the weeping of Eve, neck-deep in the Euphrates, is the mourning of Frigg; no doubt, too, that pearls are those of her tears that fell into the water, as the little nuggets of surface gold are the tears she shed upon the hills and plains. |

One other myth claims a few words. The “legends of Loki bear evident and tangible marks of divided origin. First, there is an old Titan Wloki (Lupus Behemoth)! chained, like Enceladus or Typhon, beneath the mighty mountain, in the pit [crater Hver-gelmi] *, causing earthquakes as he writhes in his torture-spasms, a monstrous, bestial, scarce human figure, which can by no means be lacking among the old anthropomorphic Nature-myths. There is another Loki, the mocking Meimos, the wicked, spiteful, cunning, sharp-tongued, weakthewed jester of Walhall, an old character, taken and put to a new part, giving many of the traits of the medieval Devil (though we do not believe that his name has anything to do with Lucifer, or his brother Byleist’s with Beelzebub). A strange metamorphosis for the old Titan, for which he is indebted to his one great act of villany, Balder’s betrayal; this has justified his being drawn out of his old monster-shape, and belied into a puny cunning tempter, powerless in the hands of Thunder, and merely tolerated, like some Archy or Will Somers, for his scathing words.

Late writers on this subject have, we take it, confused the whole matter of the Christian and foreign influence upon old Scandinavian

1 The chained wolf Fenri is merely a doublet of Wloki. 2 In Wolospa we read ‘ Hvera-brunni,’ Cauldron Well; in Aristophanes, Peace (like our Truth) is prisoned in a ‘deep well,’ whence she is pulled up.

2S ae

°°? re a 4

Tee

Soin ae) te te =

prs; as rie le Onl ar yEs

RESULTS OF THIS INVESTIGATION. cvii mythology, by fancying that the characters of the Walhall religion are new. Not so, they are the old primitive figures, common to old Aryan age and pre-Aryan beliefs, Hell, the black foul ogress, a figure known as well in Tahiti as in Germany; the monstrous Beasts that swallow the sun and moon, believed in to-day in China as fourteen centuries ago in England; the Earth-serpent, that is said to be found in South American myths as well as in those of Old Norway; even the belief in the ill-faring of criminal ghosts common to Homer and the Wolospapoet; punishment of crime, as Tacitus notices, being part of the old Teuton faith, though the Christian idea of sin is of course a later conception. These archaic figures and fancies are merely employed in a new connection, and mingled with new personifications (whose very names betray their recent origin—Glad-ham, Corse-strand, Muspilli, Swart, and the like) and so often obscured and altered, so that it often requires careful investigation to trace their real character, origin, and bearing.

The results of our work here also are truly conservative. We have tried to gain a clearer conception of the old Teutonic religion among the Northern folks (essentially the same as the faith of our English forefathers), the true character of which has been obscured by false historical perspective. We have also, by setting the Wicking religion in its proper place and in its proper light, endeavoured to obtain a deeper insight into the spiritual life of the Wicking-tide than has hitherto been possible. Questions, many and important, arise as the consequences of the conclusions we have come to, but these we may confidently leave to the care of living scholars in this place, who, by intimate and minute knowledge of comparative Indian, Greek, and Semitic mythology, are so eminently qualified to treat them. And it is especially with a view of bringing these unsolved problems to their notice that this imperfect sketch has been written.

§ 18. SPELLING AND ARRANGEMENT OF THIS EDITION.

The system of spelling adopted in these volumes must here be explained. As to the early poems, the MS., in which the chief of them are preserved, is one of the transition period, an era between Ari the historian and Snorri, when Icelandic phonesis was passing through a change which was complete about 1230. Two modes of treatment are therefore possible—to normalise the spelling down to the classical spelling of the fourteenth-century MS., a plan hitherto adopted, or to do as we have done and put the spelling 4ack before the change, to the normal spelling of Ari’s time as near as may be. Thereby we get nearer the MS. from which the scribe of R copied; we approach more nearly the language in which the poems were composed ; for where, if not in these songs, should we learn the oldest forms of the Northern tongue? We have been careful throughout tg use no form for which there is not good MS. warrant, cviii INTRODUCTION.

We make the distinction between 9, ce (¢)1; we prefer inflexive o to u, as R does; though, following R, we have, wrongly perhaps, preferred inflexive i to e; for the oldest MSS. use e, not 7, and to an English eye ‘time’ looks more homely than ‘timi.. We have not changed the 4 into ¢, for two reasons: the change would be meaningless, a mere pedantry, and it is inconvenient for dictionary purposes, etc.

A few things require special notice :—

We print vowel before .vowel, irrespective of natural quantity, as short; that this was a phonetic law with the ancients is borne out by the metric evidence: words as bua, trua are never found in the trochaic third or sixth measure of Court-poetry, whereas they are frequent in the last measure of the Dialogue metre line—bua, Old W. Pl. 193; buinn, 50; bua, G. W. 74; snuask, Alvm. 2; trui, Love Less. 56; hloa, Grimn. 90; nio, Niord and Skadi; gloa, Alvm. 18; veom, Grimn. 46; soit, Love Less. 54; blyi, Sun Song 124; skiom, 76; sxing, 68;—an evidence that it was sounded vv, not -v.

That this too was the pronunciation of Thorodd the grammarian appears from the phrase (as once restored by the Editor, Dict., p. 335 a) the uw sounded with a slight touch of w. The strange pronoun (Dict. p. 738 a, s.v. pinn B) owes its origin to the same phonesis—pu-inn, pwinn, pinn. In like way we have by preference written pvi-at, po-at, sva-at, sa-es, su-es, and so on. We must not count syllables here, doth vowels were distinctly seard, but slurred or rapidly pronounced*. The sound was, we take it, like ‘io, mio, miei, tuoi’ in Italian. Such lines abound in Dante and Petrarca.

Mr. Alexander Ellis urges that the so-called hiatus in Latin were in fact ‘slurred vowels;’ each vowel being sounded though they did not make a syllable.

We distinguish between vowel i and consonant i (/); it is vocalic—(1) as in fiall, iord, iardar, (2) as in the diphthong of bid%a, idk; the sound in all such cases was, we take it, purely vocalic, like Italian io, mio, or the like; the alliteration bears ample evidence to its being sounded as vowel, differently from the modern Icelandic pronunciation (y). Again, z is consonantic in inflexions, such as gledja, dynja, midjom, as evidenced not only by the etymology, but by these syllables being long by position, which is seen by the frequent occurrence of these words in the third and sixth measure of the six-measured Court-metre, which here requires —v. So, too, the 7, coming between two vowels, pre-

1 See Dict. p. 761. The form ‘ao,’ it should be noticed, is far more correct than the hurried script form ‘9g.’ It is also better, for it shows its:meaning at once, and is analogous to the other forms ‘&,’ ‘c&.’ We have preferred it to the Old English form of the Parker MS. ‘ 0,’ as more consonant with the modern-type shape of ‘a,’ The 9, ¢ forms, so much affected nowadays, are neither so shapely nor so correct, nor do they tell the eye what they mean.

An inflexive syllable counts as short, e.g. ganganda (— | uu), Less. Lodd. 87. In Lokas. 59 skraut odr is treated as a double word, tae, al ei

SPELLING OF THIS EDITION. cix serves the length of the former, e.g. nyjo (Lat. novo) (-—v), whilst nio (uv) (Lat. novem) '.

Again, though it is certain that, when the poems were composed, the final inflexive ‘r,’ Y, was a sibilant (z) not a fricative (r), and that the fricative did not come in till a much later date than is generally supposed, we have not ventured to make the change in printing. It is difficult to fix the exact date of such phonetic changes, and it will not be the same date in different countries, so that, while in the earlier poems it would be more correct to print ‘stadz,’ ‘ Haralldz,’ ‘ Alafz’ nominative, it would be impossible to draw a correct line fixing what poets first spoke ‘r’ instead of ‘z?.’

So, too, we might well have printed ‘w’ for ‘v’ throughout the first volume at any rate, for there is no doubt that ‘v’ was pronounced ‘w’ as late as the eleventh or even twelfth century, and it would have given the book a more homely look to English eyes. However, a great part of the text was already clean copied and it was deemed hardly worth while to make the change. In a future edition of any of the poems we should be willing to adopt the ‘w’ as truer and speaking more clearly to the eye. At any rate the reader must sound the ‘v’ as ‘w.’

We spell hana (illam). The word is hardly ever found in MSS. uncontracted; that it was sounded long we know, (1) because we have once, in Sturl. Cod. B. (a hand which distinguishes between a and aa), actually found it written so in full; (2) by its use in Placidus-drapa, ‘fran-pvengs sa es gat hana’ (the sixth measure requiring —v); (3) by the analogy with hanom; for it is only before a double consonant that the vowel is shortened.

The double ‘ss’ in genitive inflexions, as bass, less, sk¥ss, tf¥ss, Freyss, rikiss, stilliss, etc. [from bi, le, sky, t¥-rr, Frey-rr, riki, stillir], are warranted by the best vellums, and represent the pronunciation. So also vatz, botz, from vatn, botn—‘vatns, botns’ are purely manufactured book-forms, and should, with so many other like things, be banished from our grammars and paradigms; they are not once met with in an old vellum, nor are they ever heard in modern speech.

_ The old forms wr (wreka, wreiér, wrangr) might in many of the songs, e.g. the Aristophanic poet, have been restored. Yet the MSS. in no instance retain the ‘ w,’—it is merely from the alliteration that we learn its existence, as with the digamma in Homer,—for the songs have had to pass through the hands of Icelanders, to whom the w was a thing of the past. r for wr is merely a West Norwegian idiom. The Swedes and Danes even at the present day say wr in most, though not all words where it is etymologically due. Even the Icelanders have in a few cases substituted an 4r (see Dict., p. 672, B 111),—a mark that

? Grimn, 22 must be wrong for ‘ glymja yfir’ or the like.

2 In these ancient times nominative and genitive case were distinguished, one being -z, one -iz; of which archaic genitive a few remains are seen in the laws and poems, as heimis, svefnis.

cx INTRODUCTION.

at no remote time the qw sound was still heard in words whence it has now vanished.

As for the article, ‘en’ is the sole form in the oldest vellums, then ‘in,’ and lastly by analogy ‘hin.? A young Swedish scholar, Mr. Axel Kock, of Lund, has lately demonstrated the etymological identity of the Scandinavian and the Anglo-German article; the ‘en’ was sounded ‘zn,’ the initial p being dropped—‘ pan’ being the stem of our present madr-enn). Thus an old and hard puzzle has at last been solved. R spells in and en (ins, ens) promiscuously. In this edition we should have given ‘e’ throughout, without regard to the vellum.

The preposition and particle should have been ‘ of’ or ‘umb’ throughout; though R prefers ‘um,’ which form can hardly haye existed in the tenth or eleventh century.

As to proper names, in the older poems we have kept to the normal eleventh and tenth century forms, for example preferring ‘ Aleifr’ [* Anlafz’] and ‘ Sigroeér’ [‘Sigfridz’]. In the later dated poems we have kept their contemporary ‘ Olafr’ and ‘Sigurdr.’ In the translation, while keeping to the familiar Olaf and Sigurd, our rule has been to put the names as far as possible into their English forms; thus to prefer Woden to Odin, Eadwine to Audun, lfwine to Alboin, Wolf and Worm to Ulf and Orm, Thorfrid to Thorrod or Thord, Garfrid to Geirrod (but Gard, Bard, Thord, in later cases), Anses to Ases'. For ‘ Sigroedr’ in the text there is MS, authority once or twice in W, but it is not certain at what time the ‘frid,’ ‘ fred’ was degraded (by analogy with ‘rad’ probably) into ‘rad’ in so many cases. Sigroedr must have passed into Sigordr about the eleventh century, when we have ‘ Sigordr com nordan.’ From this the latest form Sigurdr regularly comes. Accordingly the forms are, Sigfroedr (ninth century), Sigroedr (tenth century), Sigordr (eleventh century), Sigurdr (twelfth century).

The history of the name of Olaf is as follows:—The White Dublin king, the Aud’s husband of the Northern genealogists (A.D. 850), would have been called ‘ Anlaif.’ The second, his great namesake Tryggwason (965-1000), must, to judge from the poems, have been known as « Alaf’ (there seems here to have been a Western influence in turning the laif, leif, into 14f; Sighwat has Aléfar fris gafo). The Quiet King, who loved the farmers, was called, we know, Oldfr [Ol4f, sélar]: the @ is here rounded into 6. We have thus nasal Anlaif (ninth century); Aléf (still nasal? tenth century); Olaf (eleventh century); and lastly, Olaf (the modern form). The pet-form Léfi, beside Leifr, still preserves the quantities of the name, which was raised to such popularity by the veneration paid to St. Olaf.

There remain other things for remark in this connection; however, we must needs stop, with a hearty apology for slips and casual incon-

1 A very strict consistency would have required Gundhere everywhere for Gunnar, Binki for Bikki.

EXCLUDED MATTER. | cxi sequences, having had much else to mind of even greater moment in this edition. Grimm once (KI. Schr.) speaks of ‘falsches streben nach kalter richtigkeit.’

Touching the extent or limits of this work, it will be well to notice at least the names of certain poems which, for various reasons, we have not included in the present volumes. The chief of these are the two metrical poems Hatta-/lykill and Hatta-tal. Of the first, the following account is given in the Orkneyinga Saga: ‘These two together [Poet Hall and Earl Rognwald, vol. ii, p. 274] made the old Metre-Key, setting five verses to each metre, but afterwards that was thought too long, and now there are two pieces of verse to each metre*.’

In 1222 Snorri’s Hatta-tal was composed. It is a poem in honour of Hacon and Duke Sculi. It is wholly uninteresting, gives no historic fact, and as many of its metres are mere fanciful inventions of its author, it is by no means a safe authority to follow. It has lately been critically edited by Mébius, who is now engaged upon the Hatta-lykill.

The poems by Snorri, Olaf and Sturla in Hacon’s Saga, Sturlunga, etc., being purely artificial and imitative poetry, and having been lately edited elsewhere by the Editor, would have been rather out of place in these two volumes. In the same category fall the fragments in Hrafn Sweinbiornsson’s Saga and Aron’s Saga.

The poems in Orkneyinga Saga are also beyond our limits, though we have taken some of the most important of Earl Rognwald’s,

• It is of little interest, save as containing the following names of heroes :—

[Three lost. ] : Hedin. Hogni. Gundhere. Harald. Attila, Hiarrandi. Hrolf Kraki, [Two lost. | Hialmar, Ragnar Lodbrok. Eirec Victorious. Eirec. Anlaf Swedes’ King. Agnar. Gautrec, Biorn, Styrbiorn, ; Sigfred Snake i’ th’ Eye. Harald Fairhair, q White-Sark, Eirec Bloodaxe, , ; F Hakon the Good, [Four lost. ] Harald Grayfell. Swein Forkbeard, a a Canute the Great. peek: ages Olaf Tryggwason, "4 St. Olaf. Frodi. Magnus ° . 9 * Helgi Hunding’s Bane. Harald, Harald Hild-tooth. | Olaf. Hring. - Magnus Bareleg. Angantheow. [The end ? stanzas lost.]

The knowledge of the Helgi story in the West is worthy of remark, The MS. at Stockholm is very corrupt, and we have had no means of making a satisfactory text, cxii INTRODUCTION.

To another category altogether belongs the Early Book-poem,. Hugsvinnz-mal, a translation in the old Dialogue metre of Cato’s Moralia. We take it to be of the early twelfth century, for later the Dialogue metre would hardly have been known or used. It was published by the late Dr. Hallgrim Schewing as a School Program, Bessastead, Iceland, 18311.

There are also some book-poems on sacred subjects, Harm-sol, Leidarvisan, Liknar-braut, all from Arna Magn. 757, and the Placidus Drapa in a twelfth-century MS. (AM. 673), which are mere cloister-work, void of inspiration and purely imitative. They have been edited as School Programs, by Dr. Egilsson, 1833 and 1844, as also was the spurious Olaf’s Drapa (from Berg’s Bék), mentioned vol. ii, p. 89 ”.

In the edition of Bishops’ Lives, vol. ii, fasc. 1, the Editor published (1861) a text of the Gudmund Encomias, of Einar Gilsson, Abbot Arngrim, and Abbot Arni (1345-80). Of the Lilja of 1350 (on the Virgin, by the Augustin Eystan) a critical text has appeared, by Cedershidld, 1881.

It was not worth while to reprint these poems in our volumes to the necessary exclusion of more important original work. We have by omitting them gained space for all that is of real original value in Northern poetry down to the Reformation, and been able to include such important poems as Skida-Rima, Skaufhala-balkr, to put in the Ditties, the Ballad Burdens, etc., and to give a more complete view of the whole subject than we could otherwise have accomplished.

A few fragments from the Scalda Essay from poems on Saints have been likewise left out, as they are of no original value whatever.

No attempt had till now been made to classify the Eddic poems in the order of development or to fix their subordinate relationships. It has been one of our chief aims to do this, for. without some such general scheme there is no comprehending the poems themselves, and their use as historical documents and their exact position in literature is merely a matter of guess-work. We have endeavoured: to look at the whole matter from as broad a point of view as possible, taking into account the literary evidence afforded by the other fragments of early Teutonic literature and the historic testimony presented by English and German chronicles. And it was only after weigh- ing every consideration as well as we could that the plan of each poem

1 It is found in AM. 624, a fifteenth-century vellum, and is very corrupt in parts; we have only noted the final stanza :-—

The MS. reads, ‘let ek,...holda speki....Her er nu.” Yet in a new edition ; this interesting but very corrupt vellum would have to be re-read and re-considered ; the poem if printed should in due order follow the Merlinus sp4.

2 By a strange chance, ‘Placidus’ is, as to MSS., the oldest bit of Northern poetry, for AM. 673 appears to be older than our R by some thirty or forty years.

a

NAMING AND NUMBERING OF THE POEMS. cxiii was decided upon. We may at all events humbly claim to have buoyed the way, and whatever modifications our classification may undergo from the result of future research, we trust that the main grounds on which it rests will not be shaken.

As to the Court-poetry, it should be noticed that, though in Snorri’s Edda the bits cited are, in most cases, simply referred to the poet without giving the name of the poem, yet there is very seldom any doubt as to the exact piece from which they come. The internal evidence is, in ninety-nine examples out of a hundred, pretty conclusive. The Editor first classified them twenty years ago, and in not more than half-a-dozen cases has he thought it needful to alter the classification then arrived at, though he has gone over each verse again and again.

It will be seen that the whole of the Court-poems are fragmentary; in no case have we a perfect, complete work. It is impossible in all cases to show exactly where there is a gap and how much is missing, but by classing the lines according to subject, and marking the text and translation whenever the subject changés, enough is done to indicate the state of the text.

With regard to the naming of the poems we have adopted the following rule. Where there is an old title fixed by MS. authority we have kept it, translating it also. Where there is a modern fabricated title (such as Sigrdrifu-mal) without any authority, we have given an English name. Hencé the names at the top of the pages are sometimes in the Old Northern, sometimes in the English tongue; thus Hofudlausn is vouched for by Egil himself, but Wolundar-kvida is a mere fabrication, and we use the descriptive English title Weyland’s Lay. The reader will thus be able to distinguish between true and false titles, for the only Old Northern titles used have good MS. authority.

Such names as the Atli- or Attila-poet, the Brunhild-poet, the Western Aristophanes, the Tapestry-poet, the Ballad-poet, are convenient titles for different anonymous poets whose work we have arranged and classified. There is in every case certain internal evidence for the works classed under the same head, e.g. Helgi-poet, being of the same school and often strong proof that they are by the same man. But it is sufficient to'bear in mind that they are of the same time, plan, and style.

The mode of citation followed in this edition is new, but it is strictly necessary. We cite by line, not by stanza, most of the poems hitherto cited by stanza being wholly unstanzaic. The system of citing by stanza is altogether unsatisfactory; only two modes of citing the older poems being really right, viz. they must either be cited by the line of the Codex Regius, which till the Codex Regius is published in a facsimile edition it is impossible to do, or the line must be quoted according to the plan invariably followed in all other poetry, Greek, Latin, or English, -

The Court-poems having been here collected and arranged for the h

CXiV INTRODUCTION.

first time, they have been numbered both by stanza and line, so as to facilitate future references.

In the case of the complex masses of verse, such as Havamdl, where we have had to disentangle the component parts, we have added in brackets the old-fashioned stanza-number, to enable reference to be made with certainty to older books.

The abbreviations employed in citation are marked in the Table of Contents ; they are, as far as possible, identical with those used in the Lexicon, but in many cases changes were imperatively necessary, owing to needful re-arrangement of poems.

§ 19. THE TRANSLATION.—ITS PURPORT AND DESIGN.

It will be right, if only in self-defence, to say something about the translations included in these volumes. They are primarily intended as a help to the scholar, and a faithful rendering for those who wish to know the contents of the various poems and citations, without having mastered the tongues in which they are composed. This aim has been, as far as could be, kept in view throughout; and it is from this point of view, rather than she a purely literary standpoint, that they are to be judged.

There were no light difficulties in the Translator’s way, and they have not, by any means, always been overcome, though they have at least been honestly faced and grappled with. In the first place, it is no light task to deal with songs of such high beauty and power as many of these poems are, it is only a great thinker and poet that could worthily achieve a noble transfusion of them. Like all masterpieces of literature they have a style, a phraseology, and a savour of their own, which it is easy to feel, but singularly hard to transmit to another who is not already en rapport with the tongue or the age in which the poems were composed. Then the syntax, simple as it looks at first sight, is really very difficult ; so delicate and fine are the minute shades of difference which the same tense, for example, may express in several phrases,—a peculiarity which readers of Professor Driver’s monograph on the tenses in Hebrew will see closely paralleled in that tongue. Then there are numerous technical phrases, legal, political, martial, naval, colloquial, economic, not found elsewhere, the meaning of which has to be discovered, settled, and duly brought out, a process often of extremest difficulty. All this is work, which not even a born Icelander is at all fitted for, unless he has not only studied the old tongue, but the old Jife in all the extant evidence possible; indeed, it would be easier in many cases to get help from old English and old French scholars than from Icelanders, so different is the old diction and the old circumstance of the poems from modern speech and social existence in Iceland. Again, it will not do for a scholar, who is merely a philologist, to presume to deal with the translation or edition of the old literature of our own or any other tongue. The letter, sacred

THE TRANSLATOR’S DUTIES. CXxV

as it is, kills; and one, whose chief interest in a poet is to know how often he uses such and such a word, and who is mainly taken up with considering how far the ‘copyist’ is changing the ‘é’ into ‘e,’ should not (without help from some one who knows and feels the life and beauties of the literature in question) deal with literary matters at all, or he will be likely to fall into some such error as a certain distinguished scholar did when he mistook prose for verse, and gravely told his reader to take the poems he was noticing as models of classic prose style. The philologist’s work is of the very highest value ; but in precise proportion as a man is a good philologist, or indeed a specialist of any kind, he must take especial care to prevent his interest from becoming contracted, and his senses blinded to other than the small round of daily objects which his particular specialty brings before him. There is perhaps no work more likely to turn a man into a gerund-grinding machine, ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,’ wholly insensible to the real beauty and worth of literature, than what is often misnamed ‘pure scholarship ;’ while, on the other hand, no critic can enjoy the best books so well as the rightly educated, widely read, and thoughtful philologist.

It must also be remarked, that it will not do to use one style of English to render the wide varieties of poem and prose met with in these volumes. The Biblical phraseology, which will aptly render Paul the Deacon’s paraphrase, would not give the quaint half-pedantic effect of Saxo for instance; while the calm, unruffled serenity and purity of . diction, which marks the poet of Wolospa, is very different to the rugged, passion-wrung lamentation of Egil. The legal phrases of the Greenland Lay of Attila and the Euripidean softness of the Gudrun Lays are very far removed from the antique Homeric beauty of the old Attila and Hamtheow Lays.

There is one grave error into which too many English translators of

_ old Northern and Icelandic writings have fallen, to wit, the affectation of archaism, and the abuse of archaic, Scottish, pseudo-Middle-English words. This abominable fault makes a Saga, for instance, sound unreal, unfamiliar, false; it conceals all diversities of style and tone beneath a fictitious mask of monotonous uniformity, and slurs over the real difficulties by a specious nullity of false phrasing. The idiomatic spoken tongue of the Saga-makers should be rendered as far as possible into an idiomatic spoken tongue’. |

One great advantage the translator has had. English is, of all existing

It is perhaps invidious to mention instances of failure, but among examples of more successful rendering, one is glad to put Sir Edmund Head’s Viga-Glum’s Saga, Mr. Sephton’s Eric the Red’s Saga, Sir G. W. Dasent’s Gisli the Outlaw. While on this subject, it may be noted that there is a very great difference between the styles and worth of different Icelandic Sagas, and even parts of them; there are parts of Niala which are certainly below the level of true classic writing, and the greater part of Gretti’s Saga and Egil’s Saga is mere fictitious ‘padding.’ Future translators would do well to consider this point when dealing with thé’ Icelandic Sagas proper. A man who has a real pleasure in his work will have- a. pretty safe guide in his ha cxvi INTRODUCTION.

tongues, from the richness of its vocabulary, the laconic power of its idioms, and the simplicity of syntax which it admits of, the best vehicle for a translator from the old Northern speech to work im. The Elizabethan dramatists, the Bible, and more modern classics, such as Defoe and Carlyle, pithy, phraseful, idiomatic, give the translator an inexhaustless mine in which to quarry. There is always the right word some- where in English, though it is not always that one can hit upon it at the right time. Especially: useful also to him, who would attempt to English the Songs and Sagas of old, is a knowledge of the spoken English of the country-folk, who (as Mr. Barnes has proved to those who refused to see it before) often preserve the best English phrases which the miserable, conventional, hack-English of this and the preceding century has scornfully passed by. Some knowledge of Greek, especially of Homer, Hesiod, and Herodotus, and some acquaintance with what is known of the older Greek life and ways, will often avail the translator when nothing else can.. It is obvious that he should know something of Old English literature, law, and history, familiarity with which again and again will prove his best guide against mistake, and his best help to the right handling of his subject-matter.

The task is not one to be entered upon with a ‘light heart,’ and the translator may: at least claim to have been aware for years of the obstacles in his way; now that. he has gone through with the work, he cannot profess to be satisfied with his results, save in a very modified degree. At best his version is to the original as the thin, muffled, meagre, telephone-rendering is to. the full rich tones which it transmits, faithfully, it is true, but with what a difference to the hearer !

There are many instances in which the translator has had to choose between a poetical rendering,.and one which, awkward though it was, yet had the quality of suggesting the real meaning; and in every case he has preferred the latter. Had he been making a purely literary version, which should not. be merely,.as it. were, an interpretation, but a representation of the original, he would have decided otherwise. Hence in the qualities of rhythm, flow, and roundness of phrase, the present version is obviously all too often lacking, and this is, as the writer feels, a very serious defect; but there seemed no: help for it. A translator, even of Chapman or North’s calibre, could such a one be found, must. sometimes come to a place where two roads fork,.and will not always follow the right branch of the Pythagorean letter. Moreover, in the present case, it was necessary very often to decide quickly.

Wherever, too, there were phrases which, though ‘they construed,’ would not ‘make sense,’ the translator has chosen to omit them rather than give a guess rendering, which would make his version read more easily, but. at the same time mislead the innocent reader.

instinctive feelings, and should. follow them in making his selection of what should be translated; and if he thinks, above. all, of making himself intelligible, he will not be likely to fail absolutely in. conveying-his matter into readable and actual English,

THE SCOPE OF THIS TRANSLATION. _ cxvii

It is not with a desire to forestall criticism, that thus much has been said, but from a wish to set forth plainly the aims, sie. and scope of the present version.

Besides the poems, the translator has in the course of these two volumes given a rendering of all that part of the Prose Edda which has not yet been translated or printed in England, a version of the paraphrase of the lost Lays of R, and an anthology of all the best passages relating to poetry or poets which occur in the Iceland Book of Settlement or Landnama-bok, the Kings’ Lives, and the Icelandic Family Sagas, as well as many of the most noteworthy parts of Jordanis, Paul the Deacon, and other writers, of which there is either none or no accessible English translation.

The translator must in fairness add that he has received no help from any former versions, English or foreign; his success or failure, such as it is, is his own. When he took up his task the text of most of the poems was in such a chaotic condition that, till the work of arrangement and reconstruction was well under weigh, it was impossible really to make a beginning at all. Every word and phrase has been reviewed three times; and, though there are far too many slips and shortcomings even upon the face of the translation, yet considerable pains have been taken to bring it into harmony with the finally settled text above it. In the case of the Wolospas and Hyndlu-liod, the translation in the Appendix is of course to be preferred.

The hope with which the translator has laboured has always been that of inducing Englishmen and Americans to seek back for themselves into the Homeric age of their forefathers, to turn to the rock from which we are hewn, and to make it possible for those who cannot go straight to the original work of this period to get some knowledge at second-hand of its glories and its greatness, of its highest creations and its deepest thoughts. Any real, however scanty, knowledge of these old Northmen’s finest poetry and noblest era of history is of solid value and interest; the men from whom these poems sprung took no small share in the making of England, their blood is in our veins, their speech in our mouths, their law in our courts, their faith in our hearts; and if there be, as the sage has said, no ingratitude so base as self-forgetfulness, surely we of all men should look back to the great Wicking-tide, to which the finest of the Lays in these volumes are due, as a momentous era in the world’s history and our own.

Let Goethe speak on this head—‘ The most singular and deepest themes in the History of the Universe and Mankind, to which all the rest are subordinate, are those in which there is a conflict between Belief and Unbelief, and all epochs, wherein Belief prevails, under what form it will, are splendid, heart-elevating, and fruitful. All epochs, on the contrary, where unbelief, in what form soever, maintains its sorry victory, should they even for a moment glitter with a sham splendour, vanish from the eyes of postefity, because no one chooses to burden himself with the study of the unfruitful.’

CXvili INTRODUCTION.

§ 20. THE GROWTH AND AIMS OF THE PRESENT EDITION.

As early as 1861 the Editor began to make a collection of the Courtpoetry, including all written in that style down to the fourteenth century, copying, classifying, and arranging the scattered materials with a view to the publication of a ‘Corpus Poetarum Aulicorum.’ This plan was extended by degrees, till the idea of a complete Corpus Poeticum was reached, and the Eddic Poems were for the first time classified and put in some order. The work was interrupted, and the intended publication in Germany, which had been the Editor’s ultimate end, set aside by a summons to England, where other and engrossing toil put a stop for a long time to any projects of the kind, But already some results had been achieved; the half-begun work had not been fruitless, though there were still many questions left for future solution ; for instance, the Editor had convinced himself that the Helgi-poems were the work of one author, that Skirnis-mal and Harbard’s Lay and Loka-senna were the work of one man, that the Tapestry-poems were later than the Helgi-poems, that the lays of Arrow-Ord and Half were spurious epics, etc.; he had also arranged the body of the Court-poetry —an elementary and rough sketch, yet it is the foundation of great part of the present book.

The textual restoration has been a hard task, and the measure of success therein attained is sure to seem but small in comparison to the pains spent upon it; for there are still scores of passages which have foiled our best efforts, and which, after much labour lost, we have been compelled to leave obelised for future toilers to grapple with. Former editors have not even been aware of the fearfully corrupt state in which the text stands in R; they have taken the MS. as literally exact, without seeing the often absolute necessity of changing its order, of disen- tangling its intertwined poems, or even of pointing out the breaks of sequence and gaps and blanks which disfigure nearly every lay. They have busied themselves with disputes about stanzas in old unstanzaic poems, and endeavoured with all manner of grammar-defying devices to squeeze sense out of the senseless corruptions of a mangled text; or else they have vexed their souls over questions of spelling, whilst they left the sense smothered and choking, without lifting a finger to rescue it,

When the text and translation had at last been put into shape and order for printing, and had passed through the press in due course, the text was subjected to two rigorous revises at some months’ interval of time, first, for the Excursus (especially Excursus I to vol. ii), and again for the — Notes, so that the final result, as embodied in the Excursus and Notes, may be looked on as, in some sort, a second or even third edition. It has been highly satisfactory to us, that our subsequent tests have been confirmatory of our first conclusions as far as they went, and that we have in each successive revision of the poems accumulated new evidence with regard to such cardinal points as the Western origin of the Helgi and

USE OF EXCURSUS AND NOTES. cxix

Wolospa Lays, the religion of the Northmen, the classification and chronological order of the various poems and the like. It is perhaps inevitable in a case like this, when we have’ had to work from our own printed or written text, no other being in the least degree helpful for our purpose, that there should be numerous fresh text-emendations and alterations of detail; but the reader will not, we believe, be puzzled by this, if he will only take the trouble in every case to consult the Notes and the Appended List of Final Readings, as well as the prefaced introduction avhen he peruses the text or translation of any given poem. He must also bear in mind, that for the greater convenience of historians and scholars, and to save space and needless repetition as far as might be, we have preferred to throw the main results of our work on the Metric and Vocabulary of the poems, on the Chronology of the early poets, and on the Mythology Ritual and Religion of the Old Scandinavians into the form of connected Dissertation or Excursus, rather than strew them up and down the whole book in scattered notes. Such textual alterations as are of the greatest moment we have, for the reader’s behoof, postfixed to this introduction.

The Excursus on Metric is a piece of pioneering; for nothing at all conclusive to our mind has yet been attempted in this direction. It endeavours to account for the whole mass of phenomena, presented by Early Teutonic metric, in Old English, German, and Scandinavian poems, according to orderly and historical principles *.

The Excursus on the Synonyms? will practically fulfil the need of a small poetical Glossary, as it includes nearly every genuine and original phrase under a regular classification which permits a ready comparison with the Thulor Lists. It also carefully excludes that mass of unauthoritative and parroty kennings® which were the manu-

_ facture of the Remanieur of the Court Poems,—a rank and file of wooden dummies, that choke the dreary pages of the Lexicon Poeticum and of many an Icelandic commentary or ‘ Skyringar,’ and hide the quick life that there is in the fresh and thoughtful kennings of the early Encomia.

The two Excursus on Mythology and the Early Beliefs of the Scandinavians are of course toa large extent sketches; we have merely tried to give the prime out/ines of the religious phenomena which our subjectmatter presents, phenomena that have hitherto been obscured and

1 That the introduction of line-rhyme into Northern poetry is due to Celtic influence (long our conviction) was first suggested in print by the late Dr. Edzardi, a young German scholar, in Paul Braune’s Beitriige, 1878, an essay which for clearness, ingenuity, and conciseness might serve as a model to other writers on such subjects, His suggestion that the first feeling towards line-rhyme may be traced in such lines as Wolospa 3, 5, 79, 93, we can hardly accept (though it would fall in with the general Western influences so marked in that poem), for the instances seem to be mere coincidences such as might easily occur in any poet with a fine ear who always sought to make his verse harmonious and varied. Cf. Beowulf, 1. 1009,

• Supplemented by the two Graduses, vol, i, fine, and gol. ii, p. 618.

• Yet even of these a sample is presented to the reader in vol. ii, pp. 600-6: 2.

cCxx | INTRODUCTION.

ignored. Thus the great facts of Ancestor-worship, and the many beliefs and ideas connected with it, are here plainly if briefly pointed out. We have also endeavoured to show the true standpoint of that late and artificial system that, as set forth in the two splendid poems, the Greater and Lesser Wolospas, has so impressed itself upon modern students, that they have mistaken its age, its character, and its origin. With this Excursus, § 16 of this Introduction should be read, as it touches upon another side of the same subject 3.

We have in the course of these volumes practically included the whole body of mythological evidence for Old Northern Belief, the main mythic contents of the Prose Edda, and its appendices, as well as the material afforded by Ari’s works—the Landnama-bok, Kings’ Lives, etc., and by the Icelandic Family Stories [Islendinga Ségur].

A novel and interesting question is handled in the Dissertation on the traces of Teutonic Legends in the Icelandic Sagas, and the little note on the Hymiskviéa from the Fereyinga Saga and Grettla? must be referred to in connection with it. It should also be observed that in the French Chanson de Geste are a number of incidents founded upon early Teutonic legends, and though we have here no time or space to treat of this matter, which is in great measure beside our immediate subject, we would at least suggest this fruitful and charming field of research to Old French as well as Old Northern scholars.

The Translator’s note on the English Ballads touching their connection with older poems and their kinship to the Scandinavian Ballads may be mentioned in this place.

The Excursus on Chronology as well as the Introductions to each book and section of the Court-Poems, containing, as we believe, many noteworthy corrections and rectifications of some of the most capital chapters of Northern History, the age of Fairhair, the career of Tryggwason, the character of St. Olaf, the impostor kings and their destinies, and the like, we commend to the notice of Scandinavian friends and historians, and especially to the judicious and philosophic Sars of Christiania, and the ingenious and careful Steenstrup of Copenhagen, as well as to those many distinguished Englishmen who are labouring in the field of Old English history and literature.

Towards a complete Verbal Commentary, what is strictly necessary has been done at the foot of the page and in the brief, added notes; the text will speak for itself. To fully illustrate the poems, e. g. with parallel passages from Greek, English, Indian, and Hebrew poetry,

1 Our amiable and learned friend M. James Darmesteter of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes of Paris has given the Editor an unexpected confirmation in the matter of the Heathen Calendar discussed in this Excursus. He has quite independently discovered that the old Persian week was a pentad, a fact which throws no little light upon the Editor’s theary, founded upon the oldest Northern poems, that the Old Teutons reckoned by months made up of six weeks of five days.

2 Given in the notes to the Lay of Hymi.

AIMS OF THE PRESENT EDITION. Cxxl would alone require another volume, and we have perforce allowed ourselves but few notes on this head.

Indices have been reduced to the smallest practical limits; the full tables of contents and the chronological arrangement adopted furnishing themselves the most useful index which we could contrive.

What we have tried to do here with regard to Old Northern poetry we hope to see done some day for Old English poetry and literature. It is ever to be deplored that that most gifted scholar Kemble, who had the deep philological and literary sympathies and wide knowledge required for such a work, should have died so untimely. However, all knowledge did not perish with him, and we look to the rising generation of Old English scholars to set about this long-neglected work, which the late much-regretted Grein did so much under such pathetic discouragement to smooth the way for. The Editor owes a deep debt to him; for his book was the only firm piece of Old English lexicography which he had to help him in much of the comparative part of his Dictionary, as to wit, towards settling what words in English are Scandinavian loan-words.

England and the other English-speaking countries are in one respect singularly happily situated, in that learning and literary interest is not confined to a class as abroad within the walls of universities where a man is aut Professor aut nullus, All over the British Empire and the United

States, often far from big towns or universities, often little known, humble, and unpresuming, there are to be found earnest and devoted scholars, who take up and pursue studies of various kinds, purely from the love of them, without any desire for reward or fame or publication. This is a class which every writer must cherish as furnishing many of his best readers, and we have throughout these volumes endeavoured to hold the wants and requirements of such students in view, and taken pains to put things as plainly as possible, and*to keep as free from all needless technicalities as might be.

It were much to be wished that every scholar and man of letters had some handiwork, which he could take up during his spare hours for the strengthening of his body and the freshening of his brain; and indeed all wise men of letters have ever had some ‘ hobby,’ carving, turning, boat-building, or the like', And it were also an excellent thing if every handicraftsman and trader, great or small, had some literary or artistic occupation or amusement for his leisure time. To those of this class who are willing to take a little trouble for the sake of a great gain, we can recommend no more delightful study than that of the Old

Northern Literature, with a part of which we have endeavoured to deal in these volumes.

1 «T never look but with reverence on the features of an aged carpenter, now fourscore, with whom, encouraged by the family laws of my father’s house, 1 used to work in my boyhood, I first learnt in his work and at his bench what I have now related; and never, as a child, saw him at his work, but ghat I felt the nobleness of labour.’ —Dr. Acland.

CXXil ie INTRODUCTION.

The Editor may be allowed here to notice an amusing attack, that has been brought against him by certain of his own countrymen, of lack of patriotism; the chief charges of the indictment being, that he spelt his Christian name in English fashion, and that he used ‘ we’ and ‘our’ in speaking of English things and ways. His answer to this must be, that he writes in English because he writes for Englishmen, who publish, buy, and read his books, and that, as Sterne says, he may ‘at least be permitted the licence accorded to a heathen Roman,’ and allowed to speak rather from the reader’s point of view than his own, just as if he were a humble correspondent of Cicero or Pliny or even Julian. In penning one phrase at least, which has been adduced against him, he was, as now, writing in conjunction with an Englishman, and their joint views are therein expressed.

With respect to the arguments that have been brought against the Western origin of some of the Eddic poems, the Editor has more sympathy, for they represent what were once his own views. During his life he has indeed passed through several stages of opinion on Eddic questions—at first accepting the generally accredited view that the ‘ Eddas’ were the holy books of the fourth and fifth centuries. Next, when such ideas on closer inspection proved baseless and visionary, he came round to the notion that they were Icelandic (of the Western colonies they must be, as he soon felt) of a comparatively late date [see Dict. p. 2 b]—a theory now held by the patriotic school, but which he was the first to put forth, and which, from his letters and conversation, has passed into circulation. But this theory, after full, careful, and mature consideration, he finally abandoned in favour of the one he now holds, which has since he first formed it received an abundant mass of confirmatory support from all kinds of unexpected sources’,

1 The fresh and charming little book of Professor Rhys, ‘Celtic Britain,’ published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, has even, as we are passing through the press, furnished fresh and new arguments to our position.

For instance, Professor Rhys speaks of the Dog-men, sons and slaves of the Dog, an un-Aryan, un-Celtic, un-Teutonic nomenclature, peculiar to the pra-Celtic population of Great Britain, with whom the Northmen came into contact at a time when feelings and ideas were strong in the mixed Celtic and half Celticised kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland. This phenomenon of nomenclature recalls at once the Hundings, Dogsons, of the Helgi Lays—Macbeaths and Maelbeaths, due, we have little doubt, to Ivernian influences.

Again, ‘ond’ is pre-Celtic for stone, In the Helgi Lays one meets with an oath sworn at the ‘ Unnar-stein,’ though to swear by a stone is un-Teutonic. Is not the word a mere doubling of the Ivernian word, such as there are many instances of elsewhere, e, g. the Isle of Sheppey, Bardsey Island, and the like ?

Further, there are in Ireland and Scotland place-names in Ith, Magh-Ith, the plain of Ith, though Ith is not a Celtic vocable, but probably the Ivernian name of a tribal and ancestral deity. What if Wolospa’s ‘ Ida-vdllr’ were merely the same word?

The Brownies and Fairies too of Wolospa, etc., one dwarf actually bearing the Welsh name Dwryn, are these not borrowed Celtic or pre-Celtic figures? But we must forbear here, confidently leaving the final working out of these questions to our learned and ingenious friend,

AIMS OF THE PRESENT EDITION. CXxiil

We have now to add in a few words the brief history of these two volumes.

é In June, 1880, the Editor and Translator proposed to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, through the ready and hearty mediation of the Dean of Christ Church, who has always shown the warmest interest in Northern studies, to edit and translate a Corpus of Old Northern Poetry. The Delegates were good enough to accept the proposal, and the work was at once begun, some part of the text having been already put in order and prepared by the Editor.

It was at first proposed to include the whole Corpus in one volume, but as the work proceeded it became evident that the subject naturally fell into two distinct parts, and the separation into two volumes—one of Eddic and one of Court-poetry—was decided upon, with the kind approval of the Delegates, who have throughout the work given continual evidence of their goodwill and indulgence, for which we beg to tender them our best thanks,

As to the several shares of the Editor and Translator in this book, what was said in the preface to the Sturlunga Prolegomena need not be repeated here, it is sufficient to say that their co-operation in the work, extending over nearly three years, has been of a still closer character. To enter into fuller detail would be impertinent, ‘nec debet prologus enormior esse quam fabula.’ Without more ado, therefore, we bid our book good speed. We have bestowed on it no small time and thought, but we know full well that it is not the quantity but the quality of the labour spent that gives it what value it has, and we are most surely aware how hopeless it is to expect any work of this kind to wholly

: fulfil its designs, aims, or completely.satisfy their ideal. Still, as we have done our best, we are content to adopt the words of the sweet singer of Germany—

‘Wenn dirs im kopf und herzen schwirrt Was willst du bessres haben:

Wer nicht mehr Jiebt und nicht mehr irrt, Der lasse sich begraben.’

4 : | I:

OxrorD, March 1883.

CXKXiV

INTRODUCTION.

FINAL READINGS. (See Introduction, p. cxix, 1. 8.)

VOLUME I.

grind

Woden’s Love Lesson— bronnom vidi. veri at bidri(?) kominn. 63. 61 alda sonom. The High One's Lesson— 4. hlydda-ek & meyja (?) mal. 17. 66...eknam... barn. 106. telja tiva rok. Spell Song— 4. Hodd-fafnis (?). Vingniss.

Guest's Wisdom— 34. many lucky men may be driven to the woods, 102. ‘a man must not nurse envy.” 190. when he is at a gild-feast. 303. eat like one starving. Song of Saws— 34. Take angelica and the wheatsprout. 46. There is often a stout hand under a tattered coat. Loddfafni’s Lesson—

1. Hoard-Fafnir [Dragon of the Treasure],
2. mindless fools.
3. I bid thee be wary and not unwary. 102, bring down every plague upon thy limbs, Woden’s Love Lesson—
4. lest any should get wind of our ill-fated love (?). 1g. I came back again thinking to win my will from the maid.

53. asking for B. if he had got at the ale or whether...

68. Ale is not so good for the sons of men as it is said to be. A verse from Guest's Wisdom.

The High One's Lesson—

17. I got the draft of inspiration, then I fell back.

50. I chaunt thee songs such as no king’s son knoweth.

70. by the roots of ... wood.

77. An eighth I know if there be any quarrel among men.

106. till the Doom of the Gods. Spell Song —
107. out of the Treasure-Dragon’s horn,

12, and on the wheel that turns under Wingni’s car [Thor’s goat-cart].

14. on Bragi’s [i.e. Woden’s] tongue.

16. on the Raven’s wings and on the Whale’s tail.

FINAL READINGS. CXXV

ungs spordi (?). The Old Wolsung Play— 16. langar leida simar (?), see |. 258. 36-40, see p. 470. 54. orn 4 ask-limom (?). sundr-bornar saman. spanna. 258. grimmar simar ganga: af grida rofi. lada.

The Old Lay of Atli—

The Old Wolsung Play—

12. who speak lying words,

17. long fetters will pain.

36-40. Call swiftly on thy brother for the inheritance and the family land [that is thy share], for it ill becomes thee to let Fafnir keep the whole of the estate,

54. If thou hear an eagle scream from the tree-branch.

rog. I know that there came to children a midwife-Norns of very different kindred.

127. comes into the host.

132. thou madest a great blast’ and didst scream with a cruel heart’

191. He[Sigfred]|suspects no treachery.

201, Manifold are men’s ills!

205. Hail Night with thy moons,

215. some on the hilt-band and mark T twice,

22g. and brand them on thine oar, or andmark [runes] £Jdand Year.

258. grim bonds come from broken oaths: most wretched is the man-sworn,

281. brides on. the bench, do not break the bonds of kindred nor bed with them,

_ 292-4. If thou art in a suit against a fool, it is better to fight than bandy words with him.

Old Lay of Attila—

5. The henchmen were drinking wine in the great hall, they had no thought of traitors.

14. gold-decked helms.

17. He says that he will give you the gold,

18. whistling spears and gilt’ swords.

21. turned his head to Hagena and spake.

33. wrapt im the wolf’s coat [in a piece of wolf hide].

45. shall bite... the wolf shall howl.
46. would, O brother, thou hadst stayed at home on thy hearthencompassing’ benches, rather than come here to visit ... . 81-87. Gundhere the lord of the Goths, 107..The Rhine shall possess the strife-begetting treasures of the heroes, the: Anses’ ransom, the heritage of the Hniflungs.
47. as dainty morsels the horrid caygion-feast,
48. uproar among the women,

CXXVi

INTRODUCTION.

110. kalla Hlid-bang Heljo {.

King Heidrek’s Riddles— 79. hvitar vadir ber of vetrom bera: €i svartar wu. s. 108. pd la drykkjar dryn-rann yfir ?

237:

170. smoked; the young maidens of Budli burnt and the amazons within sunk, etc.

Lay of Hamtheow—

21. when the women are lopping withies on a hot day.

24. when you and Sigfred awoke out of sleep.

74. There is ill help in a coward’s heart.

123. Lack of wisdom is a sad lack in a man.

Lay of Webstrong— 83. were all - the stormy clouds made. 142, over the waves; but is never seen of men itself. 216, What didst thou, Woden, whisper in Balder thy son’s ear? Lay of Grimni— 103. he is bound to carry the words of mischief down.

10g. than anyignorant man can know. Lay of Allwise— 11. I am come to fetch Woden’s pledge [the Sun goddess= Woden’s Eye]. 10g. Weald-fur. King Heidrek’s Riddles— 79. they wear white raiment.

Lay of Swipday— 34. on the straight path [lit. short cut]. 48. may neither sleet nor frost hurt thy body.

53. may the evil night-riding witches not come nigh to palsy thee.
54. given into thy breast.
55. may the greedy ravens. Loki’s Flyting—
56. blended blood in the foot-print.
57. T. Frey is, etc.
58. Be silent, Boor, Beyla’ s husband,
59. From my heart and breast.

FINAL READINGS.

Lay of Skirni— "39. pursa porp yfir. proska-mikla. nenna Niardar syni. Lay of Hoarbeard— 46. sprakkar atto ver konor, etc. 55. upp varp-ek augom Olvalda sonar. doemdak. eyjo. aldroenom. The Flyting of Iwar— sa. Niord and Skadi— Helgi and Sigrun, Helgi i— 19-21. Hrafn kvaddi hrafn—sat 4 him meidi kur.

CXXVii

28, ungom foera imon-lauk grami, 63. ... or ulf-hedni. 66. pidd-165 piggja (?), etc. 89. beit 4 brim skrido, etc. 103. vig-nistingo 4 Varins-firdi, Svarins-haugi. 127. verp...vig-gyrdir... vikingar. 179-80. Obelise. foro. 281-3. ne man af lidi lofdungs lidma bregda, renna und visa vig-bler hinig goll-bitli vanr, knegat-ek grami fagni. brautir, lata folvan id fogl-stig troda. Helgi and Swava, Helgi ii— ?

Helgi and Cara, Helgi iii—

Lay of Skirni— 39: over Giant-Thorp. 63. which of the sons of the Elves or of the Anses? 67. I am no son of the Elves nor of of the Anses. Hoarbeard’s Lay— 46. ‘Lively wenches they were.

• 94. in adventure with a lass.

105. I smote the brides of the giants [ogresses].
106. I learnt them from the ancestral spirits, _ 143. thou comest to the land of men. Iwar’s Flyting—
107. the greed of Hell [a boundless ambition], Helgi and Sigrun—
108. Somewhat of hopeful tidings I know.
109. The household loved the king.
110. bearing a fair sword to the young prince.
111. The king called out from under his wolf-coat [skin-armour].

. bear him home with them that night. 74. no better than a young crow. 90. Then Helgi asked Hiorlaf, 92. But one king after another answered. . they hoisted the wicker shield. . as if the surf were breaking against the rocks. . The sons of Granmar gathered at S. . The wickings’ ships are bulwarked for battle. 179. and... that ragged hag, Imd’s daughter. . the horses’ manes fluttered out as they passed by. for me to ride the road of the wind [air] and let my fallow steed tread the bird’s path, Helgi and Swava— 33. the curse of the shield. Helgi and Cara— 33. whemI took [or slew] Biorn in Woden’s wood. [Lund?]

CXXViii

Helgi and Sigrun— Helgi and Rimegerd— Western Wolsung Lay— 5-10 and 35-38, see p. 494. 87-8, see p. 495. Hialmar’s Death Song— The Waking — durom. 71. skelfrad meyjo hnegg i mun-tuni. verdit ! Lay of Wayland— lask. 64. Opt-es i holti heyrandi ner. 66.. Tenn hans man teygijask, etc. stod. std (?). Lay of Thrym—

INTRODUCTION.

' Balder’s Doom—

rod (?). 50. Ertattu Vegtamr, sonr Valtams. The Mill Song— Lay of Biarki— Hildibrand’s Lay— 17. mitt skaltu verja vadom liki. 34. Huna kappi fadir HOdbrandz (?). The Sibyl’s Prophecy reconstructed, see vol. ii, p, 621. The Short Sibyl Lay, see vol. ii, p, 629: The Sun Song— 53- Obelise, ‘ Munar-perna .. .’ perhaps. 99. Obelise. slito sidnir sarliga.

Helgi and Sigrun— 1, thou hast been an Hild [Eriphyle] to me. Helgi and Rimegerd— 77. and if I step ashore. Western Wolsung Lay— 48. Regin plotting treason. 53. if he were to punish him for his treachery. Hialmar’s. Death Song— 40. in the east at Sote’s reef. The Waking— 53. before the door of Death. 71. Thy daughter’s heart will never quake in her breast, 109. May this Doomer of men do no harm to thee! Wayland’s Lay— 3. at Sea-stead [an island]. 64. ‘Woods have ears,’ The line is misplaced. 69: and set down his smithy in S,

Lay of Thrym— 96. In the evening there was a bench set for the ladies, Balder’s Doom— 21. Way-wont... War-wont. 26, ready brewed, the bright cups and the ale-vats scoured, 50. No Way-wont art thou, son of War-wont. The Mill Song— 66. to the merciless king’s house. Biarki’s Lay— 7. nor to woman’s whispers, Hildibrand’s Lay— 10, counted thereon three score and twelve men. 17. wrap my body in mine own raiment. The Sun Song— 16, the doomed man’s race. 53. Probably The Soul flew up. 99. meal forthem that dwell in hell.

FINAL READINGS.

The Christian’s Wisdom— munom fylgja, bidr. IIg. ping-logih . Lay of Hymi— 31-33. attnidr Asa! ykkr viljak Hyndla’s Lay reconstructed, see vol. ii, P. 515. Lay of Righ— 61. dukr vas 4 halsi, dalkr vas 4 6xlom. 107. keikr vas f. Ynglinga-tal—testored text, see vol. ii,

CXXiX

p. 655. Lamentation of Ordrun— Hotere text, see vol. ii, . 63-64. saperet - ++ & skriptom, 657. “ee 5 eee 2 : roo. Hiymr vas at heyra hofgiallanda. The pid Song— sy. . 4 at sitja Old Gudrun Lay— Lay of Hymi— 93- labour of my speech-peg.

3. and the blood-spills (?).

31. Thou child of the Anses, I will set both you tremblers under the cauldron, etc.

44. Look where the cauldrons stand under the gable, there they are, with a pillar before them, Lay of Righ—
45. swaddled it in a cloth and called it T. (?) The Raven Song—
46. and gaping beaks, Hakonar-mal—

69. Many are the woes of men. Arinbiorn’s Lay—
70. and mansworn at Woden’s toast.

Gripi’s Lay—

187. when thou with all thine heart art trusting to thy swornfriendship with the sons of Guiki.

Long Lay of Brunkild— 24. or else he must die. 186. ever for evil to us. Ordrun’s Lament— 64. in the bower, she embroidered -.. and men on her roll how . 122. I loved the generous hero, Old Gudrun Lay— 23. South"Way [on the Rhine= Germany].

CXXX INTRODUCTION,

Vidurs.

The Atli Lay— 73. Ey man I, m. a. 1.

Gudrunar-kvida— Ditties— 75. a willow shorn of her leaves. 5. They call me Poet, Dwarf’s hip-builder.

105-106. Transpose — the game is ‘hurling,’ zof ¢ curling.’ 235. Here shall lie for ever, etc.

179. Afternoon and evening till nightfall,

To be added to the Notes.

It is worth noting that the Romance of Olger the Dane contains several late echoes of the old Helgi myth. a. The visit of the fairies by night to the new-born child, whose mother, we learn, died at his birth. 6. His childhood at an enemy’s court in danger of his life. ¢, His possession of a famous sword, Curtana. d: His rescue by a fairy from a terrible storm at sea. e, His return to earth after death or disappearance, like Ossian in the later Finn ballads. Mark that Holgi is the true old form (cp. Russ. Olga), and the one which should have been used throughout this book. Helgi is merely a piece of eleventh-century Icelandic ‘ folk-etymology,’ for really Holgi has nothing to do with helgi (holy); its true derivation is unknown. The old hero Holgi and the Carling peer Otgeir (Eadgar) are distinct persons confused by later tradition.

Helgi i. 127. We adhere to the reading given in p. cxxvii. The sense requires, your ships are ready for battle; now the technical word for bulwarking the ships is ‘viggyrdla’ (Dict. 715 a); the resemblance with vigrodi cannot be accidental; further, verpa is not idiomatic for throwing light (for which sla, lidsta are approvorp would mean bulwark. From Merl. ii. 299 we may infer that the text Gunn- laug had in hand was the same as our disordered one.

Christian’s Wisdom, p, 217. The Earth is figured as a ship, see Seneca, Nat. Quest. iii, ch. 14—‘ Que sequitur Thaletis inepta sententia est, ait enim terrarum orbem aqua sustineri, et vehi more navigii, mobilitateque ejus fluctuare tunc quum dicitur tremere.’

Long Br. Lay, 1. 103. Metre, grammar, and sense are faulty; the object to firrask is missing; we suggest svik: for fiand-gardi (an improbable word) read frend-gardi, a word we find in Sonat. 1. 26; see Excursus I to vol. ii, p, 473. Read—

He (our infant son) will not be able to escape his kinsmen’s treachery. In fact, Sigfred’s murder was followed by that of his son, cp. ll. 45, 46, O. G. L. 95. 1, 113. ‘hans’ cannot carry letter-stress; abelise the line, oe a ha AS Oe ee ae

Tere eee ae

_ EDDIC POETRY.

BOOK I.

OLDEST NORTHERN POETRY.

THis Book contains the earliest Northern poetry yet surviving, mostly if not entirely of the prw-Wicking day, and some of it belonging to a very remote period.

The Poems are mostly of an ethical character, but among them we have the earliest Norse form of several old myths and traditions.

The metre employed in the first four sections is that used for dialogue (‘mala-hattr’); in the last, the old epic metre (‘ kvido-hattr’).

SECTION 1 comprises poems of a purely ethic and instructive character, without any mixture of myths or traditions, and preserves the best picture of the Northman of the old days.

SECTION 2 contains fragmentary poems of a half-mythic, half-ethical character. "

SECTION 3 preserves some of the most precious remnants of the old spells, liturgical observances, etc., intermingled with myths and traditions.

SECTION 4 contains the oldest version of the Wolsung story—though the interest is less historical than didactic.

SECTION 5 contains the remains of the oldest epic cycles that centred in the famous names of Attila, Ermanarik, and Theodrik.

1. OLD ETHIC POEMS.

THE GUEST’S WISDOM.

THIS poem is the first of a series of compositions of an ethica/ nature, found mingled together at the beginning of R (leaves 3-7) under the general title HavamAl, rightly due to one only among them.

No restoration of order can be more than approximative. The framework, which seems to be the talk on manners and morals of an old wayfarer to his host on entering, is very slight and soon dropped. By clearing away what were obviously parts of other poems, and setting in such array as was possible its scattered limbs, we have done what we could for it. The order, or rather disorder, of the verses in R is shewn by the figures in brackets. See notes also.

Two verses we have transposed to the Christian Wise Man’s Song, Book iii. § 5.

Lines 253-54 are cited in Fostbredra Saga as a ditty, and verse 76 in Edda (Gg) also as a detached stave. Line 1 of verse 39 appears in Eyvind the Poet-spoiler’s Lay of Hakon. Saxo, Lib. v, translates verse 74. Beyond this all is silence, so that but for R we should never have known of the existence of this great collection of antique Wisdom.

It falls into tavo main divisions: the first (vv. 1-55), consisting. of general Reflexions under various heads, the Guest, the Wise, the. Fool, etc., or various subjects, Friendship, Trouble, etc.; and the latter (56-82), distinguished by the use of ‘skal’ and ‘skyli,’ being a series of Ethical Maxims touching various points of behaviour and conduct.

The pithy common sense and truth of this poem and its keen but homely observation of human nature are noticeable.

The ethics are heathen; with no touch of Christianity. Verse 65 is the outcome of slighted love and a wounded heart.

1-3. HAIL, mine host! a guest is come, where shall he sit? Hot haste is his that has to try his luck standing at the gate-post. The new-comer with his cold knecs needs a fire. A man that has travelled

$1] THE GUEST’S WISDOM. 3

to tyr oyer the hills needs meat and clothing. He that comes to a meal needs water, a towel, a welcome, good fellowship, and a hearing and kind answer if he could get it.

4. A man that travels far needs his wits about him; anything will pass at home. He that knows nought makes himself a gazing-stock when he sits among wise folk.

5. A man that has travelled far, and seen many lands, will know the ways of every kind of gen, if he have his wits about him.

6-9. The wary guest who comes to his meal keeps a watchful silence; he listens with his ears, and peers about with his eyes; thus does every wise man look about him.

The fool gapes when in company, mutters to himself, sitting stock still. But if he get a drink, then immediately his mind is all displayed.

A guest that mocks his fellow guest is pleased when he drives the other away. But he that gabbles over a meal, little knows but that his baying will bring his foes upon him. Many mgp, good friends other-

30. hadinn, false quantity (-v): 34. tekaz, R. B 2

wise, will quarrel over a meal; it will ever be a besetting sin for guest to wrangle with guest.

10-12. Let the cup go round, yet drink thy share of mead; speak fair or not at all. No one can blame thee for ill-breeding though thou go early to sleep.

A glutton, unless he has his senses about him, eats himself into lifelong misery. The fool’s belly makes him a laughing-stock in company of gentle-folk.

The flocks know their time of folding, and leave their pasture: but a fool never knows the measure of his own belly.

13-14. Blessed is he who wins a good report and the favour of men: for it is hard to win over other men’s hearts.

Blessed is he who in his life enjoys good report and good advice: for many a man has suffered from another’s evil counsel.

15-16. No man can bear better baggage on his way than wisdom; in strange places it is better than wealth. It is the wretched man’s comfort.

No one can bear a better baggage on his way than wisdom; no worse wallet can he carry on his way than ale-bibbing.

40. at sofa, R. 54. vit, vin? 60. From elsewhere ?

ee a ee

§1.] THE GUEST’S WISDOM. 5

pat es pé betra an been. 80 at verit biggja pegit, eva sine Gar swiew 2 os et 23. Mikilsti snemma kom-ek { marga stadi, [66] al vas drukkit, sumt vas dlagat. Sialdan hittir leidr { 11.

17. He feels at his ease who can ask and answer. The sons of men can keep silence of nothing that passes among men.

18. He that never is silent talks much folly. A glib tongue, unless it be bridled, will often talk a man into trouble.

1g. It is a far way to an ill friend, even though he live on one’s “aaah but to a good friend there is a short cut, even though he live ar off.

20. One’s own home is the best, though it be but a cottage. A man is a man in his own house. Though thou hast but two goats and a hut of hurdles, yet that is better than begging.

21. One’s home is the best, though it be but a cottage. A man isa man in his own house. His heart bleeds who must beg for every meal.

22. I never met with a man so open-handed and free with his food but that boon was boon to him; nor so [prodigal] as not to look for return if he had a chance.

23. To one man’s house I came much too early, to another’s much too late; either the ale was drunk out, or it was unbrewed. An unwelcome guest always misses the feast.

— y rad 77 and 81. bukot] Bugge, litit, R. 86. ei veri, R.

24. Here and there I should have been bidden had I known where to look for my next meal; or if even two hams were hanging at my good friend’s for every one I had eaten.

25. Once I was young, and travelled alone, then I went astray. I felt happy when I met a man. Man is man’s comfort.

26. Open-handed bold-hearted men live most happily, they never feel care; but a fool troubles himself about everything. The niggard pines for gifts.

27. I bestowed my raiment on two men of wood in the field; they looked gallant when they were dressed. A naked man is bashful.

28. The young fir in a court withers; neither bark nor shoots shelter her. Even so is a man whom nobody loves. Why should he live long?

29. The eagle coming to the sea sniffs and droops her head over the ocean: Even so is the man who comes into company having no comrades.

30. Hotter than fire for five days flares friendship between ill friends; but when the sixth day comes it is slaked, and all friendli-. ness turns sour.

§1.] THE GUEST’S WISDOM. 7

31. Brand kindles brand till it is burnt out; fire is lit from fire. Through speech man draws nearer to man, but becomes wilful in proud loneliness.

32. He that opens all his heart to another mixes blood with him... .

33. Only one’s own mind knows what lies in one’s heart; a man is his own confidant. No sorrow is worse to a man than to be able to enjoy nothing.

34. Fire is the goodliest thing the sons of men can have, and the sight of the sun, the enjoyment of good health, and a guileless life.

35. A man is not utterly wretched though he have ill health; some men are blessed with sons, some with kindred, some with wealth, some with good deeds. .

36. Better be quick than dead. A live man may always get a COW. oi.’

37. The halt may ride a horse; the handless may drive a herd; the deaf may fight and do well; better be blind than buried. A corpse is good for nought.

38. A son, though late born after his father’s death, is better than none. Few road-stones stand by the wayside that were not raised by ~

son for father. i

39. Chattels die; kinsmen pass away; one dies oneself: but good report never dies from the man that gained it.

40. Chattels die; kinsmen die; one dies oneself: I know one thing that never dies, a dead man’s name [good or bad].

41. No man is so good but there is a flaw in him, nor so bad as to be good for nothing.

42. Little are grains of sand; little are drops of water; little are men’s minds: for all men were not made wise alike. The average of men is but moiety.

43. He that knows nought else knows this, many are befooled by riches. One is wealthy, another needy, never blame a man for that...

44. I saw fire consume the rich man’s dwelling, and himself lying dead before his door....

45. Anything is better than to be false. He is no friend who only speaks to please.

147. bautarsteinar, R. 165. af aurom] af audrom, R. 167. vetki] vitka, R. .

ty

EE a we

§1.] THE GUEST’S WISDOM. 9

46. Dry logs and bark-flakes, wood to last for all meals and seasons, one knows how to husband them. But... [the application is missing].

47. ... One often has to pay dear for [idle] words spoken to another.

48-55. The fool thinks he shall live for ever if he keeps out of battle: but old age gives him no quarter, though the spears may.

A fool is awake all night worrying about everything; when the morning comes he is worn out, and all his troubles just as before.

A fool thinks all that smile on him his friends, not knowing, when he is with wise men, what there may be plotting against him.

A fool thinks all that smile on him his friends; but when he goes into court he shall find few advocates,

A fool thinks he knows everything, if he sits snug in his little corner. But he is at loss for words if people put him on his mettle.

A fool, when he comes among men, ’tis best he hold his peace. No one can tell that he knows nothing unless hestalks too much; for a fool is a fool still speak he ever so much,

A fool if he wins wealth or woman’s love waxes in pride, but not in wisdom, and goes on steadily in his own conceit.

The miserable man whose mind is warped laughs at everything ; knowing not what he ought to know, that he has no lack of faults.

Hi.

56. A king’s son should be silent and thoughtful, and daring in battle; cheery and blithe every one should be till his death-day come.

57. Every man of foresight should use his power with moderation; for he will find when he comes among valiant men that no man is peerless. ‘

58. Middling wise should every man be, never over-wise. Those who know many things fairly lead the happiest life.

59. Middling wise should every man be, never over-wise. No man should know his fate beforehand; so shall he live freest from care.

60. Middling wise should a man be, never too wise. For a wise man’s heart is seldom glad, if its owner be a true sage.

§.1.] THE GUEST’S WISDOM. II

61. A man should be merry at home and cheerful with his guests, genial, of good manners and ready speech, if he will be held a man of parts. A good man is in every one’s mouth. Archdunce is he who can speak nought, for that is the mark of a fool.

62-66. No man should blame another in matters of love; hues charmingly fair may move the wise and not the dullard. Never blame aman for what is all men’s weakness. Mighty love turns the sons of men from wise to fools.

The man who will win a lady’s grace should speak fair and offer gifts and praise the fair maid’s form. He that woos will win.

No man should trust a maiden’s talk, nor any woman’s word; for their hearts were wrought upon a whirling wheel, and falsehood planted in their bosoms.

Now I will make a clean breast of it, for I know quite well that men’s mind to women is false; we speak fairest when we mean falsest ; this beguiles honest souls.

67-71. A man should be a friend to his friepd, and pay back gift with gift; give back laughter for laughter, and leasing for lies,

A man should be a friend to his friend, to himself and his friend; but no man should be a friend of his foe’s friend.

Friends should gladden one another with gifts of weapons and raiments, such as may shew about one’s body. ‘ Give’ and ‘give back’ make the longest friends, if there be luck withal. Give not overmuch at a time; one often buys a friend at little outlay; I got a comrade with half a loaf and the last drops of my cup. . . Gift always looks for return.

72. The wise man, who wishes to be called well bred, must both ask and speak:—(The latter part is here wrong. Better, ‘A wise man should learn to answer all questions.’)

Tell one man [thy secret] but not two; what three know all the world knows.

73. He should rise betimes who has few workers and get about his work; many hindrances has he who sleeps his mornings away; wakeful man’s wealth is half won.

74. He should rise betimes that would win another’s chattel or life. The slumbering wolf seldom gets a joint; nor the sleeping man victory.

270. Read, at virdi vel?

§1.] THE GUEST’S WISDOM. 13

75. Go on, be not a guest ever in the same house. Welcome becomes Wearisome if he sit too long at another’s table.

76. A man should not step a foot beyond his weapons, for he can never tell where, on his path without, he may need his spear.

77. A man, ere he goes in, should look to and espy all doorways; for he can never know where foes may be sitting in another man’s house.

78. A man should take his meal betimes, before he goes to his neighie _ he will sit and snuffle, like one starving, and have no power to talk.

79. Washed and fed should a man ride to court, though he be not so well clad; let none be ashamed of his shoes or breeches, nor of his horse though it be but a sorry one.

80. A man should not boast of his wits, but rather keep watch over his mind, when a wise and silent man comes to a house. The wary man will seldom slip; for there is no better friend than great common sense.

81. A man should not make a gazing-stock of another in company ;

SONG OF SAWS.

Tuts little fragment of sayings, and sundry odds and ends, is only found in R, stuck, in three places, into the midst of the ‘ Havamal Collection.’ The last fragment (ll. 47-50) is from Edda Arn. Magn. 748. The figures in brackets mark the strophes of the Codex R.

many a man feels happy when no one asks him questions, and he may keep his corner with a dry skin.

82. A man should not stint himself of money he has made; the loathed often get what was meant for the loved. Things often go worse than was hoped,

1-3. PRAISE the day at eventide; a woman at her burying; a blade when it is tried; a maid when she is married; ice when crossed; ale when drunk.

4-5. Fell wood in a wind; row out in fair weather; court a maid in the dark. Many are the day’s eyes.

6-7. A ship for speed; a shield for shelter; a sword for a stroke; a maid for marriage.

8-10. Drink ale by the fireside; slide on the ice; buy a lean horse and a rusty blade; fatten thy horse at home and thy hound at thine house.

11-24. A creaking bow; a burning low; a gaping wolf; a coughing crow; a grunting sow; a rootless tree; a waxing wave; a boiling

7. kosta] emend. ; kossa, R,

§1.] SONG OF SAWS. 15

vaxanda vagi, vellanda katli, fliiganda fleini, fallandi baro, [86] 15 fsi ein-nzettom, ormi hring-legnom, husi half-brunno, hesti al-skidtom, cauldron; a flying shaft; a falling billow; ice one night old; a coiled snake; a bride’s bed-talk; a broken sword; a bear’s play, or a king’s child ; a sick calf; a self-willed thrail; a sibyl’s fair oracle; a fresh-felled corpse, or thy brother’s killer though thou meetest him abroad; a halfburned house, or a swift steed; a steed is useless if but one leg is broken. Let no man be so confident as to trust in any of these things.

25-28. Let no man trust an early-sown acre, nor too soon in a son :

‘weather makes the acre, and wit the son; each of them is slippery enough.

29-33. Ihe love of a woman whose heart is false, is like driving with a slip-shod, wild, two-year old, badly broken horse on slippery ice; or sailing in a rudderless ship with a gale behind her; or like setting a lame man to catch a reindeer on the thawing hill-sides.

34-39. Wherever thou drinkest ale take earth’s strength [as antidote] : for earth acts against ale; and fire against sicknesses; oak against binding of the bowels; the corn-ear against witchcraft; spur of rye against hernia ;—call on the moon against curses ;—heather against biting sicknesses; runes against charms, Earth drinks up floods.

THE LESSON OF LODDFAEFNI.

FOUND only in R, packed among the other poems of the ‘ Havamal Collection.’ The verses of this song are marked by the occurrence of the forms ‘thou’ and ‘thee,’ which do not occur in the Guest’s Wisdom, which is of a more reflective and less didactic character even where they both travel over the same ground.

This poem, the second great collection of the Traditional Ethics of the old pre-Wicking days, is nowhere quoted.

The framework or plot of it is slight, but sufficient for the purpose. A wise mentor is supposed to be addressing his youthful pupil Loddfafni, just as King Lemuel is admonished by his mother, Prov. xxxi.

The topics treated of are of the usual character in such collections, Friendship, self-control, behaviour in company, etc,

40-44. He who trusts in his wallet is glad when the night sets in. Short are ship’s berths. An autumn night is changeable. The weather often changes in five days, but oftener in a month.

45-46. Two are never on one side. The tongue works death to the head. A stout hand is often hid under a shabby cloak.

47-50. From the tread of the cat, from a woman’s beard, from fishes’ breath, and birds’ milk, from a hill’s roots, and a bear’s tail: out of all these things Gleipni (the Lithe Shackle) was fashioned.

1. I COUNSEL thee, Loddfafni; do thou take my counsels; they will profit thee if thou take them; and do thee good if thou followest them: Rise not at night, save thou be scouting, or go out to cover thy feet.

2. I counsel thee, etc.: Sleep thou not in a witch’s arms lest she palsy

§ 1.] THE LESSON OF LODDFAFNI. 17

thy limbs. She will make thee to forget the assembly and the king’s business. Thou shalt refuse thy meat, and all pastime of men, and go off sorrowful to sleep.

3. I counsel thee...: Never tempt another man’s wife to be thy mistress.

4. I counsel thee ...: If thou art minded to travel on fell or firth, take good provender with thee.

5. I counsel thee ...: Never let a bad man know thy mishaps: for of a bad man thou shalt never get good reward for thy sincerity.

6. I counsel thee .. .: Know this, if thou hast a trusty friend, go and see him often; because a road which is seldom trod gets choked with brambles and high grass.

7. I counsel thee. ..: Draw a good man to thee for thy good conversation, and learn spells of good favour whilst thou livest.

8. I counsel thee...: Be not thou the first to break off with thy friend. Sorrow will eat thy heart if thou lackest a friend to open thy heart to.

g. I counsel thee...: If thou hast a friend in whom thou trustest, and thou wishest to profit by him, mingle souls with hifi, and exchange gifts with him, and go and see him oft. If thou hast another in whom thou

Cc

( y fo trustest not, and yet thou wilt profit by him, thou shalt speak fair to him and mean false, and pay him leasing with lies. Farther, smile thou in the face of him thou trustest not, and whose faith thou suspectest, and speak against thy mind. So shall gift pay back gift.

10. I counsel thee ...: Never bandy words with mindless apes, for thou wilt never get good reward from an ill man’s mouth; but a good man will make thee strong in good favour and man’s goodwill.

11. I counsel thee ...: Do not speak three angry words with a worse man; for often the better man falls by the worse man’s sword.

12. I counsel thee ...: Be thou neither shoe-smith nor shaft-smith save for thyself: if the shoe be misshapen or the shaft be wry, thou shalt get ill thanks.

13. I counsel thee ...: Where thou encounterest a curse invoke the moon against it, and give no peace to thy enemies.

14. I counsel thee...: Never rejoice at evil; and be of good conversation.

§1.] THE LESSON OF LODDFAFNI. 19

15. I counsel thee ...: Never look up in battle: the sons of men vert be turned into swine [panic-stricken]; beware of men spell-binding thee.

16. I counsel thee...: If thou wilt converse with a good woman, and take thy pleasure with her, thou shalt promise fair and hold to it. No one will turn away from good.

17. 1 counsel thee...: I bid thee be wary, and yet not over wary; be wary with ale and with another’s wife; and thirdly, lest thieves play a trick with thee.

18. I counsel thee . ..: Mock thou not nor laugh at a guest or a wayfarer, for often no one in the house knows who they may be that come.

19. I counsel thee ...: Never laugh at a hoary sage: old men’s sayings are often good; discreet words often come out of a shrivelled skin, hanging among the hides, and dangling among the pelts, and swinging among the bondsmen.

20. I counsel thee...: Never growl at a guest, nor drive him from thy gate. Be kind to the poor. There is might in the door

FRAGMENT OF A LOST LAY.

From Edda (Gg). It is apparently the beginning to a song like the Guest’s Wisdom. Nothing more has been preserved.

§2. MYTHICAL ENSAMPLES.

WODEN’S LOVE-LESSONS.

ONLY found in R, mixed up with the other poems of the ‘ Havamal Collection :’ in which its position is marked by the bracketed figures. It is nowhere cited. It seems to be a portion of a greater poem of Woden’s adventures, using them as ensamples.

The first fragment is one of Woden’s love adventures, It is found nowhere else, nor is it even alluded to. Its moral is not to trust to woman.

The second is the popular story of how Woden came by the Holy Mead, beguiling Suptung and his daughter Gundfled. Snorri tells the tale at large in his Edda (Sk), and Eyvind the Poet-spoiler knew the same myth. Verse 14 is a reflection of the poet’s own.

The High One’s Lesson tells another tale, how Woden hangs nine days on the gallows-tree, and so learns the spells by which he brings the magic drink out of Hell. The author of Volospa and Egil tell how Woden pawned one of his eyes to Giant Mimi in the Brook of the Weirdsisters for the precious potion, whence it comes that he is one-eyed,

We have transposed ll. 9-10 from after 1. 14.

beam, which shall swing for all men’s coming. Set a ring (a handle) thereon, or it shall bring down curses on thine every limb.

21. O Loddfafnir! long shalt thou need these songs; may they be good to thee if thou follow them, profitable if thou receive them, — gainful if thou trust them!

STAND thou forth that questionest. He that answers must sit.

§ 2.] WODEN’S LOVE-LESSONS. 21

1. MANY a good maid, if thou knowest her well, turns out false to aman. I proved that when I tried to lead the wise maiden astray, the gentle lady mocked me throughout, I got no favour from her.

2-7. I proved that when I sat in the rushes, watching for my love; I thought there was no happiness for a man but in her sweet body; the gentle maid was as my own flesh and blood, yet she was not mine. 1 found the sun-white Billing’s daughter sleeping in her bed. ‘ Come then, Wodin, in the gloaming, if thou wouldest talk with me. It would be ’ my ruin if any but us two knew of our unlawful love.’ Away I went, I was distraught with love; I was sure I should win her whole heart and love. But when I came again, all the armed household was awake with burning lights and flaming torches; such a woeful walk had I. And nigh morning-tide, when I came again, and all the household were asleep, then I found the fair lady’s hound tied to her bed.

9. potti mer, R. 19. Read una? 26. var mer, R.

it

8—r1o. I sought the old Giant,—now I am back. It was not by holding my tongue that I won my suit there; many a word I spoke to my profit in Suptung’s hall. Gundfled gave me to drink of the precious mead in a golden chair; I gave her back evil reward for her true heart, and for her steadfast love. I let the point of Rati (the auger) make its way gnawing through the rock. Giant causeways were over and under me. Thus I risked my head.

11-12. The fraud-bought mead has profited me well. The wise man lacks nought now that Odreari [Inspiration] is come up to the skirts of the city of men. 1 doubt whether I-should have come back out of Giant-town had I not had the help of Gundfled, that fair lady in whose arms I lay.

13. Next day the Frost-giant came... asking for Balework, if he were back among the gods, whether Suptung had sacrificed him.

14. Wodin, I ween, had taken the oath on the ring; how shall his

• R adds—Hava rads at fregna, Hava hollo i, reminiscence from the High One’s Lesson.

§3.] HAVA-MAL. 23

9. SBR OLD: RIFUAL. HAVA-MAL—THE HIGH ONE’S LESSON.

THIS poem of a mystical and Jiturgic character has come down only in R, where it stands at the end of the ‘ Havamal Collection.’

It is nowhere cited; but Ari the historian must have known it as a separate song, since he paraphrases verses 11, 15, 17, 19 in Ynglinga (chs. 2, 6, 7). But along with thesé-he also clearly gives paraphrases of verses which are no longer found in our vellum, an evident proof, if any were needed, that our copy is but fragmentary. In one verse (19) Ari introduces a later western development of this old pre-Wicking poem, making Woden give Biannak to his followers, and bless them when he sends them into battle, instead of the ‘ undir randir ek gel’ of the poem.

The poet of the Lesson of Fiolswind (Book ii) must also have known it. A verse of the old song has even dropped in there.

The first verse (ll. 1-8) separated from the rest in the vellum, has been restored to its place. Line 15 is maimed, though the sense is not doubtful. Lines 36 sqq. contain sacrificial terms, belonging to the good faith be trusted any more! He betrayed Suptung out of his mead, and made Gundfled weep. ;

15. The heron of forgetfulness hovers over banquets; he steals away the minds of men. I was fettered with that bird’s feathers in Gundfled’s mansion.

16-17. I was drunk, I was over-drunk at the wise Fialar’s [the Dwarf]. The only comfort is that a man’s wits (wandering through drink) come home again. The ale of the sons of men is not so good

• it is said to be, for the more a man drinks the less he is master of is wits.

24 THE OLD RITUAL. [px. 1.

oldest Teutonic ritual, the key to which is now lost. Verse 26 is no part of the old poem, but a bit of byplay of the minstrel who sung it.

The loss of part of the song, and our ignorance of its framework, makes the scene and personages a little uncertain; but the speaker is probably Woden in the character of a Counsellor or Wise-man, sitting in the Wiseman’s seat opposite the King, the High One, and delivering his counsel and old instances (forn doemi) according to the duties of his office. Such a Counsellor as this appears as a necessary court official in all early Teutonic history (the referendarius and the redesmen of our old English Kings and perhaps even the medieval fool may be his descendants). His right old name is Norse ‘ bulr,’ A.S. ‘ Byle’ He is to the Teutonic king as Phoenix was to Achilleus, and always belongs to an earlier generation, his advice, like Nestor’s, being drawn both from his own experience and from ‘the tradition of the elders.’

1. IT is time to speak from the Wiseman’s chair. At Weird’s Brook, I saw and was silent; I saw and took thought; I listened to men’s counsels. I heard them consider the mysteries; nor did they leave words of forethought unspoken in the High One’s Hall. In the Hall of the High One thus I heard spoken :—

Woden (the High One) speaks:

2-5. I mind me hanging on the gallows-tree nine whole nights, wounded with the spear, offered to Woden, myself to myself; on the tree, whose roots no man knoweth. They gave me no loaf; they held no horn to me. I peered down, I caught the mysteries up with g. Emend., vindga meidi, R; but vinga is attested by Haleygijatal. 15. horni gi, R. 19. Thus Edda (Gg); Bolpors, R.

Pe

§ 3.] HAVA-MAL. 25

=

a cry, then I fell back [descended]. I learnt nine songs of might from Balethorn’s son, Bestla’s father, and I got the draught of the precious mead, blent with Odreari [Inspiration]. Then I became fruitful and wise, and waxed great and flourished; word followed fast on word with me, and work followed fast on work with me.

6. Thou shalt discover mysteries and staves to read, most great staves, most steadfast staves, which the mighty Wiseman painted and the High Gods made and the Counsel of the Powers graved; Woden among Anses, Dain among Elves, Dwale among Dwarves, Alwise among Giants. I myself graved some.

7. Knowest thou how to grave? knowest thou how to read? knowest thou how to paint? knowest thou how to inquire? knowest thou how to play? knowest thou how to sacrifice? knowest thou how to send? knowest thou how to offer?

8. Better is never graved than graved out of measure, etc... .

Thus Thund [the Great Sage] graved ere the world began.

31. rogna] false quantity (—w). 40-47. Thus emendated, R reads—

—

Now I ascended returning again.

9. I know songs, such as no King’s daughter, nor son of man knows. Help the first is called, it will help thee with all suits and sorrows, and all kinds of sickness. .

ro. A second one I know, which the children of men need who wish for healing simples... .

11. A third one I know: If I am in sore need of bonds for my enemies, I can deaden my enemies’ swords, their swords will bite no more than staves.

12. A fourth I know: If my foemen lay bonds on my limbs, I can chant myself free; the fetter flies off my feet, and the shackles off my hands.

13. A fifth I know: If I see a shaft shot with deadly aim into the ranks; fly it never so fast I can stay it, if my eyes light on it.

14. A sixth I know: If a man wounds me by spells of a... tree; the curse shall bite him that lays the spells upon me rather than me.

15. A seventh I know: If I see a hall aflame over the sleepers, be

§ 3.] HAVA-MAL. 27

the flame ever so broad I can stay it. Such a charm know I how to chant.

16, An eighth I know (most profitable to men): Whereso feud arises among princes, I can heal it forthwith.

17. A ninth I know: If I am in need to save my ship afloat, I still the wind on the waves, and lull the whole sea.

18, The tenth I know: If I see witches [hedge-riders] dancing in the air, I prevail so that they go astray and cannot find their own skins and their own haunts.

19. The eleventh I know: If I am to lead my old friends to battle, I chant under the shields, so that they go in their might hale to the battle, hale from the battle, hale wherever they go.

20. The twelfth I know: If I see a halter-corpse swinging high on the tree, I can so grave and paint in signs, that the man shall come down and talk with me.

21. The thirteenth I know: If I sprinkle water on a young lord, he shall never fall though he go to battle, he will be proof against the swords.

22. The fourteenth I know: If I am to tell over the tale of the gods before the host, I know them all well, both Anses and Elves; few dunces know so much as that.

23. The fifteenth I know: How Great Sage (Thiodrearer) the dwarf chanted before Delling’s doors; he chanted strength into the Anses, and victory to the Elves, wisdom to the God of Counsel.

24. The sixteenth I know: If I would win a goodly lady’s whole heart and love; I can change the white-armed lady’s heart, and turn all her love to me.

25. The seventeenth I know: That the young maid shall never forsake me....

26. The eighteenth I know, which I never will tell, neither to maid nor matron,—It is safest to keep one’s own secret. This is the end of my Lay—save only to her who lies in my arms, or to my sister.

27. Now the Lay of the High One has been chanted in the Hall of the High One, most profitable to children of men, most unprofitable to the sons of the Giants. Hail to him that spoke it! Hail to him that knows it! Joy to him that learnt it! Hail to them that have listened to it!

109. False alliteration. 113. vilja] vil, R. 129. Wrong quantity (-w).

ee oe

' " ee |) eo

‘ oo

§3.] FRAGMENTS OF A SPELL SONG. 29

AppENDAGE which we do not know where to insert.

FRAGMENTS OF A SPELL SONG.

PRESERVED as an insertion in the Great Play of the Wolsungs, § 5 (between vv. 63-64); also inserted into the Wolsung paraphrase, though in a very indifferent text (V). It tells of the origin of the Runes, and seems to contain another fragment relating to the signs of the Heavens, and the mysterious characters which they trace on the black vault of a moonless night (a fancy which the Jewish cabalists shared). The final words are unmistakably the end of a long poem, but of the framework of the poem and the name of the speaker we get notrace. The metre is mixed, half-didactic, half-epic.

Appendage. It will be seen whenever thou askest ... of the heavenly mysteries, which the High Gods made, and the Great Counsellor painted, he shall do best to hold his peace.

THE Sage read them, graved them, thought them out from the lees that had leaked out of Cleardripper’s skull and out of Hodd-rofni’s horn,

He (Woden?) stood on the cliff, holding a sword, and a helm on his head. Then spake Mim’s Head... the first wise word, and told the staves true,

They were engraven on the shield that stands before the shining God, on Allwaker’s ear, and Allswift’s hoof, and on the wheel that turns under Rungni’s car, on Sleipni’s teeth, and on the sledge-bands,

Io, godi] thus sing. ? 12, ryngness, R,

Ov Dv BN Mv Mv Mv Ds an

§4. OLD HEROIC TEACHING. THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS.

THIS poem is now found only in R, leaves 28-32, down to 1. 283 (the great lacuna). The end is supplied by paper copies derived, we believe, from lost leaves of a sister MS. AM 748. The authenticity of these verses, which has been. attacked, may be proved by the occurrence of the dra€ Xeydpevoy, aud-stafir, which we find quoted by Gunnlaug in his Merlinus Spa; but even were this testimony lacking we should have no reason to suspect their genuine character.

on the bear’s paw, on Brage’s tongue, on the Wolf’s claw, and the Eagle’s beak, on the bloody wings, and the Bridge’s end; on the midwife’s palm, on the healing foot-print, on men’s amber and gold, on talismans, on wine and wort, and the Sibyl’s seat; on Gungni’s point, and Grani’s breast; on the Norn’s nail, and the owl’s beak.—All that were engraven were scraped off, and mixed with holy mead, and sent away on every side. The Anses have some, the Elves have some, some the wise Wanes have; mortal men have some.—T here are Beech-runes, Help-runes, Love-runes, and great Power-runes, for whomsoever will, to have for charms, pure and genuine, till the world falls in ruin. Profit by them if thou canst.

Ig. i] add. V. Volo sessi] V; vilis essi, R. 29. avir-,R. 29-30. (-v).

§ 4.] THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS. 31

The Wolsung paraphrast knew this poem and used it in his rough way, even inserting verses though in a very corrupt state. Snorri quotes v. 30 in Edda (Gg), and paraphrases v. 32. King Swerri cites ll. 83-84, and Gunnlaug, as has been noticed, may have had it in its present form. We have not been able to trace any other notices of it. The Fiolswind poet has also known this lay.

It is unfortunately in a fragmentary condition, with sad gaps yawning here and there across the even path of the story, but the plot and sense are nowhere doubtful. Some of these gaps have been filled up (by the collector?) by fragments, broken pieces of a later grander and more beautiful work on the same subject. Those new pieces bear the stamp of the Poet of the Helgi Trilogy. We have carefully gathered them up and placed them with the rest of his work in Book iii.

Lines between verses 63-64, belonging to some old lost poem of a magical character, and a few lines probably relating to mythical astronomy, have been removed to § 3, under the name of ‘ Fragments of a Spell Song’ (see above).

This old Wolsung Play was evidently written down just at a time when the older poetry was dying out of men’s memories, supplanted by a newer poetic school: hence, though we have 300 lines remaining, there must have perished at least 100 lines, principally in the early or more mythological part.

The poem has hitherto been printed, divided into 3 lays (Sigurdar kvida I1, Fafnis-mal, and Sigrdrifu-mAl), but this is not only unwarranted by the vellum, where the poem runs straight on without any break or big initial letter, but is plainly contrary to its whole plan and spirit.

It is an encyclopedic work, containing the earliest known version of the story of the Wolsungs, in a dramatic form, which is a natural development of those earlier Didactic Dialogues between Teacher and Pupil, of which we have already treated. Indeed the poet is continually falling back into the traditional form, through the mouths of his characters blending his story with old mystic, augurial, half-perished tradition, Thus we find Andwari, Hnikar (the wise god Woden in disguise), Fafni the giant snake with the prescience of death upon him, and Sigrdrifa the mysterious Athene-like Walkyrie, each in turn teaching their pupils.

The red thread which runs through the whole, and links the deeds of the divine Anses to the exploits of the Hniflung heroes, is the Curse that follows the Hoard.

Rodmar had three sons, Fafni the Serpent, Regin the Dwarf-Smith, and Otter. The Anses had the ill luck to slay Otter. The injured father compels them to pay him as weregi/d enough gold to cover his son’s skin (hung up by the tail so that the nose touches the ground, as in the Welsh Laws). Loki borrows Ran’s net, catches the dwarf Andwari in a pike’s shape, and gets a great treasure from him. But one hair is still bare, though the heaped gold hides the rest. Loki therefore robs the poor dwarf of his only remaining ring, with which he had hoped to retrieve his losses in time, for it was a magic ring which bred gold. Enraged at this merciless treatment Andwari laid a curse upon all who should own the ring till it had been eight men’s bane. Loki now pays Rodmar, and the curse begins to work. Fafni kills his father and takes the hoard off to Glistenheath, cheating his weaker brother of his share of the heritage. The Giant-Snake, as we gather from vv. 17 sqq. of our lay, could only be slain by one who was ‘unborn,’ and Sigfred, Regin’s foster-sén, the Macduff of our

• «—(«, tale, is employed forthwith to kill Fafni. The talking pies warn Sigfred that Regin, now master of the cursed hoard, means to murder him, and so defraud him of the reward he had promised him. Sigfred thereupon kills Regin, and rides home with the gold. Sigfred’s meeting with Sigrdrifa is told. But the part telling of his fate and the end of the Curse has been lost.

Very noteworthy is the subserviency of the real actual historical element which is paramount in the mythical tale in its later forms. Sigfred’s life here is rather that of Heracles than of Achilleus. In the later tales Brynhild replaces Sigrdrifa, and the human passion with which her story is filled gives the whole story a fresh colour.

The characters in the drama as we have it are—

Act 1. Andwari and Loki. Act. 5. Hnikar (Woden) and Sig-

5 5» 2. Loki and Rodmar. fred. 5, 3+ Rodmar and his daughter ,, 6. Fafni and Sigfred. Lyngheid. » 7+ Regin and Sigfred. » 4 Lyngheid and Regin her ,, 8. The three talking Pies and brother. Sigfred. Act 9. Sigrdrifa and Sigfred.

I. Lok! and ANDWARI.—Loki. WHAT is that fish that swims in the stream, and does not know how to keep out of danger? Ransom thou thy head from death, give up thy hoard.— Andwari. My name is Wideawake, Oin was my father, many a fall have I swum up, An evil Norn doomed me long ago to swim in water.

Loki. Tell me, Andwari, if thou wilt keep thy life on earth, what penance awaits the sons of men who revile one another ?—(Andwari. Heavy is their penance: They must wade through Whelm-ford. — words against another strike deep roots of retribution.

§ 4.] THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS. 33

Il. Loki and RoDMAR.—Lof4i. Here is the gold for thee, verily thou hast a great ransom for my head. Luck shall not fall to thy son; it shall be the death of you both.—Rodm. Thou gavest gifts indeed, and no gifts of love, thou gavest not with whole heart. It should cost you your lives if I knew this disaster was to come.—Lofi. There is a worse still in store, as I know, a deadly feud among thy offspring. They who shall be under this curse are still unborn.—Rodm, I shall enjoy the red gold as long as I live; I fear nought thy threats. Get ye home.

III. RoDMAR and LYNGHEID.— Rodmar (deadly wounded, to bis daughters). Lyngheid and Lofnheid! Behold, I am dying! Manifold are the woes of men.—Lyngheid. How can sisters revenge their father’s death on their own brother !

inheritance and redress, for it ill beseems thee, at sword’s point to call on Fafni for treasures.

V. HNIKAR [Woden] and SIGFRED.—Tell me, Nikar, as thou knowest the omens of gods and men, what is the best omen in battle whilst the swords are sweeping.

Nikar. Many good omens there are, if men but knew them, while the swords are sweeping. It is a good omen for a warrior to be followed by the dark raven. It is another, if thou be without thy house ready for thy journey and thou see two proud warriors standing in the path. It is a third, if thou hear a wolf howling underneath the branches of an ash, then if thou see them going before thee, thou wilt gain victory over thy antagonists. It is a most fatal omen if thou stumble on thy feet when marching to battle, for Evil Fairies stand on either side of thee, wishing to see thee wounded. Combed and washed shall every man be, and take his morning meal: for no one knows where he may lodge at night. III it is to outrun one’s luck.

VI. FAFNI and SIGFRED.—Fafni (mortally wounded). Boy, QO boy! whose son art thou, and what man’s child art thou that thou hast reddened thy keen brand on Fafni? the sword has struck me to the heart.

65. sveinnivm, R,

§ 4.] THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS. 35

—Sigfred (the unborn, wants to bide his name). My name is Noble deer; I came into the world a motherless child; I had no father like the sons of men. I stand alone.—Fa/fni. Tell me if thou hadst no father like the sons of men, by what marvel wert thou born? (4ere something is lost)... —Sigfred. My race is unknown to thee, I think, and myself also.— Fafni. Who egged thee on? why wert thou persuaded to seek my life? Thou keen-eyed boy, thou hadst a bitter father. To the unborn... —Sigfred. My heart egged me on; my hands helped me, and this my sharp sword. An old man is seldom valiant, if he was cowardly in his youth.—Fafni. Behold! if thou grow up for the face of thy friends, one would see thee fight in wrath; but now thou art in bonds and captive. A prisoner’s heart is ever throbbing.—Sigfred. Why blamest thou me, because I am far from my father’s care? I am no bondman, though I be captive; thou hast felt that my hands were free.—Fafni. Thou talkest none but words of hate, though I tell thee but the truth. The

72. 2. added for sake of the metre. 76. R adds, Sigurér ek heiti, Sigmundr hét minn fadir, | es hefk pik vapnom vegit. Sigfred is ‘unborn,’ and conceals his name. So these lines must be an interpolation. 80. Thus partly emend.; aborno sciér asceip, R, some saying to the effect that only an unborn could harm Fafni. 83. hroerask] Sverr. S.; hréedaz, R, 84. ef hann er ringing gold, and the fire-red hoard; these rings shall be thy death !— Sigfred. Every one longs to enjoy his riches to his last day; because every one must needs sometime go hence to Hell.—Fafni. The doom of the Norns [death] will overtake thee off the (zearest) headlands... Thou shalt drown in the water if thou rowest in a gale. The doomed man’s death lies everywhere.

Wisboms.—Sigfred. Tell me, Fafni, since they call thee wise and of great knowledge—Who are the Norns, the midwives of mankind, who chose the child from the mother’s womb ?—Fafni. The Norns are of most sundry races, they have no common kin; some are of Anse-race, some of Elve-race, some Dwale’s (Dwarf’s) daughters.

Sigfred. Tell me, Fafni, etc.: What is that holm called, where Swart and the Anses shall mingle blood together ?—Fafni. Unshapen is the name of the reef, where all the gods shall hold a lance play. Bilrost [Rainbow] shall break as they pass over the bridge, and swim their steeds through the waters.

_ Fafni. I carried the helm of terror over the sons of men, when I lay on the Hoard. I thought myself stronger than all beside, finding none

97. vill] svill,R. 101, Thus, not ‘neisom,’ R, 11g. bru] Bugge; brot, R. 120. marir, R, .

tates pote agi cack

§ 4.] THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS, 37

VII.

my peer.—Sigfred. The helm of terror is of little help in deadly fray. A man soon finds, when he comes among others, that no one is peerless. —Fafni. I spouted venom when | lay on the great hoards of my father. .. . —Sigfred. Thou fierce Dragon, thou madest a great blast, and a hard heart. All the greater the hate will be among the sons of men, if they have that helm.—Fa/fni. I counsel thee, Sigfred, do thou take my counsel; ride straight home. The ringing gold, and the fire-red hoard ; these rings shall be thy death!—Sig/red. I have heard thy counsel, yet I shall ride towards the gold that lies on the heath. But thou, Fafni, lie there in thy death throes till Hell take thee !—Fafni. (Beware) Regin betrayed me; so he will thee; he will be the death of us both. Now, Fafni, I shall yield my life. Thy strength hath prevailed. (Fafni dies, Regin comes in.)

VII. REGIN and SIGFRED.—Regin. Hail, Sigfred! thou hast won the

123. hugdame, R. 124. sva] add. Bugge. 125. Bugge; einugi, R.
124. reidir, R. 131. frani] rammi, R. 13% gatzt, R. 135. Sigurdr, R (here and elsewhere). 139. mer] per, R, victory, and slain Fafni. Of all men who tread the earth, verily thou art the bravest born.—Sigfred. It cannot be known, when the Sons of the Blessed Gods meet all together, who is the bravest born. There is many a bold man who has never reddened his sword in another’s breast.—Regin. Thou art glad, Sigfred, and rejoicest in thy victory, now thou wipest Gram [thy sword] in the grass. Thou hast given my brother his death-wound; though I myself took share therein.— Sig fred. It was thou who madest me to ride hither over the holy hills; the fierce Dragon would still be enjoying his life and hoard, hadst thou not challenged my courage.—Regin. Sit down, Sigfred, and roast Fafni’s heart at the fire whilst I go to sleep. I will take a morsel of the heart after this draught of blood.—Sigfred. Thou stoodest aloof, when I reddened my sharp sword on Fafni. I matched my strength against the Dragon’s might, whilst thou wast hiding in the heath.—Regin. Long indeed might the Dragon, that old Giant, have lain on the heath, if thou hadst not the help of the sword that I made thee, this sharp brand of mine.—Sigfred. Courage is better than a good brand, when the wroth

4 4

§4.] | THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS. 39

meet in fray, for I have seen a brave man win the day with a blunt sword, The brave fares better than the coward in the game of war; the cheery man fares better than the whiner, whatever betide him.

VIII. The THREE TALKING PIES and SIGFRED (Sigfred is sitting beside the sleeping Regin, roasting the dead Fafni’s heart at the fire. The birds speak from the tree above him).

First Pie. Let him send the hoary Counsellor quick to Hell, shorter “ the head, then all the gold shall be his, all the hoard that Fafni ay on.

Second Pie. He is right foolish if he spare any longer his dangerous foe. Lo! where Regin lies, who has plotted his death. He [Sigfred] cannot guard against it.

Third Pie. Let him shorten the rime-cold Giant by the head, and enter into his hoard; then he will be sole owner of all the riches Fafni had.

Sigfred (who, having tasted the heart, understands the birds’ talk), The Fates shall not fall so ill, that Regin shall sentence me to death; for both the brothers shall quickly go hence to Hell.

IX. SIGRDRIFA and SIGFRED.—Sigrd. (awakening from the enchanted

196. verda] thus R =verda-a. * 200. vas, R.

sleep). Long have I slept, long have I slumbered; the spells bind men long. Woden wrought this, that I could not break from the rods of sleep. Hail Day! hail Day’s sons! Hail Night and her sister [Earth]! Look with gracious eyes upon us, and bless us both as we sit here. Hail Anses! hail Goddesses! and hail mother Earth! Give to us, two goodly lovers, counsels and wisdom; and healing hands as long as we live!

THE CHARMS OF SIGRDRIFA, which she spake to Sigfred— Runes of Victory thou must know, if thou wilt have victory; and thou shalt grave them on thy sword-hilt ; some on the rims, some on the carnagebrands, and twice name Ty.

Runes of Love thou must know, if thou wilt not have another’s wife in whom thou trustest betray thy trust. Cut them on the horn, and on the back of the hand, and mark Need on thy nail.

[Runes of Ale thou must know . .|° Cross thy cup against ill; and throw leak into the liquor, [then I know that thy mead will never be poisoned. |

Runes of Help thou must know, if thou wilt help to deliver a woman of a child. Grave them on the palm of the hand, and clasp it on the wrist, and cry upon the Fairies for help.

ce ee wick

AOS ir ae tlety aly the. eae Sota Ne

§ 4.] THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS. 41

Runes of Sea shalt thou grave, if thou wilt save the sailsteeds afloat. Grave them on the bow and on the rudder-blade, and mark Eld [Rune] on thy oar. Be the wave ever so steep, or the billows never so black, thou shalt come safe from the deep.

Runes of Branches thou must know, if thou wilt be a leech, and learn to search a wound. Thou shalt grave them on the bark, and on the stock of a tree whose branches lean eastwards.

Runes of Speech thou must know, if thou wilt that no one may harm thee in a feud. Wind them; weave them; put them all together at the husting when the assembly is going into full court.

Runes of Mind thou shalt know if thou wilt be wiser than. all ther men.

Sigrdrifa. Now, my hero, as thou hast the choice, choose either silence or speech. All evils are meted out [predestined].—Sig/red. I will not flinch, yea, though I know I am a doomed man, I was not born a coward ; I will cherish all thy loving counsels as long as [ live.

SIGRDRIFA’S COUNSELS,—Sigrdrifa. I counsel thee frrst/y: Avoid thou

229. merkja] emend.; leggja, R. 234. badgpi] barri, Vols. S. 248. feigan, R.

42 OLD HEROIC TEACHING. [Bx. 1.

offence towards thy kinsmen ; even if they harm thee, revenge it not. It will do thee good when thou art dead.

I counsel thee secondly: Swear no oath, except it be true. Perjury strikes fearful roots. Most wretched is the truce-breaker.

I counsel thee thirdly: Do not plead in court against an ignorant man: for a fool may drop worse words than he knows of. Thou hast no choice: if thou holdest thy peace thou art either held a coward, or his words are held to be true.—The home verdict is a parlous matter, unless it be good;—slay him the next day, and thus requite people for their lie. .

I counsel thee fourthly: If a witch full of evil be in thy way, better go on than sleep there, though the night overtake thee. The sons of men need an eye of foresight, wherever the fray rages, for balewise women (evil Fairies) often stand near the way, blunting swords and mind.

I counsel thee ffthly: Though thou seest fair brides on the bench, let them not hinder thy sleep. Do not allure women to kisses.

258. limar] simar, R (cp. 1. 16). 276. reidir, R. 281. Read, sifjar silfrs?

§ 4.] THE OLD PLAY OF THE WOLSUNGS. 43

I counsel thee szxth/y: Though there be high words bandied at the banquet, never quarrel with drunken men: wine is a great wit-stealer. Revellings and ale have often brought men grief of heart, death to some, to some curses. Manifold are the evils of men.

I counsel thee seventhly: If thou hast to fight out a quarrel with dauntless men, better to fight than be burnt in the house.

I counsel thee eighthly: Beware of evil, and avoid staves of falsehood. Betray no maid nor man’s wife, nor lead them to shame.

I counsel thee ninth/y: Care thou for corses, wherever on earth thou findest them, be they sick-dead, or sea-dead, or weapon-dead. Make a bath for the departed man; wash his hands and head; comb him and dry him, ere he be put in coffin; and bid him sleep sweetly.

I counsel thee ¢enth/y: Trust thou never the oath of an outlaw’s son, if thou hast slain his brother, or felled his father. There is a wolf

283. fari] here falls in the great lacuna in R, the rest of the poem from paper vasom, Cdd, 309. hvarstu, Cdd.

44 THE OLDEST EPICS. TBR.

/

§ 5. TIPE OLDEST Erics.

ATLA KVIDA IN GRGENLENZKA; or, THE OLD LAY OF ATLI.

Tus Lay is only found in R, leaves 39-41, and, save where it is paraphrased (along with the later Lay, for which it served as a model) by the Wolsung paraphrast, nowhere else noticed.

It is in a fragmentary condition, and in some parts unintelligible. Great gaps and hopelessly mangled are especially ll. 53, 72-78, 110-116, 127-1343; but enough remains to tell the story clearly enough.

One verse (between Il. 53 and 54) of Hamtheow’s Lay, which had been inserted in it, we have removed to its proper place.

In R it is inscribed ‘Atla kvida in Greenlenzka’ (the Greenlandish Atli Lay), for this reason, we imagine, that our poem was the model to the later Greenland Lay (Atla-mal) ; the collector, we presume, gathered _ both poems from the same source; in no other sense can it be Greenlandish, for it must be anterior to the discovery of Greenland by a century at least.

In our Lay the scene is cast between the Hniflungs (this and not Niflungs is the old Norse form preserved in alliteration), namely, Gunnar and Hogni, and the Huns (Atli and his men). The Hniflungs are betrayed and perish, the curse of the Hoard now resting on them.

It is one of the most ancient Teutonic epics, and markedly original in vocabulary; an originality which has led to its maltreatment before it reached the transcriber, who often fails to understand the drift of the verses, though he honestly gives the words.

in a young son, though he be comforted with gold. Feuds and hates are not sleepy, nor malice either. The warrior, who is to be the chief among men, must needs have the choicest wits and weapons.

I counsel thee e/eventhly: Beware of evil in all thy ways. For thee I can forecast no long life. Mighty feuds have arisen [which will cause thy death].

§5.] ATLA-KVIDA. 45

The metre (which only occurs in one or two other poems of later date) is a fine dactylic mode of the old Teutonic heroic metre. It has in several instances suffered badly, lines being shortened and marred, and words cut out or altered.

Historically, it is interesting as preserving so purely the character and fall of the great King Attila, whose wonderful life and death are here linked to the story of the cursed Hoard as told in the old Wolsung Play, giving a final act to that drama.

There seems to be some memory of the Lombard tragedy of Rosamund and Alfwin in the story of Gudrun as told here,

In the olden days Atli sent one of his trusty warriors, whose name was Knefred, to Gunnar. He came to the courts of Giuki, to the hall of Gunnar, with its hearth-compassing benches, and to the sweet ale. The henchmen were drinking wine in the great Hall, the strangers kept silence, for they feared the wrath of the Hniflungs; till Knefred the Southern messenger cried with an evil voice from where he sat on the high bench :—

‘ Atli hath sent me hither on the bridled steed through the wild Mirkwood to ride his errand, to bid you, Gunnar, to come to the hearth- compassing benches... to visit Atli. Ye shall choose you gifts there, shields and smooth-shaven shafts, gold-red helms and Hunnish maidens, silver-gilt saddle-cloths and crimson shirts, ... darts and bridled chargers, He says that he will give you the wide field of Gnite-heath, and store of sounding spears and gilt shields, huge treasure, and the dwellings of Danp, and the famous forest men call Mirkwood.’

6. Hniflunga] conj.; Hina, R; or better would be, enn d. ugdo . . . vreidi ~ Hniflunga, 12. drin-greypan] arin-greypom, R; it can only be an epithet to the hall. 14. meyjar] conj.; mengi, R. 1g. val-rgda, R. 18. Read skigidom for stofnom ?

Then Gunnar turned his head, and spake to Hogni: ‘ What counsel dost thou give us respecting all this that we hear, thou young hero? I know no gold on Gnite-heath, but that we have as much again. We have seven treasuries full of swords, every one of them with a golden hilt. My steed is the best, my brand the keenest, my bow the best strung, my mail-coat is of gold, my -helm and shield are the whitest, they came from the hall of Kiar. My harness alone is better than that of all the Huns.’

Then spake Hogni...: ‘ What thinkest thou the lady [our sister] meant, when she sent us a ring wrapt in the coat of the beast of the heath? I think that she gave us a warning thereby. For I have found wolf’s hair twisted about the red ring. Our way will be wolfish [murderous] if we ride on this errand.’

It was neither his friends nor his neighbours, nor his wise men, nor his counsellors, nor his mighty men that made Gunnar eager to go.

Up spake Gunnar, as beseems a king, gallantly in his mead-hall, out of the pride of his heart—‘ Rise up, Fiornir [my cupbearer], let the gold-ringed cups pass round the benches from hand to hand. The wolf, that old grey-coated beast, shall rule over the heritage (Hoard) of the Hniflungs, if Gunnar perish. The bears with black hide shall bite with fierce teeth at the “ gold” if Gunnar come back no more.’

fiallar, R.

ee)

§5.] ATLA-KVIDA. 47

The blameless warriors wept as they led the warlike kings out of the courts of the Hniflungs [to bid them farewell]. Then spake Hogni’s young heir: ‘ Fare hale and hearty wherever your hearts list to go.’

The gallant kings made their bridled steeds gallop apace over the mountains and through the wild Mirkwood. All Hunmark shook where the strong heroes passed, they rode their chargers through the... green mantled fields.

They reach Atli’s Palace... darts, where Atli was drinking wine in the great hall. The warders were sitting without, to guard it from Gunnar, if he and his brother should come thither to waken the [fierce] battle with the sounding spears.

Their sister met her two brothers at once as they came into the hall, ..+ ‘Thou art betrayed, Gunnar (she said), how wilt thou, O King, withstand the treacherous wiles of the Huns? Get thee out of the hall as fast as thou mayst. Thou hadst better not have come hither, brother, to the . . . hearth-compassing benches to visit Atli’s hall. Thou shouldst be sitting in the saddle through the sunlit day, making the Fates to weep over the death-pale corses, and making the Hunnish amazons to know the harrow, and setting Atli himself in the pit of serpents—but now that serpent-pit is dug for thee.’

Then answered Gunnar, the Hniflung hero: ‘ It is too late, sister, to call up the Hniflungs ; it is too far to get their help, my blameless champions, across the “ craggy’’ mountains of the Rhine.’

They took Gunnar, the friend of the Burgundians, and set him in fetters and bound him fast. Hogni cut down seven men with his keen sword, and cast the eighth into the hot fire. So should a brave man defend himself against his foes!...

They asked the brave King of the Goths if he would buy his life with gold. [Then said Gunnar] ‘ Hogni’s bleeding heart must be laid in my hand, carved with the keen-cutting knife out of the breast of the good knight.’

They carved the heart of Hialli (the thrall) from out his breast, and laid it bleeding on a charger, and bore it to Gunnar.

Then spake Gunnar, king of men: ‘ Here I have the heart of Hialli the coward, unlike to the heart of Hogni the brave. It quakes greatly as it lies on the charger, but it quaked twice as much when it lay in his breast.’

• fem

$5] ATLA-KVIDA. 49

Hogni laughed when they cut out the quick heart of that crested hero, he had little thought of whimpering. They laid it bleeding on the charger, and bore it before Gunnar,

Then spake Gunnar, the Hniflungs’ hero: ‘ Here I have the heart of Hogni the brave, unlike to the heart of Hialli the coward; it quakes very little as it lies on the charger; but it quaked far less when it lay in his breast. May thou ever be as far from joy [luck], Atli, as thou art from the hope of the treasures! for the whole Hoard of the Hniflungs is hidden with me alone now that Hogni is dead. While we two were alive I always had a doubt, I have none now that I alone am alive. The Rhine, the stream the gods know well, shall possess the strife-begetting Treasure of the heroes, the heritage of the Hniflungs. The great rings shall gleam in the rolling waters rather than they shall shine on the hands of the sons of the Huns.’

• • • % * % * &

Quoth Aili, * Harness the wheel-wain, the prisoner lies in bonds.’

| Some corrupt lines, which cannot be translated, come in here; the sense of them is that Gudrun tries to dissuade her husband from putting her brother to death and so breaking the oath he had saworn to him, saying :—|

100. augom] corrupt; read audno? angan? 2, unt=und? 103. Niflunga, R, = “

E

‘May it be with thee, Atli, according to the oaths, which thou didst oftentimes swear to Gunnar, calling aged witnesses to hear thy vow, by the southing sun, and the Great God’s rock, and by the lintels of thy bedchamber, and by the ring of Wuldor. .

The band of warriors put the king alive into the pit that was crawling _ with serpents. But Gunnar, alone there, in his wrath smote the harp with his hands; the strings rang out. So should a valiant hero keep his gold from his foes,

Atli made his steed gallop back from the murder toward his own land. There was a din in the courtyard, crowded with horses, the clang of men’s weapons, when they came back from the heath.

Then Gudrun came out to meet Atli with a gilt chalice... .‘ Take, lord, in thine hall from Gudrun... .’

Heavy with wine Atli’s ale-beakers rang when the Huns gathered in the hall, when the long-bearded heroes assembled together.

The bright-faced [Gudrun], that fierce lady, hastened to bear the

118. arofa] emend., from arofi, see Dict. 45a; arof, R. 120. hulqvi, R. .
119. -drifr] hringdrifi, R. 132. Read reida? 138. False alliteration.

§5.] ATLA-KVIDA. BI

wine to the lords, and in her cruelty to share out the dainty morsels to the pale-faced princes, but to Atli she spake a word of mockery. ‘Thou hast eaten the fresh-bleeding hearts of thy sons, mixed with honey, thou giver of swords. Now thou shalt digest the gory flesh of man, thou stern king, having eaten of it as a dainty morsel, and sent it as a mess to thy friends. Never more shalt thou, merry with ale, call thy two sons Erp and Eitil to thy knees from thy high seat. Thou shalt never see in the midst of thy court the young princes shafting their spears, clipping their horses’ manes, or spurring their steeds.’ Then arose a hum on the benches, a horrible murmur from the men, uproar among them that were in fine raiment, the children of the Huns weeping aloud—save Gudrun only, she never wept for her bear-hearted brothers or her sweet sons, the young innocents that she bore to Atli. The swan-white queen strewed gold abroad, and bribed the household with red rings,—making doom to wax high,—and poured out the bright hoards; she grudged not the treasures. ... Merry was Atli, he had drunk himself mad, weapon he had none, he was not wary against Gudrun. It had been often a sweeter play between them when they embraced each other before the princes. With the point of the sword she gave the bed blood to drink with her murderous hand, and loosed the hounds. She cast the hot brand

144. or] emend.; i, R. 146. dlreifr] emend.; aylreifa, R. 155. seri, R.
145. Olverr] ovaR R, see Atlamal. E 2

HAMDIS-MAL, or THE OLD LAY OF HAMTHEOW.

ONLY found in R (where it is the last poem in the book), but known to and used by the Wolsung paraphrast (who also draws from a later parallel prose story). In the story of the Wolsungs, inserted in Codex Regius of Edda (Sk), there is also a paraphrase derived from our poem and other sources. It is hence that Il. 68-71 can be restored.

It is imperfect in our vellum, where it is treated in a peculiar way; a part has been taken down double; so to say. The first part, or what survives of it, is tacked (prefixed) to a wholly different poem of later age (from which its metre and subject sufficiently mark it off), viz. the Death Song of Gudrun (see Book v). Then there follows another copy, separately headed ‘ Hamdismal,’ but parts of the two bits overlap and run parallel, text B being a side-piece or appendage to text A. Thus—

Text B G

Text A

so that we get for some verses a double text. Our text (Il. 1-61) isa compound text from the best readings of the two, B and A, as far as the parallelism goes, In the Notes both A and B are printed side by side in parallel columns, so the reader may see and judge for himself. In the Introduction to the Death Song of Gudrun will be found an account of that lay.

The metre appears to have been cut down in many places, but still many of the older Jong /ines (for they are the true ones) of the original are preserved.

against the door of the hall.... This is the weregild she got for her brothers. To the flame she gave all that were in the hall, that had come from Mirkwood from the murder of Gunnar. The old timbers fell down; the treasure-houses smoked; the king’s houses and the amazons within them sunk life-lorn into the burning fire.

It is told to the end. Never has other lady gone forth in mail to avenge her brothers as she [Gudrun] did. The fair queen pice the death of three great kings before she died!

168. Read Myrkvidi. 170. Read beoeir? 171. skamar] emend. ; stamar, i.e. scamar, R, ;

§ 5.] HAMDIS-MAL. 53.

The poem is in many places mangled beyond mending, with great gaps in one or two places at least. Lines 50 sqq., 65 sqq., 102-105, 130-131 are especially in a most broken and sad state. No thorough restoration is here to be attempted, though one may guess at the meaning of what is lost, misplaced, or maimed. As to ll. 126-129, see the Notes.

Transpositions we have made in IJ. 49-50 from between 79-80; Il. 72-75 from between 64-65; ll. 126-129 from between 131-132; Il. 84-87 are transposed hither from the Atli Lay, and Il. 81 and 82 have been interchanged.

The story of which this Lay contains the oldest version (one strikingly identical with that which Jordanes gives after Cassiodorus) was very popular in the North. And such expressions as ‘ Hamtheow’s sark’ for a coat-of-mail, and ‘the killer of the sons of Ionakr’ for a stone, are found even in very early poets. ‘The famous final scene was painted on Bragi’s shield, and it was known with some important variations to the Beowulf poet, who mentions the ‘necklace’ which Ham- theow owned.

• The first part of the poem, the Murder of Swanhild, is lost, so that what is left falls into two parts, the Egging of Gudrun and the Fight in Ermanarik’s Hall. The plot deals with a feud between Huns (Hamtheow) and Goths (Ermanarik). Gudrun, wedded to her third husband Ionakr the Hun, marries Swanhild, her daughter by her first husband Sigfred, to Ermanarik king of the Goths, who, listening to the treacherous advice of Bikki, has her trodden under the feet of horses in the gate of his palace. Gudrun eggs on her sons to avenge their sister, and they set out, having been armed by their mother with wonderful magic mail-coats, upon which no sword will bite. Their bastard brother offers them his help, but they despise him and slay him. They attack Ermanarik and cut off his arms and legs, but he lives to have them beaten down and stoned to death, since steel could not hurt them.

cr

I HEARD the bitterest bickering, hard words spoken forth of deep sorrow, when the stern-hearted Gudrun egged on her sons with fierce words.

‘Why sit ye, why sleep ye your lives away? How can ye bear to speak words of cheer? Ye had a sister named Swanhild, whom Eormunrek trod down on the highway under the hoofs of his steeds, white adds R.—A duplicate of the verse in the text. 8, Iorm-, R, here and elsewhere.

and black, the grey well-broken horses of the Goths. Ye are not such as Gunnar, nor have ye hearts like Hogni’s. Ye would have the will to avenge her if ye had the spirit of my brothers or the stern heart of the Hun-kings, yet ye are the sad remains of these great kings, ye only are alive, last strands of my race. I am left alone like an aspen in the wood; reft of my kinsmen like the fir of its branches; stripped of joy like a willow of her leaves when the branch-scather [the lopper with his bill] comes on a warm day.’

Then spake Hamtheow, the great of heart: ‘ Thou wouldst not have praised Hogni’s deeds so highly when he and his fellows waked Sigfred from his sleep; thou wast sleeping in the bed, while the slayers laughed. Thy blue and white coverlets were dyed red with the gore of thy husband, bathed in his blood. When Sigfred sunk in death thou didst sit over him dead; thou hadst no mind for joy. Gunnar wrought that for thee. Thou thoughtest to pain Atli by the murder of Erp and by the slaying of Eitil; but thou hurtedst thyself.... One should so use the biting sword to slay another as not to hurt himself. The revenge of thy gladsome brothers was sharp and sore to thee when thou didst

— =

§ 5.] HAMDIS-MAL. . 55

murder thine own sons therefore.... All united we might revenge our sister upon Eormunrek.’

Then spake Sorli, he had a wise mind: ‘I will not bandy words with my mother ; each of you still thinks a word is lacking. What dost thou ask for, Gudrun, which thou canst not speak for tears? Bring out the war-crests of the Hun-kings, now that thou hast egged us on to the court of swords !’

Gudrun turned to her storehouse, laughing; chose out of the chests the kings’ crested helms and the long mail-coats and brought them to her sons. They shook their cloaks, they fastened their swords, and the god-born heroes clad themselves in goodly woven raiment, . . . and angrily sprung on their horses.

Then quoth Sorli, etc.... (as they took leave of their mother): ‘Weep for thy daughter, and for thy sweet sons too, thy young children whom thou hast led into thy feud. Thou shalt have to bewail both of us, Gudrun, that sit here doomed on our horses; we shall die far away.’

Then quoth Hamtheow, etc.: ‘ We shall never come back to our mother [when we have slain the King of Goths]. Thou shalt drink the arval for us all together, for Swanhild and thy sons.’

38. allir] om. R (see V). 44. herkumbl] emendy; hnossir,R. = § 3. Bruidi] emend.; broedr, R. 54. leida, R. 59. Read, at geirniord hniginn 4 G.?

meekiss eggjar ‘at mun flagdi,

They went out of the court foaming with rage; the young men rode on their Hun horses over the wet mountains to revenge the murder [of their sister]. They met on the street their [base brother]. ‘ How shall this little .. . help us ?’

He answered their half-brother, saying that he would help his kinsmen as foot does hand, or flesh-fast hand does foot... .

They say: ‘ How may foot help hand, or flesh-fast hand help foot?’...

Erp the merry, as he sat on his horse’s back, spake once: ‘ It is ill work to show cowards the way.’...

They said that the bastard was over-bold, they drew the [scathing] iron from the sheath... with the edge of the sword they minished their strength by a third when they felled their young brother to the ground.

The road lay before them, they found . .. a wolf-tree [gallows] windcold on the west of the hall, and their sister’s son wounded on the tree. The ‘corse’ kept swinging, ... it was not pleasant to stay there. They posed from Lay of Atli.

§ 5.] HAMDIS-MAL. 57

saw the Goths’ hall and the lofty watch-seats, and Bikki’s warriors standing within the high stronghold, the hall of the Southerners set. round with seat-benches, with clasped targets and white shields. There was a clatter inside, the men were merry with ale, and the Goths paid no heed to their coming till the proud warrior blew his horn. The watchmen told Eormunrek that helmed men were in sight. ‘Take counsel thereto, for they that come be mighty; it was the sister of the strong that ye have trodden [under your horse-hoofs].’

Then Eormunrek laughed, and stroked his beard, leant over to his leman, maddened with wine. He shook his brown hair; he looked on his white shield; he rolled the gold cup round in his hand. ‘ Happy should I think myself if I could see Hamtheow and Sorli in my hall! I would bind them with bow-strings, and fasten the god-born [heroes| to the gallows.’ . . . [What has fallen out recounts the coming of the two brothers and their furious onslaught, no iron will bite on their mail, and they slay on the right hand and on the left. Eormunrek, weltering in his blood, his hands and feet cut off, shouts out in his rage|: ‘Shall not ten hundred Goths bind and beat down two lone men in the high hall!’

tveir menn einir tio hundrodom Gotna, R.

There was an uproar in the hall; the ale-cups were shivered ; men lay in the blood that had flowed from the breasts of the Goths. Then spake Hamtheow, the stout of heart: ‘ Thou didst wish, Eormunrek, for the coming of us two brethren to thy stronghold. Now, Eormunrek, look at thy feet, look at thine hands cast into the burning fire.’

Then the god-sprung king roared mightily, as a bear roars, out of his harness: ‘Stone ye these fellows, these sons of Ionakr, that spears will not bite nor sword-edge nor arrows !’

Then spake Hamtheow, stout of heart: ‘It was ill done of thee, brother, to unloose the bag. Sharp counsels often come out of a shrivelled belly.’

Quoth Sorli: ‘Thou hast heart enough, Hamtheow, would thou hadst wit to boot. It is a sad lack in a man to lack of wisdom.’

Quoth Hamtheow ; ‘The head would be off by now, if Erp had lived, our bold brother whom we slew on the way... the fairies egged us on, ... set us to murder him.’

Quoth Sori: ‘1 never thought that we two should come to do as the wolves do, and fly at one another, like the Fates’ greedy greyhounds that are bred in the wilderness. ...

§ 5-] LAY OF THEODRICK THE GOTH. 59

LAY OF THEODRICK THE GOTH.

A FRAGMENT on an ancient Runic stone (early tenth century ?), known as the ‘ Rokstone,’ in East Gothland, Sweden; see Icelandic Reader, pp. 446 and 452. This stone stands in the same relation to the lost Lay as does the Ruthwell Cross to the Lay of the Rood. The identity we assume from the correspondence of the name Theodrick and the Maringa with the Mzringaburg where, according to the old English Deer’s Lay, Theodrick ruled. The stone has no word-division, and never doubles a letter. ‘A’ is a nasal a.

|S Sl Piaurikz hin purmubi

Stiliz flutna strandu Hraipmaraz. Sitiz nu garuz a guta sinum Skialdi ub fatlabz skati Maringa.

‘We have fought a good fight, we stand on slaughtered Goths, on the sword-sated slain, like eagles on their perch. We have gotten a good report though we die to-day or to-morrow. No man can live over the evening when the word of the Fates has gone forth.’

Sorli fell at the gable of the hall, and Hamtheow sank down at the back of the house. ;

THEODRICK the daring of mood, the lord of seamen, ruled Redmere’s Strand. He, the Prince of the Mzrings, sitteth now in full war-gear on his steed, shield-girt.

BOOK II.

EARLIEST WESTERN POEMS.

THE subjects of the poems in this Book are all of mythical origin. They belong to what we take, from considerations treated in the Introduction, to be the beginning of a Western School of Poetry.

The metre employed is chiefly that of the old ethical poems.

SECTION 1 comprises those encyclopedic poems which are evidently intended for teaching purposes (mythological primers, as it were), each poem having its own proper framework.

SECTION 2 contains what is left of the work of a single great poet, a Norse Aristophanes of the Western Islands, treating mythology in his own humourous way.

SECTION 3. Fragments of lost mythical poems of almost the same date and subject as others in this Book.

§ 1. DIDACTIC MYTHOLOGY.

VAFPRUDNIS-MAL. THE LESSONS OF GIANT WAFTHRUDNI.

FounD in R and partly (the end, from I. 73) in A (A.M. 748). It was upon this poem and the Sibyl’s prophecy that Snorri based his eschatology in Edda, where the paraphraser makes use of the following verses, 10-13, 17, 19-38, 41-42, 47-48, 51-543 cited are vv. 17, 31-32, 36, 38, 42. It treats mainly of cosmogony and cosmography, and represents the popular view rather than the speculative and spiritual ideas of wise men.

The first scene is in Walhall between Woden and his wife. The next scenes lie in Giantland in the wise Giant’s Hall, where Woden presents himself to make trial of wits, answering the giant’s questions for a time, till it is his turn,.when he asks the giant many hard things, and at last one which he cannot answer, thus (as had been agreed on between them) forfeiting his head.

The text is in a fair condition. One verse, an interpolation, has been put down in a foot-note. Of another verse we have a duplicate version, one in Grimnism4l, Its true place is here, hence our verse 20.

First SCENE.—Lidskialf in Walhall. Woden and Frigg.

1. Woden. Counsel me, Frigg, now I am longing to visit Wafthrudni (Webstrong). I have a great mind to cap staves of old with that wise Giant.—Frigg. I counsel thee, Father of hosts, to stay at home in the seat of the gods. For I never knew of a giant so wise as Wafthrudni.— Woden. Far have I travelled, much have I se@n, many beings have I

known; but now I will find out how Wafthrudni’s household stands.— Frigg. Farewell in thy going! farewell in thy coming back! farewell on thy way! may thy wits stand thee in good stead, when thou, Sire of men, hast to cap words with the Giant.

SECOND SCENE.—Giantland, in the Giant’s hall, Woden standing before Wafthrudni.

5. Woden. I greet thee now, Wafthrudni! I am come here to thy hall to see thee. First, I must know if thou art a wise and learned Giant.—Wafthr. Who is this man that speaks to me in my hall? Thou shalt never leave this hall alive except thou prove the wiser of us two. — Woden. Ganger is my name; I am just come off the road thirsty to thy hall. I have yearned on my long journey for thy bidding and hospitality, O Giant.—Wafthr. Why dost thou stand and speak from the floor? take thy seat in the hall! Now shall it be proved who is the

15. or, add. R, Then Woden went to cap wisdom with the Giant. He came to the Giant’s hall, and in he went.—An epic verse most surely interpolated.
16. Read, verpomk vordi 4?

$1] VAFPRUDNIS-MAL. 63

wiser, the Guest or the old Sage.—Woden. When a poor man comes to a rich man, Jet him speak something to the point or else hold his peace. Great babbling turns to ill, when one encounters a cold-hearted man.

10. Wafthr. Tell me, Ganger, as thou wilt try thy luck from the floor, What is that horse called, that draws every day over mankind ?— Woden. Sheenmane is its name, the horse that draws the bright day over mankind. The Red-Goths hold him the best of horses; ever glimmers that steed’s mane.

12. Wafthr. Tell me, Ganger, etc., What is that steed called that draws the night from east over the blessed Powers ?—Woden. Rimemane is the horse called, which, etc. Every morning the foam drops from his mouth; hence comes the dew in the valleys.

14. Wafthr. Tell me, G., etc., What is the river called which parts the land between the sons of Giants and the Gods ?—Woden. Ifing its name is, etc. Open it runs for ever; no ice comes on it.

16. Wafthr. Tell me, G., etc., What is that plain called where Swart and the sweet gods shall gather for battle ?—Woden. Wigrid that plain is

43. Reidgotom, R, 50. offok, R, called, etc. A hundred miles it is every way. This is their pitched battle-field.

18. Wafthr. Thou art wise indeed, O guest. Come up to my bench, and let us sit and talk together! Guest, let us wager our heads on our wisdom.

Now comes the real trial, and Woden’s turn to question.

19. Woden. Tell me, firstly, O Wafthrudni, if thy wisdom can tell it thee, and thou knowest it, Whence came the Earth or the Heavens above in the beginning, thou wise Giant ?—Wafthr. Out of Ymis’ flesh the earth was made, and the mountains from his bones; the heavens from the skull of that rime-cold giant; but from his blood the sea; and from his brows the blithe gods made the earth for the sons of men; but from his brains were all the threatening clouds made.

21. Woden. Secondly, tell me, etc., Whence the Moon is come that rides above men, and the Sun likewise ?—Wafthr. Mundilfori (Fireauger) was the father of the Moon and also of the Sun; they must wheel round the heavens every day to tell men the seasons.

81-84. Added from an insertion in Grimnismal.

§1.] VAFPRUDNIS-MAL. 65

23. Woden. Thirdly, tell, etc., Whence the Day came that passes over mankind, and the Night with her new moons ?—Waftdr. Delling is the name of the father of Day; but Night was Norwi’s daughter. The blessed gods shaped the full moons (ny) and new moons (nid) to tell men the seasons.

25. Woden. Fourthly, tell me, etc., Whence came the Winter and the warm Summer in the beginning, among the wise Powers ?—Wafthr. Wind-chill is the name of the father of Winter, but Sweet-mood of Summer....

27. Woden, Fifthly, tell me, etc., Which of the Giants or the sons of Ymi was the eldest in the beginning ?—Wafthr. Winters unnumbered ere earth was fashioned was Berwhelm born; Thrudwhelm was his father, and Orwhelm his grandsire.

29. Woden. Sixthly, tell me, etc., Whence did Orwhelm come among Giant-kind in the beginning, thou wise Giant ?—Wafthr. From the Bay of Sleet poisonous drops beat, which grew into a giant. Thence is the whole of our race sprung ; hence it is altogether grisly.

103. vetr... varmt Sumar, R. 109. Iavtna] emend,; asa, R. 114. Avrgelmir, here and below, R. )

F

31. Woden, Seventhly, tell me, etc., How did this sturdy giant beget sons, since he knew not giantess ?—Wafthr. A maid-child and man-child grew together from under his arm-pit. Foot begat with foot a sixheaded son to that wise giant.

33. Woden. Eighthly, tell me, etc., What earliest thou knowest, and what thou rememberest furthest back, thou wise Giant ?)—Wafthr. Winters unnumbered ere Earth was fashioned Berwhelm was born. The first thing I know of is when this wise giant was laid in the Ark.

35. Weden. Ninthly, tell me, etc., Whence comes the Wind, which blows over waves, but is never seen?—Wafthr. Carrion-gulper is he called, a giant in eagle’s shape, that sits at the end of heaven; from under his wings the wind that blows over all men is said to come.

37. Woden. Tenthly, tell me, etc., Whence Niord from Noatun came among the Anses; he rules over countless temples and high places; yet he was not Anse-born?—Wafthr. In Wane-world the wise Powers

125. baldni] A; alldni, R. 130. sex-, A; serh-, R, 131. svinnan} frddan, R. 149. or Noatuinom]emend.; med Asa sonom, R and A,

§1.] VAFPRUDNIS-MAL. 64

made him, and gave him to the Gods (Anses) for a hostage. In the doom of the Age he shall come back again home to the wise Wanes.

39. Woden. Tell me, eleventh, etc... . (mangled text)—Wafthr. All the Chosen Host in Woden’s Court meet together in sword-play every day; they choose the slain, and ride from the battle, and then sit down at peace together.

41. Woden. Twelfthly, tell me, Why thou, Wafthrudni, knowest all the fate of the Gods? Thou speakest most truly of the mysteries of the Giants and all the Gods, thou all-wise Giant.—Wafthr. Of the mysteries of the Giants and all the Gods I can speak truly, for I have been in every world, I have been in nine worlds, (even) underneath the Hell of Clouds, Hither die the men from Hell (a second death).

43. Woden. Far have I travelled, tried untold things, explored untold worlds, etc.: What men shall be left alive when the Monster-winter has passed away ?—Wafthr. Lif [Sample] and Lifthrasi shall be hidden away in Hoardmimi’s holt. They shall feed on the dews of morning and from thence a new generation shall spring.

45. Woden. Far have I, etc.: Whence shall come the Sun on their burnished heaven, when the Wolf shall have destroyed this one ?— Wafthr. The Sun shall bear a daughter ere the Wolf destroy her; that maid shall ride, when the powers have passed away, along the paths of her mother.

47. Woden. Far have I, etc.: Who are the maids, the wise-minded, who ride above the mariners ?—Wafthr. Three great rivers fall over the croft of the Maids of Mogthrasi (the Fates), Only their images are in the world, whilst they themselves dwell with the Giants.

49. Woden. Far have I, etc.: Which of the Anses shall own the dominion of the Gods, when Swart’s Fire is quenched ?)—Wafthr. Widar and Wali shall inhabit the city of the Gods, when Swart’s fire is quenched; Mood and Main shall have Miollni [the Hammer] after Wingni’s (Thor’s) last battle.

51. Woden. Far have I, “etc.: What shall be the death of Woden, when the powers fall in ruin ?—Wafthr. The Wolf shall swallow the

205. Thus A; vinna at vigproti, R. 211. reka, R,

§1.] GRIMNIS-MAL. 69

GRIMNIS-MAL, or THE SAYINGS OF THE HOODED ONE.

FOUND complete in two sister MSS., R and A. Copious quotations and paraphrases of the same text are found in Snorri’s Edda (GG), VV. 5, 6, 10-15, 19-30, 32, and Appendix, vv. 1-7, 9. One verse (25) lost in our vellums is preserved there also in paraphrase. The text of Snorri had the same interpolations as ours.

The subject is celestial geography. The framework is the visit of Woden in disguise to a certain wise but cruel king, Geirrod, who, not knowing his rank, seizes his guest and binds him between the fires on the hearth to torture him, denying him food or drink. On the third day, Agnar, the king’s son, takes pity on him and offers him a beaker of mead, whereupon he speaks, and after giving his treasure of old lore blesses the young man, and by the death of his father, which he brings about, endows him with the kingdom. —

The text is doubly interpolated, first owt of a similar poem in which Woden is speaking without disguise, which of course is quite incompatible with the plan of our story (the fragments of this poem we have eliminated and subjoined in an Appendix); the second are memorial verses of a different metre.

One verse between 1 and 2 is put in a foot-note, being epic and in different metre.

Sire of Men; Widar shall revenge him, he shall rend the cold jaws of the Beast and slay him.

53. Woden. Far have 1, etc.: What did Woden whisper in his son’s ear before he mounted the Pyre?—-Wafthr. No being knows what thou long ago didst whisper in thy son’s ear. With a doomed mouth have I set forth my old lore, and the world’s doom, now that I have striven in speech with Woden. Thou shalt be ever the wisest of all!

THE SCENE, Grimni (Woden in disguise) in the hall of King Geirrod, staked between two fires, without food or drink. -Agnar, the King’s son, hands the prisoner a goblet of wine. Then Woden breaks forth into song,—

1. Grimni.—Hor thou art, flame, and far too gfeat! Fall back from me, flame! My fur is singed, though I hold it aloft. My fur burns on me. (Here Agnar reaches him the cup.)

2. Woden. Hail to thee, Agnar, the God of men bids thee hail. Never for one draught shalt thou get better guerdon. (Here Woden breaks forth in song):—

3-16. A holy land I see nigh Anses and Elves. Ever in Thrudham Thor shall dwell till the fall of the Powers. Yeavdales they are called where Wuldor has built him a hall; E/fsam the Gods gave to Frey in olden time for a tooth-fee. There is the third mansion, which the blessed Gods thatched with silver: it is called Wale-shelf, the Anse (Thor) bought it in the olden time. Sunkbench the fourth is called, where the cold waves ever murmur above; there Woden and the Seeress drink every day joyfully out of golden cups. Gladbam the fifth is called, where the goldbright wide Walhball towers ; there the Sage (Woden) chooses every day weapon-dead men. That hall is very easy to know for all that come to

I sat here eight nights between the fires, while nobody offered me morsel, save Agnar alone, who alone of Geirrod’s sons shall rule the land of the Goths,

§ 1] GRIMNIS-MAL. nt visit Woden; the house is raftered with shafts, the hall is thatched with shields, the benches are strewn with mail-coats. That hall is, etc. A wolf hangs before the west door, an eagle hovers above it. Thrymbam the sixth is called, where Thiazi dwelt, that foul giant; but Skathi, the fair bride of the Gods, now dwells in her father’s old home. Broad-d/ink is the seventh, there Balder has made him a hall; the land in which the fewest curses lie [the most blessed of lands]. Heavenhold is the eighth, where they say Heimdall rules over the fane; here the glad watchman of the Gods drinks the goodly mead in the peaceful hall. Fo/king is the ninth, where Freyja orders the seats in the hall: she chooses half the slain every day, but Woden the other half. G/istener is the tenth, its pillars are of gold and it is thatched with silver: here Forseti (Judge) lives every day, settling all causes. Noaton is the eleventh; there Niord has built him a hall; the guileless helper of men rules a high-timbered altar-place, )

Wood, the land of Widar, is overgrown with sprouts and high grass; here the son [shall mount on] horseback to avenge his father.

Lie ee one verse).

18-19. Wal-gate is the gate’s name: it stands on the holy plain before the holy doors. It is an ancient gate, but few know how it is locked. Five hundred and forty doors there are to Wal-hall I ween. Eight hundred of the Chosen shall go out of each door at one time, when they go forth to fight the Beast.

20-21. Heathrun is the name of the goat that stands on the hall of the Father of Hosts and bites at the boughs of Learad (a tree). She shall fill a vat with pure mead which shall never fail. Oakthorn is the name of the hart that stands on the hall of the Father of Hosts and bites at the boughs of Learad: his horns drip into the Boiling-cauldron [Tartarus], whence come all the rivers on earth. .

22-23. Kormth and Wormth and the two Charlocks Thor must

68. glaumai] AS gnats, R.

§1.] -GRIMNIS-MAL. 13

wade every day when he goes to court at the ash Ygg’s-steed, for the Anse-bridge burns all aflame, and the holy waters bellow. Gleed and Gylli, Gler and Skidbrim, Silvertop and Sini, Hostage and Fallow-hoof, Goldcrest and Lightfoot, these steeds the Anses ride every day when they go to court at the ash Ygg’s-steed.

24-29. Three roots stretch three ways under the ash Ygg’s-steed. Hell dwells under one, the Frost Giants under the second, mortal men under the third. [An eagle sits in the branches of the ash Ygg’s-steed, called ...., and between his eyes sits a hawk, that is called Weatherpale.| Rat-tusk is the name of the squirrel that runs up and down the ash Ygg’s-steed: he carries the Eagle’s words down and tells them to the Serpent below. There are four bow-necked Harts that gnaw the {high shoots]: Dain and Dwalin, Duneyr and Durathror. More serpents lie under the ash Ygg’s-steed than any foolish ape can know: Goin and Moin the sons of Grave-wolf, Greyback and Gravedigger, O. and S., I know will for ever be boring at the roots of the tree. The ash Ygg’s-steed suffers greater hardships than men know of. The hart bites its root, and its side is rotting, the Serpent crops it below.

30-32. The speedy Earlywaker and Allswift draw the Sun hence,

100. Here one verse is dropped, of which Edda (Snorri) gives a paraphrase. 1o1. Rata-toskr heitir tkorni, R (supernumerary). 10g, Ofundar ord, Edda. 113,

34. Olr ertu, Geirrcedr, hefr bi of-drukkit, and under their shoulders the blissful powers, the Anses, hid the cooling of iron. Cooler is the name of the shield that stands before that shining Goddess the Sun. Rocks and sea would burn up, I know, if .it fell down. Skulk is the name of the wolf that follows the fair-faced Goddess to .... But the other is called Hastener; he is the son of the Great Beast: he has to run before the bright bride of Heaven....

33. He has the favour of Wuldor and all the Gods who first touches the fire; for all worlds stand open before the Anses’ sons when the kettles are lifted. ...

34-36. The end of the song. Here Woden reveals himself.

Woden. Drunk art thou, Geirrod, too deep hast thou drunken, ’Tis grievous for thee to have forfeited my fellowship, that of all the Chosen Host, and Woden’s friendship. Often I told thee, but little thou mindedst it. Thy friends are betraying thee; I see my friend’s [thy] sword all dripping with blood. Now Woden shall soon have thy sword-worn corse, I know that thy life is at an end, the Sisters frown on thee. Now thou seest Woden. Come nigh me if thou canst! (Geirrod rises from the fire, and stumbles over his sword, which runs him through.)

136. The quantity wrong,

Pe ee ee ee eee

§1.] GRIMNIS-MAL. 75

APPENDIX.

FRAGMENTS of a long poem imbedded in Grimnis-mal, telling the names of Woden, his exploits, etc. They are distinguished from the rest by the incompatibility with the plot of that Lay, which requires Woden to conceal himself till the end of the story.

BREATH-SOOTY cooks Sea-sooty [the hog] in Fire-sooty [the kettle], the best of bacon, but few know what the Host of the Chosen live on.

2-3. The glorious war-wont Father of Hosts feeds Greedy and Fierce [his two Wolves], but the weapon-blessed Woden lives on wine alone. Thought and Mind [his two Ravens] fly every day over the mighty earth: I fear for Thought lest he never come back, but I am still more fearful about Mind....

4-5. Five hundred and forty rooms in all there are in Clear-twinkling. I ween of all roofed halls my son’s (Thor’s) is the biggest.

I will have Hrist and Mist (Walkyries) to give me the horn. S. and S. etc.; these serve ale to the Chosen Host.

6. The sons of Iwald in the days of old set 2. ge building Skidblade, the best of ships, for the bright Frey, the blessed son of Niord.

[Some reference to Eager’s banquet.]

8-12. I was called Grim [mask]. I was called Traveller, Hostleader, Helm-bearer, etc. I never had one name since I walked among the natives. They called me Hooded at Geirrad’s, Ialk at Asmund’s, Keeler when I drew the sledges, Thro at assemblies, Widur in battle, .... Wish and Sough, Even-high and Sway-shield,.... Wizard and Hoar-beard among the Gods. Swithur and Swithri I was called at Sunk-Mimis [the giant of the abyss], when I fooled the . old giant, when single-handed I became the slayer of that famous son of Midwolf. Now I am called Woden, before that I was called Awe, and before that I was called Sage, Waker, etc. Gaut and _ lalk among the Gods, Opener and Sleep-maker,.... which, I think, all meet in me.

§ 1.] MNEMONIC VERSES. 17

MNEMONIC VERSES RELATING TO MYTHOLOGY.

I. In Drpactic METRE.

THEY are the most artless examples of the Teaching or Lesson- Lays, and are for the most part mere lists, poetically describing some part of the old mythology. The frame either never existed or is hopelessly lost. They were used for instruction and to aid the memory.

a. From a lost Lay. List of Best Things. Found in Grimnis-mal, Rivers, etc.

é. Thorgrim’s List. Fragments. Found in Edda (Sk). They tell the names of the famous Horses and Oxen of the epics and myths.

c. The Moon-Pail fragment. Found in A.M. 748, with a paraphrase of another lost verse, which gives us the name of the well (Byrgi), wherein the pail was dipped, and of Widfinn, the father of the two children, Bil and Hiuki. Dante (Purgatorio, xviii. 76) has the same image :—

La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda facea le stelle a noi parer pid rade fatta com’ un secchione che tutto arda.

d. Of the Tree Glass. A fragment preserved in Edda (Sk).

II. IN Epic METRE.

a. 1, 2, 3. Lists of Dwarves, Fates, and Walkyries found embedded in Wolo-spa, from which they are clearly distinguished by metre and style.

3 Kalf’s Verses. Heroes and their steeds. Pieces of a lost mnemonic poem found in Edda (Sk). It may be compared with Thorgrim’s List.

c. Of Woden’s Ravens. Found only in Skalda, d. Names of Woden from Grimnis-mal.

is a. FRAGMENTS OF LosST Lay IN GRIMNIS-MAL.

2. Rivers.

a. 1. THE ash Ygg’s-steed is the best of trees, Skidblade of ships, Wodin of Anses, Slipper of horses, Bilrost of bridges, Bragi of poets, Highbreek of hawks, Garm of hounds, Brimi of swords, etc.

&. Porcrrs-PuLa.

1. Horses.

2. Oxen.

Gamalla oxna neafn hefik gerla fregit, c. Tue Moon Patt. {

5. 1. RAVEN and Slipper, famous horses, Hawk and Lightfoot and Racer, Goldcrest and Goth, and I heard Soot reckoned, etc. Blanch bore Thane, etc. Bloodyhoof was the name of the horse that bore, they say, the mighty Atrid [Frey]. 2. I have enquired diligently into the old names of Oxen. Redetc..... and Dapple, Chattle and....

-c. THE pail is called Seg, the pole is called Simul, Bil and Hiuk carry them.

§1.] MNEMONIC VERSES. 79

d. Tue Tree Gtass.

II. a. FRAGMENTS FOUND IN VOLO-SPA.

1. The Dwarves.

2. The Fates.

e GLAss stands with golden leaves before the hall of the Blessed God. II.

a. 1. THE greatest of all Dwarves was Motsogni, the second Durin, Full Moon and New Moon, North, South, East and West, etc. It is time to count up the generations of the company of Dwale [the Dwarves] to Lofar, those Dwarves that went from Rock-halls, the seat of Loam-garden, to lIoroplain. There was Dripper, etc. This pedigree counted from Lofar shall remain as long as mankind lives.

2. Weird they called the first of them, the second Becoming—they carved on a tablet—Shou/d the third.

3. The Walkyries.

6. KALFS-vISA.

c. From Eppa (Sxatpa). Woden’s Ravens.

d. From Grimnis-maL. JVames of Woden. Bil-eygr, Bal-eygr, Bal-verkr, Fiolnir, S{6-hattr, Sid-skeger, Sig-fadr, Hnikudr,

3. Should held the shield, and Skogul the second.... Now the nuns of Woden are told over, the Walkyries ready to ride over the land.

5. Day rode Steed, but Dwale Moden; Helmtheow Highfoot; Haki Gelding; Beli’s slayer [Frey] Bloodyhoof; [Helgi] the Scathe of the Haddings rode Strider; Westan rode Wali, and Weevil rode Stump; Mantheow rode Moi; Morn rode Waker; Anila rode Raven (to the Battle) on the ice, whilst another, a Grey, wounded with the spear, turned east under Eadgils.

Biorn rode Blanch; Biar rode Cart; Attila rode Gleam, but Eadgils rode Slungni; Hogni ‘rode Haulqui, and Harold Faulqui; Gunnar rode Goth, and Sigurd Grani.

c. THERE flew two ravens from Woden’s NS Thought to the _ gallows, Mind to the carrion.

4. Skadi] Skati, Cod.

DS ween tS

§1.] ALVISS-MAL. 81

ALVISS-MAL: THE WISDOM OF ALLWISE THE DWARF.

THIS little poem, which seems almost complete, is found in R only (leaves 19-20), save two verses (20 and 30) cited in Edda (Sk). The name is warranted by Edda and the superscription in R. It is plainly of Western origin, as there are several Gaelic words (niola, eti) introduced. The text in ll, 11-20 is not quite safe.

The frame of the story is ingenious: Allwise the Dwarf, having entrapped the Gods into a promise of giving him Freya to wife, comes to claim her, but one of the Anses (probably Wingi, i.e. Woden, for the frank blunt character of Thor would by no means suit the part, though Wingthor is found in the MS.) contrives, by playing on his philological vanity, to keep him answering questions, till the sun rises and its rays falling on him turn him to stone. We have therefore put ‘W. q.’ in the margin, leaving undecided whether to read Wingthor or Wingi. The vellum has ‘porrq.’ Maybe the Dwarf first met Thor (Wingthor), whereupon Woden (Wingi) came up. In that case the dramatis persone would be three.

The answers to the questions comprise a dictionary of synonyms for thirteen important words— Earth, Sky, Moon, Sun, Clouds, Wind, Calm, Sea, Fire, Wood, Night, Corn, and Ale. The different synonyms are brought in as being the speech of the different orders of living beings—Gods, Men, Wanes, Giants, Elves, Dwarves, the Dead within Hell, and the Higher Powers. Each verse can only take in six, and so the names are varied, only Men and Gods are constant items. As in Homer, the common Norse word for each object is given to Men, the older or rarer word (often Saxon or English) to the Gods, curious and foreign words to the Giants. The synonyms which are invented for the Dwarves and Elves are very fanciful and pretty, suited to the dark underground world of the pigmy miners, or the pathless fields of air in which the crew of Ariel disport themselves.

FIRST SCENE.—The door of the Dwarf’s cavern. He hurries in hot hasie to fetch his bride, telling his servants, as he leaves, to make ready Sor the wedding feast.

Allwise (to his men): Deck the benches; the bride will soon be back with me. I am in great hurry for marriage, folk will say. There is no staying at home for me!

nN

=

SECOND SCENE.— Outside Walhall. Allwise meets Woden (Wing-thor, Wingi?).

W. What fellow is this? why art thou pale about the nose? wast.

thou sleeping with corpses? ‘ There is something oger-like about thee; thou art but a sorry bridegroom!— A. Allwise my name is. I dwell beneath the earth; under the rock is my homestead; I am come to fetch my bride. Let none break his plighted word.—W. I will break it; I have the bride in ward like a father. I was not at home when she was betrothed; I who hallow the weddings of the Gods.

4, Who is the fellow who claims to be the ward of the fair beaming maid....? W. A runagate; nobody knew thee. Who hath bribed thee ?—W. Wing-thor (Wingi) is my name; I have travelled far; I am Longbeard’s son. Without my will thou shalt never have that young maid, nor make that match.—4. I would rather have thy goodwill, and make that match; I would sooner win than lack the drift-white maid. —

5. W. q.] porr q., R, here and elsewhere. 7. pikkjomk] pikir mer, R.
6. Read Vardar vers? i.e. the bride Freyja. 16. For giavfer read giaford ?
7. Read Wingi? i.e. Woden? 23. skalattu] Rask ; scaltu, R. 25. viljak]

Ce ee a

=a 2 bl awe

His TRA AME in SY aber a oi,

§1.] ALVISS-MAL. 83

W. The maiden’s love shall not be denied thee, thou wise guest, if thou canst tell me of every world what I want to know.

(Here Dialogue begins.)

W. Tell me, Allwise, for thou Dwarf, methinks, knowest the whole history of mankind :—How is EarTH, which lies before sons of men, called in every world ?—A. ‘ Earth’ among men; ‘ Field’ among Anses; the Wanes call it ‘Way,’ the Giants ‘Ever-green,’ the Elves ‘ Growing ;’ the High Gods call it ‘ Clay.’

W. Tell me, Allwise, etc. How is HEAVEN the... . called in every world?—4. ‘Heaven’ among Men, ‘Warmer’ among Gods; the Wanes call it ‘ Wind-woof,’ the Giants ‘ High-home,’ the Elves ‘ Fairroof,’ the Dwarves ‘ Drip-hall.’.

W. Tell me, Allwise, etc. How is the Moon, that ali men see, called in each of the worlds?—.A. ‘Moon’ among Men, ‘ Mylin’ among the Gods; ‘ Whirling-wheel’ in Hell; ‘ Hastener’ the Giants, ‘ Sheen’ the Dwarves, ‘ Year-teller’ the Elves call it.

W. Tell me, Allwise, etc. How is the Sun, that all men see, called in each of the worlds?— A. ‘Sol’ among Men, ‘Sun’ among Gods; the Dwarves call her ‘Dwale’s doll;’ ‘Everglow’ the Giants, ‘ Fairwheel’ the Elves, ‘ All-sheer’ the sons of Anses.

W. Tell me, Allwise, etc. How are the CLOUDS, that are mingled with showers, called in each of the worlds?— A. ‘Sky’ among Men, ‘Shower-boder’ among Gods; the Wanes call it ‘ Windfloe,’ ‘ Wetboder’ the Giants; Elves ‘ Weather-main ;’ in Hell they call it ‘ Helm- of-Darkness.’

W. Tell me, Allwise, etc. How is the WIND, that travels so far, called in each of the worlds?—A. ‘Wind’ among Men, ‘ Waverer’ among Gods; the Strong Powers call it ‘Neigher,’ ‘Whooper’ the Giants, ‘Softgale’ the Elves; in Hell they call it ‘ Whistle-gust.’

W. Tell me, Allwise, etc. How is the Cam, that rests, called in each of the worlds?—A. ‘Loun’ it is called among Men, and ‘ Lea’

§1.] ALVISS-MAL. 85

among Gods; the Wanes call it ‘ Wind-slack,’ ‘Sultry’ the Giants, the Elves ‘ Soul-of-Day ;’ the Dwarves call it ‘ Day’s-rest.’

W., Tell me then, Allwise, etc. What is the MAIN, which men row over, called in each world ?}—d,. ‘Sea’ among Men, ‘Level’ among Gods; the Wanes call it ‘Wave,’ Giants ‘Sound-ham,’ the Elves *Sea-blink ;’ the Dwarves call it ‘ Deep.’

W. Tell it me, Allwise, etc. How is Fire, that burns before the sons of men, called in each of the worlds?— A. ‘Eild’ among Men, ‘Fire’ among Gods; the Wanes call it ‘ Wavy,’ ‘Greedy’ the Giants, ‘Furnace fire’ the Dwarves; in Hell they call it ‘ Destroyer.’

W. Tell it me, Allwise, etc. How the Woop, that grows before the sons of men, is called in each of the worlds ?—4. ‘Wood’ among Men, ‘ Wield-fur’ among the Gods; the Men in Hell call it ‘ Cliff-wrack ;’ tte it ‘Firewood,’ the Elves ‘ Fair-foliage ;’ the Wanes call it ‘Wand.’

W. Tell me this, Allwise, etc. How is NiGHT, Norwi’s daughter, lol. furr] emend.; funi, R. ™

KING HEIDREK’S RIDDLES.

Tus Lay has come down in two vellums, Hauks-bék (A), and Cod. Reg. No. 2845 (B). Our text is mainly founded on A, first to 1. 9 on the vellum itself, hence on copies taken in the seventeenth century, when called in each of the worlds )—A. ‘Night’ among Men, ‘ Newl’ among Gods; ‘Mask’ the Great Powers, ‘ Unlight’ the Giants, ‘Sleep-joy ’ the Elves; the Dwarves call it ‘ Dream-fairy.’

W. Tell me then, Allwise, etc. How is the SEED, which the sons of men sow, called in each of the worlds?—d. ‘Bigg’ among Men, ‘Bear’ (barley) among Gods; ‘ Waxth’ the Wanes call it, ‘Oat’ the Giants, the Elves ‘ Lees-staff;’ iri Hell they call it ‘ Blight.’

W. Tell me then, Allwise, etc. How is the ALE, the sons of men drink, called in each of the worlds?—/4. ‘Ale’ among Men, ‘ Beer’ among Anses; ‘Draught’ the Wanes; ‘ Clear-lees’ the Giants, ‘Mead’ in Hell; Suttungs’ sons (Dwarves) call it ‘Good-Cheer.’

W. In one man’s breast I never saw more olden words.—With great wiles thou hast, I swear, been beguiled. The Day is upon thee, Dwarf; the hall is full of sunshine! (The Dwarf is turned into stone.)

§1.] KING HEIDREK’S RIDDLES. 87

it was still complete, viz. AM. 281, 4to. Text B omits riddles 7, 10, II, 15, 30, 33: the sequel also is here somewhat different.

The framework of the poem, which binds together a collection of riddles of the same type as those of the early English and Medizval riddle poets, is the visit of Woden disguised as a blind wayfarer (Gestum- » blindi) to King Heidrek, the famous riddle-reader, at Yule-tide. The King, after solving all Woden’s questions, at length fails to answer the one which was fatal to Wafthrudni, and falls like him a victim to the ‘ pride of learning.’

In the last century, answers in verse were supplied by some Icelander, probably Gunnar Palsson, the author of ‘Gunnar-Slag;’ but in our vellums, the King replies to each question with the remark,—‘ Géd es gata bin Gestum-blindi getid es peirar.’ Thy riddle is good, Guest the blind ; it is soon read! whereupon the solution follows in prose.

The riddles relate to many subjects thrown together without much order, and were possibly (as several have the same answer) not all in the original framework. One of them (No. 34) has not been read before; it depends on an intricate pun, and must be later than most of the others.

The second line of riddle 24 is cited in Skalda.

Guest. 1. WOULD I had what I had yesterday! guess thou what it

_ was: Men’s damager, words’ hinderer, and yet words’ arouser, Read my riddle, O King Heidrek !—A/e.

2. I came from home, I wended my way from home, I saw a way of ways; way underneath, way above head, way on all sides. Read my, etc.— A bridge.

3. What drink was it I drank yesterday; it was neither wine nor water, nor mead, nor beer, nor aught of meat kind; yet I went thirstless away? Read my, etc.—The dew.

4. Who is that shrill one, who walks by hard paths, having passed them many a time; he kisses very fast, has two mouths, walks on nought but gold? Read my, etc.—The goldsmith’s hammer.

10, drykki, B. —

5. Who is the huge one, who passes over the earth, swallowing water and woods; he fears the wind, but no man, and wages war on the sun? Read my, etc.—The fog.

6. Who is the big one, who wades in the deep, turning half towards Hell; he saves people, but tugs against the earth, if he has a trusty withy by him? Read my, etc.—The anchor.

7. Who dwells in high mountains? Whe falls into deep dales? Who lives without breath? Who is never silent? Read my, etc.— The raven, the dew, a fish, a fall.

8. What was that wonder I saw outside Delling’s door (outside the hall): It turns its head towards Hell, and its feet towards the Sun? Read my, etc.—The leek.

g. What was that wonder, etc.: Two ever-stirring yet lifeless things were boiling a wound-leek? Read my, etc.—Smith’s bellows forging a sword.

10. What was that wonder, etc.: The white flyers beat the rock, while the black ones are embedded in the sand? Read my, etc.— Hail and rain.

11. What was that wonder, etc.: I saw a black hog wallow in the

§ 1.] KING HEIDREK’S RIDDLES, 89

ae though no bristles were on his back? Read my, etc.—d dungbeetle.

12. What was that wonder, etc.: It has ten tongues, twenty eyes, forty feet; this being moves along? Read my, etc.—A sow with a litter of nine pigs.

13. What was that wonder, etc.: It flies high aloft, yelling loud....? Read my, etc.— An arrow.

14. What was that wonder, etc.: It has eight feet, four eyes, carrying its knees higher than its belly? Read my, etc.—4A spider.

15. What was that wonder, etc.: It lightens people over all lands, and yet is ever chased by wolves? Read my, etc.—The sun.

16. What was that wonder, etc.: Harder than horn, blacker than a raven, whiter than egg-film, straighter than a shaft? Read my, etc.—4 streaked agate or obsidian.

17. Blond-haired brides, bondswomen both, carried ale to the barn; the casks were not turned with hands, nor forged by hammers; she that made it strutted about outside the isles? Read my, etc.—Eider duck’s exes.

18. Who are those fairies of the mighty mountains ; woman begets by a woman; a maid bears a son by a maid. Those goodwives have no husband? Read my, etc.—Two Angelicas.

19. Who are the maids that fight weaponless around their lord; the brown ever sheltering, the fair ever attacking him? Read my, etc.— The pieces of a table (hnef-tafl).

20. Who are the merry maids that glide above the land to the joy of their father; in winter they bear a white shield, but black in summer? Read my, etc.—Snow-flakes and rain [the text gives Rep-hens (1!) }.

21. Who are the maids that go weeping to the joy of their father, white-hooded, fair-haired, wide awake in a gale? Read my, etc.—The WAVES.

22. Who are the maids that go many together to the joy of their father; they have brought grief to many; these goodwives have no husbands? Read my, etc.—The same.

23. Who are the brides that walk over the reefs, and drive along the friths; these white-hooded /adies have a hard bed; in calm weather they make no stir? Read my, etc.—The same.

24. I saw an earth-dweller pass by, a corpse sitting on a corpse; a blind

78. fognudi] emend.; forvitni, Cd., here and below. hadda bleika hafa per enar hvitfoldodo,
79. nar 4 na] A; nadr 4 nai, B; nar a na, Skalda,

§1.] KING HEIDREK’S RIDDLES. gt one riding on a blind sea-car, yet the steed was lifeless? Read my, etc.—A dead horse floated on an icefioe.

25. What is that beast, all girdled with iron, which kills the flocks; it has eight horns, but no head, and....? Read my, etc.—The hiinn (bear) or headpiece in the game of hnef-tafl ( fox and geese).

26. What is that beast that shelters the Danes; with bloody back it covers men, encounters spears, saves many a life, fitting its body to the hands of men? Read my, etc.—The shield.

27. A... . yearning for children, gathered her building materials, straw-choppers fenced her in, whilst above her was drink’s echoing hall. Read my, etc.—d duck building her nest in a neat’s head with the horns on.

28. Four ganging, four hanging, two showing the way, two keeping the dogs off, one ever dirty lags behind. Read my, etc.—A cow.

29. Who is it that sleeps in the hearth, all made of stone,—a mischievous being without father or mother,—there is his lifelong abode?

30. I saw a horse, a maid whipped it, she shooka....? Read my, etc.—A /oom (the upright) worked by a woman.

gas] thus A, B. varin] emend.; vaxin, Cd. 108. drynhravn, B; drunraun, A, 112. avs grva, B. 114. fagr-giarni, B. 11@ meri] read mer?

THE LAY OF SWIPDAY AND MENGLAD.

THIs Lay is only found in very indifferent seventeenth century copies of a lost vellum, about which we have no information. It is nowhere

31. Who are the champions riding to court sixteen together;. they send their men far and wide to make settlements? Read my, etc.—The table (game) of King Itrek.

32. I saw in summertide a household awake and merry at sunset; the gentlemen drank their beer in silence, but the ale-butt stood and screamed. Read my, etc.—JA sow with a litter of sucking pigs.

33. I saw certain dust-like maidens; the rocks were their bedding ; they are black and swart in sunshine, but the less one can see [i.e.in the dark] the fairer they look. Read my, etc.—Pale embers on the hearth.

34. | saw on a (see the text). 4 pun, (a hearth, a hawk, a duck, talons.)

35. Who are the two that have ten feet, three eyes, one tail? Read my, etc.—The one-eyed Woden riding Sleipni his eight-legged steed.

36. What did Woden whisper into Balder’s ear ere he was borne on the pyre?—Heidrek cries, Wonder and wickedness and all sorts of lewdness !

Being vanquished he has now forfeited his life, but he treacherously draws

120. sattir allir sam, B.

131-2. Thus emendated ; maimed in Codd. thus—Sat eg a segli sa eg dauda menn blods hold bera i bork vidar (!).

» egg-dauda menn =valr, the slain, also a hawk.

© blood-tube = zr, a vein, also a duck,

4 belly’s birch =¢alons.

137. The rest in prose.

$1.) THE LAY OF SWIPDAY AND MENGLAD. 93

cited, and the very story appears to be unmentioned by any old writer. But there is a Danish ballad of the sixteenth century telling the tale of ‘Young Sweidal’ (No. 70 of Grundtvig’s Collection), which is clearly derived from some old copy or tradition of this poem. The romantic character of the story evidently pleased the taste of the sixteenth century, for there are also Swedish ballads (derived from the Danish?) which tell it with the variations suitable to the taste of the time. Dr. Bugge was the first to discover that the two parts, in which this Lay is found (therein entitled Grogaldr and Fiolsvinns-mal), are merely sections of the same poem.

The riddles exchanged between Swipday and the Giant are to such a degree obscure and corrupt as to defy any attempt at interpretation. We have therefore put them in small type, retaining what belongs to Swipday and his love Menglad.

The story, which is probably a Sun-Myth from some alien source, is briefly this:—Young Swipday is bound, by a cruel step-mother, to ride into Giantland and win the giant-guarded maiden of the enchanted castle. Before setting out he goes to his mother’s cairn, and raising her from the dead prays her to give him charms that will protect him on his dangerous errand. She grants his prayer, and thus endowed he is able to try his wit with success against ‘ Mani-wise,’ the warder of Menglad. The charm is broken, and Menglad is set free and gladly welcomes her long-expected lover.

The poet has known and imitated several old poems, e.g. Havamal, The Old Wolsung Lay, Lay of Wafthrudni, Skirnismal, etc. Nay, a few lines one would think are fragments of lost verses of the Song of the High (e.g. v. 9; v. 10 is a duplicate, better text, of Hm. v. 12); verses 36, 39 may be an echo of lost verses of Grimnismal.

his magic brand Tyrfing and strikes at Woden, who flies away in the shape of a hawk. Heidrek however soon afterwards perishes, slain by his slaves with his own sword,

FIRST SCENE.—4t his mother’s grave.

S. AWAKE thou, Groa! awake thou, sweet lady! I bid thee awake at the door of the dead. Perchance thou rememberest how thou toldest thy son to come to the grave-mound,

The Mother. What is it that troubles thee, my only son? what ails thee, that thou callest thy mother, who is turned to dust, and gone from the world of men?

’ .- 2. dura] not dura; the metre requires (vv).

94 DIDACTIC MYTHOLOGY. ~ —_—s [Bx m.

S. That false woman, who lies in my father’s arms (my step-mother) has set an ill game for me; she bade me go.... to find Menglad. Mother. Long is the journey, long are the paths; long are the sorrows of men ; perchance thou may get thy will, and the fates turn well for thee.

S. Chant me chants, that will help; Mother, save thy child, else I shall perish in my journey; I am but a youth.

Mother. The first charm I chant thee, it will stand thee in good stead; Wrind chanted it to Wali: Cast off from thy shoulder whatever evil thou encounterest; let thyself be thy guide.

The second charm I chant thee: If despair fall upon thee on thy way, may Guarding-charms fence thee about on all sides, as thou goest on thy way.

The third I chant thee: If great waters threaten to overwhelm thee, may flood and foam turn back to Hell the while, and dry up before thee.

The fourth I chant thee: If foes stand in ambush on the gallowsg. skaut si] Bugge; skautzu, Cd. 12. menglodom, Cd, 20. Not arfi, the metre requiring (uv). 22. Vrindr Vala] emend.; Rindr Rani, Cd. 28.

§1.] THE LAY OF SWIPDAY AND MENGLAD. 95

path, mayest thou turn the heart of thine enemies, and shape all their mind to goodwill to thee.

The fifth I chant thee: If fetters be laid on thy limbs, then may my loosing spell make them slip off thy body, the bonds snap off thy limbs, and the fetters off thy feet.

The sixth I chant thee: If thou comest on sea swelling higher than men can tell, may calm and still obey thy bidding, and give thee a peaceful journey.

The seventh I chant thee: If frost overtakes thee high on the mountains, may the winter cold not harm thy body, nor any ill take hold of thy limbs.

The eighth I chant thee: If the night overtake thee on a path of darkness, may the [evil] night-riding witches have no power to come and harm thee.

The ninth I chant thee: If thou must needs bandy words with the goad-wielding Giant, may speech and wisdom be abundantly given into thy heart and mind.

Fare thou well through every danger; may no evil stop thy desire. I stood within doors on the earthfast stone, while I chanted thee these charms. Do thou, my child, bear thy mother’s words hence, and let i a attattu her { v4 vero.

them dwell in thy breast; for ever-abounding luck shalt thou have through thy life as long as thou rememberest my words.

SECOND SCENE.—Swipday in Giantland, before Menglad’s fame-bound bower, encounters the Giant Warder Manywise.

S. What monster is this, standing in front of the fore-court and wandering round the hot flame?

Giant. What dost thou seek, and what art thou in quest of, and what wouldst thou, lone man, know? Tread back the wet ways; thou hast no abiding-place here.

S. What monster is this that stands in the front of the fore-court, giving no welcome to wayfarers.. .?

G. Manywise my name is; I have a wise mind, though I am chary of my meat; thou shalt never come within these walls, but shalt wander forth like a wolf to the woods.

S. One yearns for the delight of one’s eyes, seeing a sweet sight. The courts gleam, methinks, in these golden halls. Here would I live for ever.

G. Tell me, whom wast thou born of, lad, and whose man’s child art thou?

• Cod. here adds— Utan garda hann s& upp um koma pursa piddar sidt.

67. Read heitan ? 71. Emend,; attattu her verndar vanr vero, Cd. 79. at vidi] at vegi, Cd,

$1.) THE LAY OF SWIPDAY AND MENGLAD. 97

S. Wind-cold is my name, Spring-cold was my father’s name, Hardcold his father.

(Here begin the questions.)

Tell me now, Muchwise, what I shall ask, and what I would know: Who rules here and reigns over this land and gleesome halls?

G. Menglad is her name, whom her mother bore to the son of S., she rules, etc.

122, sizt} medan, Cd, H

S. Tell me now, Muchwise, etc. What is the rock called, on which I see the most belauded maid sit?

G. Hill of Healing it is called, it has long been the joy of the sick and sore. Any woman that climbs it, though she have a year’s sickness on her, will become whole.

S. Tell me, M. etc. What are the maids called that sit together peacefully at Menglad’s knees?

G. The name, (a// healing names.)

TS ee

$1.) THE LAY OF SWIPDAY AND MENGLAD. 99

S. Tell me, M. etc. Whether they deliver those that worship them, if need be?

G. Every summer, if they be worshipped in an altar-hallowed place, though never so high peril overtake the sons of men, they will deliver them every one from his need.

S. Tell me this, M. etc. If there be any one, to whom it is granted to sleep in Menglad’s sweet arms?

G. To none of men is it granted to sleep in Menglad’s sweet arms, save to Swipday alone; the sunbright bride was destined to him for wife.

S. Push open the door, throw back the gates, lo, Swipday is here! yet go and see if Menglad will have my love.

G. (shouting to within). WHearken, Menglad! here is a new comer, go and see the guest; the hounds welcome him, the house has sprung open of itself; I think it is Swipday.

Menglad (from within to the Giant). May the great ravens tear out thine eyes on the high gallows-tree, if this be a lie that my love is come from afar to my hall. (Swipday comes in, she turns to him): Whence didst thou start? whence didst thou journey? what did thy

§2. THE WESTERN: ISLANDS”

ARISTOPHANES.

LOKA-SENNA.—THE FLYTING OF LOKI.

THIs poem is preserved in R, leaves 15-17. Edda (Gg) quotes v. 29, yet mixing it up with v. 47; Il. 60-61 seem to have come in here from the old Wolsung Play.

The plot is laid at the Last Banquet of the Gods just after Balder’s death. All are present, save Thor and Loki; the latter comes to the household call thee? I must have sure token of thy kindred and name, to know whether I be thy fated wife.

S. Swipday is my name, Sunbright was my father’s name; the winds have driven me far along cold paths. No one can withstand the word of the Fate, even though it be spoken to one’s destruction.

Menglad. Be welcome now! I have got my will; take a kiss with my greeting. A blessed sight is the meeting of two lovers. Long have I sat upon the Hill of Healing, day after day I waited for thee. Now that which I yearned for is come to pass, and thou, my love, art come to my bower. I have yearned sorely for thy kiss, and thou for my love. Now it is true that we shall pass our lives and days together.

243. Bugge; liufu bergi, Cd.

§ 2.] LOKA-SENNA. 101

door of Eager’s Hall, and though warned by the cook that he will find scant welcome, persists in entering, and going round the hall banters each God and Goddess in turn with the bitterest sarcasm, reducing all to silence till Thor comes in fresh from his exploits in Giant-land, when Loki is forced to retire, cursing his host.

The treatment is purely dramatic, and the drawing of character is extremely vivid and well sustained. Loki’s speeches are full of allusions to the scandals of Ansegard (many otherwise unknown to us), a few of which seem to be remnants of very archaic. cosmogonic myths, such as we find in Irish and Hindu mythology.

The poet is a heathen; for the mockery is not that of Voltaire or Lucian, but of Aristophanes, and there is no more lack of reverence in his attitude than in that of the Homeric poems when recounting the quarrels of Zeus and Hera or the loves of Aphrodite.

The diction and vocabulary are as rich as those of Rabelais, and contain many words which are not found elsewhere.

The ¢ext is luckily in a fair state. A few lines, e.g. 76-77, are corrupt.

The name Loka-senna is warranted by the superscription in R.

FIRST SCENE, in Eager’s Hall (Okeanos); all the Gods and Goddesses, save Thor, present at a banquet. Loki appears at the door.

Loki at the door to Eldi the Cook. Tell me, Eldi (Cook), before thou goest ‘further, what the Blessed Gods talk of over their Ale!—E/di. The Blessed Gods are comparing their weapons and their exploits. Of all the Anses and Elves within, not one speaks a good word for thee.—Lodi. I shall go into Eager’s hall, to see this banquet; I will bring the Gods bitter spice for their drink, and mix their mead with venom.—£/d:. Be sure, if thou goest in to behold the banquet, and pourest foul words and filthy slander on the bounteous Gods, that they will wipe it off on

Ss

8. ordi, Ro thee.—Loki. Be sure, Eldi, if we two be left alone to bandy cutting words, that I shall not lack an answer, if thou speakest too much.

SECOND SCENE.—Loki enters the Hall.

Loki. Thirsty, I, Loki, came to this hall off a long journey, to beg the Anses to give me but one draught of the goodly mead.—(No ansqwer.) Why sit ye so silent, ye moody Gods, speaking no word? Give me seat and place at this banquet, or else bid me go hence.

Bragi. The Anses will never give thee seat or place at their banquet: for the Anses know well who deserve the joy of the feast.

Loki and Woden. Loki. Dost thou remember, Woden, how we two in days of old blended blood together? ‘Thou sworest never to taste ale unless we drank together.—/W. Get up then, Widar, and let the Wolf’s father (Loki) sit down to the banquet; that Loki may not make mock of us here in Eager’s hall. (Loki sits down and drinks health to the Gods.)

Loki and Bragi, L. Hail, Anses, hail, Ansesses, and all ye most holy Gods, except that one Anse, Bragi by name, who sits on the

37. Ulfs, R.

ee

_ re

Pin Si eee ee ee! Ws ca 1 he a RSC: -

el]

St eh

§.2.] LOKA-SENNA. ! 103

inner bench.—B, I will give thee out of my store a steed and a sword, moreover Bragi will recompense thee with rings; so thou do not abuse the Anses. Do not rouse the Gods to anger against thee!—Z. Thou hast never had a horse or arm-rings; of all the Anses that are here to-day thou art the wariest in fight, and the shyest of shooting.—B. Be sure, if I were without Eager’s hall, as I am now within it, I would bear thy head in my hand; and give thee that for thy lies—Z. Thou wilt not do so. Thou art bold enough in thy seat, O Bragi, thou benchboaster. Go fight if thou be wroth; a valiant man flinches for nought.

Idun and Loki. Idun. 1 pray thee, Bragi, for our children’s sake, and all our beloved, do not provoke Loki here in Eager’s hall.—Z. Hold thy peace, Idun; I call thee the lewdest of women, since thou laidest thine arms, washed white in the water, about thy brother’s slayer.—I. I am not provoking Loki in Eager’s hall; I am but quieting the beer-stirred Bragi; I would not see you come to blows in anger.

59. Quantity amiss (- ¥V). 60. reidr, R. 73. reidir, R,

104 THE WESTERN ARISTOPHANES. [BK. 1. 19. Gefion Hvi id sir tveir skolod inni her

Gefion and Loki. G. Why should ye two Anses bandy angry words here within? Loki knows....—Z. Hold thy peace, Gefion! I will now tell how the fair swain, who gave thee the raiment, and who lay with thee, stole thy love.

Woden and Loki. W. Drunk art thou, Loki, and out of thy wits, to make an enemy of Gefion; for she knows, as well as myself, the fate of all men.—Z. Hold thy peace, Woden, thou never couldst deal victory fairly out to men; thou often hast given the victory to them to whom thou shouldst not have given it, to the cowardly—_W. Know that if I gave the victory to whom I should not, to the cowardly, that thou wast eight winters underneath the earth, a woman, and a milkmaid; and thou hast borne children, and I call that the part ofa.... —L. But thou, they say, didst work sorcery in Sams-ey; and thou dealtest in magic, like wise women. In a wizard’s shape thou flewest over the earth, and that I call the part ofa....

Frigg and Loki. F. Ye should never talk of your old doings before men, of what ye two Anses went through in old times. Men should let ee be , f Pa 3 ie:

§ 2.] LOKA-SENNA. 105

to ur bygones be bygones.—Z. Hold thy peace, Frigg; thou art Fiorgyns’ daughter, and hast always been wanton; since thou, Woden’s wife, laidest We and Wili, thy husband’s brothers, both in thy bosom.—F. Be sure, if I had here in Eager’s hail a son like Balder, thou shouldst never come out alive from the Anses, but thou shouldst be slain in thy anger. —L. Willest thou, Frigg, that I tell more of my abominations? It is my doing that thou seest no more Balder ride into the hall.

Freyja and Loki. F. Drunk art thou, Loki, telling all your horrors. I ween Frigg knows the fate of all men, though she say it not.—Z. Hold thy peace, Freyja; I know thee well enough; there is no lack of lewdness in thee; of all Anses and Elves that are here, every one has been thy paramour.—F. Loose is thy tongue; it will, I guess, talk down evil on thee. The Gods are wroth with thee, the Ansesses are wroth with thee; thou wilt go home a sadder man.—L. Hold thy peace, Freyja; thou art a witch-hag, most full of evil, since thou ‘bewitchedst’.... and then, Freyja, thou didst ....

Niord and Loki. N.’Tis no great matter, though women find them lovers, this man or that man. But it is monstrous that a vile Anse, who has borne children, should have dared to come in here.—L. Hold thy peace, Niord; thou wast sent from the east a hostage to the Gods; the maids of Hymi used thee fora....and....—WN. This is my comfort, though I was sent as a hostage among the Gods from afar, that I have begot a son whom no one hates, and who is best of the Anses.—L. Stay now, Niord, keep within measure; I shall not hide it longer; this son thou didst beget with thy sister; that outdoes all.

Ty and Loki. L, Frey is the best of all charioteers in Anse-town ; he never makes a maid or man’s wife weep, and redeems all from their bonds.—L. Hold thy peace, Ty, thou couldst never set goodwill between two men. Now I will call to mind that right hand of thine which Fenri bit off thee.—Ty. I lack a hand, but thou hast lost thy son the Wolf, Both fare badly. The wolf is in ill plight, for he must ‘wait in bonds for the Doom of the Powers.—Z. Hold thy peace, Ty. It happened to thy wife to have a child by me. Thou hast never had an ell or a penny for thy damages, thou sorry fellow.

Frey and Loki. F. 1 see the Wolf lying in the mouth of the river till the world falls in ruins. Thy turn will come next to be bound, thou worker of evil, save thou holdest thy peace.—Z. Thou boughtest Gymi’s daughter with gold, and gavest thy sword for her. And when Muspells’ sons ride over Murkwood, thou shalt not know with what to fight, thou sorry fellow.

Byggvi (Barleycorn) and Loki. B. Be sure, if I had a heritage like Frey the Ingowin and such a seemly seat, I would pound thee to marrow, thou ill-omened crow, and maul thine every limb.—Z. What is the tiny thing I see there wagging its tail, snuffling about (doglike)? Thou wilt be always at Frey’s hearth, yapping at the quern.—B. My name is Barleycorn; Gods and men know I am hot-tempered; I am here in high spirits because all Hropt’s sons (Anses) are here drinking together.—L. Hold thy peace, Barleycorn; thou hast never shared food fairly among men. Hid in the bedstraw, thou wast not to be found when men were a-fighting.

Heimdal and Loki. H. Drunk art thou, Loki, and out of thy wits; why dost thou not....? Too deep drinking makes men babble they

176, es pat, which. 178. é6rnom] emend.; eyrom, R. 179. umb] und, R.

108 THE WESTERN ARISTOPHANES. ~* [xx. it.

know not what.—JL. Hold thy peace, Heimdal! A dull life was meted out to thee in old times. Thou must ever stand with a wet back, and wake as the Gods’ watchman.

Skadi and Loki. S. Thou art easy now, Loki, but thou shalt not long go tail-awag; for the Gods shall bind thee on swords with the guts of thy rime-cold son.—L. Be sure, if the Gods, etc. I was the first and the foremost at the slaughter, when we handled Thiazi (thy father) roughly. —S. Be sure, if thou wast the first, etc. From my hearth and home there shall ever come cold counsels for thee.—Z. Thou wast softer of speech to Laufey’s son (me), when thou didst bid me to thy bed. We must speak of the .

Sif and Loki. Sif (banding him a goblet). Now hail to thee, Loki, and take this foam-brimmed cup full of old mead, so that thou let but her among the Anses be unreviled.—Loki (emptying the goblet). But thou too, if so it be, art a wife who has played thy husband false. I know for sure one rival of the Thunderer lees? fo: one else but cunning

Loki (myself).

ea

RP Oe

» tegen Ta ©

SS EES ee ee ae seer

§ 2.] LOKA-SENNA. 109

Beyla (housewife) and Loki. B. The mountains are a-quaking; the Thunderer must be astir from home; he will quiet those that revile Gods and men here.—L. Hold thy peace, Beyla, thou art Barleycorn’s wife, and full of malice; nothing more noisome has come among the Anses; thou art altogether filthy, thou serving-woman.

(Here Thor comes in.)

Thor. Hold thy peace, vile being; Miollni, my mighty hammer, shall cut thy speech short. I will knock thy shoulder-knob (head) off, and then thy life is done.—Z. Ha! here is Earth’s son at last; why talkest thou big, Thor? Thou wilt not be so valiant in thy fight with the Wolf, who shall swallow up the Blissful Father (Woden).—T. Hold thy peace, Loki, etc. I will fling thee up into the east, where none shall see thee more.—L. Never speak to men about thy eastern journeys, since thou, the Hero, didst crouch in a glove-thumb, remember- ing not that thou wast Thor.—T. Hold thy peace, Loki, etc. My right hand will smite thee with the killer of Rungni (Hammer), so that thy every bone shall be broken.—Z, I mean to live a long life, though

243. Einridi] emend. ; ein heri, R.

THE LAY OF SKIRNI.

GIVEN in R, leaves 11-125; and (the opening only) in A (748) to 1.110. Quoted in Edda (Sk), v. 42, where also a paraphrase of the plot is given, which supplies the scanty account to be gathered from the poem, which is certainly imperfect, with several serious lacunz.

The character of the story is highly romantic and passionate, and there are touches which remind one of Romeo and Juliet. But the bantering scenes, in which the faithful servant upholds his master’s cause, testify to the poet of Loka-senna.

Frey, having fallen in love with the beautiful white-armed giantmaiden, falls into a deep love-melancholy. His mother, grieving at his sad state, bids his trusty page Skirni find out the cause thereof. Skirni worms out his secret, and agrees to go to Giant-land to woo Gerda, his master’s love, for him. By a mixture of caressing and force he makes her consent; but at a great price, Frey’s charmed sword must go to Giant-land. Frey welcomes his good squire’s tidings, and the poem breaks off before the end. We learn from the prose paraphrase the antecedents and consequences of this fiery passion, and why it is that —

Frey will ride weaponless to the Last Battle at the Crack of Doom. The origin of the story is probably a sun-myth. The name Skirnismal is warranted by A, where it is thus superscribed.

thou threatenest me with thy hammer. Skrimnis’ straps were too tight for thee, thou couldst not get to thy food, and wast well-nigh starved for hunger.—T. Hold thy peace, Loki, etc. The killer of Hrungni shall strike thee dead, and (send thee) down underneath the gates of the Dead.—L. I chanted to the Anses, I chanted to the sons of Anses, what the mind bid me; but for thee alone I will go away, for I know thou wilt smite.

Loki (in parting, addresses Eager the host). Thou didst brew thy ale [for a feast], Eager, but thou shalt never more give a banquet. All thy goods here within the flame shall lick, and burn thy back to boot.

§ 2.] THE LAY OF SKIRNI. III

Skadi. ARISE, Skirni, and go and get speech of our son, and ask our goodly son with whom he is angry.— Skirni. I shall get but evil words from your son if I try to speak with him and ask your goodly son against whom his wrath is kindled.

SECOND SCENE.—Skirni goes up to Frey.

Skirni, Tell me, O Frey, thou captain of the Gods, fain would I know why thou, my lord, sittest the livelong day alone in thy hall.—Frey. How can I tell thee, my young boy, my heavy heart-sorrow. For the sun shines day by day, but brings no joy to me.—Séirni. Can thy grief be so great that thou, my friend, couldst not tell it to me? For we were lads together in past days ; well might we two trust one another.— Frey. In Gymis’ crofts I saw a-walking a maid I love; her arms beamed so that sky and sea were lit thereby. This maid is dearer to me than

IV.

on ever maid was to a young man. But none of the Anses or of the Elves will have us be together.—Skirni. Now give me the horse to bear me through the dark flicker-flame thou knowest of; and that sword that fights of itself against the Giant-kind.—Frey. I will give thee the horse to bear thee through the dark flicker-flame ; and that sword that fights of itself if he is bold that bears it.

THIRD SCENE.—Skirni on his way talks to his horse.

Skirni. It is dark all about us, it is time for us to go over the wet hills, over Ogre-land. We shall both get there unless that foul giant takes us both.

FOURTH SCENE.—In Giant-land, outside Gymis’ hall. To the Shepherd.

Skirni. Tell me, Shepherd, sitting on the howe and watching all the ways, how I may come to talk with the young maid, maugre Gymis’ hounds,

Shepherd. Art thou fey, or art thou a ghost?... Thou canst never get to talk with Gymis’ goodly maid.—Skirni. He must never be flinching

39. pursa. pidd yfir] A; pyria piod yfir, R.

rs i Me i. 2 ~

§ 2.] THE LAY OF SKIRNI, | 113

V.

VI.

whoso wants to go on with his journey. On one day my fate was fashioned and all my life laid down.

FIFTH SCENE.—Inside the hall. Gerda and a bondsmaid.

Gerda. What is that clattering clatter that I hear in our court? The earth is quaking, and all Gymis’ homestead shaking.—Bondsmaid. A man is without here, he has got off his horse, and lets his steed graze.—Gerda. Go, bid him in to our hall, to drink of our clear mead; though it misgives me that my brother’s slayer i is without.

SIXTH SCENE.—Gerda welcomes Skirni to the ball.

Gerda. Which of the sons of Anses or of wise Wanes is this? How didst thou alone get over the huge fire to visit our hall?—Skirni. I am none of Anses nor of Elves nor of wise Wanes, though alone I came over the huge fire to visit your hall. I have here eleven all-golden apples; these, Gerda, will I give thee to purchase thy favour, that thou mayest call Frey the best-beloved of all living.

Gerda. Thy eleven apples I will never take, for any one’s love; nor shall we two, Frey and I, ever live together.—S£irni. I will give thee a ring that was burnt with Woden’s young son; eight rings as heavy drop therefrom every ninth night.—Gerda. I take no ring, even though burnt with Woden’s young son. I lack no gold in Gymis’ house, sharing my father’s wealth.

Skirni (threatening). Look on this blade, maid, slender, marked with characters, that I hold in my hand; I will hew thy head from off thy neck unless thou yieldest to me.—Gerda. I shall never bear to be driven to love any man. Yet I guess if thou and Gymir meet, you will come to fight.—Skirni. Look at this blade, etc. Before its edge the old giant shall bow down and thy father fall doomed. I shall touch thee with a magic wand, for I will tame thee, maiden, to my will; thou shalt go where the sons of men shall never see thee, on the Eyrie-mound thou shalt for ever sit, looking out of the world, sniffing Hellwards. Meat shall be more loathsome to thee than is the cruel Serpent to any man. Thou shalt

Tee eee |e ees re

Pe aa ae ere. cy Ts 0h og PE)

[Oe ery «Pre

§ 2.] THE LAY OF SKIRNI. 115

be made a show of, when thou comest out. May Rimni (the giant) grin upon thee; may everything stare on thee; thou shalt be better known than the watchman (Heimdall) among the Gods, gaping through the gate! May (the magical characters) Maddener and Whooper, Teasle and Lust, bring upon thee tears and sorrow! Sit thee down, I| will yet tell thee a heavy ... and double grief. May the demons pinch thee every day in Giant-land; thou shalt creep loveless and lovelorn to the Frost- Giants’ hall day by day, thou shalt have weeping for joy, and wear out sorrow with tears. Thou shalt linger for ever with a three-headed monster, or else be husband-less. May thy soul be smitten! May thou pine away with pining! Be thou like a thistle-head thrust away in the porch! I went to the holt, and to the... wood to fetch the magic wand, and got it. Woden is wroth with thee, the pride of the Anses (1 hor) is wroth with thee; Frey shall hate thee. Thou, most wicked maid, hast brought down upon thee the wrath of the Gods.—Hearken, O Giants! Hearken,

ye Frost-Giants ! ye sons of Suttung! ye companies of the Anses! how I forbid, how I deny her all joy of men, all pleasure of men. A monster called Rimegrim below Corse-gates shall have thee (to wife). There the sons of toil underneath the roots of the wood shail serve thee with....; no better drink shalt thou get, maid, for thy pleasure, at my pleasure.— I engrave thee with the sign ‘p’ and the three signs, Lewdness, Love- Madness, Lust.—Yet will I scrape it off as I scratched it on, if need be.

Gerda (cowed, now brings him a goblet). Hail now, lad, and take this foaming cup full of old mead! Though I had not thought that I should ever love the Waningi (Frey) well.—Skirnz. I must have a full answer before I ride hence; when wilt thou have a love-tryst with Niord’s blooming son?—-Gerda. Barra is the name of a peaceful copse we both know; there after three nights Gerda will grant her love to Niord’s son.

SEVENTH SCENE.—Skirni back at Elfham telling his success to Frey.

Frey. Tell me, Skirni, before thou castest saddle off thy horse and

163. priar] emend,; nio, R here and 1. 171, ys . Pa, eee oe rs ard |

if ui

“eats, 2 io cle, -—}

a ak ae

§ 2.] HARBARDS.-LIOD. 114

VIII.

HARBARDS-LIOD; or, THE LAY OF HOARBEARD.

Tuis little drama is contained in R (leaves 12-13); and partly in A, from ll. 57 to the end. It is otherwise unknown, never having been cited or paraphrased.

The metre is a sort of alliterative prose, which ever and anon becomes regular verse ; a style of composition only met with in this poem and in the following fragment.

The subject of the drama is the contrast between the two religious ideals of the age, the old and the new; the homely, hard-working, oldfashioned franklin, and the adventurous, gallant, loose-living gentleman- buccaneer of the young wicking-days, typified in the two characters Thor and Woden.

The dialogue between the two kings, Eystein the reformer and Sigurd the crusader, in The Life of Kings, treats of a similar subject, and may be partly inspired by our poem.

Thor, anxious to get across the stream, which he cannot ford (as Bergmann acutely observed) because the water would put out his quiver-ful of thunder-bolts, calls to the ferryman, Hoarbeard (Woden in disguise), to put him across. Hoarbeard mocks him, denies him a passage, and the scene ends by Thor going off grumbling to seek his way home by a long roundabout route which his malicious antagonist has told him of.

There are several interesting mythological allusions, and the vocabulary is marked. The text seems pretty straight and perfect.

The zame ‘ Harbards-liod’ is warranted by R.

takest one step forward, How didst thou fare in Giant-land—for thy pleasure, or mine?—Séirni. Barra is the name of a peaceful copse we both know; there after three nights’ time Gerda will grant her love to Niord’s son. -

EIGHTH SCENE.—Frey (soliloquising). One night is long, two nights are longer! How can I endure three? A month has often seemed shorter to me that this half (short) bridal night.

; _ 173. lengri ro] léng, R ; W has, L. es n. léng es 6nnor, hve megak preyja priar.

SCENE, on the banks of a river, Thor shouting on the one bank for the Jerryman who is on the other.

Thor. WHO is that lad of lads, that stands across the river ?—H. Who is that churl of churls, that shouts across the water?—TI. Ferry me across the water, I will give thee food to-morrow. I have a basket on my back; there was never better meat; I dined, as I rested before I went from home, on herring and goat-venison; I am still sated with it—H. Thou rejoicest in an early meal. Little thou knowest it, but dismal is thy home; I guess thy mother be dead.—T. Thou tellest me now, what is the worst news to every man, that my mother is dead.— H. It looks little like thy having three estates; there thou art, bare-legged in a beggar’s gaberdine; not even thy breeches on.—T. Bring the boat here, I will show thee the berths. Who owns the bark thou holdest by the shore ?—H. Hildwolf is his name, who bade me hold her here; the shrewd husbandman who lives in Radsey Sound. He told me not to ferry over any poachers or horse-thieves, but only good men and such as I knew well. ‘Tell me thy name, if thou wilt cross the Sound.—T. I will, though an outlaw, give my name, and all my kin and dwelling. I am Woden’s son, Meili’s brother, and Main’s father, the Strong One of the Gods; it is with Thor thou speakest. Now I will ask what is thy

4. matrinn, R., 7. Arligom verkom, R. g. verst] mest, R.

: sae

§2.] HARBARDS-LIOD. 119

name ?—H. My name is Hoarbeard; I never hide my name.—T. Why shouldst thou hide thy name, unless thou be an outlaw?—H. Even though I were an outlaw, I could keep my life safe from such as thee, unless I were death-doomed.—T. ’Tis a bad job to have to wade through the water to thee and wet my quiver; I should pay thee, thou quiver-boy (wee boy), for thy mockery, if I were to cross the Sound. —H,. Here I shall stand, and bide thy coming; thou shalt not have met a better man since Hrungni’s death.—T. Now thou tellest how Hrungni and I dealt together, that stout-hearted Giant, whose head was of stone; yet I felled him and brought him low. What wast thou doing then?—A#. I was with Fiolware five winters together on an island called Allgreen ; we fought there, and made a slaughter: tried many things, meddled with love.—T. What manner of women were those women of yours? —H. Sparks of women they were, had they but been wise; fair they were, if they had been but faithful. They wound rope out of sand, and dug down the dales into a field. I got the better of them all. I slept with these seven sisters, took my pleasure with them all. What wert thou doing the while, Thor?

Thor. 1 smote Thiazi, the mighty Giant; I flung the eyes of Alwald’s son up into the clear heaven; these are the greatest tokens of my works, which all men may see hereafter. What wert thou doing the while, Hoarbeard?

H, Many love adventures I had with the night-riders (hags), when I wiled them from their husbands. Sturdy Giant, indeed, was Leebeard; he gave me a magic wand, but I wiled him out of his wit.—T. III didst thou requite good gift then.—H. One oak takes what is scraped from another. Every man for himself. What wast thou doing the while, Thor?

Thor. I was in the east, smiting the ill-working Giant-brides on their way to the hills. Great would be Giant-kind were they all alive. No man could then live on this earth. What wast thou doing the while, Hoarbeard?

H. I was in Welshland, busy a-fighting; I drove kings to fight, but never wrought peace. Woden owns all the gentlefolk that fall in fight, but Thor the thrall-kind.—T. Thou wouldst share out unfair odds among the Anses, if the power were thine.

H. Thor has strength enough, but no heart; from fear and cowardice thou wast packed away in a glove, and wast not much like Thor then; thou darest not in thy terror either to sneeze or... . lest Fialar heard i i i at i i le ie ei Oi ei, ee ae ee ee. a eT”

$2. HARBARDS-LIOD. rot it.—T. Thou coward, Hoarbeard, I would smite thee to death if I could stretch across the Sound.—H. Why stretch across the Sound when there is no cause? What didst thou the while, Thor?

Thor. 1 was in the East, and defended the river, when Swarang’s sons set upon me; they pelted me with stones, yet they did not enjoy victory, they were obliged to beg quarter of me. What wast thou doing the while, Hoarbeard?

H. | was in the East, in adventure with a certain lady; I played with the linen-white one, and held a secret love-meeting; I gladdened the goldbright lady. She, the maid, enjoyed the sport.—T. Ye had a good choice of maidens then.—H, I needed thy help then, Thor, that I might keep hold of that linen-white maid.—T. I would have helped if I had had the chance.—H. I would have trusted thee, if thou hadst not broken truce with me.—Z. I am no such heel-biter as an old brogue in the spring. wnHT, 4 2 o's » What wast thou doing the while, Thor?—Z. I smote the Bearsark brides in Leesey, they had wrought the worst deeds, wiling all people.—H. That was a shameful deed of thee, Thor, to beat women.—T, She-wolves they were, but hardly women. They shattered

84. Fialarr] thus. 95. laun-ping] A; lavng ping, R. 97. atto pr, R.

my ship which I had beached, threatened me with an iron club, and chased Thialfi. What wast thou doing the while, Hoarbeard?

H. I was in the army, which was marching hither, hoisting the warbanner, and reddening the spear.—T. Now thou art telling how thou wentest to do harm to us.—H. I will make it good to thee with a handring, as the daysmen order who shall settle our cause.

Thor. Where didst thou learn those cutting words? I never heard words more cutting.—H. I learnt them from the old [giantesses] that live in the home-howes.—I. Thou givest a (too) fair name to cairns, when thou callest them home-howes.—H. So I judge on this head (that is what I call them).—T. Thy word-fencing will turn out ill to thee, if I do set myself to wade across; thou wouldst, methinks, cry louder than the Wolf, if thou shouldst get a stroke of the Hammer.—d. Sif [thy wife] has a paramour at home, go and seek him, that is a job for thee; *tis nearer at hand to thee.—T. Thou lettest thy tongue lead thee to say what is most offensive to me; thou coward, Hoarbeard, thou liest, I warrant thee.

H. I speak true, I warrant thee; thou art too slow on thy journey. Thou wouldst have been far on thy way now, if thou hadst started at break of day.—T. Hoarbeard, thou coward, how long thou hast kept mm, A; om. R.; read ividjom ? 120. Bugge; -skavgom, A; skogom, R. 122. -skoga, R and A. / 128. hor] hd, R and A,

$2] IVAR AND WODEN. , 123

THE FLYTING OF IVAR AND WODEN.

THIS curious fragment is found in a prose paraphrase in the Skioldunga Saga; whence we have taken those lines which still keep traces of the old poetic form. The text is printed in the Icelandic Prose Reader, pp. 191-192.

Ivar Widefathom, the famous Danish conqueror, had a dream, as

‘me waiting.—H. I never thought a ferryman could stop Anses-Thor’s journey.—T. I will give thee counsel; pull the boat hither; let us stop hooting. Come to meet Magni’s father (me).

H. Get thee gone from the Sound, passage shall be denied thee.—T. Then shew me the way, since thou wilt not ferry me across the water. —H. That is a small thing to refuse. It is no long way to go; an hour to the stock; an hour to the stone; then keep on to the left hand, till thou comest to Werland, there shall Fiorgyn meet her son; and then she will tell thee the highway to the land of Woden.—T. Shall I get there to-day ?—H. Aye, thou wilt get there with great toil and trouble at sunrise, or nigh about, I think.

Thor. Short shall our talk be, since thou answerest me nothing but mocking. I will pay thee back for refusing me passage, if we two meet again.

H. Get thee gone. May all the fiends take thee!

SEPT POR ETE

=

eal oi Faas =

eRe he lay on his ship off a haven, in which he saw a great fiery dragon, flying up from the sea, followed by all the birds in the Northern lands; and from the land he saw a great cloud rolling up, with rain and tempest, towards the dragon; and presently the dragon and his followers were swallowed up in the cloud, and were seen no more, But there came great thunderings and terrible lightnings, and rain and hail over all the realms that were under his rule; and when he looked for his war-galleys, to put to sea and take refuge from the storm, lo, they had turned into whales and were swimming away into the deep. With that the King woke, and called on Hord, his old foster-father, to read his dreadful dream. But Woden took the likeness of Hord, and stood on the pier by the side of the King’s ship, while the King sat under the awnings at the stern and talked to him.

It is at this point that our paraphrase begins:—At the end of the dialogue the King rose up furious, and jumped overboard to get at Hord, who dived into the water before he reached him, and neither of the two was ever seen again, and the revolution foretold by the dream came to pass, so that the mighty empire of Ivar Widefathom was broken up and ruled over by strangers. Munch has traced the events alluded to with great ingenuity in his Norse History.

The metre appears to have been the same as in the preceding Lay of Hoarbeard; and by the same poet.

King Ivar. Come on board, Hord, and read my dream.

Hord. 1 shall not come; read it thyself. Thy kingdom shall fall from thee, both Sweden and Denmark. And surely the greed of Hell is come upon thee, since thou thinkest to lay all realms under thy rule; but thou shalt die, and thine enemies shall take thy kingdom.

K. I. Come hither, and tell thy prophecies of evil!

H. I will stand here and speak from this place.

K. I. Which of the Gods may Halfdan the Sharp be likened to?

H. He is Balder among the Gods, whom all the powers mourned for—very unlike thee.

K. I. Come hither, and tell thy words of wisdom.

H. I will stand here and speak from this place.

K. I. Which of the Gods may Hrorek be likened to?

H. He is Honir, the cowardliest of the Gods, and he, too, is unfavourable to thee.

K. I. Which of the Gods may Helgi the Keen be likened to?

H. He is Hermod, who was the boldest-hearted, and...

a \ ee Me r ER a a CRS

§3.] FRAGMENTS OF LOST POEMS. 125

§ 3. MYTHIC FRAGMENTS.

FRAGMENTS OF LOST MYTHOLOGICAL POEMS.

1. Heimdal’s Charm (Heimdallar Galdr). A fragment preserved in Edda (Gg).

2. The Dialogue of Niord and Skadi, probably by the author of Skirnismal. Husband and wife ill-matched; the God of the Sea with the Giantess of the Hills. A morsel saved in Edda (Gg). It is also paraphrased by Saxo, pp. 53-55 (ed. 1839); but falsely attributed by him to King Hadding and his Queen, Saxo dilutes the eight Norse lines into thirty-one Latin ones,

“ The Goddess Gna’s talk with the Wanes; just this morsel in Edda (Gg).

4. Balder’s Death. A mere quotation in Edda (Gg) and a paraphrase of the story is all that remain of what must have been a fine poem. Thokk is Loki in disguise.

5. Geirrod and Thor. A story of one of Thor’s adventures paraphrased in Edda (Sk). Eilif Gudrunson’s Thor’s Drapa gives a later version of the legend. There is an Irish version of this story derived from a Northern source (as the word ‘Iarla’ shows) in the Revue Celtique, 1880,

1. H&IMDALLAR-GALDR.

K. I. Which of the Gods may Godfred be likened to?

H. He is Heimdall, the most foolish of the Anses.

K. I, To which among the Anses am I like?

H. Thou art the serpent, the worst of all things, called the Earthserpent.

K. I, If thou art foretelling my fate, I can tell thee of thine. For I know thee, where thou standest, thou monstrous Demon.

H, Come nearer, thou Earth-serpent, and let us prove our might.

1. Heimdall’s Charm.

• » » » 1 AM nine mothers’ child, I am nine sisters’ son,

2. LNiord and Skadz.

3. Gnd and her steed Hofvarpni.

4. Lay on Balder (the Giantess Thokk). Thokk Pakk mun grata purrom tdrom q. Baldrs_ bal-farar : Haldi Hel pvi-es hefir! 20
5. hor and Giant Geirrod. q. Iatna garda {!

2. Niord and Skadi.

Quoth Niord. | LOATHE the mountains; I was not long there, nine nights only. The howl of the wolves seemed evil to me after the song of the swans.

Quoth Skadi. 1 cannot sleep in the resting-places of the sea (shore) for the shrieking of the sea-fowls. The mew, coming in from the sea, wakes me every morning.

3. Gna and her steed Hoofsplasher.

The Wanes say: WHAT is that flying? What is that moving, gliding through the air?

She says: 1am not flying, though I move and glide through the air on the back of Hoofsplasher, whom Hamsharp begot with Gardrof.

4. Lay on Balder’s Death.

The ogress Thokk says: THOKK will weep dry tears at Balder’s balefire. What have I to do with the Son of Man quick or dead? Let Hell keep what she holds!

5. Thor and Giant Geirrod. Thor, (wading through the river Wimmer, says): Wax not, Wimmer,

3. &] add. W. 5. pdottomk] emend.; mer potti, W. 7. makat] emend. ; matat (i, e. macac), W. 21. Vimra, W, but elsewhere Vimor.

eer eor

FRAGMENTS OF LOST POEMS. 124

Vino ative tvisak Re waciri 25 Iatna gaordom {:

for I am minded to wade through thee to Giant-land. Be sure if thou waxest, my god-power will wax too, as high as heaven. .. .

Once I put forth all my God’s-power in Giant-land, when Squall and Grip, Geirrod’s daughters, tried to lift me up to heaven.

25. sinni] om. U; allz (for As), U. Both W and r drop this verse.

Bp ODER Trt

EARLY WESTERN EPICS.

TuHis Book contains the flower of Northern Epic Poetry (kvidor) ; of the best period of what we take to be a Western School. These poems differ widely from those of the preceding Books in spirit and form. The metre of the first three Sections is epic (kvido-hattr).

SECTION 1 includes the finest Heroic poems in the whole range of Northern Song; all, we think, by the same unknown hand, the ‘ poet of Helgi.’

SECTION 2 is made up of the Lay of Weyland, Thryms-kvida and Balder’s Doom, the Danish Mill Song, the Morsels of Biarka-mal, all marked out by their ballad-like spirit.

SECTION 3 contains Volo-spa, the great prophetic Sibyl’s Lay of the last days of heathendom,

The first Northern Christian poems which make up SECTION 4 we have preferred to put here, next to Volo-spa, rather than in the preceding Book with works kindred in metre, but wholly alien in spirit. They are the last genuine poems in Didactic measure, but their strength and subject are those of Dante, not of Hesiod.

LR Re Te ea

Ti ea] — ws

EE SOR NOD Mee NOS Re BY

ee

Cia HELGL POET,

THE HELGI TRILOGY,

THIs trilogy has reached us in a single vellum, R, (leaves 20a-264,) where its component parts are massed together confusedly, just as they must have been taken down by the collector from the mouth of reciters who had half forgotten the old poem. As the editions by no means represent the state of the MS., it will be necessary to enter into detail, especially as there is no other part of R which shows so clearly how the collector received and treated his matter.

R gives the trilogy in this order :—

(a) The story of HELGI and SiIGRUN down to line 235 (A text), followed by—

(4) The story of Hiorward and Sigrlind, and HELer and Swava, with the Flyting of the Giantess embedded in it, going on without fresh title to—

(c) The beginning of HreLG1 and KARA, under the names of Helgi and Sigrun. ‘Then come without a break—

(d) The fragments of the old Wolsung Lay, to which are attached—

(e) The last section of Helgi and Sigrun, Il. 236 sqq., with—

(f) Stray verses of the earlier part. of the same story, strewn pellmell among the rest, giving a duplicate text (B) to part of the story (ll. 125-235); being probably the recollections of a second reciter, who happened to know a few verses the collector had not got before.

The Wolsung paraphrast, working from a sister copy of our R, takes (a), and uses it for his story, without noticing the following sections (or text B), which indeed were not necessary for his purpose. Of Helgi and Swava, we have zo paraphrase. But we do find such bits of the story of Helgi and Kara in the late and wretched Saga of Hromund Gripson, as enable us to restore the proper names in (c), and show that it is really the first part of the old Karoliod referred to in the prose of R. :

We have used (a), (e), and (/) in our text of the first part of the trilogy (Helgi and Sigrun), choosing the best versions where they run parallel. Both texts A and B are printed in the Notes, side by side.

The second part (Helgi and Swava) has been cleared from its interpolations.

The old Wolsung Lay fragment is printed separately.

The third part (Helgi and Kara) is thus left distinct.

The lot of the three parts is all built on the same lines. The whole story may be thus resumed.—A young hero wins the love and protection of a Walkyrie, marries her, and dies in the height of his glory. She joins him in the grave, and the two" lovers are born again

K

under different names to go through the same life-story, though with varying incidents, as follows :—

I. Helgi and Sigrun. Helgi is born at Bralund of Borghild, and is blessed by the Fates, though an evil Fate foretells trouble to him. While he is yet a child, his father, Sigmund, is slain by King Hunding. His first deed of arms is to avenge his father in a battle at Lowefell. As he is resting after the fight, the Walkyrie Sigrun, daughter of King Hogni, comes riding through the air to him, and begs him to deliver her from being given in marriage to Hodbrord, the cruel son of Granmar. He agrees to do so, and sets out with his fleet; when he reaches the enemy’s coast there follows an episode, the Flyting between Sinfiotli, his captain of the host, and Godmund, Hodbrord’s watchman. At the battle of Frekastein, Helgi slays his enemy, but also unwittingly his love’s father and elder brother, but saves Day, the next brother, making him swear fealty to him. Day breaks his oaths, and kills his father’s slayer at the battle of Fettergrove. Sigrun curses her brother for his perjury, and goes into the grave with Helgi’s ghost.

II. Helgi and Swava. The opening scenes are very fragmentary. Atli, by help of the talking birds, woos Sigrlind, Swafni’s daughter, for his master, King Hiorward. Rodmar, a piratic king, kills Swafni, and Sigrlind escapes to Hiorward, marries him, and bears a son, Helgi, who is dumb and nameless in his youth, till he meets Swava, a Walkyrie, in a wood; she gives him a name and a charmed sword which will enable him to avenge,his grandfather, Swafni. He accordingly kills Rodmar in battle, and marries Swava. His half-brother, Hedin, having refused the love of a witch, is cursed by her, and in consequence makes a foolish vow at the Brag-cup, toewed Swava, his brother’s wife. In horror at his words he tells all to Helgi, who bids him be at ease, for he himself is doomed to fall in battle against Rodmar’s sons. As Helgi lies dying but victorious in the field, he sends for Swava, and gives her to his brother, but she refuses to marry him till he has avenged her husband. Here the story breaks off abruptly.

III. Helgi and Kara. We have very little of this story left. It is evident that Helgi’s father (Sevi?) has been slain, for we find him brought up by a foster-father, Hagal, with his own son Hamal. In their house he is sought for by his enemies under the conduct of King Hadding’s counsellor, Blind the balewise, but contrives to elude them by putting on a bond-woman’s dress and grinding at the handmill. After this he meets the Walkyrie Kara, Halfdan’s daughter, who tells him that she has long watched over him though invisible. Here the poem breaks off; but no doubt there was in the last part a flyting, in which Hamal took part, a battle in which Helgi slays his father’s slayer, Hadding,—a complication in which Kara’s brothers, Sigar and Hogni, are mixed up, and a final tragedy in which both Kara and Helgi erish. : That Haddinga-skadi (not Haddinga-skati, as it is twice written, the word only occurring thrice in all) is the proper epithet of this Helgi, appears from the parallelism with ‘ Hundings-bane,’ from the name ‘Halding’ (an evident corruption of Hadding), in Hromund. Gripson’s Saga, and from the fact that it fits the verse, while there is no place for Hadding in Helgi Hiorward’s son’s life at all.

For the transposition at the end of Helgi and Sigrun see the Notes.

g m Ls 4 i : i en eee ae aid ioal teria hme ms ee a ee. ee ee

§1.] HELGI AND SIGRUN. 131

HELGI AND SIGRUN.

b I. HELGA-KvIpA.

A* vas alda pat-es arar gullo, hnigo heilag vatn af Himin-fiallom :

I. IT was in the olden days, the eagles were screaming, the holy streams were flowing from the Hills of Heaven, when Helgi the stout of heart was born of Borghild, in Braeholt. Night lay over the house when the Fates came to forecast the hero’s life. They said that he should be called the most famous of kings and the best among princes. With power they twisted the strands of fate for Borghild’s son in Braeholt, they spread the woof of gold and made it fast under the midst of the moon’s hall. In the east and in the west they hid the thrums, all the land between was to be his. Neri’s sister fastened one strand in the a sides of the North, and prayed that it might hold for ever.

There was one thing only that threatened the son of the Wolfings and the lady that bore the darling.... [ Quoth a raven to a raven, as he sat on a lofty branch, famished for food, ‘ Somewhat of tidings I know. The son of Sigmund, one night old, stands in his armour—now the day is a-dawning—his eyes flashing like a hero’s; friend of the wolves is he. Let us be of good cheer !’ The household looked on him as a dayling [bright son of light],

1o. burar Borghildar] emend.; pa er borgir braut, 2 18. Here a verse or more seems to be lost.

saying, ‘ Now are good seasons come among men.’ The king himself came off the battle-field bearing a fair leek to the young prince. He gave him the name of Helgi with Ringstead, Sunfell, Snowfell, Sigarsfield, Ringhaven, Hightown and Heavening; moreover he gave Sin- fiotli’s brother an inwrought blood-serpent [sword].

The high-born elm [hero] grew up fair and lovely before his kinsman’s eyes, he dealt out the gold and bestowed it on the household, never sparing the red hoards. He did not wait long fora war.... When he was fifteen years old he slew the stark Hunding, who had long borne rule over his lands and people. Then the sons of Hunding summoned the child of Sigmund to give them riches and rings, for they had to make him repay them for their father’s death and a ‘vast plunder. But the prince paid the heirs neither recompense nor weregild, but bade them await the fierce tempest of spears and the ©

anger of Woden. The king’s sons came to the sword-tryst at Lowefell, as was appointed. Frodi’s peace was broken between the foes, Woden’s greedy hounds ravined over the island. When he had slain the sons of Hunding, Alf and Eywulf, Hiorward and

26. g68] blank for three letters in R, 36. spardi eigi, R. 45. botir, R.

Be Nae Ss le rene)

eee en

"5 _W-Suyel phage rath Poe

§1.] HELGI AND SIGRUN. 133

Haward, and destroyed the whole race of Geir-Mimi, the prince sat down beneath the Eagle-Rock. - Then over Lowefell there burst flashes of light, and out of the flashes the lightnings leapt ....- Then appeared high in air a troop of fairies, riding in the field of

. Heaven;/they wore helmets, and their mail-coats pes? Ga with I

blood, aid from their spear-points light-beams shone.fIt was early when the king called out of Wolfwood to the Maids of the South and asked them if they would follow him home that night—there was a clang of bowstrings..fBut Hogni’s daughter answered from where she sat on her steed—the shield-clash lulled—‘ Other matters have we on hand, I ween, than to birl at the ale with the prince [you]. My father has plighted his daughter to the grim son of Granmar, though I, O Helgi, have said that I held King Hodbrord no better than a cat’s son. f Yet he will come, within a few days’ space, save thou, O prince, challenge him to battle or deliver me out of his hand.’ / ‘Fear not,

• maiden, the slayer of Isung [Hodbrord], there shall be a rattle of blades first, unless I be dead.’ Thence the king seht messengers over land and sea to call out a

59-60, Thus partly emend., Bugge; leiptrir qvomg, pa vas und hialmom, R.

levy, promising the warriors and their sons gold in good store. ‘Bid:

them get aboard their ships forthwith and make ready to sail from Brandey.’ ‘There the prince waited, till there came thither warriors by hundreds from Hedinsey. Forthwith the gold-decked fleet stood out to sea from Staffness. Then quoth Helgi to Hiorleif, ‘ Hast thou mustered the blameless host?’ And the young king answered that it were long to tell over the high-stemmed ships freighted with mariners from Crane-ore, as they sailed out to sea down Yorwa-sound, twelve hundred trusty men. ‘ Yet there lies at Hightown a king’s host twice as great. We must make us ready for battle.’

The host awoke, they could see the brow of dawn; the king bade furl the bow-awnings, and they hoisted the woven canvas to the yards in Warinsfirth. Then there arose a plashing of oars and a rattle of iron, shield clashed against shield as the Wickings rowed. With a foaming wake the king’s fleet of warriors stood out far from the land. When Kolga’s sister [the billow] and the long keels dashed together, it was to the ear as if surf and cliffs were breaking against each other.

88. af stundo] emend.; stgndom, R. 89. beit her} thus? 95. Thus, not i orva-. 102, ra] tre, R. .

ia

TOF OE et Ra em

§1.] HELGI AND SIGRUN. 135

Helgi bade them hoist the topsails higher. The fast-following seas kept tryst upon the hulls, whilst Eager’s dreadful daughter strove to whelm the bows of the steer-steeds. But battle-bold Sigrun, from on high, saved them and their craft off Cliffholt. The king’s brine-steed was wrested by main strength from Ran’s hands, and that night the fair-found fleet rode safe once more in Unisvoe.

The foes gathered at Swarin’s howe, mustering their host in angry mood. Quoth the god-born Godmund [Hodbrord’s warder], ‘Who is the king that steers these ships with a golden war-standard at his bows? No shield of peace, methinks, do I see in the van, but a halo of war wraps the Wickings about.’

Quoth Sinfiotli, hoisting a red shield, golden-rimmed, to the yard— he was a warder that could give a good answer, and bandy words with warriors—‘ Remember this evening, when thou art feeding the swine and leading the bitches to their swill, to make it known that the Wolfings from the East, in fighting mood, have come off Cliffholt. There

112. vardat hifom hrénn ping-loga] thus emend,; hranom hrav,‘n, R (the scribe mended the wrong word). 114. & stag . . .] emend.; stagstiorn mavrom, R. 11g. Svat] i.e. sva-at; sat, R. 123. Hence to I, 235 there is a double text, A and B. - 126. Emend.; piccia mer frid i farar br-, R. 127. Thus Text A duplicate. 128, ra] tre, R. 135. fyr] fra, R. 135-139. Text hefir cedli zttar binnar | arf Fiorsunga und sik prungif—A duplicate.

in the midst of his fleet may Hodbrord find Helgi, that flight-spurning hero, who has often given the eagles their fill, whilst thou wast kissing the slave-girls at the querns. .

Quoth Godmund: 1 would sate the ravens on thy carcase at Wolfstone before I would lead your bitches to their swill, or feed the hogs. The fiends bandy words with thee.

Quoth Sinfiotli : Thou, O Godmund, shalt sooner tend goats, and climb steep scaurs, holding a hazel club in thy hand. That is more to thy liking than the moot of the swords.

Quoth Godmund: Thou knowest little, my lord, of the stories of old, when thou bringest false charges against warriors. Thou thyself hast eaten wolves’ meat and murdered thy brother. Thou hast often sucked wounds with cold mouth, and slunk, loathsome to all men, into the dens of wild beasts.

Quoth Sinfiotli; Thou, witch-hag that thou art, wast a sibyl in Warinsey, fashioning false prophecies. Thou didst say that thou wouldst have none of the mail-clad warriors to husband save Sinfiotli. Thou, hateful ogress, wast a Walkyrie, hideous, accursed of All-father. The

139. at] a, R. 140-143. These lines, clearly due in here, are a response to the preceding. Text B has—pvi fyrr skolo at Freka steini sAttir saman um sakar (i.e. quap Sinfiotli), add. R after skoda. 161. sveip-vis] emend.; svevis, R.

ba) bas

I}

ey,

$1.] HELGI AND SIGRUN. 137

Helgi Veeri ykkr, Sinfiatli, s@mra miklo

Host of the chosen had well-nigh fought together for thy sake, thou false woman. On Saganess we two had a litter of nine wolves; I was the father of them all.

Quoth Godmund: Nay, thou wast no father of Wolves, that I can remember, since the ogre-maids gelt thee on Thorsness by Cliffholt. Thou wast Siggeir’s step-son, and didst lie in the reindeer’s lairs, out in the woods, used to the songs of the wolves. All manner of crimes fell to thy lot; thou didst rip up thine own brother’s breast, and didst make thyself famous for abominations.

Quoth Sinfiotli: Thou wast Grani’s dam on Braefield, golden-bitted thou rannest saddled for a race. I have ridden thee many a course, uphill and down dale, sitting in saddle on thy slim back, thou.... :

Quoth Gedmund; Thou wast a mannerless swain when thou wert milking Gollni’s (the Giant’s) goats; and now, for the second time, thou hagspawn, thou tatter-screen, wilt thou a longer tale?

Quoth Helgi; It would beseem you both far better, good Sinfiotli, to fight out your quarrel and gladden the eagle, than to bandy unprofitable words. Though the princes are my foes, yet a warrior should speak the truth, and brave, methinks, are Granmar’s sons; they have proved on Moin’s heath that they have the heart, to wield their swords.

Now they rode their steeds Sweepwood and Swaywood with all speed to Sunham, through dewy dales and dusky glens; the sea of mist [air] shook as they passed by. They met the king in the gate of the court, and told him of the coming of his foes. Hodbrord was standing helmhooded without the house, looking on the riding of his kinsmen: ‘ Why are the Hniflungs flushed with wrath?’ [quoth he.]

Quoth Godmund: The lithe keels are turning their heads to our shore, ringed sea-stags, with long sail-yards, with many shields and smooth-planed oars, a great war-fleet, the gallant Wolfings. Fifteen battalions are landing, but out in Sogn are seven more thousand, At the dock by Cliffholt are lying surt-deer, swart-black, and fair ‘with gold, there is by far the most of their host. Helgi will not put off the sword-moot.

Quoth Hodbrord: Bridle the fleet steeds to go forth and call a great levy! Saddle Spurwitni for Sparin’s heath, Melni and Milni for Mirkwood. Let no man stay away that can beara brand. Call up Hogni

$1.] HELGI AND SIGRUN. 139

gran-stod Gridar’—Granmars sona.

Fello { morgon at Freka-steini and the sons of Ring, Atli and Yngwi, Alf the old; they are all eager to waken war. Let the Wolsungs meet resistance.

With one swoop the yellow blades crossed at Wolf-Rock. Ever fought Helgi Hunding’s slayer foremost in the foremost ranks, with stoutest mettle, spurning to fly. That hero’s heart was steadfast. And now the Helmed Fairies, that watched over him, came down from heaven,—higher grew the clash of spears. Then spake Sigrun, winged war-fairy.... Hail, Prince of Yngwi’s race, have joy of thy life, for thou hast felled the flight-spurning king that wrought the death of Eager. Thine, king, by right are now the red-rings and the mighty maiden. Hail, king, and have joy of thy victory and thy realm !—Now the battle is ended....

Sigrun to Hodbrord dying on the battle-field; Sigrun from Sevafell shall never, O King Hodbrord, rest in thy arms. Thy life and that of the sons of Granmar is at anend....

Quoth Helgi: Thou canst not give good hap in all things, thou fairy, though some of this is the Fates’ doing [not thine]. Bragi and Hogni fell this morning at Wolf-Rock, and at Styrcliff King Starkad, and Hrollaug’s sons at Leaburgh: I was their slayer .... The fiercest

224. hialm vitr, R. 231. Read Lsungs?

Liggja at Iordan allra flestir king I ever saw, his trunk fought on when his head was off. Most of thy kinsmen lie corpses at Yordan. This slaughter was no work of ~ thine, but thou wast fated to be the cause of feud among the Mighty.

II. Day comes to Sigrun to tell her the news of ber lover's death by his hand, saying « Sorry am I, sister, to tell thee tidings of sorrow, and it is sore against my will to make my kinswoman weep. He fell this morning at Fetterholt that was the best of earthly princes, that trod upon the necks of kings.

Quoth Sigrun; May all the oaths that were sworn to Helgi, by the bright Lightning water and the ice-cold Rock of the Waves, sting thee now. May the ship that sails under thee sail not, even though thou have a fair wind aft! May the horse that runs under thee run not, yea, though thy foemen are following after thy life! May the sword that thou drawest bite not, save when it is whistling about thine own head! Helgi’s death were but rightly avenged, if thou wert a wolf [outlaw] out in the woods, poor and joyless, and lacking meat save what thou couldst get from leaping on carrion corpses!

Quoth Day: Thou art mad and distraught, sister, to pray down

248. Thus, Iordan, R, not at idrd0; a name of place is required.

§1.] HELGI AND SIGRUN. 141

curses on thine own brother. It was Woden alone that wrought all this evil, when he scattered runes of strife among kinsfolk, Thy brother offers thee red rings, all Wandilswe and Wardales, yea, the half of his land to recompense thy wrong to thee and thy sons, thou ring-dight lady.

Quoth Sigrun: Nevermore shall I sit happy at Sevafell, nor have joy of my life at morn or eventide; for nevermore shall I see the light flash on my lord’s company, nor the war-steed with its gold bit bearing my king thither; nevermore shall I welcome the prince home, Helgi struck terror into his foemen and their kindred, so that they were like unto the fearful goats that run madly downhill from the wolf. Helgi was among other kings as it were a noble ash among the thorns, or as a young hart, flecked with dew, towering above the other deer, his

283. Read knegat-ek ? 284. Helgi] om, R, to come, from the halls of Woden. I have but faint hope of his coming, now that the eagles are sitting on the limbs of the ash and all the household are thronging to the Assembly of Dreams.

Sigrun’s bondmaid sees Helgi and his company riding by in the dusk, and cries out: Is it a mere phantom that I think I see, or is the Doom of the Powers come?—Can dead men ride? Ye are pricking your steeds with the spur !—or have ye been granted leave to come home?

Helgi answered her: \t is no mere phantom that thou thinkest thou seest, nor is it the end of the world, though we prick our steeds with the spur, but we have been granted leave to come home. Come out, O Sigrun from Sevafell, if thou desirest to see thy lord. The barrow is opened, Helgi is come, the sword-prints are gory on him. The king bids thee come to stay the bleeding of his wounds. It is time for me to ride along the reddening roads, to let my fallow steed tread the paths of air. I must be west of Windhelm’s bridge [the sky bridge, i.e. rainbow] before Salgofni [chanticleer] awakens the mighty Host.

The bondmaid answered: Be not so mad as to go alone, thou sister of kings, to the houses of the Ghosts. All dead fiends of Hell wax stronger by night than in the bright daylight..

§1.] - HELGI AND SIGRUN. 143

~

Sigrun goes out to meet her dead lord, and falls upon his neck and kisses him, saying: 1 am as glad to meet thee as are the greedy hawks of Woden when they scent the slain, their warm prey, or dew-spangled espy the brows of dawn. I will kiss thee, my dead king, ere thou cast off thy bloody mail-coat. Thy hair, my Helgi, is thick with rime, thy whole body is drenched with gory dew, thy hands are cold and dank. How shall I deliver thee from this, O my lord?

Helgi answered her; It is thine own doing, Sigrun from Sevafell, that Helgi is drenched with deadly dew. Thou weepest cruel tears, thou gold-dight, sun-bright lady of the South, before thou goest to sleep: every one of them falls bloody, dank cold, chilly, fraught with sobs, upon my breast.... Let us drink costly draughts, though we have lost both love and land! Let no man chant wailing dirges, though he see the wounds on my breast. Now are maidens, royal ladies, shut up in the barrow with us dead men!

Quoth Sigrun; I have made thee a bed here, Helgi, a very painless bed, thou son of the Wolfings. I shall sleep in thine arms, O king, as I should if thou wert yet alive.

Helgi answered; Now 1 swear that there shall never be a greater

337. fellr] Bugge; felt, R. 338. ofialgt] infialgt (i.e. ufialgt), R.

HELGI AND SWAVA. I. Kine Hiorwarp Anp SIGRLIND.

marvel, early or late, at Sevafell: for thou, the white daughter of Hogni, art sleeping in the arms of the dead; thou, a king’s daughter, art come down alive into the barrow. :

I, FRAGMENT.—King Hiorward and Sigrlind. Hiorward sends Atli to woo Sigrlind to him; he is helped by a talking bird.

The Bird says: Hast thou seen Sigrlind, Swafni’s daughter, the fairest maid in this blissful world, though the lovely wives of King Hiorward in Glassgrove seem fair to men ?—4?#/i. Thou wise bird, wilt thou talk more to Atli the son of Idmund?—Bird. I will, if the king will worship me, and I may choose what I will out of the king’s house. —Atli. Thou shalt not choose Hiorward, nor his sons, nor any of his fair wives, nor one of the king’s wives. Let us bargain together as friends do.—Bird. I will choose temples, and many high places, goldhorned kine from the king’s stock, if I get Sigrlind to sleep in his arms, and follow the king of her own will.

Atli comes back to the King: We have had trouble and ill speed, our steeds foundered on the broad mountains; we had to wade across

353. ert pd] ertu (i.e. ertd), R. 4. pekkjar] emend.; piccia, R,

Te ee ee ee ee ee ee Te ee ae.

— Ts ee

Oe ee ee

§1.] HELGI AND SWAVA. 145

a}, Sfepes AND SWAVA.

Semorn; and then we were denied Swafni’s daughter, the ring-endowed maid, whom we came to woo.

Il. The king wins ber at last, and she bears him a son, and his father having been slain, he was silent and nameless, He goes one day out in the wood, and meets the Walkyria Swava, a king’s daughter. She says—

Helgi, my warrior, it will be long ere thou rulest over rings or the Sunfells—the eagle screamed early—if thou alway keep silence; though thou broodest over thy revenge.—He/gi. What gift wilt thou give with the name, thou bright-faced lady, since thou givest me these commands? Consider well thy words, I take no gift unless I am to have thyself to boot. Then the Walkyria tells him where to find a magic sword, with which he is to win fame and avenge his father.

I know where swords, two score and six, lie in Sigar’s ha]m, but one is the best of them all, the curse of the war-net [mail], inwrought with gold. There is a ring in the hilt, a tang through the midst; an ‘onn’ in the point, for him that gets it; a blood-painted serpent lies along the edges, writhing his tail round the sword-knot.

-O H., thou art not a well-advised king, although thou be a great champion; thou madest the fire consume the halls of a king who had done no harm to thee. But thou lettest Rodmar rule over peim-es (tto drir nidjar ; hyggsk aldauda-arfi at rada. 45

the treasures which our forefathers had. He (Rodmar) sits free from fear of foes, for he thinks he holds the heritage of an heirless race. (K. Rodmar knew not that Helgi, Sigrlind’s son, survived from the slaughter.)

Helgi to his brother Hedin: Hail, Hedin! what news hast thou to tell from Norway? why art thou outlawed from thy country, and come alone to see us here ?—Hedin. Far greater is my guilt; I have chosen at the Bragi-toast thy king-born bride.—He/gi. Blame not thyself; the ale-talk of both of us may prove true. A king has challenged me to the field; within three nights’ time I must be there. I doubt if I shall ever come back; yet it may turn out well if I do not.—Hedin. Thou saidest that Rodmar had deserved goodwill and great gifts from thee, but it beseems thee better to redden thy sword than to give peace to thine enemies.

It was a witch, riding a wolf in the gloaming, that bade Hedin follow her. She knew that Sigrlind’s son should be slain at Sigarsfield.

Helgi (qwounded to death) sent Sigar [his friend] to fetch Eylimi’s ee a

$1] HELGI AND SWAVA. 147

only daughter (Swava): ‘Tell her to make her ready quickly, if she would find her lord alive.’

Sigar goes to Swava and says: Helgi has sent me hither to speak to thee, Swava. He said he wished to see thee before he yielded up his breath.—Swava. How came hurt to Helgi Hiorwardson? I sorely am stricken with grief—was it by sea or was it by sword, then I will surely harm his slayer.—Sigar. This morning at Sigar’s-field fell the best king under the sun. Alf has won, though it was in evil hour.

Swava comes to Helgi on the field of battle.

Helgi. Hail to thee, Swava! let not thy heart fail thee! this shall be our last meeting. My wounds are bleeding; the sword has cut right to my heart. I pray thee, Swava, if thou wilt hearken to my words— weep not, my lady !—to make ready the bed for Hedin, and lay thy love on him.—Swava. I had vowed in the home of my happiness, when thou, Helgi, didst endow me, that I would never, of my will, take any other to my arms after my lord’s death.

69. Bid] Bugge; bidr, R. 79. Seig her i m. at Sigars-vollom] emend, ; fell her i m. at Frekasteini, R, 83. hugi deilattu] emend.; hug skaltu deila, R. L2

HELGI AND KARA.

on

Helgi dies, and Hedin bids farewell to Swava before going to revenge his brother.

Hedin. Kiss me, Swava! I will never come back to Strifeham, or Sunfell, before I have revenged the son of Hiorward, the best king under the sun!

When Helgi’s father {Sevi?| was slain, he was saved by his foster-father |

Hagal, who sent him to be brought up in the hall of his enemy, giving him the name of his own son Hamal. When he was grown up Helgi left his Soe’s Louse, and bade a shepherd tell Heming whom he had fostered.

1, TELL Heming that Helgi knows who slew his father at B. (place, Bear-bay?); ye have cherished a wolf-cub among you, K. Harding, deeming that it was Hamal.

Blind the mischievous was sent to seek after him, and came to Hagal’s house, where Helgi was hid in a bondmaid’s dress, working the mill. When he saw him Blind said—

5. Hagal’s bondmaid has fierce eyes, no slave-born maid is she that stands at the quern. The stones are cracking, the bin is shivering. Surely the prince is hardly entreated, when a lord such as he must grind the barley, The grip of the sword fits those hands better than the mill-handle.

12. Hagal answered; It is little wonder that the bin rattles as the king’s bondmaid turns the handle. She was wont to ride above the

4. *Haddingr] Hundingr, R. 6. 4] read at? g. malajom.R. 13, man] mer, R

; 3 H EA Ge Pee eee ee OO Re

§1.] HELGI AND KARA. 149

clouds, and dared to fight as wickings use, before H. (mame uncertain) made her captive. She is the sister of Sigar and Hogni. That is why the Wolfings’ maid has such wild eyes.

After the battle, in which Helgi had slain Harding and avenged his Sather’s death, Kara, the War-fairy, comes flying towards him.

19. Kara said; Who are ye that moor your ships by the shore? Where is your home, ye warriors? What are you awaiting at Bearbay? Whither are you bound? Helgi answers : Hamal is letting his ships lie by off the shore. Our home is in Leesey. We are awaiting a fair wind at Bear-bay. We are bound for the east. Kara says: Where hast thou, King, wakened the war, and where didst thou sate the birds of the sister of Battle? Why is thy mailcoat flecked with blood? Why eat ye raw flesh, helmed as ye are? Helgi answers: The very last deed of the sons of the Wolfings west of the Main, if thou seekest to know, was when I baited the bears in Bragholt and fed the eagle’s brood full with my blade. Now, maiden, I have told thee why our meat is raw; we get little roast meat at sea, maiden! Kara says: Thou tellest of war; King Harding was made to bow low in the field before Helgi. The fight was joined, and Sevi was avenged, and the blood spirted on the

19. Kara] Sigrun, R, here and below. 23. +Hamall] Helgi, R. 35. sarkat goerdisk] Bugge; sacar gorduz, R. 38. Ha@dingr|? Hundingr, R.

VOLSUNGA KVIDA IN FORNA. THE OLD TALE OF THE WOLSUNGS (Fracment).

A fragment of a poem, found imbedded in Text B of the great Helgi Lay in R. It gives a duplicate, but inferior, version of the first meeting of Helgi and Sigrun, and may be by a different poet.

edges of the brand. Helgi says : How canst thou tell, thou wise lady, that we be they that avenged Sevi? There are many keen wickings like unto us. Kara says: 1 was not far off, my lord, yestermorn when the chief was slain, though thou, son of Sevi, talkest covertly, and tellest of the war in strange riddles. I have seen thee before on the long ships, when thou stoodest at the bloody bows, and the ice-cold waves played about thee. Thou art striving to hide thee from me, my prince, but Halfdan’s daughter knows thee well.

Sigrun seeks Helgi after the battle in which he had avenged his father, to beg his aid against Hodbrord her suitor, as it is told in the Lay of Helgi. _ 1, SIGRUN went to meet the joyful king; she was minded to seek

Helgi’s hand; she kissed and greeted the helmed king. Then the hero heart was moved to her. She told him that she had loved him long ere he had seen her.

Saying: 1 was plighted to Hodbrord, though I loved another king; a j :

§1.] LAY OF ATLI AND RIMEGERD. 151

Helgi Hird eigi pi Hagna reidi

HELGI AND SIGRUN (Fracment).

A fine fragment from what was probably, judging from the metre, a short dialogue-poem between Helgi and Sigrun. It is found after |. 251 in R (Helgi and Sigrun).

LAY OF ATLI AND RIMEGERD THE GIANTESS.

A dramatic episode in the story of the second Helgi, into whose poem it is stuck in the vellum after 1. 45. It is probably by the same author.

though I fear, my lord, my kinsmen’s wrath. I have broken my father’s dearest wish.

11. Hogni’s daughter spoke from her heart, when she said that she would fain have Helgi’s love.

13. Helgi spake; Fear not thou the wrath of Hogni nor the evil thoughts of thy kindred. Thou shalt live with me, young maid .

Helgi tells Sigrun that he has not only slain his enemies but also her father Hogni.

COMFORT thee, Sigrun, thou hast been a war-goddess as it were to me. Kings cannot withstand fate. Sigrun answers: Indeed I could wish those alive that now are dead. But yet I would shelter me in thy arms,

Helgi has slain giant Hati, Rimegerd’s father, and has brought his ships to Hatefirth, where they are moored by night. Atli his warder is keeping watch on deck, while the warriors sleep, when Rimegerd appears on the cliff and calls to him.

Rimegerd. WO are the men in Hatefirth, whose ships are awned

16, Ett Attu] read ertattu? 2. skipom ydrom, R.

with shields? You come in boasting guise, as if you feared no danger. Tell me your king’s name!—A/?/i. Helgi is his name, but thou canst never do him harm. There are iron fences about his fleet; ye ogresses are powerless over us.—Rimegerd. What is thy name, thou foul wight? How do men call thee? Thy prince must trust thee well to set thee at his ship’s fair bow.—4z/i. My name is Ati; and Hateful (a pun) shall I prove to thee. I am the fiercest foe to ogresses. I have often stood in the wave-washed bows, and many a night-rider have I slain. What is thy name, thou corse-greedy monster? Name thy father, ogress! Thou shouldst be set nine miles deep in earth, with the thorns growing from thy breast.—Rimegerd. My name is Rimegerd. My father was named Hati, the grimmest giant I have heard tell of. He carried off many a wife from her home ere Helgi hewed him down.— 4#/i. Monster, thou wast swimming before the king’s ships, and didst lie before the mouth of the firth. Thou wouldst have given the king’s crews to Ran, hadst thou not been thwarted.—Rimegerd. Thou art astray in thy mind, Atli; thou art in a trance, I think, with thy brows bent over thine eyelids. It was my mother that lay before the prince’s ships; but it was I

oe en

Gin wie

§1.] LAY OF ATLI AND RIMEGERD. 153

that drowned the sons of Lodvar in the deep. Thou wouldst neigh, Atli, wert thou not gelt. Lo, Rimegerd tosses her tail; surely thy heart must be sunk low within thee, Atli, for all thou hast a stallion’s voice. —Atli. I will prove myself a stallion, if we meet and I land from the sea. Thou shalt be mauled, and carry thy tail low, Rimegerd, if 1 set to work in earnest.—Rimegerd. Come ashore, Atli, if thou trustest in thy strength. Let us meet in Warin’s Bay. A rare rib-stretching thou shalt get, thou champion, if thou comest within my clutches.—47#/i. I shall not leave the deck ere the crews awaken, but keep watch about my lord. I can never be sure but that some monster may come up from under the ship.

Rimegerd. Awake, Helgi, and recompense Rimegerd for the slaughter of Hati! If I lie but one night with thee, I will count my loss made good.—Helgi. Shaggy is the name of the giant that shall wed thee,— thou art loathsome to mankind,—the ogre that lives in Tholley, a cunning giant, worst of all the haunters of the waste, fit husband is he to thee.—Rimegerd. Thou wouldst rather have her, Helgi, who was watching over the haven ‘among the men’ last night! A gold-bright maiden, she seemed mighty to me; she landed here from the sea, and moored your fleet. It is her power alone that withholds me from killing the king’s crew.—He/gi. Hearken, Rimegerd, if I make good thy loss, tell me all about it. Was it one fairy alone that saved my ships, or were they more together ?—Rimegerd. Three nines of maids; but one rode foremost, a white maid, enhelmed. When their steeds reared, they shook from their manes dew into the deep dales, and hail upon the lofty woods; thence come fair seasons to men. But the whole sight was hateful to me.

Atli. Look eastward now, Rimegerd! Helgi hath stricken thee with the wand of Death. By land and by sea the king’s fleet is safe, and his crew likewise. It is day, Rimegerd! Atli has lured thee to deadly delay. It will be a laughter-moving harbour-mark, methinks, that thou wilt make now thou art turned to stone!

• . oe alia ane j ny =

fe ee ee ee ee a ee he ee oe

§1.] THE WESTERN WOLSUNG-LAY. 155

THE WESTERN WOLSUNG-LAY.

THE fragments of this Lay (save one) are found scattered here and there, up and down the older poem, the Old Play of the Wolsungs (Book i. § 4), on the same subject, whose gaps the Collector thus strove to fill up. The first fragment is preserved by the paraphrast of Wolsunga, and is put with the rest as probably belonging to the same poem.

We would ascribe this ‘Lay’ to the Helgi poet, whose style is almost unmistakable, especially in the better parts of the fragments, the meeting with Sigrdrifa and the birds’ talk.

IV.

The escape of Sigmund and his son Sinfiotli from the stone cave in which they were imprisoned.

1. WITH all their might they scored the great stone with the sword, Sigmund and Sinfiotli.

Andwari, as he dies, lays the curse upon the treasure which is to prove fatal to the Wolsung race.

3. The gold which I owned shall be the death of two brothers, and set feud among eight kings; no one shall have joy of my hoard.

The dying Rodmar wishes the blood-revenge to go on like a heritage in his race, and having no son to take it up at once, says to his daughter—

7. Bear a daughter, thou wolf-hearted lady; if thou bearest no son to the king thy husband, give the maid to a man to wife, perchance their son may avenge thy loss (my death).

The first meeting of Sigurd and his foster-father, Regin.

11. The son of Sigmund is come hither, a keen warrior, to our hall. He has more courage than many a full-grown man: I look for a grip from a wolf’s cub. I will bring up the dauntless prince, now that

Wi he (the son of Yngwi) has come among us. He shall be the mightiest king under the sun; the thrums of the woof of his fate lie over all lands.

Regin eggs Sigurd on to slay Fafni, as he cannot do so himself.

19. Loud would they laugh, Hundings’ sons, who took Eylimi’ s life, if I were more bent on getting the red rings than on avenging my own father.

On the way to Gniteheath Sigurd and Regin meet Hnikar (Woden), in the likeness and apparel of an old man, standing on a rock by which they pass. Hnikar says :—

23. Who are they that are riding on Refil’s steeds over the high billows, the sounding sea? The sail-steeds are splashed with blood, the wave-horses cannot stand against the wind.

Regin says: Here are we, Sigurd and I, on our sea-trees; we have a wind aft to waft us to death, the steep billows are breaking ese over our prows. The surge-steeds are plunging. Who is it that asks?

Hnikar: My name was Hnikar when I gladdened the raven, thou young Wolsung, and had fought a battle. Now thou mayst call the old man of the rock Feng or Fiolni. I want a passage .

Hnikar’s wise counsel to Sigurd : No one should fight with his face to the setting sun, the moon’s sister. They win the Peto who are quick in the play of swords and set the battle-wedge in array .

31. heto mik, R.

$1.] THE WESTERN WOLSUNG-LAY. 157

VII.

and Bird Par liggr Reginn, redr um vid sik, vill tela mag pann-es truir hanom; berr af reidi rang ord saman;

Sigurd has slain Hunding. Regin rejoices at the deed.

39. Now is the Blood-eagle cut with the brand on the back of Sigmund’s slayer. No greater king’s son ever ruled a realm or gladdened the raven.

When Sigurd has slain Fafni, Regin sets him to cook the dead monster’s heart for him, and lies down to sleep. While Sigurd is sitting at the fire, the talking birds begin to sing.

43. 1st Bird. ‘There sits Sigurd blood-bedabbled, roasting Fafni’s heart at the fire. I should call him wise if he were to eat that fierce life-core. 2nd Bird. There lies Regin plotting within himself, he will deceive him that trusts him. He is heaping up wrongful charges out of his wrath, the plotter of mischief would fain avenge his brother. 3rd Bird. 1 should count him wise if he were to take the loving counsel of you two sisters, to bethink himself and gladden the raven. I look out for the wolf when I see his ears. 4¢4 Bird. He is not so wise as I should have thought him, if he lets the one brother go free now that he has slain the other. ;

Sigurd takes the birds’ counsel and slays Regin. The birds speak again.

59. Truss up thy red-rings, Sigurd, it is not kingly to forebode future ill. I know a maid, gold-dight, fairer than gll others by far, if thou couldst get her. Green paths lead to Giuki’s, the fates point the warrior pa-es fra vigi Ving-skorni reid :

Ma-at Sigrdrffar svefni bregda,

Skialdunga nidr, fyr skapom Norna.

forward. . There is a great king who has a daughter, her shalt thou buy with a dowry. There is a hall on the high hill of Hind, it is all lapt in fire without ; cunning men built it of bright gold. I know a battlefay that sleeps on the mountain, the linden’s bane [fire] plays about her. Woden touched her with his wand of sleep, because she brought low in battle others than those he wished to fall. Thou shalt see, my son, the helmed maid, who rode Wing-skorni from the fight. Sigrdrifa’s sleep cannot be broken, thou son of the Shieldings, because of the Fates’ decrees.

Sigrdrifa wakes from the enchanted sleep, as Sigurd, who has burst through the wall of fire to her, cut off her mail-coat, and says—

74. Who has cut my mail? How have I broken my sleep? Who threw the pale pans off me?—Sigurd answers: Sigmund’s son has just cut the raven’s.... [mail-coat] with Sigurd’s sword,—Sigrdrifa tells of the cause of Woden’ s ange: [There were two warriors, the one] was Aud’s brother Agnar, whom no fairy would take .. .—Sigrdrifa gives Sigurd the magic cup. I bring thee, my hero, a cup of ale mixed with power and glory; it is full of charms and love-spells, and good enchantments any mysteries of joy.

—— | 7 i SN fH Ay a ee re |

455 ae" ks

§1.] HIALMAR’S DEATH-SONG. 159

HIALMAR’S DEATH-SONG AND

THE WAKING OF ANGANTHEOW.

Hialmar’s Lay is only found in the second MS. of Herwor and Heidrek’s Saga, Cod. Reg. 2845 (B). But that text may be mended by a few genuine fragments which occur in the later recension of Orvar Odd’s Saga (O), mixed up with a deal of late and spurious verse, written no doubt by its compiler. We have used the following lines,— 4-7, 25-28, 45-50. The earlier text of Orvar Odd leaves blanks for these verses which were never inserted.

The Waking of Angantheow is happily given in both vellums of Herwor’s Saga; Hauks book (A), which has the better text, and (B). The latter omits Il. 1-2, 13-20, 25-28, 50-57, and gives a slightly different order. Our text is founded on A, save necessary transpositions that have been made, viz. ll. 50-57, taken from between ll. 77-78, and ll. 98-101, from after |. 72 to their present position.

The story of the Sons of Arngrim, archetypes of all later Bearsarks, was very widely known. The author of Hyndlo-liod sums up their exploits in a mangled verse, ll. go-98, which we have been able, by the help of an incomplete citation in Orvar Odd’s Saga, to restore, see Book iv.§ 2. Arnor Earl’s poet, c. 1066, names Tyrfing, but this, curiously enough, is the only mention of this cycle we can call to mind throughout the whole court poetry. The Thulor Compilers know the legend. In his Fifth Book Saxo tells the tale of their life and death, which he probably got from an Icelandic Saga of Arrow-Odd. Both in Norway and the Faroes, ballads were founded on versions of Odd’s and Hervor’s Sagas. When Earl Gizur left Norway for Iceland in the autumn of 1258, he passed by the Hebudes, where he got a sword, which (by a confused reminiscence of Tyrfing, we can hardly doubt) he named Eyfarar-naut, the heirloom of Eyfora; this blade afterwards stood him in good stead.

In the remains of the Arngrim-cycle left us, we have the work of at least four poets. 1. The author of Hialmar’s Death-Song, who may, perhaps, be the Gudrun poet. 2. The author of Angantheow’s Waking, who cannot, we believe, be other than the poet of He/gi. ‘The freshness and pathos, the choice of scene and incident, the harmony, flow and wording: of the verse are his alone. 3. The author of the Riddle of Gest and Heidrek (Book ii. § 1) belongs to an earlier school, and 4. the poet who sang of an epigonic Angantheow (Book v. § 5), to a later _ time than the authors of the Lays in this Book.

The story of the cycle, as far as touches our present purpose, runs thus :—Swafrlami, a king of the seed of Woden, stole the sword Tyrfing [Ripper] from the Dwarves who made it. Unable to get back their treasure, they laid a curse upon it, that it should ever bring death to its bearer, that no wound it made should ever be healed, that three deeds of dolour and shame should be wrought by it. It is the working out of this doom, which, like that of the Niflung Hoard, runs through eight generations, which is the backbgne of the cycle. Arngrim, a famous champion of Gautland, slays Swafrlami, and wins the

. =

160 THE HELGI POET. [BK, TIL.

sword. He has twelve sons by his wife Eyfura, the eldest of whom, the renowned Angantheow, inherits the magic weapon when it has slain his father. He and his eleven brothers became Wikings, and ‘rage like wild-fire over land and sea.’ At last they came to Upsala, where Angantheow bids the Swedish King yield him his lovely daughter, Ingiborg, or find a champion to meet him. Hialmar the Stout-hearted, the lady’s lover, and his trusty comrade Arrow- Odd, ‘the best of them that speed the flying shaft,’ take up the challenge. The trysting-place is fixed at Samsey. Hialmar and Odd reach the island first and go ashore, leaving their crew on board their ship in the haven. Here the twelve Bearsarks find them, and falling into their mad battle-fury kill them to a man. Rushing ashore, in the belief that they have slain all their foes, they wear out their supernatural rage against the trees and rocks. When it is quenched, and the languor, which ever follows it, is weighing upon them, the Swedish champions appear. Hialmar, as the greatest warrior, claims to fight Angantheow, leaving to his comrade Odd the easier task of encountering the eleven brethren. Had the fury been on them, the sons of Arngrim must have overcome their foes; but, as it is, in spite of Angantheow’s giant-strength and deadly weapon, Hialmar slays him, and Odd kills all his brethren. But Tyrfing has done its work, and Hialmar, wounded in sixteen places, has but the time to chant his Death-song to his sorrowing friend before he breathes his last. Odd takes his body home, but lays the twelve brethren with their arms under a huge mound of earth on the island.

Angantheow has left his wife Tofa with child. After his death she bears a woman-child, Herwor, who is brought up as a bond-maid, without any knowledge of her father’s name or kin. When she learns the truth, the war spirit comes upon her too: she arms herself as an Amazon, and goes forth to seek her rightful heritage, the deadly sword her father owned. For the vengeance of the Dwarves is not yet sated, and now the doom rests on her. Our second poem opens as she reaches Samsey. Unheeding the shepherd’s warning, unfrightened by the horrible sounds that fill the air, and the awful flame that towers up to heaven above the Mound of Angantheow, she calls on her dead father to give her, his heiress, the precious Tyrfing. The dauntless calm of the warrior-maid, the Ghost’s vain struggle not to part with his treasure, and at last, when forced to yield, the touching appeal of the father, who knows that the curse will follow it and fall upon his beloved daughter, are most strikingly given. With words of doom and woe she receives the sword, and our poem closes. The rest of the story and the fulfilment and working out of the curse are told in the Epigonic Lay of Angantheow the younger, Book v. § 5.

Qucth Odd ; ONCE only I felt fear, when those wicked ones left the ships howling, twelve together....

Prat bat ta 2 ae

§1.] HIALMAR’S DEATH-SONG. 161

=~

Quoth Odd; 1 see men in grey mail wending in fighting mood from Munarvoe [Love-bay]. They have made a grim slaughter. Our ships lie unmanned on the shore.—Quoth Hialmar: Doughty warriors are wending from their war-ships, yea, those wicked ones, twelve together, We shall lodge to-night with Woden, we two foster-brothers, while those twelve still live on.—Quoth Odd: This is the answer that I give thee, they shall lodge together to-night with Woden, those twelve Bearsarks, while we two live on.

When Angantheow and his brothers come up, Odd calls to them: Brave men fight man to man, [not many against one, and so shall we,] unless ye be soft-spirited, or your hearts quake.

When the battle was over, and the two foster-brethren had slain their foes, Odd spoke: What ails thee, Hialmar? surely thy countenance is changed! I think thy many wounds are making thee faint. Thy helm is hewn through, and the mail-coat on thy sides. Thy life is failing fast, I trow.

Quoth Hialmar : 1 have sixteen wounds, my mail-coat is cut through, it is dark before mine eyes, I cannot see to walk. Angantheow’s sword, that keen blood-grooved blade, tempered in venom, has gashed me to the heart. The women at home shall never be told that I sought

19. & hlid] O; in sida, B. ™ M

shelter from sword-strokes, nor shall the fair, wise-hearted lady in Sigtown ever hear that I flinched. I owned five goodly manors together, yet was I never content with my estate; now I shall die, reft of life, deadly wounded by the sword, here in Samsey. The houseservants all decked with rings are drinking the mead in my father’s house, and the ale overcomes many a one of them, but the prints of the sword-edges are chastising me here in the island. Never again shall ale or good-fellowship in the king’s hall gladden the heart of Hialmar.

I left the fair song of the ladies with a merry heart, there in the east at Soti’s house, and went on my way leaving my dear friends for the last time. The king’s fair daughter sped me on my way as far as Agni’s-bank; the words that she spake to me, when she told me that I should never come back, will surely prove true. Carry back my helmet and my mail-coat to the king’s hall, such is my wish; the heart of the king’s daughter will be moved when she sees the buckler of my breast hewn through. Draw the red ring off my arm, and bear it to the young Ingiborg. It will be a lasting sorrow of -heart ee i, ele

1 / Taye _ a ott 2 : SS at eee eee ee RFE i has Rie ee a | be To

§ 1.] THE WAKING OF ANGANTHEOW. 163

THE WAKING OF ANGANTHEOW.

to her, that I shall never come to Upsala again. I-can ‘see the ladies that would have hindered my journey here, sitting in Sigtown.

There ‘is.a raven flying from the east off the tall tree, and there is an eagle flying after him. That is the last eagle I shall ever give ameal to. He shall.batten on my blood, ’

AT sunset in Munarvoe [Love-bay] the young maid met a man driving his flock home.—Quoth the Shepherd: Who comes alone to this island? “Begone ‘forthwith and seek guesting [for ‘the night]. With that he turned to go on his way.—Quoth Herwor ; | shall not seek -guesting for the night, for I know none of the island folk. Tell me straight- way, ere thou go hence, where are the howes called Hiorward’s howes ?— Quoth the Shepherd: Ask me not that, thou art not wise, thou friend of the wickings, thou art-in evil straits. Let us rather run as fast as our feet-can carry us,'for out ‘of doors all is awesome for men to:Jook ‘on. —Ouoth Herwor ; 1 offer thee a neck-ring as payment for thy guiding. I, the ‘friend of heroes, am not lightly to be stayed.—Quoth the Shepherd :

3. Hyver er yta, B. 4. greidliga] sysliga, B. q 12. Thus A and B, not 4 natt forom.

No man shall give me such beautiful jewels or fair rings, as shall prevent me from going home. Foolish I hold him that will come hither alone in the dark night: fires are flitting, grave-mounds are opening, field and fen are ablaze. Let us run harder.—Quoth Herwor; Let us not be frightened by such snortings [of the flame}, though fires be ablaze all over the island. We must not let the ghosts of the dead scare us so quickly. "We must parley awhile together.

With that the shepherd sped fast to the woods, away from the voice of the maid, but in this strait the hard-knit heart rose higher in the breast of Herwor.

Herwor goes on alone to where she sees the flames blazing around the Hewes, and calls upon the spirits of her father Angantheow and his brethren :-—

Awake, O Angantheow! It is Herwor, the only daughter of Tofa and thee, that bids thee awaken! Give me out of the howe the sharp blade which the Dwarves forged for Swafurlami. O Herward, O Hiorward, O Rani, O Angantheow! I bid you all awaken where ye lie under the roots of the trees, with helm and with mail-coat, with sharp sword, with shield, and with harness and with reddened spear! (No answer.) Surely ye are turned to heaps of dust, ye sons of Arngrim, since no one

23. latum eigi, A. 32. Sigrlama, B.

ae Yet oa OS Pi ee er aes ae ie

§1.] THE WAKING OF ANGANTHEOW. 165

q heilan { haugi, sem pt hefir eigi of the children of Eyfora will speak with me here in Munarvoe. O Herward, O Hiorward, O Rani, O Angantheow! May it be with all of you within your ribs, as if ye were nested in an ant-hill, unless ye give me the sword that Dwale forged. It ill beseems ghosts to keep costly weapons in hiding.

Quoth Angantheow (answering her out of the howe): Herwor, my daughter, why art thou crying out upon us words so full of cursing? Thou art walking to thine own destruction, thou art become mad or distraught of wit, bewildered in thy mind, that thou awakenest the dead. Young maid, thou art surely not like other mortals, that thou roamest about the howes by night, and standest before the door of the howe with graven spear and the ore of the Goths, with helmet and with mail-coat.—Quoth Herwor ; I was aye held to be a mortal, till I came hither seeking your abode. Give me the sharp blade that the Dwarves smithied out of the cairn. It avails thee nought to hide it.—Quoth Angantheow : Neither father nor son buried me, nor any others of my kin, but it was my foemen that laid me in my cairn; they, the only two that remained alive, got possession of Tyrfing, but afterward one only became the owner thereof.—Quoth H. Tell me naught but truth. May the [fiend] only let thee rest whole in thy howe if thou have not Tyrfing with thee. Thou art loth to deal thine only child her heritage !

Quoth A. The gates of Hell are ajar, the howes are opening, the whole round of the island:is ablaze before thine eyes. Everywhere out of doors it is an awful sight to see. Haste thee back to thy ships, if thou mayest, maiden!—Quoth H. Ye can light no such bale-fire by night as that ye could affright me with the flame thereof. Thy daugh-

Quoth H. I bind you all with spells, ye dead, that ye may all lie dead and rotten among the ghosts in the grave. O Angantheow, give me the mail-scathing slayer of Hialmar out of the howe!

Quoth A. The slayer of Hialmar lies under my shoulders. It is all wrapped about with fire. I know no maid upon earth that dare take this brand in her hands.—Quoth H. I will hold the keen blade and take it in my hands, if I may get it. I care not for the burning fire, the flame sinks before my eyes.—Quoth A. Thou art foolish, O Herwor the brave, to rush open-eyed into the fire! I will rather give thee the sword ee Tt, ee Om

§1.] THE WAKING OF ANGANTHEOW. 167

out of the howe, for 1 cannot deny. thee, thou young maiden. [Here Angantheow hands out the sword and Heravor takes it.]

Quoth H. Thou hast done well, thou son of the wickings, to give me the sword out of the howe. I hold myself happier in having it, O king, than if I were the conqueror of all Norway.—Quoth A. Thou little knowest, my daughter, at what thou rejoicest; hapless are thy words, thou foolish woman. This Tyrfing, if thou wilt believe me, shall be the destruction of all thy race. Thou shalt bear a son, who shall wield Tyrfing in days to come, trusting in his might. Men shall call him Heidrek, he shall be the mightiest man born under the pavilion of the ORs dui 5

Quoth H. 1 must go to my steeds of the billows [ships], the king’s daughter is in good heart. I care little, O son of kings, how my sons may hereafter come to quarrel.—Quoth A. Thou shalt own it, and enjoy it long; but keep it aye sheathed, this slayer of Hialmar; touch not the edges, there is poison on both of them; this Doomer of men is worse than a plague. Farewell, my daughter, fain would I give thee, if thou wilt believe me, the life of us twelve men, all the goodly strength and pith that the sons of Arngrim lost when they died.

Tyrfingr ef pu tr. m. | ett pinni mer a. spilla—A duplicate in A after line 72. 105. synir] hence is a blank in B. ”

§2. THE BALLAD POET.

THE LAY OF WEYLAND.

ONLY found in R (leaves 18 and 19) now, but another copy of the same text once stood in A 748, for the last remaining leaf of that MS. contains the first few words of the prose introduction.

With the exception of the old Lays of Atli and Hamtheow and a few others, no poem has suffered so much. Yawning gaps and sloughs of despond break the course of the verse, and we have been able to do little to make the path surer.

We seem to have in our fragment the opening and first part of a trilogy dealing with the three brothers Weyland, Egil, and Slagfin, and their fates. Weyland the Smith is the hero of our poem, which, in spite of its mangled: condition, manages to tell its own story pretty clearly. It opens with the trapping of three Swan Maidens, Lathgund, Allrune, and Swanwhite, by the shore of a lake, by the three heroes, who take them as. wives. But after some years’ happiness, during their husbands’ absence, they betake them to their wings and fly away. Weyland alone and unwarned is trapped by Nidad, king of the Niars, hamstrung, and forced to work for him in his forge on the isle of Seastead in lake Wolfmere. He contrives to slay his tyrant’s sons, beguile his daughter, and by the aid of a pair of wings which he has fashioned to soar away from his prison-house, rejoicing in his revenge. Here our poem is abruptly broken off. That the king’s daughter had a son by Weyland, the famous Wade (the memory of whose magic boat Wingelock lingered in N. England till the Reformation), we know from Wilkina Saga.

The Weyland smithy of the O. E. Berkshire charter, the Weyland by which Alfred translated Fabricius, the Galant of the French Chansons de Gestes, the Weyland’s houses or labyrinths of N. Europe, all attest the wide fame of this Teutonic Daidalos and his dealings with his Minos.

The story of Egil the Archer is told in Wilkina Saga, which says that he was called Allrune’s Egil by the Northmen, and repeated in the legend of Heming, in Saxo’s tale of Palna-toki, and in the 8. German

Quoth H. Hail all ye that dwell in the howe! I yearn to be away.

I must hasten hence.—To herself as she turns away and the fires sink and darkness falls again over all: Surely I felt between Life and Death when the fires were burning all about me! ....

eh eal

TE otbaier ST? if

§2.] THE LAY OF WEYLAND. 169

Tell-myth. Eyvind Poet-spoiler knew it. In the year of the great famine (975) he sings of how he bartered the silvery herrings (arrows) of Egil’s bow for the swift arrows of the sea (herrings). The archer on Mr. Frank’s Whalebone-Casket is labelled Egill. The myth of S/ag- Fin, whom we take from his name to be the Harper, is lost, unless a broken shadow of it linger in the Saga of Herraud and Bosi (see Prol. p. 194).

FRoM the south through Mirkwood, to fulfil their fates, the young fairy maidens flew. The Southern ladies alighted to rest on the Seastrand, and fell to spinning their goodly linen. First Allrune, Cear’s fair daughter, took Egil to her bright bosom. The second, [Herwor] Swanwhite, éissed Slagfin. But Lathgund her sister clasped the white neck of Weyland. Seven winters they stayed there in peace, but on the eighth they began to pine, on-the ninth they must needs part. The young fairy maidens hastened to Mirkwood to fulfil their fates.

The weather-eyed huntsman and Slagfin and Egil came home from the hunt, and found their house empty. They went in and out and sought around. Egil skated eastwards after Allrune, and Slagfin southwards after Swanwhite. But Weyland sat alone behind in Wolf-dale, hammering the red gold upon ‘the stithy,’ closing all the ring-bands tightly. Thus he awaited his bright wife if peradventure she might come.

eygr, R, but vedr-e., 1. 35 below. 21. Gim fastan, R. 24. hon um]

hanom, R,

But Nidad, king of the Niars, heard that Weyland was sitting alone in Wolf-dale. The men marched forth by night, in their studded mailcoats, their shields shining against the waning moon. They alighted. from their saddles at the hall gable, and went in forthwith right up the hall, There they saw rings threaded on bast, seven hundred in all, which the hero owned; and they took them off the bast and put them on again, all save one, which they took away. Home from the hunt came the weather-eyed hero Weyland gliding along the far track. He.... roasting a she-bear’s flesh, high blazed the faggots of rock-dry fir: the wind-dry wood before Weyland. He sat down on the bear-skin, and told his rings over, the Elves’ king, but one he missed, and he thought that Lathgund the young fay, Lodwe’s daughter, must have come back. He sat so long that at last he fell asleep; but he awoke in helpless plight, he felt the heavy shackles on his hands and the fetters clasped about his feet.

Then spake Weyland, lord of the Elves, ‘Who are the heroes that. have “handled my rings” and bound me?’

Then shouted Nidad, king of the Niars, ‘ Where didst thou get such

Re) Vege eee ee

; Seas, oat eee eee ee

§ 2.] THE LAY OF WEYLAND. 171

Hvar gaztu, Valundr, visi Alfa, orof aura { Ulfdalom?

fiarri hugda-ek vdrt land fiallom Rinar. 55

treasures untold in Wolf-dale, O Weyland, lord of the Elves? There was no gold in Glisten-heath, and I thought our land was far from the hills of Rhine.’

Then spake Weyland, lord of the Elves: ‘Far more good things had we, I remember, when it was well with us all at home: Lathgund and Herwor, Lodwe’s daughters; dear was Allrune, Cear’s daughter, to us.... (Several lines are missing here.)

They bring Weyland to Nidad’s palace and the Queen [Cynwig?| is standing outside: she mocks the prisoner and advises Nidad to hamstring him and set him on an island to work jewels and treasures for him.

Cynwig the queen of Nidad was standing without, she went in up the hall, she stood on the floor and raised her voice: ‘He does not look blithe that is coming out of the wood. His eyes are like to the eyes of the flashing snake. He will open his lips and smile, when the sword is shown to him, and he perceives Bodwild’s ring .... Sever the might of his sinews [hamstring him] and set him down in Sea-stead... .’

Then spake Weyland, lord of the Elves: ‘ Nidad’s sword glitters on his girdle, the sword I whetted with all my skill, and tempered with

53. orof] emend.; vara, R, 54. Gnita-heidi] Grana leido, see Lay of Atli.
54. borin vas} read bornar ? 61. kunnig] heretand below; a pr. name, Kynveig? 66. tep, R. 74. er mer, R,

172 THE BALLAD POET. ———[x. nt.

¢

all my cunning. That keen blade is now gone from me for ever. I shall not see it carried to Weyland’s smithy. Bodwild is wearing my bride’s red ring. I shall never be recompensed . :

He sat down, nor slept at all, but smote with his hammer; he speedily fashioned a snare for Nidad.

The two young boys, the sons of Nidad, rushed to Wolfmere in Seastead. They came to the chest, called for the keys; their greediness was clear when they looked in. There was abundance of treasure; it seemed to them full of red gold and jewels.

Then spake Weyland, lord of the Elves: ‘Come alone, ye two, come to-morrow. I shall make this gold yours. Tell it not to the maidens nor to the hall-servants, nor to any man that ye are coming to me.’

Early on the morrow the one called to the other, brother to brother, ‘Let us go see the rings.’ —They went to the chest, called for the keys; their greediness was clear as they looked therein. He cut off the heads of those urchins, and laid their feet underneath the bellows’ pit. But the scull-pans that lay under their scalps he bound round with silver and gave to Nidad. Out of their eyeballs he made gems, which

80. at Ulf-sié] emend. (according to the prose); a dyr sia, R.

§ 2.] THE LAY OF WEYLAND. 173

at fedr pinom fegri pikkir, he sent to Cynwig, Nidad’s queen. But out of the teeth of the twain he wrought two breast-brooches and sent them to Bodwild.... Then Bodwild began to praise the ring... . she had broken; ‘I dare not tell any one save thee alone.’ Then spake Weyland, lord of the Elves: ‘1 will mend the crack in the gold, so that thy father shall think it fairer, and thy mother much better, and thyself likewise.’

He gave her the beer-cup, for he was more guileful than she, so that she fell asleep on the settle.

When he had wrought his will, then said Weyland, lord of the Elves, ‘Now I have avenged my cruel losses, all save one.’ Then be made him avings to serve in the place of feet that he might escape from Nidad.

‘Well is me,’ said Weyland, ‘I have now got back my feet, which Nidad’s men bereft me of.’ Laughing Weyland rose into the air, but Bodwild weeping left the island, in bitter grief for her lover’s departure and her father’s wrath.

Cynwig, Nidad’s queen, was standing without ; she went in up the hall. But he alighted down to rest on the wall of the hall. ‘Art thou waking, Nidad, king of the Niars?? Then spake Nidad, king of the

: ) 100. kono, R, 111. Maimed text,

Niars: ‘I am ever waking. I cannot sleep for sorrow ever since my son’s death. Thy head is a-chill, thy devices have been cold to me. But now I would fain reason with Weyland. Tell me this, Weyland, lord of the Elves, what became of my brave boys.’ Then spake Weyland, lord of the Elves: ‘Thou shalt swear full oath to me before I speak, upon the ship’s bulwark, and upon the shield’s rim, upon the horse’s shoulder, and upon the brand’s edge, that thou wilt not put my wife to death, nor be the slayer of my bride, even though I have a wife known to thee, or we have a child within thy house. Go to the smithy thou didst set up, thou shalt find the .bellows stained with blood. I cut-off the heads of thy boys and laid their bodies under the bellows’ pit. But their scull-pans that were under their scalps I bound with ‘silver and gave to Nidad, and I made gems out of ‘their eyeballs and‘sent them to Cynwig, Nidad’s queen, and out of the teeth of the twain I wrought two breast-brooches and sent them to Bodwild. Bodwild goes great with child, the only daughter of you both.’

Then spake Nidad,’king of ‘the Niars: ‘Thou never spakest word

OB St At RE

§ 2.] PRYMS-KVIDA. | 175

PRYMS-KVIDA; or, THE LAY OF THRYM.

THE text of this Lay rests only on R, leaf'17; nowhere else is even its story quoted or hinted at. Snorri himself, who took such pleasure in Thor’s adventures, does not know-this one. The first time that any notice of it occurs is in a Ballad of the sixteenth century Danish Collections (Svaning’s and Wedel’s), called Tord af Havsgaard. It is probably derived from our vellum, for the theory that it could have been handed down uncorrupt by Danish tradition from the heathen days is certainly untenable; the very names Havsgaard and Locke point unmistakably to Icelandic sixteenth century pronunciation. The easy style, the humorous subject, and markedly ballad-like form of this which grieved me more, nor that I could blame thee more for, Weyland! There is no man here that can reach thee from horseback, nor so strong that he could shoot thee from below when thou soarest up there against the clouds.’

Laughing Weyland rose into the air, but Nidad sat behind in sorrowful mood. Then spake Nidad, lord ofthe Niars: ‘ Rise up, Thankred, thou best of my thralls, bid Bodwild, the white-browed fair-clad maiden, to come and speak to her father.’ Then said Nidad, lord of the Niars: ‘Is it true, Bodwild, that which is told me, did ye sit together, thou and Weyland, in the island?’ Then said Bodwild: ‘ That which is told thee, Nidad, is true; 1 sat with Weyland in the island a little hour; would I never had. I could not prevail-against him, I might not prevail against him.’

162. meyna,R, ™

Lay are such as to render it a fit subject for a Renaissance ballad. The story tells itself. The title is from R, The text is as well preserved as any old poem we know.

WROTH waxed Wing-Thor when he awoke and missed his Hammer; he shook his beard and tossed his locks, the Son of Earth groped about him with his hands, and this was the first word that he spoke: ‘Hearken now, O Loki, to what I am telling thee, a thing unheard of either on earth or in the heavens above. Thor has been robbed of his Hammer!’

They went to the fair Freya’s bower, and this was the first word that he spoke: ‘ Wilt thou lend me thy feather-fell, Freya, that I may be able to find my Hammer ?’—Quoth Freya: ‘Yea, 1 would give it thee —

though it were of gold, and grant it thee even though it were of silver.’

Then away flew Loki, the feather-fell rattled, till he won out of Ansgard and won into Giant-land. Thrym, the Giants’ lord, was sitting on a howe plaiting golden leashes for his grey-hounds, and trimming the manes of his horses; and this was the first word that he spoke: ‘How goes it with the Anses? How goes it with the Elves? Why hast thou come alone into Giant-land ??—Quoth Loki, Laufey’s son: ‘It goes ill with the Anses! It goes ill with the Elves! Hast thou hidden

7. eingi] eigi, R.

a

§ 2.] PRYMS-KVIDA. 174

the Thunderer’s hammer ?’—Quoth Thrym, lord of Giants: ‘ Yea, I have hidden the Thunderer’s hammer eight miles deep under the earth. No man shall ever bring it back, save he bring me Freya to wife.’

Then away flew Loki—the feather-fell rattled—till he won out of Giant-land, and won into Ansgard. Thor met him in the gate, and this was the first word that he spake: ‘Hast thou good news for thy toil? Tell me all thy tidings from the sky, for he that speaks sitting

• down often stumbles in his speech, and he that speaks lying down is often guilty of a lie.—Quoth Loki, Laufey’s son: ‘1 have good news for my toil. Thrym, the Giant lord, has thy Hammer, No man shall ever bring it back, save he bring him Freya to wife.’

They went to the fair Freya’s bower, and this was the first word that he [Thor] spake: ‘Take thy bride’s veil, Freya, we two must drive to Giant-land.’ |

Wroth waxed Freya, and snorted with rage; the hall of the Anses shook all over, the great Brising necklace snapped, and this was the

46. Emend,; Freyjo at hitta, R. N

first word that she spoke: ‘Sure I were proved the man-maddest of women, should I drive with thee to Giant-land.’

At once the Anses all went into council, and all the goddesses into parley; the mighty Gods took counsel together how they might get back the Thunderer’s hammer.

Then Heimdall spake, the whitest of the Anses; he had great foresight, as all the other Wanes have: ‘ Let us wrap Thor in the bride’s veil, let him have the great Brising necklace, let the bunch of keys rattle down from his girdle, and a woman’s coats fall about his knees, and fasten the broad stones [brooches] on his breast, and wind the hood neatly about his head.’

Then up spake Thor, that doughty God: ‘Surely-the Anses would call me lewd fellow, if I were to let myself be wrapped in a bride’s veil.’

Then up spake Loki, Laufey’s son: ‘Speak not so, O Thor, for the Giants will soon dwell in Ansgard save thou get back thy Hammer.’

Then they wrapped Thor in the bride’s veil, and gave him the great Brising necklace, let the keys rattle down from his girdle, and the woman’s coats fall about his knees, and fastened the broad stones [brooches] at his breast, and wound the hood neatly about his head.

54. varda] v’pa, R. 64. umb] und, R. 77. umb] und, R.

§ 2.] ~ PRYMS-KVIDA. 179.

Then spake Loki, Laufey’s son: ‘I will follow thee as bridesmaid; we two will drive to Giant-land.’

The goats were fetched out at once, they were harnessed to the carpoles, that they might run swiftly. The rocks were rent, the earth blazed in flame, as Woden’s son drove into Giant-land.

Up spake Thrym, the Giant lord: ‘Stand up, my giants all, and strew the benches, they are bringing me Freya to wife, the daughter of Niord, of Noatown. There are here in the yard gold-horned kine, and black unspotted oxen, the delight of the Giant lord. I have treasures in store, I have jewels in store, I lack nought but Freya.’

Early in the evening the guests gathered, and ale was served to the Giants. Sif's husband [Thor] ate for his share a whole ox, eight salmon, all the dainties cooked for the ladies, and drank three casks of mead.

Up spake Thrym, the Giant lord: ‘ Was ever a bride so sharply set? I have never seen a bride take such big mouthfuls, nor a maid drink so deep of mead.’

The quick-witted bridesmaid, sitting by, found ready answer to the Giant’s speech: ‘Freya has not eaten for eight days, so eager was she to be in Giant-land.’

7 ( ) 83. tvear] Bugge; tvau, R. go. feerid] read foera? N 2

He [Thrym] bent down under the veil, wishing to kiss the bride, but he started back the whole length of the hall. ‘Why are Freya’s eyes so awful? it seems as if flames were darting from her eyes.’

The quick-witted bridesmaid, sitting by, found ready answer to the Giant’s speech: ‘ Freya has not slept for eight nights, so eager was she to be in Giant-land.’

In came the Giants’ aged sister. (mother?) begging boldly for a bridal fee: ‘Take the red-rings off thine arm if thou wouldst win my love, my love and all my heart besides !’

Up spake Thrym, the Giant lord: ‘ Bring in the Hammer to hallow the bride, lay the Miollni on the Maid’s lap. Hallow our hands together in wedlock !’

The heart of the Thunderer laughed in his breast when he felt the hard Hammer with his hands. First he slew Thrym, the Giant lord, and then smote the whole race of Giants. He slew the Giants’ aged sister (mother?) who had begged a bridal-fee of him; she got a pound instead of pence, and hammer strokes instead of rings.

This is how Woden’s son got back his Hammer. (Minstrel’s epilogue.)

§ 2.] BALDER’S DOOM, 181

BALDER’S DOOM.

THIS poem, evidently by the author of Thryms-kvida, has come down only on one of the remaining six leaves of A. It is never alluded to; Snorri telling the story of Balder according to Hfs-drapa (Book vii), and Saxo from a third source. We have not the whole poem; the first section being lost, leaves it headless, as if, for instance, Thryms-kvida began with 1. 56.

So marked is this, that between the years 1643 (when R and Flateyarbék were first discovered) and 1670 (the date of our first paper copy) some scholar made an introduction to it, which he called Forspiallsliod [Preface-song], and Hrefua-galdr [the Carrion-charm], often mis- read Hrafna-galdr [the Raven’s-charm]. He also stuffed the poem with interpolations. The copy he used was certainly A, as we can show by the recurrence of errors of A, common to these interpolated copies. The same kind of evidence proves his use of R of Volo-sp4. The word ‘Ulfrun,’ only known from Hyndlu-liod, suffices to fix a date subsequent to 1643. In his postiche this author, picking up words in a most artful way, has used the following works: Volo-spa freely, some ten times, even once in Biorn of Skardsa’s copy (heimis); Weyland’s Lay, once; Atla-quida, once; Hymis-quida, once; Ynglinga Saga, once (diar); Wafthrudnis-mal, once; Hyndlu-liod, once; Gudrun’s Lays, once; and either Gagds or Niala, once (bera kvido); Snorri’s Edda often, once even in Magnus Olafson’s copy (frum-qucdull), etc. Further a Greek proverb, év vuxri BovAn. Ovid is also used. We should guess the poet to be Paul Hallson, the learned translator of Lilia into Latin, who died in Denmark, 1662.

The original tit/e is lost: we prefer Balder’s Doom, or Balder’s Lay, to Balder’s Dream, as more exactly giving the intent of the poem.

The ¢ext is corrupt here and there. Of Il. 41-44 we have a double text, one here, one in Volo-spa; its right place is here, and so we have made one text of both, printing the double one in the Notes.

hvi veeri Baldri ballir draumar.

ek AT once the Anses all went into council, and all the goddesses to a parley. The mighty gods took counsel together that they might find out why dreams of evil haunted Balder.....

Then Woden arose, the ancient Sire, and laid the saddle upon Sleipni’s back. Away he rode down toward Mist-Hell’s abode, and

5. alda-gautr, A. 8. helli] BuBge; heljo, A, there met him a whelp (Hell hound) coming out of a cave; there was blood on its breast, as it ran by the way baying at the Father of Spells. On Woden rode, while the vault rang till he came to the lofty hall of Hell. Then Woden rode to its eastern gate, where he knew the Sibyl’s barrow stood. He fell to chanting the mighty spells that move the Dead, till she rose all unwilling, and her corpse spake :—

Sibyl. What mortal is it, whom I know not, that hath put me to this weary journey? I have been snowed on with the snow, I have been beaten with the rain, I have been drenched with the dew, long have I been dead.

Woden. Way-wise is my name, I am the son of War-wise. Tell me the tidings of Hell, and I will tell thee tidings of Earth. For whom are the benches strewn with ‘mail-coats,’ and the hall so fairly hung with painted shields?

Sibyl. For Balder the mead stands ready brewed, the walls decked with shields, while the sons of the Anses are in merry mood. All unwilling have I spoken; I will speak no more.

Woden. Speak on, O Sibyl; I must enquire of thee till I know all. Next I must know, Who shall be the death of Balder and take the life of Woden’s son?

Sibyl, Lo, Hod is bearing tall branch of fate. He shall be the death

10. gé] gol, A. 23. brynjom stranir| thus emend.; baugom sanir, A.
11. fad0m skidldom] emend.; flop’ golli, A. 30. vil-ek, A, here and below.

$2] BALDER’S DOOM. 183

q. heldr ertu priggja bursa mddir.

of Balder, and take the life of Woden’s son. All unwilling have I spoken; I will speak no more.

Woden. Speak on, O Sibyl; I must enquire of thee till I know all. Next I must know, Who shall wreak vengeance on Hod, and lift the slayer of Balder on to the funeral fire?

Sibyl. In the Halls of the West Wrind shall bear a son, Wali, that shall avenge Woden’s son when but one night old. He shall neither wash his hands nor comb his hair till he has borne the murderer of Balder to the funeral fire. All unwilling have I spoken; I will speak no more.

Woden. Speak on, O Sibyl; I must enquire of thee till I know all. Next I must know, Who are the maidens that stand weeping to their mind’s liking, casting their neck-veils up towards the heavens?

' Sibyl. No Way-wise art thou, as I took thee to be, but thou art Woden, the ancient Sire.

Woden. No Sibyl art thou, nor wise woman, but thou art the mother of three Monsters.

Sibyl. Ride homeward, Woden, and glorify thyself, for no other man shall behold me again until Loki breaks loose from his bonds, and the Destroyers come at the Doom of the Powers.

GROTTA-SONGR; or, THE MILL-SONG.

ONLY found in Cod. Reg. of Edda (r), though from the four lines of introduction at the foot of a stray leaf of Cod. Arna Magn. 1e8 (Edda) we can tell that it once existed therein also.

The song itself is never cited, but the story of Frodi is widely known. His peace is talked of by the Helgi-Poet, and by Einar Skalaglam, c. 985. A more particular allusion to his mi// and its work is the Brynhild-poet’s ‘ Menia’s precious flour’ (see Book v. § 2, and Dict. s.v. neit). Egill (c. 950) speaks of ‘Frodi’s meal,’ Biarka-mal of ‘Fenia’s task.’ As late as 1104 Mark Skeggiason calls the Danish king ‘ruler of Frodi’s throne.’

The prose introduction to our poem mixes up the legend of Frodi and his Gold Mill with another story of a King Mysing and his Salt Mill, which is a variety of the well-known folk-tale ‘ How the sea became salt,’ localised fittingly enough in the Pentland firth, where the swelchies are ever churning up the white foam. Our poem, which ends with the destruction of Frodi’s mill, has no hint of this story. In Rimbegla occurs a remarkable passage, derived in all probability from Ari’s lost Skioldunga, which throws light upon a dark passage in our poem. It tells how, at the end of Frodi’s reign, there arose a terrible tempest, mighty thunderings, the earth rocking and casting up huge stones. This is the Giant-maidens’ play of Grotta-Song, where they are pictured as casting rocks for sport from under the earth, upon which they first climb in search of their missing playthings. Their subsequent conversion into Walkyries is very curious, as an evidence of how the Walkyrie legend gradually grew up. It was while Walkyries that they were taken by Frodi, and forced like Samson to grind at the mill of the merciless king. After grinding peace and gold, they suddenly grind war, the mill breaks, and they disappear. Yrsa’s son, i,e. Rolf Kraki, is to be the avenger of Halfdan, the gold-thirsty king’s slain brother.

There are several hopeless passages; we have made two absolutely necessary transpositions, viz. ll, 26-33 are taken ideas after 1. 68, and ll. 85, 86 from after 1. 78,

Two seeresses are come to the king’s house, Fenia and Menia; these mighty maids are held in bondage at the palace of Frodi, the son of Fridleif. They were led to the bin, and set to turn the gritstone of the mill.... He [Frodi] bade them take neither rest nor pastime, he must always hear the song of the bondmaids........ They [kept

§ 2.] GROTTA-SONGR. 185

up the never-ceasing song to the thud]........ ‘Let us fit the bin, let us lighten the stones.’ He [the King] bade the maidens to grind on.

They sang and they whirled the spinning stones, till Frodi’s household all fell asleep. Then quoth Menia, as she stood at the mill, ‘ Let us grind Frodi wealth, let us grind him fulfilment of joy, abundance of riches on the bin of bliss. May he sit on riches; may he sleep on down; may his waking be happy! It were well-ground then. No man shall harm his neighbour, devise any evil, or prepare any slaughter, nor smite with whetted sword, yea, not though he find his brother’s slayer bound before him.’

But still his [the King’s] word was never other than ‘Sleep ye no longer than the cuckoo song stays, or than I can say asingle stave!’....

They fall to grinding again in anger, and this time they mean to grind curses on Frodi and his house. When all were asleep, the one says to the other, as she lets the handle go for a moment—

The hand shall have rest, and the stone shall stand still. I have ground to my mind’s liking.

Soon our hands shall take no more rest, till Frodi himself shall say that we have ground it out. The hands shall handle the hard shafts, the

14. meldrs, r, 24. Emend.; sofit eigi pit ne of sal-gaukar, r. 27. Or, mun um léki? thus emend., see 1. 90; malit hefi ec firir mic mitt of letti, r.

gory weapons of war. Waken, Frodi! waken, Frodi! if thou wilt listen to our songs and our stories of old.

Frodi, thou gossip of men, wert no wise man when thou boughtest thy bondmaids. Thou didst choose by strength and appearance, without asking of their race. Hrungni and his father were sturdy, yet Thiazi was mightier still, and Idi and Aurnir, our ancestors, from whom we brides of Mountain-giants are sprung. Never had this mill come out of the grit mount, nor the massy millstone out of the earth, nor were the Mountain-giants’ maids thus grinding here, if...... ;

We two playmates were brought up under the earth for nine winters, We busied ourselves with mighty feats; we hurled the cleft rocks out of their places, we rolled the boulders over the giants’ court, so that the earth shook withal. We hurled the stones so fast that the massy rocks were split in twain. Afterwards we two seeresses stepped into the array of battle in Sweden, we rent the mailcoats, we hewed the shields, we drove through the gray-clad ranks. We pulled down one king, we set up another; we gave help to the good Gothworm, we

32. The alliteration at fault here. 41. bruidir] emend.; broedr, r (see L. 89).
33. halr,r. - 45. vitt] read visir? 53. Emend.; hofga halli at halir toco, r.
34. Read, bendom brynjor ? .

my e —; ~ POs, Pe eR ar

§ 2.] GROTTA-SONGR. 187

Takom 4 mandli mer skarpara, 75 eroma ‘val,mar’ f val-dreyra.

never rested till Knui fell. We held-this life for a season; we were dear to champions; we gashed the blood out of the wounds with our sharp spears and reddened swords.

But now we are come to the king’s hall, unmercifully treated and held in bondage, the mud eating our feet and the chill our heads. We are grinding the Quern of Peace. It is dismal here at Frodi’s!

[Then prophesying the evils to come.|

‘I behold fire burning from the east of the stronghold, the tokens of war are waking, the beacons are kindled. On a sudden a host shall come hither, and burn the hall over the king’s head. Thou shalt not hold the Throne of Lethra, the red rings, or the Holy Stones faltars].....

‘Let us grasp the handles harder still, we are..... with gore. My father’s maiden [my mother] ground amain because she beheld the doom of a multitude of men.....

‘Let us grind on! Yrsa’s child [Rolf Kraki] shall avenge Halfdan’s death on Frodi. He [Rolf] shall be called her son and her brother. Both of us know that this shall be.’

BIARKA-MAL IN FORNU; or, THE OLD LAY OF BIARKI.

OF this poem we have the beginning in S. Olaf’s Saga, the second passage on gold in Snorri’s Edda-Sk. (W), the other two fragments are preserved in Magnus Olafsson’s copy of the lost leaves of Codex Wormianus of Edda. Saxo has given what seems to have been a paraphrase of the whole poem (printed in Notes), derived, we believe, from Icelandic sources, at the end of his Second Book. There is also, in the last chapters of Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, a poor paraphrase of Biarkamal. But it is of little help to us, for this Saga is a sixteenth century compilation, built up with windy phrases upon a foundation we take it of some stray leaves of Skioldunga. ‘The Saga paraphrase reverses the roles of Biarki and Hialti; the name of the song shows that Saxo is right.

The story is, that king Rolf is overtaken by his enemies in the dawn. His two warders, Biarki and Hialti, rouse his merry men to the fray, just as a farmer calls up his labourers to their daily work. Ruta the Walkyrie bids Biarki look through her left arm akimbo, whereby he is able to see Woden. The death of Rolf and all his champions ends the poem.

On the morning of Sticklestead fight, an Icelander sang this song to S. Olaf’s followers, and the king was pleased, and said that it was a true ‘ Haskarla hvavt’ or Workmen’s call.

The maids ground on, putting forth all their strength, the young maids were in giant-fury. The huge props flew off the bin [the iron rivets} civic The shaft-tree shivered, the bin shot down, the massy.

mill-stone rent in twain. But the Mountain-giants’ bride spake this word: We have ground, O Frodi, to our mind’s liking. We have stood full long at the mill. -

83. kavstvpv,r. 86. Read, iardar fiarri? 90. Emend.; sem mynvm hatta, r.

E © 5 Wn 5 he i ie i Mi H i

2.] BIARKA-MAL. 189

heldr vek-ek ydr at hardom Hildar leiki!

Rolf, the king of Lethra, is asleep in his hall after the feast, when bis enemies come. Biarki his warder rouses his comrades, saying :—

1. THE day is up, the cock’s feathers are flapping, it is time for the sons of toil to get to their work. Wake and awake, comrades mine, all the noblest henchmen of Adils. Hoar with the hard grip, Rolf the good archer, well-born men that never flee. Not to wine do I wake you, nor to woman’s spell, but I wake you to the stern play of the war-goddess.

2. The open-handed prince endowed his henchmen with the toil of

Fenia, the lair of Fafni, the glistening needles of Glassy [the Tree], the fair burden of Grani, the precious sweat of Dropper [Magic Ring], the down of Gravewolf [the Dragon]. _ The free-hearted king gave away, and the people received—Sib’s snood, the ice of bow-compeller [the hand], the unwilling weregild of Otter, the tears of Mardall [Freya], the flame of Oran [British River], the glossing speech of Idia.

The hero gladdened many a warrior—we walked in fair array—with the pleadings of Thiazi, the red ore of Rhine, the feud-maker of the Niflungs. Awake, awake, O king!

Biarki in his despair, when he sees Woden who had been before invisible to him, burst into blasphemy, crying,—

3. I will throttle him like a grey mouse [lit. destroyer of the hall’s old walls].

Biarki said, when he heard of bis leader’s fall,—

4e As the proud-hearted hath stooped to the locks of Earth [the grass |.

18, -skilom] r; skaalom, W. 20. wakdi] thus W,

FRAGMENTS OF A LOST LAY OF ROLF KRAKI.

THE story of this lost Lay is told in Edda (Sk.) Rolf and his merry men go to visit Eadgils (Adils), king at Upsala. Having heard their boast that they would never turn from foe or fire, Eadgils tries them by sitting inside a ring of fires in his hall. They escape, as is told in our fragments, and are pursued by Eadgils. But Rolf escapes by the stratagem of casting gold behind him, the picking up of which delayed his pursuers. This famous ‘ sowing of Rolf’ is mentioned in several places, and the ‘seed of Fyris-valla’ is named by Eywind Poet-spoiler in his Lament for Hakon.

FRAGMENT OF HILDIBRAND’S LOST LAY.

FOUND embedded in the Saga of Asmund the Champion-slayer, extant in one vellum, Stockholm 7, 4to. Paraphrased by Saxo in his Seventh Book. The name Asmund takes the place of Hadubrand in our fragment. The whole Lay would have been interesting, as a branch of that cycle of which we have the well-known early German fragment Hildebrand and Hadubrand’s Lay.

Saxo appears to have had our text in two sections as now. The story, the conflict of two kinsmen (here brothers) with two twin swords (like the rings of Nathan the Wise), peerless each, but charmed that when borne by two brothers against one another the false shall fail. The twin swords, and the battle of the brothers Balin and Balan in the Arthur cycle, seem like echoes of this early tradition, The translation will explain itself.

Adils heaping fresh fuel on the hall fires, which he has lit about Rolf, to try whether he would stand to his boast of never flying before fire, cries,—

LET us heap the fire higher in Adils’ hall.

Rolf answers, dashing his shield on the flame and leaping over it out of the blazing ring,—

He flies not the fire that dares to leap through it.

Hildibrand, as he lies dying on the field of battle, slain by one of the pair of charmed swords, his own broken, speaks to his brother who slew him :— IT is hard when a man is tated to slay his own brother. Drott bore me in Denmark and thee in Sweden. There were two charmed swords,

~~

a oe ee eC

$2] HILDIBRAND’S LAY. 191

Nu verd-ek liggja lifs andvani meki undadr ‘banns magna sr.’ 20

wm that once were Budli’s—now one of them is broken,—the dead dwarves smithied them so as never was before nor ever shall be again.

My broken buckler lies at my head, there are counted thereon fourscore men whom I have slain. My sweet son lies there, the last ‘ of the reckoning,’ my heir after me that I begat, I have slain him unwittingly.

I beg one boon of thee, brother, one boon, deny it me not—to wrap me in thine own raiment as no other slayer will do for him he has slain.

Now I am lying, reft of my life, wounded by the sword in (some name of place here).

The slayer of Hildibrand says: I little thought this fate [would have come upon me to do such a monstrous deed] .... when the Huns chose me as their champion, eight times, for the king’s realm.

I fought man against man, then one man against two, against four, and against five heroes, then against six, and against seven in the field, one man against eight. Yet I am still alive. But my heart shook in my breast when eleven men challenged me at odds, till the

_§. Read, Tyrfingar .. .? 13. cefstr] eptir, Cd. 20. Some name of lace hidden here, 22. Certainly mangled text.

§3. THE. SIBYES- POET.

VOLO-SPA—THE SIBYL’S PROPHECY.

Tus Lay, the highest spiritual effort of the heathen poetry of the North, is found in three texts. The first two leaves of R contain one; a stray leaf of Hauks-bék, c. 1310 (H), a second. This latter copy would almost appear to be the work of one who had learnt the poem from a sister-text to R, and written it down when it had a little faded from his memory, as he omits important passages such as that relating to Balder, ll. 87-93, 98-107, 211-212, inserts a few lines which are clearly mere stopgaps, being totally out of keeping with the rest, and adopts a confused arrangement. But we have a third text (incomplete it is true, but presenting both a better wording and a better order than either of the other two) in Snorri’s Edda, which gives quotations as well as paraphrase for ll. 9-12, 19-21, 35-40, 49-52, 70-77, 85-89, I10-117, 130— 134, 137-140, 143-158, 161-178, 199-202, 207-210, 213-217, some go lines out of 220, and paraphrases of ll. 24-34, 41-48, 181-195, 199-206, some 30 lines more.

The transpositions here made in the text are the following :—

ll, 20-21, 144-155, placed as in Snorri’s text.

ll. 203-217 removed from after 1. 109, according to the context and Snorri’s paraphrase. Further—

ll, 83-86, 87-93, 94-97 have been interchanged.

ll. 143-146 from their former position after l. 154.

The Mnemonic Verses (p. 79), relating to the names of the Dwarves, Fates and Walkyries, have been removed as most certainly extraneous, though they had crept even into Snorri’s text.

Four lines after 1. 103, taken from the Doom of Balder (ll. 41-44), of which they give a duplicate text, have been restored to their proper place in that poem, (see p. 183, 1. 41 sqq.)

1. 187 in H is genuine, as proved by Snorri’s text.

In the Notes the central part of both texts, R and H, is given for the sake of reference, fairies told me in my sleep that I should fight that sword-play out. Then came the hoary Hildibrand, the champion of the Huns; he was no fair match for me [because of our kinship], yet 1 marked on him hard war-tokens beneath his helmet.....

§ 3.] ~. VOLO-SPA. 3 193

The readings of the Wormianus MS, of Edda (W) have proved of the greatest weight in the determination of the words of the text.

The title of the poem comes from Edda. Neither R nor H has any legible superscription.

The earliest quotation of the poem is I. 175, cited by Arnor the Earl’s poet, c. 1064, in his dirge on Earl Thorfinn, Gunnlaug the monk (1140- 1219) in his prophecy of Merlin (a paraphrase of Geoffrey’s famous prediction) imitates and uses phrases and words of Volospa; see, for instance, Il. 131, 134,176,177. Ari, in Yngl.S., ch. 4, treats of or even paraphrases ll. 64-69 of our poem; 1. 65 may be hence restored.

Volospa falls into two great divisions, the first part relating to the past (unfortunately fragmentary in many places), giving the Genesis, and the second which deals with the future, setting forth the Eschatology of the author. The scene in each case is different; in the first the Wola or Sibyl is giving answers from her Sibyl’s seat in the midst of the assembly of the Gods; in the second she is ‘sitting out’ performing her enchantments and answering the anxious consultation of Woden.

The structure of the latter part is strophical, with recurring burdens of couplets put in at regular intervals in a way which greatly heightens the effect of the words.

Py Lions bid-ek allar Helgar kindir,

Miatud meran fyr mold nedan.

For a hearing I pray all Holy Beings [Gods], and the sons of Heimdall high and low [all men]. Thou O Wal-Father [Woden] wouldst have me set forth in order the histories of men as far back as | remember. I remember the Giants born of yore, who bred me up long ago. I remem- ber nine Worlds, nine Sibyls, a glorious Judge beneath the earth.

In the beginning, when naught was, there was neither sand nor sea nor the cold waves, nor was earth to be seen nor heaven above. There was a Yawning Chasm [chaos], but grass nowhere, ere that the sons'of Bor, who made the blessed earth, raised the flat ground. Then the,

Sun shone forth from the south on the dwelling-stones, and the fields were mantled with green herbs. The Sun from the south, with the moon her fellow, cast her right hand on the edge of Heaven [entered the gates of the horizon]. The Sun knew not her inn, nor the Moon his dominion, nor the Stars their place.

Then all the Powers, the most high Gods, assembled to their judgment-seats and took counsel together, giving names to Night and the New Moons [phases of Moons]: they called Morningtide and Midday, Afternoon and Eventide by their names, for the counting of seasons.

The Anses met on Ida-plain, and raised high places and temples, setting forges, and fashioning treasures, shaping tongs and making tools. They played at tables in the court and were happy, they lacked not gold till there came three most loathsome Titan maids from Giant-land.

• • • • % * *

Then all the Powers, the most high Gods, assembled to their judgment-seats and took counsel together, who should create’ Dwarf-kind os

18. iodur, H; iodyr, R. z0. W; R transposes Il. 20 and 21. See, afis kostodo allz freistodo, H, which om. 1. 28. 32. vettugis] H; vettergis, R.
19. W; hverir—dvergar drottir, R and H. 38. W and H; or brimiss bl6di.

§ 3.] VOLO-SPA. 195

dvergar { iardo, sem Durinn sagdi. 40

from the bloody surf and the Giants’ black bones; they fashioned out of earth, in the image of man, many Dwarves as Durinn commanded.

Till out of this host there came to the house three Anses, mighty and blessed. They found Ask and Embla helpless and futureless on the ground. The breath of life was not in them, they had neither feeling nor motion, nor utterance, nor comely hues. Woden gave the breath of life, Hoenir feeling, Lodur utterance and comely hues.

I know an Ash, a high-towering Holy Tree, called Ygg-drasil [Woden’s steed, gallows], besprinkled with white loam; whence come the dews that fall in the dales. It spreads ever green over the Weird’s burn; whence come the Three Virgins of manifold wisdom, from the Well beneath the tree. They have laid down the fate, and chosen the life and spoken the destinies of the children of men.

The first war in the world that I [the Sibyl] remember was when they speared Gold-weig [Gold-draught], and burnt her in the High One’s Hall; thrice was she burnt, and thrice reborn, though still she lives.

*% * * * * * * Then all the Powers, the most high Gods, assembled tostheir judg-

41. priar, R. 42. H; dstgir, R; husi, R, H; sevar strondo, Edda. 43- aa landi, H. 46. la né leti] thus R and H; read, lat ne Jeti? 49. ausinn —heilagr] W; standa—ausinn, R, H. 54. sal] Edda and H; se, R. 56.

ment-seats and took counsel together, whether the Anses should pay tribute, or were they to exchange hostages and make a league. Woden hurled spears and shot into the host. This was the first war in the world. The paled-wall of the Burgh of the Anses was broken, the Wanes [Gods] marched over the plains that rung with war.

Then all the Powers, the most high Gods, assembled to their judgment-seats and took counsel together to 4nzow who had charged the air with noisome venom and given the Maid of Od [Freya] to Giantkind. Thor alone was swelling with wrath, he seldom sits still when he hears such news. .Then were utterly broken all oaths and plighted faith and mighty leagues sworn between them.

II. Wheresoever she came to a house they called her Haid, the soothsaying Sibyl; she charmed divining rods, she knew witchcraft, she was aye the delight of the evil Bride [Hell].

The Father of Hosts endowed her with rings and necklaces, with cunning treasure-spells and rods of divination. She could see far and wide through all the worlds. She could see the Wal-choosers travelling afar, ready to ride to God-folk.

$3.] . VOLO-SPA. 197

Odins barni cerlag folgin:

Oia a , iy ™ v—

We e Austr byr in aldna { Iarn-vidi 110 k

She was sitting alone without when_the aged Patriarch of the Anses [Woden] came and looked into her eyes. What ask ye me? Why tempt ye me? I know it all, O Woden, where thou hiddest thine eye in the holy Well of Mimi, who quaffs mead every morning from Wal- Father’s pledge.—Know ye yet or what?

I [the Sibyl] know the trumpet-blast of Heimdal, hid beneath the wide-shadowing Holy Tree. I see a stream rush in rapids over the pledge of Wal-Father.—Know ye yet or what?

I behold Fate looming for Balder, Woden’s son, the bloody victim. There stands the Mistletoe slender and delicate, blooming high above the ground. Out of this shoot, so slender to look on, there shall grow a harmful fateful shaft. Hod shall shoot it, but Frigga in Fen-hall shall weep over the woe of Wal-hall.—Know ye yet or what?

I behold a captive lying under Cauldron-holt, the bodily semblance of Loki the guileful. There Sigyn sits, sad of heart, over her husband.— Know ye yet or what?

Eastward in Ironwood the aged witch is sitting, breeding the brood

CRATORESEE.

ae

Pr RE ESE St te i eT Oe E Celipi

R here sticks in four lines from the Doom of Balder, see p. 183, ll. 41-44. 103.

tungls titigari { trollz hami.

Fyllisk fizorvi feigra manna; of Fenri [the Wolf-ogre], from whom there shall spring one amongst them all in ogre shape that shall pitch the Moon out of Heaven. He |

shall feed on the lives of death-doomed mortals, spattering the heavens 4 with red blood. ‘The sunshine shall wax dark, nor shall any summer . follow, and all the winds shall turn to blight.—Know ye yet or what? 4

On a mound there sat striking a harp the giantesses’ shepherd, Eggtheow the Gladsome; in Gaggle-brake, a bright-red chanticleer whose name is Fialar was crowing to her. The cock Gold-comb is crowing to the Anses, waking the warriors of the Father of Hosts. Another cock, Sooty-red, crows under the earth in the halls of Hell.—Fiercely Garm [the hell-hound] bays before the cave of the Rock, the chain shall snap and the Wolf range free!

Tales-a-many the Sibyl can tell. I see farther in the future, the mighty Doom of the blessed Gods, Brothers shall fight and slay one | another, kinsfolk shall break the bonds of kindred. It shall go hard a with the world: much of whoredom, an age of axes, an age of swords, shields shall be cloven, an age of storm, an age of wolves, ere the world falls in ruin. The sons of Mimi are astir, the Judge is moving at the ag

‘

f i ae ands ee a eee eee ee

§3.] VOLO-SPA. 199

at eno galla Giallar-horni.

Skelfr Yggdrasils askr standandi, blast of the Horn of Roaring. Loud blows Heimdal, the Horn is on high, Woden talks with Mimi’s head, the towering Ash Ygg-drasil quivers, the aged tree groans, the Giants have broken loose.—Fiercely bays Garm, etc.

How do the Anses fare? How do the Elves fare? All Giant-land is rumbling from end to end. The Anses are assembled. The Dwarves are moaning before their doors of stone, the inmates of the rocks.— Know ye yet or what?

The Giant Hrym comes driving from the east; high he holds his

’ linden shield; the Monster Dragon writhes in giant-fury ; the Serpent lashes the waves; the Eagle screams; Pale-neb [the vulture] tears the corpses; Nail-board [the Ship of Doom] is launched. A bark is speeding from the west; the sons of Muspell [the World-Destroyers] are crossing the sea, with Loki for steersman. All the Demons are marching with the Wolf; Byleist’s brother [Loki] is in their ranks.

From the south comes Giant Swart, fire in hand; the sword of the Demon of Death shines like the sun. The granite-rocks are rending, the ravines fall in, the Dead are marching up the road of Hell, the Heavens are riven.—Fiercely bays Garm, etc.

136. gamla, H, 140. H here adds—hredaz allir 4 helvegum adr Surtar pann sevi of gleypir. 151. vestan] emend.; austan, R, H. 157. hrata] W; rata, R, 159-60. R here at the junction of lines jpadvertently omits the burden.

Hlin’s second woe shall now come to pass when Woden goes forth to fight with the Wolf, and Beli’s bright slayer [Frey] encounters Swart. Frigga’s darling must die there. Then shall Widar, mighty son of the Father of Hosts, go forth to fight the Beast. He shall thrust his sword down the Monster’s jaws right tothe heart. Then is his father avenged.

Then shall Hlodyn’s glorious child, Woden’s son [Thor], go forth to fight with the Dragon. Earth’s Holy Warder shall slay him in his might. Nine paces back from the accursed serpent reels the Son of Earth [Thor].

The inmates of Hell [the evil dead] shall all sweep over the earth....

The sun turns to darkness, Earth sinks into the deep, the bright stars vanish from out the heavens, fume and flame rage together, the lofty blaze plays against the very heavens.—Fiercely bays Garm, etc.

III. I behold Earth rise again with its evergreen forests out of the

; a so * i ' : t ;

, e 3

$3.] VOLO-SPA. 201

deep; the waters fall in rapids; above~hovers the eagle, that fisher of the falls. The Anses meet on Ida-plain, they talk of the mighty Earthserpent, and remember the great decrees, and the ancient mysteries of Fimbul-ty [the unknown God]. There shall be found in the grass wonderful golden tables, their own in days of yore. The fields un-

’ sown shall yield their increase. All sorrows shall be healed. Balder shall come back. Balder and Hod shall dwell in Woden’s mansions of Bliss, in the holy places of the blessed Gods.—Know ye yet or what?

Then shall Heeni choose the rods of divination aright, and the sons of the Twin-brethren shall inhabit the wide world of the winds.—Know ye yet or what?

I see a hall, brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, standing on Gem-lea. The righteous shall dwell therein and live in bliss for ever.

Northward in the mounts of Darkness [No-Moon] stands a hall of gold, hostel of Dwarves. But on Okoln [Uncold] stands another, called Surf [Brimi], the Giant’s drinking-hall.

Far from the sun on Corse-strand I behold a hall, whose doors

187. Add. H, see Edda paraphrase. 189. pa muno #sir . . . finna, H.
188. Here a line is missing. 195. vel val tivar, R; vel vell tivar, H ; cp. W ; a ae: R. 203 and 205. stendr] stéd, R. 207. veit-ek] W;

(4. THE CHRIS TRAN «POR

SOLAR-LIOD; or, THE SUN-SONG ann THE CHRISTIAN’S WISDOM.

THE following poems, which stand quite alone, are contained only in indifferent paper copies of the seventeenth century, without any trace of their origin, age, or MSS. We can only be sure that these copies are all derived from one single vellum, nay, even from a single copy of a single vellum. A guess may be hazarded that the lost original may have been the missing leaves of AM. 748. Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages there is neither trace nor hint of the existence of these poems, which are indeed first mentioned by Biorn of Skardsa, | in a MS. Essay (unpublished), now at Stockholm (Royal Libr. No. 38), where he speaks of the ‘ Old Solar-liod’ (referring to the words ‘ fadar stand northwards, In through its luffer drops of venom are falling, its roof is thatched with adders. A river, called Slide, whose waters are knives and swords, flows through Venom Dales. There shall the murderers and the mansworn wade through heavy streams, while Nidhogg [Backbiter] the serpent is sucking the corses of the dead, and a Wolf is ravening on men.—Know ye yet or what?

Hither comes Nidhogg, the dark Dragon, the fiery serpent winging his way up from the hills of Darkness, flying over the earth with corses on his wings.

Now must the Siby] sink, this verse. s&] emend.; pann, R, H. 216. kvelr] W; saug, R. 218. H here adds—pa koemr hinn riki at regin-démi | Gflugr ofan s& es dllo rar.

he in

Pte: a a ae fr ap. rine ee ise lites if re,

§ 4.] SOLAR-LIOD. 203

feikn-stéfom’ in 1. 112 of the present text). Later in the same century, when Szemund’s name had been connected with the ‘ Poetic Edda,’ of which he was then popularly supposed to be the author, a myth sprang up that this poem was the /ast composed by Semund, and that he sung it rising from the bier three days after his death. A perusal of the Sun-Song will easily show how this story arose. It has been supposed that the story of Swafr and Skarthedinn is that of Gunlaug and Raven (Proleg. p. 81), told under feigned names; but it is not safe to press the details of Gunlaug and Raven’s Saga, and the incident of the mutual slaughter there may just as well be copied from the tradition of our poet, as our poet’s tragedy derived from the Saga. Nor can anything be gleaned from the supposed derivation of ‘ Draumaquedi,’ the Norwegian ballad, No. 7 of Landstad’s Collection; for be- er the coincidence of the words ‘Drauma quedi’ and ‘f draumi veOit,’ 1. 182, which could hardly escape occurring in two poems on a ‘dream’ or trance, there is absolutely no connection between our poems and the ballad. The ballad, indeed, may rather be paralleled by some fragments in North-English ballads, such as Clerk Saunders.

That our poems are old (eleventh century?) there can be no doubt; they are in an old metre, and preserve the quantity accurately. It is not unlikely that the author, or authors, may have known Volospa. The spiritual connection between the two poets, one a heathen with glimpses of Christianity, the other a Christian with heathen remembrances, warrants us in placing their works in juxtaposition. The sub- ject of the Sun-Song was a favourite one in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and we have a number of medizval visions, foregangers of the great Comedy which has obscured them all. The Sun-Song poet seems to quote from some lost ritualistic poem, such as our Spell-Song (Book i. § 3), whence he borrows the mystic phrases which are enigmas to us.

It is a curious fact that these striking poems have left no traces on a single Icelandic poet. Probably a pair of half-effaced parchment leaves alone preserved them from oblivion through the Middle Ages.

The best of the paper copies, which are in no very good state, and in the second generation from the vellum, is that marked I, in Bugge’s edition, No, 166 in 8vo. of the AM. Collection, and our text is chiefly derived from it. Its date is c. 1660.

Both poems are, we doubt not, of Western origin.

In the MS. the two poems which we have here separated are run together without division, the headless Christian’s Wisdom first, and then following without break or capital letter the Sun-Song. The latter perfectly distinct in subject, regularly divided into three parts, Death, Hell, and Heaven, and ending with its rightful epilogue, which gives us the title ‘Sun-Song.? The poet must have given it this title from the striking words ‘s6l ek sa,’ seven times repeated in the first part of this lay.

_The Sun-SonG is told by a dead father in a vision of the night to his son, for his instruction. The father in the frst part tells him, in what is the finest passage of the poem, of his death and how he lay, with corse-bound soul, a night ere the spirit fled, and then after nine days in the Norns’ Chair passed into the world of Hell, In the second part he describes how he saw there ten kinds of torments for different kinds of sins. In the third part (of which some verses are, we believe, lost), the father recounts six of the joys of Heaven. He ends his vision with a beautiful Prayer, and a last word to his son.

The TEXT is in a tolerably fair state; one or two of the maimed passages we have been able to heal, but there are certainly some verses lost. The division between the parts is marked by the words ‘ Fra pvi es at segja;’ but the verses with these words which began the third part ‘ Heaven’ are lost.

het

I, DEATH.

Now I shall begin to tell how happy I was in this World of Delight, next how the sons of men go down into the grave against their will.

Vanity and Pride deceive the children of men who set their heart on riches; bright gold turns to long grief. ‘Wealth hath befooled many.’

Happy in every way was I in men’s eyes, for I could not see far before me. Surely the Lord has made this world we live in very full of pleasures.

Bowed down I sat, drooping a long while; great was my desire to live, but He, the Stronger, had His will. ‘The doomed men’s race is run.2 The cords of Hell were hard-girt round my sides. I tried to break them, but they were strong. ‘Lightly he walks whose limbs are free.’ None but myself knew how the pains got hold of me on

2. yndis-heimi] thus I. 4. name (i.e. naam), Cd, 11, dular-heim, I,
3. rikri] emend. ; rikr, Cd. Ig. sterk] seig, I.

awe rere

= Ps ¥ .

f Ns

5 Pa

§ 4.] SOLAR-LIOD. 205

every side. The Maids [messengers] of Hell called me home to them every evening. ;

I saw the Sun, right Star of Day, sink in a World of Storm, while on the other side I heard the gates of Hell clang heavily.

I saw the Sun go down, with characters of blood thereon, well-

-nigh gone was I out of this world; more glorious did he then appear than ever he had done before.

I saw the Sun, I felt as if I were looking on the glory of God. I bowed to him [the Sun] for the last time in this world of mortals.

I saw the Sun, so bright he beamed, that I fell in a swoon; while on the other side roared boiling streams, deep-dyed with blood.

I saw the Sun, with trembling eyes, shrinking and full of dread, for my heart was utterly melted away into clots.

I saw the Sun, never was I more sorrowful, well-nigh gone was I out of this world; my tongue was become dry as it were wood, and all without was stiff with cold,

I saw the Sun never more after that dreary day, for the mountain

23-24. Emend., by transposing the words; er mer hrolla budo heim 4 hverjo kveldi, Cd, (false quantity, - u). 39. Gylvar, I (not Giallarjm 48. kolnud) add. I.

waters closed over my head, and I departed being called out of my torment.

The star of Hope flew up from my breast (sore afraid was I then). High she soared, nor once alighted that she might take her rest. Longer than the rest was that one night when I lay stark on straw; then was fulfilled the word of God, ‘Man is but as dust.’ Consider and take heed, O great God, that made earth and heaven, how woebegone many fare..... Every man reaps the fruit of his own works; blessed is he that doeth good. For a// my riches a bed of sand was made ready for me. The Lust of the Flesh oftentimes deceives men, many a man has too much thereof..... The water of cleansing was to me of all things most loathsome.

Nine days I sat in the seat of the Norns, whence I was lifted on a horse; mock suns shone grim out of the windows of a cloud-charged heaven. Within and without, through all the Seven blessed Heavens,

53. hreddr] emend. ; feddr, Cd. 57. vas] er, I. 59. mezlti God] Gud malti, Cd. 60. moldo iamn] emend.; moldu sami, I. 63. hve} for hversu, I. 68. se#'ng] (uu) a vowel before a vowel. 70. Something missing here ? 73. stol, I. 74. hafinn, Cd, 76. skiém] thus mended ; skyom for skijom, Cd. (not skyjom), 78. himna] AM. 738; heima, Cd.

methought I passed; high and low I sought a path, wherein my way might lie straight.

II. HELL.

Now I shall begin to tell what I saw first when I went into the Place of Torment :—

Scorched birds that were souls were fluttering about as thick as flies.

From the West I saw the Dragons of Despair fly, leaving behind them wakes of fire; they shook their wings as if, methought, heaven and earth would fall asunder.

I saw the Sun’s Hart wend from the South, and there were two that led him ‘ between them ;’ his feet stood on the earth, but his horns reached to heaven.

From the North I beheld the sons of the Dark Moon, riding; they were seven together; from brimming horns they drank the clear mead from the brook of Mammon [Baug-rori, Ring-rearer].

The wind lulled, the waters stilled, then I heard an awful clash. Traitorous women were grinding dust into meal for their paramours.

85. Read vanar? 86. fiell a, I. go. ‘saman’ cannot be right. 96. Emend, ; cp. 60-rerir ; bang-reirz, I (not regins). 100. mélo} molodu (the mod, form), Cd. -

Bloody stones were these dark women piteously whirling; gory hearts hung out of their bosoms, heavy with many sorrows.

I saw many maimed men walking on those glowing paths: their faces were smeared all over, methought, with witches’ blood.

I saw many of the dead, who had not received the /ast holy office. Heathen stars, painted with characters of dread, stood over their heads.

I saw men that dearly cherish envy of others’: goodhap: bloody signs were painfully engraven on their breasts.

I saw many sore distressed, bewildered and astray; this is their reward that ape the follies of this world.

I saw men, who in divers ways defrauded others of their own: in crowds they were journeying to the City of Greed, bearing burdens of lead.

I saw men, that had robbed many of life and goods: strong venomous dragons kept shooting through their breasts.

I saw men, that would in no wise keep holy-days: their hands were painfully nailed to hot stones.

apast at dheillom (—¥u), Cd. 122. villtu, not valto, I (or read vélto ?). 124. blyi (uu).

ee a a Ny nm

Siglo a ae

§ 4.] SOLAR-LIOD. 209

it. Boe cere PVE C8 Ot SORit 25: io cas ie] 145

I saw men, that through pride had dressed too sumptuously: their clothes were wondrously wrapped in fire.

I saw men that had borne false witness against their neighbour: the Ravens of Hell were pitilessly tearing the eyes out of their heads.

Never canst thou know all the torments which the damned endure. Sweet sins are turned to sore penance. Pain ever follows after pleasure.

III. HEAVEN.

Now I shall begin to tell.....

I saw men that had given away much according to the Law of God: Pure candles were brightly lit above their heads.

I saw men that with all their hearts had succoured the poor: Angels were reading holy books and heavenly writings to them: this is the highest bliss.

{ saw men that had chastened their flesh by much fasting: Angels of God bowed down to them: this is the highest bliss.

134. vedask] emend.; virdaz, I. 135. kymiliga, Cd, * One verse or more here missing. 149. breiddir, I. 153. Thus from the following

P

~

210 THE CHRISTIAN POET. [PK. Iu.

IV,

I saw men that had put meat into their mother’s mouth: their beds were softly made on the beams of heaven.

Holy Virgins had washed clean of sin the souls of those that had on many a day chastised themselves.

I saw troops riding along the sky high aloft, they are on their way to God, their leaders are men murdered without cause.

IV. PRAYER.

Father Almighty, most glorious Son, Holy Ghost of Heaven, I pray Thee, Who hast made us, to deliver us from evil.

This Song which I have taught thee, thou shalt recite before the Living, the SuN’s SONG in which no lie shall be found.

Here we part, but we shall meet again in the Great Day of Gladness, O my Lord, give rest to the Dead and mercy to the Living.

A wondrous tale was chanted to thee in thy dream, and thou didst

170. mestr, Cd, 183. sama] emend.; sanna (—y), Cd.

n Na pare

$4] THE CHRISTIAN’S WISDOM. 211

THE CHRISTIAN’S WISDOM.

THIS poem, of which the beginning is lost, consists of a series of parables told by a teacher to his disciple, ending with seven short counsels, by way of epilogue, in the spirit of the old poems of our first Book. The five perfect parables we have (how many more there were it is impossible to tell), deal with the Repentance of a Sinner, the Deceitfulness of Riches, the Perils of Love, the Fall of Pride, and the Discovery of Treachery. The names of the characters in the parables may be feigned, but they are all possible. The spirit of the poem, which may be by a different author from that of the Sun- Song, is sweet and gentle, but never rises very far from earth, and is more coloured by the wisdom of old days.

Between verses 44 and 45 of the Sun-Song is a fragment dealing with mystic figures. The transcriber of the lost vellum must have thrust them in here; they stand by themselves, and have no evident connection with the rest of either of the poems as we have them. They are here put into the Appendix.

There are three fragments (vv. 34-36) from the ‘ H4vamAl Collection,’ which would seem to be part of our poem, and are therefore added here. The key words ‘ek sa’ would lead us to separate them from their place, and refer them to some such poem as the Christian’s Wisdom.

see the same. Never was mortal man so wise as to have heard ere now the Tale of the SonG OF THE SUN.

a paces wickedness they wrought, Swafor and Swaferlow ; they shed

• *% * x * * & The fierce [highway]man took the life and goods of wayfarers; no man could pass with his life upon the road he watched. Day by day he ate alone and never bade any man to sit at meat with him, till

I, bragdi] om. Cd. 7. vega] gite, Cd. P2

a weary and fainting guest happened to come by the way. Wet and

• cold the stranger told him that be was hungry and athirst, feigning to trust with a trembling heart this man that had always been so cruel aforetime. He [the robber] set meat and drink before the weary one, all with an upright heart; he was mindful of God, and gave him good cheer, for he bethought him of his wickedness, But the other rose up with an evil heart, requiting good with evil; his sin waxed great within him, he murdered his watchful host [the robber] in his sleep. He cried unto the God of Heaven for help when he was wakened by the death-blow; and lo, his sins passed from him unto the man that had slain him treacherously without a cause. The holy Angels came down from Heaven and bore his soul back with them, and he shall live a pure life for ever with Almighty God.

II. Wealth and health no man can rule, be he ever so happy. What is least expected often happens, no man of himself can make sure of peace ;—Unnar and Sewaldi little thought that their luck would fall

AA ne wrt )

yee)

§ 4.] THE CHRISTIAN’S WISDOM. 213 Ill.

to pieces; they were stripped naked and outlawed, and fled like wolves to the wood.

III. The Might of Love hath brought sorrow on many a man. Much misery comes of women, they have become drossy; God Almighty created them pure:—Swafod and Skarthedin were at one, neither could live without the other, till they grew mad because of a woman ; she was the cause of strife between them. For this fair maiden’s sake they took no pleasure in any sport nor in the light of day, they could think of nothing else but her white body; the dark nights became dreary to them, they could get no sweet sleep; till out of this misery deadly feud sprung up between two bosom friends. For the most part, fatal passions meet with fearful retribution. These two fought a wager of battle for that proud lady, and slew one another.

IV. No man should fall into Pride; this have I seen to be true: for all they that follow after it fall away from God:—Radny and Webow

48. lagin, Cd. 51. engi] ongvan,Cd. 53. peim)*per,I. 56. virta-, I.

V.

were mighty, and thought the world their own: now they sit turning their mangled bodies first to the fire, then to the frost. They trusted in themselves and thought themselves above the rest of mankind, but their behaviour seemed in no way so pleasing to God Almighty. They fell into Lust in divers ways, and took delight in gold: and now they are repaid by being doomed to walk between frost and fire.

V. Put not thy trust in thine enemies, yea, though they speak thee fair, though they promise thee weregild; good it is to take warning by the mishap of others :—Sorli the Single came to know this when he put himself in Wigwulf’s power. He trusted his brother’s slayer freely, but it turned out badly for him. He [Sorli] gave them safe conduct out of the simplicity of his heart, but they promised him gold [weregild] in return. All was peaceful while they sat and drank together, nevertheless treachery sprang out of it. For afterwards on the next day, when they had ridden into Ryedale, they hacked the pu heit, Cd. 82. Wrong quantity. 83. tregliga] thus I. hénom] emend.; hinn, Cd, (h’m=hin). go. ryardal, Cd.

§ 4.] THE CHRISTIAN’S WISDOM. 215

VI.

innocent man with their swords, and took his life. His body they dragged along a hidden path and dropped it into a well. They wished to hide it, but the Blessed Lord beheld it from heaven. The one true God called his soul to dwell in bliss with Him, but I think the murderers will not so soon be called out of their torments.

VI. 1. Call upon the Virgins . . . of the Lord to be propitious to thee : . . . afterward all shall go according to thy wishes.

2. The Deeds of Wrath that thou hast done, see that thou add no offence thereto; yea, thou shalt cheer them that thou hast made to weep with good things, it shall do thy soul good.

3. Thou shalt call upon God, Who made all men, for all good things. Every man.....

4. A man must pray earnestly for that which he thinketh he needeth. He that asketh nothing shall always ‘be in want.’ Who can guess the needs of him that is silent?

VII.

5. 1 appeared too late, though I was summoned in good time to the judge’s door, and so I ‘lost the suit’ that was given in my favour. ‘ He that cries out gets the dish.’

6. It is because of our sins that we go sick out of this world of terror. No man is in fear save he has done ill; it is good to be without spot. :

7. Like unto wolves are they that have a deceitful heart. It shall be so with them that they shall walk in the paths of fire.

Seven friendly counsels that pertain unto wisdom, I give thee here together. Thou shalt remember them well and never forsake them, they are all of them worth learning.

VII. I saw the well-stocked garners of the sons of Fitiung, now they bear the beggar’s staff. Riches are, as it were, the twinkling of an eye, the most unstable of friends.

I saw the fire consume the rich man’s house, and himself lying dead before the door.....

I saw the words of an evil woman sting a man so that he smarted.

121. siukir] conn} hryggvir, Cd,

§ 4.] THE CHRISTIAN’S WISDOM. 217

APPENDIX.

The Slanderer’s tongue was the death of him, and yet he was falsely accused.

....and.... are sitting at the door of .... on the stool of the Greedy, witches’ blood: falls from their nostrils which wakens hatred among men.

Woden’s wife is rowing on the Earth’s ship,.... her sails that hang [defiantly] on the haulyards are never furled.

I, the father, and the sons of Solkettle have read to thee, my son, [the signs on] the hart’s horn that the wise War-dwarf bore out of the grave-mound,

Here are the runes that Niord’s nine daughters have graven, Badveing the eldest, and Kreppwor the youngest, and their seven sisters.

2. agiarns] Bugge; organs, Cd. 3. Bugge; iarna dreyri (sic), Cd.; cp. Sun Song, I. 108. 4. fyrdum, I. 6. i modugum, I. 8. pumor, I. g. Read arfa?

BOOK IV.

EARLY HISTORIC POEMS.

THE poems in this Book are (with one exception in the last section) ‘the work of a group of tenth-century poets running from c, 900 to c. 985. The school to which the poems belong is influenced on one side by the great Western Epics of the Third Book, on the other by the oldest Epics of the First Book. The link which binds them together is a common historical interest.

SECTION 1 contains one poem, which, though akin to its neighbours in metre and spirit, is not on an historical subject, but relates one of Thor’s adventures.

In SECTION 2 we have gathered together the genealogical poems, the first two Western and of Pindaric character, the third more Hesiodic in tone and by a Norwegian. Along with this latter we have given an imitation by a Northern court-poet, the latest poem of these four sections, dating not before 985.

SECTION 3 comprises the earliest Excomia on kings by their poets, Hornklofi’s Praise of Harold Fairhair, an unknown Western poet’s Dirge on his eldest son Eric Bloodax, and Eywind’s imitation of it in a Dirge on his youngest son Hakon Athelstan’s foster-son.

SECTION 4 contains three original and powerful contemporary poems, Head Ransom, Arinbiorn’s Lay, and the Sons’ Wreck, the work of our first Iceland-born poet Egil.

SECTION 5. Latest of all in this book comes the Dart Lay, composed after 1014 by some unknown Western poet, probably in honour of Sigtrygg Silkbeard, king of Dublin.

§x1. THE HYMI POET.

HYMIS-KVIDA.

Tuis clever poem, which stands in a class by itself, is found both in R, leaves 13, 14, and in A. These two copies differ very little.

The subject is twofold: a double adventure of Thor’s, the hooking of the Sea-Serpent and the carrying off the Cauldron. The former is well known from Edda; though Snorri relates it, not from our poem, but from Hus-drapa and similar poems; see Book vii. Among other things he calls the Giant Ymi (all three vellums of Edda, W, r, U), so our poem he cannot have known. The second adventure is utterly unknown to the Edda. The only references we have, which seem to refer to our poem or at all events to its story, are Thorodd’s ‘ heyrdi til héddo er Pérr bar hverinn,’ c. 1130, and Harold Sigurdson’s verse ‘haddan skall,’ which looks like an echo from our |. 133, ‘enn 4 helom bringar skullo.’ Peculiar to our poet is the word ‘Veorr,’ the giantbirth of Tew, and the occasion of Thor’s getting his servants Thialfi and Réskvi, Snorri making him gain his servant on the road to Utgard Loki’s.

The short, crisp, regular metre is of the model followed by Egil and Thiodolf. ‘Kennings’ begin to appear. The epithets, a distinct feature in its style, are very well chosen and striking. The parallelism, as in lines 87-92, is noticeable throughout.

The story tells of the Gods’ frst feast at Eager’s hall, the ’Qxeavoto Sdépor, and of Thor’s quest of a cauldron big enough for brewing the ale for them all. The giant Hymi, in the far north, is reported to own such a vessel, and Thor accordingly repairs to him. He is received contemptuously at first, but proves his might in three tasks. First, he goes fishing with the Giant, who pulls up whales, while Thor hooks the Earth-serpent; for the second, Thor shatters the giant’s cups upon his head; for the last, Thor walks off with the huge alecopper on his head like a hat, the rings and pot-hooks of it clanking about his heels as he goes. The giants pursue him, but he betakes himself to his Hammer and slays them all, coming back triumphantly with his prize. All this is racily and humourously told. Line 93 is sublime, like Milton’s ‘ Earth felt the shock.’ It is evidently a poem to be recited at feasts and merrymakings, as the Epilogue shows.

The ¢ext is fair, merely a word here and there corrupt.

The #it/e is warranted by the superscription in A. There are several foreign words in this poem, ‘kalkr’ for instances

AS valtivar veigar ndmo:

The Gods are feasting at Eager’s. The unwilling host at parting sends Thor on a forlorn errand for a cauldron for future entertainments.

In days of old the blessed Gods drank together, and gathered at the feast: ere they had their fill, they cast the divining rods, and inspected the blood, finding at Eager’s all good cheer.

The simple giant [Eager], like the Mud-monster’s son, was sitting; Woden’s son [Thor] looked him defiantly in the face, saying, ‘Thou shalt often make a feast for the Anses!’ The taunting wight [Thor] gave the giant trouble; he [Eager] thought to pay out the Gods in his turn. He bade Sif’s Husband bring him the cauldron ‘wherein I may brew the ale for all of you.’ None of blessed Gods, nor of the Powers above, could anywhere get such a cauldron, until Tew secretly gave the Thunderer the best of counsel :—‘ There lives east of the Sleet-bays, at the ends of heaven, a hundred-wise giant, called Hymi. My grim father owns a mighty cauldron a mile deep.’ —Thor. ‘Thinkest thou we can get this lee-vat.’—Tew. ‘ Yes, friend, if we contrive a plot for it.’

Now they made speed all day long, till they came to Egil’s [Tew’s uncle]. He stalled the proud-horned goats. Then they wended to the hall that Hymi owned. The grandson [Tew] found his granddam,

I. veigar] emend.; veidar, R, A. 4. hverja] A; hvera, R. 6. miscor-, R; miskor-, A. 17. glivaga, R. 20. -brygdan, A. 24. Egils] Agis, A.

§1.] HYMIS-KVIDA. 221

hafdi hafda hundrod nio:

hug-fulla tv und hvera setja.

Se-bii hvar sitja und salar gafli !—

Sagdit hanom hugr vel pa loathsome to look on, having nine hundred heads. But another came forth, bright as gold, fair-browed, bearing a beer-cup to her son, saying, ‘Thou child of Giants! I will hide you stout-hearted twain underneath the cauldron. My husband is oftentimes sharp and savage to his guests.’ )

But now that woe-maker, the sturdy Hymi, came late home from hunting; he walked into the hall; the icicles clattered; the churl’s chin-thicket [beard] was frozen. Giant-wife says; ‘Hail, Hymi! be not angry! thy son is come to thy hall, whom we have been looking for, off a long journey. With him comes the Giant-killer, the friend of man, whose name is Weor [Thor]. Look where they sit under the gable, keeping at safe distance, behind the pillar !’

The giant turns his face towards them. The pillar flew asunder at the look of the giant, and the [cross] beam [on which the cauldrons lay] broke in twain. Down came from the shelf eight cauldrons; but one, a hard-wrought one, remained unbroken. Now the two came out, and the old giant fixed his eye on his foeman. It could bode him no good to see him, who makes widows of giantesses, standing on his floor.

Hym.q. Verk pikkja pin verri miklo,

Now three steers were taken out, and the giant bade set them to boil. One by one they made them shorter by the head, and set them on the fire. Sif’s Husband alone ate, before he slept, three of Hymi’s oxen

• whole. The hoary giant deemed Thor’s dinner rather large, and said : ‘We three shall have to provide some other venison for our supper.’

Next morning Weor [Thor] said he should like to row out fishing, if the bold giant would give bait. Giant said: ‘Go to the herd, thou Giant-slayer, and get thy bait thyself! I think thou shalt easily find bait from the oxen.’ Then the lad [Thor] turned quickly to the wood, where a coal-black ox stood. The Giant-killer wrung the head off the bullock. .. . Giant said: ‘ Thou boatman! thy works are worse than thy sitting still.’

Now they go out fishing.

The Lord of the Goats [Thor] bade the giant pull his boat out further; but the giant said he had no mind to row any longer. The sturdy Hymi kept pulling up whales, two at once, on his hook; while

~

aa

§1.] HYMIS-KVIDA. 223

kvadat mann ramman, pdtt roa kynni

Weor, Woden’s kinsman, aft in the boat, was cunningly getting his line ready. He, the Helper of men, the Serpent-slayer, baited his hook with the ox’s head. He, the God-abhorred one, that girds all lands round from beneath [the Serpent], gulped down the bait. The doughty Thor pulled amain the venom-streaked Serpent up to the gunwale, and battered with the Hammer the hideous head of the Wolf’s twin-brother. The Dragon howled, and the wilderness rang; even the old Earth shuddered all through. Back sank the sea-monster into the deep.

Moody was the giant as they rowed back, so that he never spoke a word; he steered round with his oar on the other tack,

Ashore the Giant says; ‘1 pray thee, share half the work with me! Either. carry the whales up to the court, or house our ship.’ The Thunderer stepped forward, caught hold of the bow, swung the wavesteed [ship] up single-handed, with all the bilge, the oars, and the bilge- scoop inher. He carried the giant’s craft up to the court, all along through the rock-cauldrons [caves].

Still the stubborn giant challenged Thor’s strength, saying, ‘ Though a man might pull a good oar, he did not call him strong except he could break his cup.’

92. hlumdi] emend,; hlumdo, R; hruto, A. 94. sa fiskr] thus R, A.
93. réro, R. 96. ar] thus R, A. 106. um] gead inn?

Hymi gives him the cup. When the Thunderer grasped the [giant’s] beaker [and cast it], he soon burst the tall shaft [pillar] in twain. From where he sat he dashed it through the pillars; but they bore it back whole to Hymi again, till the giant’s fair leman gave him good counsel, which none but she knew: ‘Dash it down on Hymi’s skull; that sturdy giant’s pate is harder than any cup.’ Then the hardy Lord of the Goats [Thor] sprang to his feet, putting forth his whole godly strength; the old churl’s skull was unbroken, but the wine-vat was cracked all across.

-The giant cries, whimpering : ‘Many good things have now departed from me, now I see my cup broken at my feet. Now,’ the old fellow said, ‘I can no more say, “ Ale, thou art brewed.”’ ,

The giant tells Thor: ‘The last Task is, if thou canst carry my alecauldron out of my hall.’ Tew tried twice to lift it, but each time the cauldron stood still [4e could not stir it], Then the Father of Modi [Thor] caught hold of the brim, and his feet sank down through the floor of the hall. Sif’s Husband [Thor] clapped the cauldron upon his head [/ike a hat], and the [ pot-hooks| chains rattled about his heels.

They had not passed far upon their path, when Woden’s son [Thor]

III. i tvd] gleri, A (sic). 11g. allra] thus R and A. 121. Read vin-

§ 2.] HYNDLO-LIOD. 225

hafr Hlorrida half-daudr fyr:

vas skirr skakuls skakkr 4 beini;

§2, GENEALOGICAL LAYS.

HYNDLO-LIOD; or, VOLO-SPA IN SKAMMA.

In Flatey-book only, under the title Hyndlo-liod, this poem is found. The copyists of that huge vellum lit upon it among other odds and looked once back; he.saw a many-headed throng come from the East, following Hymi from their dens. He [Thor], as he stood, cast the cauldron down from his shoulders, and swung the murderous Miollni before him, and smote all the whales [monsters] of the wilderness.

They had not passed long on their way, when the Thunderer’s goat fell down half-dead ; the shaker of the car-pole [the goat] was lame on one leg; it was the guileful Loki’s doing.

[The Poet’s epilogue|: Now ye have heard—every mythologist can tell all about it—what pledge he [Thor] exacted from the Giant [Egil], who had to pay him both his children as ransom. So the Mighty One [Thor] came to the assembly of the Gods, bringing the cauldron that Hymi had owned.

[The Gleeman’s epilogue]: Now Weor [Thor] shall surely drink ale at Eager’s, once every harvest-time [/ike a harvest-kern].

140, -hvala] -vala, R; -hvali, A. 143. skirr] R, A,=sker? & beini] emend.; a bani, R, A, 151. Veorr—skyli] emend,; vear—skolo, R, A. 152. hormeit’, A ; havrmeitip, R. )

Q

ends, when they had finished the greater part of their task, and to find room for this matter, prefixed two vellum leaves to the whole volume, on column 5 of which they wrote this Lay (Fb. vol. i, pp. 11-16).

Snorri (Edda Gg) quotes Il. 133-6 under the title Volo-spa in Skamma. The compiler of the Genealogies which follow it in Flatey-book (who was not the Flatey-book scribe) knew it in a more complete state, and the compiler of Orvar Odd-Saga knew at least a few lines.

More than 25 years ago in Tima-tal the Editor suggested that it was written for some member of the famous Horda-Kari family, which numbered among its members S. Magnus of Orkney, Thorleif the Wise, the lawgiver, and other distinguished persons in the West. The names Ketil, Klyp, Olmod, often met with in that family’s genealogy, and occurring here, seem to warrant this conclusion.

The framework of the poem is ingenious; Ozhere (Othere the Simple the Giantess calls him), a great worshipper of Freya, begs her help to get him an inheritance which is at dispute between him and his rival Angantheow, and will fall to him that shows the best ancestry. Freya turns her favourite into the shape of the boar Goldbristle (her wellknown steed), mounts on his back, and goes to seek a Giantess [Houndling or Gothic Hunilo= Hyndla for H¥nla?] in her cave, whom she asks to saddle her wolf (the steed of witches) and ride with her in the gloaming to Walhall, promising her safe-conduct at Thor the Thunderer’s hand. As they ride together, the Goddess draws from the Giantess the generations of the Heroes. She runs over these one by one, adding after each tree, ‘All thy ancestry, Othere the Simple!’ This fills the first part of the poem. Then she turns to the generations of the Gods, and of the Destroyers of the World; and finally foretells the Doom of the World. This section no doubt gave it the title of the Shorter Sibyl’s Lay. When she has told all, Freya asks her to hand a cup of remembrance to her Boar; the Giantess recognises the humanity of the disguised Othere and reviles Freya. Yet the poem ends with a blessing on Othere.

The poem was composed in the dim light between heathendom and Christianity, and the passage relating to the High One (no interpolation) points to a hearsay knowledge of the New Faith at least.

The text is, like that of all Fb. verse, very sadly mangled. Bugge’s acute conjectures have been of great help, and we have been able to make the plot clear by what we take to be a few certain emendations.

The genealogy of the sons of Arngrim has been put right by the help of the echo of the lost original verse in Orvar Odd-Saga. The genealogies in Fb. i. 24, 25 may be of a little further use, but the poem is completely hopeless in parts.

We have transposed Il. 133-140 from after 1. 158.

Freya at the cave of Houndling, the Giant-witch, when she cries,—

WAKEN, maid of maids, waken, my friend, my sister Houndling, that dwellest in the cave! It is now the gloam of gloaming, let us ride together to Wal-hall, to the holy city. Let us pray the Father of the

1 ee ae” ——— me

§ 2.] HYNDLO-LIOD. 224

Hosts to be gracious to us, for he grantSand gives gold to his servants ; he gave Hermod a helmet and mail-coat, and Sigmund a sword. He gives victory to his sons, and wealth.to his followers, ready speech to his children, and wisdom to his offspring. He gives fair wind to captains, and song to poets, and luck in love to many a hero. I will worship Thor, and pray him that he be at peace with thee, though he is no friend to the giant-brides. But take thy wolf now from the stall, and let him run beside my boar. My boar shall forthwith speed to the land of the Gods; I will saddle [mount ?] my steed of price.

Quoth Houndling : Thou art false, Freya, tempting me so—thou fixest thine eyes on me—thou that hast thy lover with thee in boar-shape, Othere the young, the son of Innstone.

Quoth Freya : Thou art deceived, Houndling, thou art surely entranced, to say that I have my lover here in boar-shape, where the swine Goldenbristle glows, the Boar.of War, which the skilful dwarves, Dain and Nabbi, wrought for me. Let us talk from our saddles, let us sit and weigh the Races of Kings, of all men that sprung from the Gods. For they have

5. herians f., F. 6. verdugum, F. g. sinnom] suinnum, F, 10. es] read, senn man? minn] emend.; pinn, F. (The words are Freyja’s.) | Godvegr here = Godheimr. 19. vil-ek &] emend.; vil-ek ei, F. _hléeda hleda, F.
6. val-svini] emend.; valsinni, F, here and 1. 25. ay. dulin, F.

laid a wager of Welsh-ore [gold], Othere the young and Angantheow. I am bound to help the former, that the young prince may have his father’s heritage after his kinsmen. He made me an altar built of stones, the grit thereof is changed to glass, he has reddened it with the fresh blood of oxen. Othere hath ever trusted in the Ansesses. Now do thou tell over the men of old and say forth in order the races of men. Who of the Shieldings? who of the Shelfings? who of the Ethelings? who of the Wolfings ? who of the Free-born? who of the Gentle-born are the most chosen of kindred of all upon earth? (Here Houndling’s lesson begins.)

THE GENERATIONS OF HEROES. I.

Quoth Houndling : Thou, Othere, art sprung from Instone, but Instone was from Alf the Old, Alf from Wolf, Wolf from Sea-farer, and Seafarer from Swan the Red. Thy father had a mother, rich with necklaces; I think that her name was Hledis the priestess. Frodi was her father and F... her mother—all that race is ranked with those of high degree. Anila was of old the mightiest of men, and Halfdan in former days the highest of the Shieldings. Famous are the wars which that king waged, his deeds have gone forth to the skirts of heaven. He strengthened himself in marriage with [the daughter of | Eymund the

33. inn ungi] iungi, F, 43. Thus from 1, 63; om. F,

§ 2.] HYNDLO-LIOD. 229

Vas Hildigunn ‘hennar’ mddir highest of men, who slew Sigtryg with the cold blade. He [Halfdan| wedded Almweig the highest of ladies; they bred up and had eighteen sons. Thence come the Shieldings! Thence come the Shelfings! Thence the Ethelings! Thence the Wolfings, etc.—All this race is thine, Othere the Simple.

Hildigund was .... mother, the child of Swafa and Seaking. All this race is thine, Othere the Simple! 1 doubt if any know so much. Wilt thou have me tell more?

Day wedded Thora Mother-of-heroes; of their race are bred the highest champions—Fradmar and Gurth, and both the Frekis, Am and lofur-mar, Alf the Old.—I doubt, etc.

Their friend was named Ketil, the heir of Klyp, he was the father of thy mother’s mother. Frodi came before Kari, but Alf was born....

Nanna came next, Nokkvi’s daughter ; her child was thy father’s kinsman by law. This affinity is of old days, but I can see farther forward.

I know both Brord and Haurfi.—All this race is thine, Othere the Simple!

59. va] om, F, 60. quinnu, F. 63. Ylfingar] Ynglingar, F, 70. Voromk at vitir svi] emend.; see Alvis-mal, p. 83; vardi at viti sva, F. 74. iosurmar, F (cp, O. H, G. Epar-mar), -

folkom grimms, pess-es Fafni va.

S4 var visir fra Valsungom ;

Iswolf and Answolf, Olmod’s sons, and Skurhild, Shackle’s daughter. Thou canst tell thy race up to many heroes.—All this, ete. .

Gunnar Balk, Grim the Ploughshare, Thori Iron-shield, Wolf the Gaper ... .—All this, etc.

Herward, Hiorward, Rani, Angantheow, Bui, Brami, Barri, Reifnir, Tind and Tyrfing and twins Hardings, these twelve sons, they. were born of Arngrim and Eyfura in Bolm-in-the-East: Bearsark-brothers, who raged like wild-fire over land and sea.—All this, etc.

They were among the henchmen of Hrolf the Old; all sprung from Eormunrek, the kinsman by law to Sigurd—listen thou to my story— the fierce king that slew Fafni. That prince was of the Wolsings, but Hiordis [Ais mother] of the Redings, and Eylimi [his mother’s father] of the Ethelings.—All this, etc.

gi-98. Thus partly mended and transposed. F runs on from verse 90.—UlIfr brodd ok haurfi (repeated from 1. 83).

Orvar Odd-Saga gives the following verse :—Hervarér, ok Hiorvarér, Hrani hrudo tryggra manna.—This and the mangled remains of F are our materials for restoring the text, 103-104. Vélsungom .., Hraudungom] Volsungi, Hraudungi, F.

§ 2.] - HYNDLO-LIOD. 231

Gunnar and Hogni the heirs of Giuki, and Gudrun their sister likewise, but Guthorm was not of Giuki’s race, though he was the brother of both of them.—All this, etc.

Harald War-tusk was sprung from Roderik Ring-slinger; he was the son of Aud, but Aud of-deep-wealth was the daughter of Ivar, and Radbeard was Randwer’s father. They were men marked with a sign to the Gods.—All this, etc:

THE GENERATIONS OF THE GODS AND THE DESTROYERS. II.

There were eleven Anses all told, when Balder went down into the hillock of death. Wali was his avenger; he slew the very slayer of his brother. Balder’s father [Woden] was the heir of Bor. Frey wedded Gerd; she was Gymi’s and Aurbode’s daughter of giant-race; so Thiazi became their kinsman, the hunter-giant ; his daughter was Skadi. I tell thee much, but I know more.—I doubt, etc.

Hate [the Sun-devouring Wolf] was the .... of Hwedra’s sons, but Hate’s father was the Great Beast. Haid and Horse-thief were of

112. -taunn, F, 127. skaut-giarn, F. 130-131. Emend.; Haki var Hvednu h, beztr sona enn Hvedno var Hiorvardr fadir, F.~-See Thulor and Gm. p. 74.

‘Loki af hiarta lindi brendo varO Loptr kvidugr at kono illri.

Hrimni’s kindred [giant-brood]. Loki bred the Wolf with Angrbode, and begat Sleipni with Swadilfarer. One monster there was, of all the most terrible [the Serpent], sprung from Byleist’s brother .. . (tavo lines corrupt)... Loft [Loki] grew heavy with a female child, an evil woman [Hell]. Thence are sprung every kind of Ogresses.

All Sibyls are from Wood-wolf, all Warlocks from Wilmeid, all Sorcerers from Swart-head, all the Giants from Ymi. I tell thee much, but I know more.—I doubt, etc.

There was one born in the beginning of days [Heimdall], endowed with mighty strength, of the kindred of the Powers. Nine giantmaidens bare this. stud-endowed man, on the outskirts of the earth. Yelp bare him, Grip bare him, Eistla and Eyrgive bare him, Wolfrun and Angey bare him, Imd and Atla and Iron-saxa. He was endowed with the strength of Earth. I have told thee much, etc.—I doubt, etc.

THE Last Doom. III. The Deep shall rage in tempest against the very heavens, pouring

134. -fara, F. 135. read, eitt pd vas? 139. at] emend. ; af, F.
135. vaulfur, F. 143. Seid-b.] Edda; Skilberendr, F, 149. nad baufgan, Fis 150. F here inserts—Mart segjom per ok munom fleira (wrongly).

} ees I eee ee ee of.

7, ae | yet:

§2.] HYNDLO-LIOD. 233

over the land. The firmament shall fall. Thence shall come snows eh rushing winds. Then the Doom of the Powers shall be nigh at and,

• There was one born mightier than any [Thor]. He was endowed with the strength of Earth. He is held the most strong of lords, Sib’s gossip, among all races.

Then there shall come ANOTHER mightier still, but I dare not name him. None can see farther forward than the day when Woden shall meet the Wolf.

EPILOGUE. IV.

Quoth Freya; Bear a cup of remembrance to my boar, so that he may remember all the words of this speech, to repeat them on the third morning from now, when he and_Angantheow shall reckon up races,

Quoth Houndling :; Get thee gone hence, I would fain sleep, thou shalt get little good from me. Thou runnest out, thou friend of Od [Freya’s lover], by night, as the she-goat Heathrun does among the he-goats.

Thou hast run after Od ever pining, and many have stolen under thy skirt. Thou runnest out, etc.

162. regin] regn, F. 165. -audgaztan, F. 168. porig eigi, F. 171. gelti] thus F. 173. pessa, F. 174. reikna, F, 177. Ods-vina] Bugge; edlvina, F, 179. Odi] Bugge; xdi, F. &

RIGS-PULA; or, THE LAY OF RIGH,

THIS poem only occurs on one of the stray leaves at the end of Codex Wormianus. It begins with a few words of prose and a big initial letter at the top of the page, and fills both sides ; but the following leaf is lost, and the end of the poem with it. The second leaf was missing in 1609, when Magnus Olafsson had the vellum; but a few years earlier, 1596, when Arngrim wrote his Supplement to the Kings’ Lives, it seems to have been in existence, for he gives information which could only be derived from it, as to Dan, Danp, etc. See Notes.

The only reference to it is by Ari, who in Ynglinga, c. 20, says: ‘Dyggvi’s mother was Drott, daughter of King Danp, the son of Rig, who was the first called King in the Danish tongue.’ The myth of Heimdal being, like Brahma, the father of men, is known to the author of Volo-spa, whose invocation begins, ‘Sons of Heimdal high and low.’

The story deals with the origin of the three orders of men—Thralls, Yeomen, and Gentlemen. Heimdal the White God, the old Anse, assuming the name of Righ the Wanderer, walks thrice over the Earth, From his first visit spring the Thralls, from the second the Churls, from the third the Earls. Now follows the birth of Kon the young (= Konung, King), the youngest son of Ear/. The final lines, which, we take it, contained the particular application to some king of the author’s day, for this belongs to the class of Pindaric genealogical poems, are lost.

From the plan of the poem, the first three strophes are full of parallels ; and hence, as abbreviations could be used by the copyist, omissions were likely to occur and are actually found. Bugge noticed that the fare of the Yeoman household was missing. Bergmann acutely observed that the latter lines of the Thrall’s fare in our vellum were too good, and

Quoth Freya: I will cast fire about [thee] the evil Sibyl, so that thou shalt not be able to get hence.

Quoth Houndling : 1 see the Deep on fire and Earth ablaze: few there be that shall not suffer death. Here she hands the cup to Freya. Bear the ale to Othere’s hand, mixed with venom and omen of ill.

Quoth Freya, taking the cup: Thine omen shall be of no avail, though thou threatenest with curses, thou giant’s bride. He [Othere] shall drink draughts of blessing. I pray all the gods prosper Othere! .

183. of] af, F. 184. . . .] eigi kemk, F (a verb negative on 6 is required),
184. Haf] emend.; hyr, F.

§ 2.] THE LAY OF RIGH. 235

must have been transposed from the Yeoman-strophe. The names of the Daughters of Earl are also missing. Further, the names given of the Yeoman’s daughters are those of gentle ladies, and must be out of place. So here we are in a double plight. But chance has helped us: the Thulor gives us twenty names of women, evidently taken from our poem. From them we can pick out ten names of ladies and ten names of Yeoman’s daughters, and thus put the Yeoman’s daughters aright, and at the same time fill the second lacuna. But we still lack half the fare of the Thralls, the way the Yeoman’s table was dressed, and a line or two more about the food at the Earl’s table. For this there is no help, unless a new text should turn up. The second line, either overlooked by or illegible to the copyist, containing Heimdal’s name, had dropped out. We have restored this, a necessary clause, from the Prose Preface.

The writer of the Codex Wormiatius had the poem before him in a prototype of not later date than 1200, to judge from the spelling of certain words, e.g. 1. 179.

The metre is something between the short and long epic measures, and is not very flowing or finished. The poet’s attention was concentrated on the concise and orderly setting forth of his subject, which makes his work so interesting and renders almost every word worthy of study. The vocabulary is, as one would expect from a poem dealing with economic and political life, rich and varied.

In the olden time they say there went along the green paths the white and ... Heimdal, the mighty and ancient Anse, the strong and brisk RiGH the Walker.

He went on upon his way along the middle of the path and came to a house, where the door was ajar, and made bold to walk in. There was a fire on the floor, and over the hearth there sat the hoary good-folk of the house, Al, and EDDA with her old-fashioned hood. Righ knew how to make himself at home; he sat him down in the middle seat, with the good-folk of the house on either side. —Then Edda took an unkneaded

1. ar] at, W. groennar brautar] emend.; groenar brautir, W;; ep. Il, 20, 51, etc. 8, hitin] hion, W, here and below. of} af, W. aarniy W.

loaf, heavy and thick, and mixed with bran....... He rose up thence and went to bed. Righ knew how to make himself at home; he lay down in the middle of the bed, with the good-folk of the house on either side. Here he stayed three nights together, and then went on upon his way.

Nine months more went by, Edda brought forth a man-child and sprinkled it with water,... . . of swarthy skin, they called it Thrall. He grew apace and throve finely, ..... 5 the skin of his hands was wrinkled, his knuckles bent, his fingers thick, his face ugly, his back broad, his heels long. He began to put forth his strength, binding bast, making loads, and bearing home faggots the weary long day. There came to the house Toddle-shankie, with scars on her feet, sunburnt arms, and a broken nose; her name was Theoqw. She went to the middle seat, the good-folk’s son sat down beside her; the weariful day they gossiped and whispered, and made ready one bed for them, Thrall and Theow. They had children, and dwelt together and were happy. Their sons’ names I ween were Sooty and Cowherd, Clumsy

15, ll. 15 and 16 interchanged in W. 34. vas] er, W. pir, W; read pyr? 36. hitina] emend,; huts, W.

§2.] THE LAY OF RIGH, 237

Klirr,ok Kleggi, Kefsir, Fulnir, akra taddo, unno at svinom; vas skegg skapat; skar vas fyr enni; skyrto proengva; skokkr vas 4 golfi. Sat bar kona, sveigdi rokk, sveigr vas 4 hafdi; smokkr vas 4 bringo; 60 dukr vas 4 halsi; dvergar 4 oxlom.— Art ok Amma 2tto his. '

and Clod, Bastard, Mud, Log, Thickard, Laggard, Grey-coat, Lout, and Stumpy. They busied themselves with building fences, dunging plowland, and tending swine, herding goats, and digging peat. Their Daughters were Loggie, Cloggie, Lumpy-leggie, Snub-nosie, Cinders, Bondmaid, Woody-peggie, Tatter-coatie, Crane-shankie, Thence are come the generations of THRALLS,

II. Then Righ went on his right way. He came to a hall; the door was on the latch. He went boldly in; there was a fire on the floor. The good-folk were sitting there, busy at their work. The good-man was cutting a log into a loom-beam; his beard was trimmed, his hair was cut across his forehead, his shirt was tied; a chest was on the floor. kia whe The good-wife sat there twirling her distaff, stretching out her arms, working the clothes; she had a hooked cap on her head, a smock on her breast, a kerchief on her neck, pin-brooches on the shoulders, GAFFER and GAMMER owned the house. Righ knew how to make himself at home; he sat down on the middle seat, with the good-folk of the house on either side. Then Gammer took ...., these she put

51. rettar brautir, W. =

sod vas { bolla; setti 4 bidd; vas kalfr sodinn krdsa baztr.

hus at timbra, hlador [at] smfda,

Geita-kyrtlo, gipto Karli: 85 Snor heitir su; settisk und ripti:

on the middle of the dish, broth was in the bowl which she set on the table, and boiled veal the best of dainties. Righ knew how to make himself at home; he got up from the table and went to bed. He lay down in the middle of the bed, with the good-folk of the house on either side. Here he stayed three nights together, then he went on upon his way.

Nine months more went by. Gammer brought forth a man-child, they sprinkled it with water and called it Carle; the good-wife swaddled him in linen; he was red and ruddy, with rolling eyes. He grew apace and throve finely. He took to breaking oxen, and building plows, timbering houses, smithying barns, making carts, and driving the plow [cart]. They carried home a wife for Carle. Keys 0’ beltie, Goat-skin-coatie, Daughter-in-law was her name; she sat under the linen [veil]. The good-folk kept house together, and spent their rings [money], they spread the sheets, and farmed their land. They had children, and dwelt together and were happy. Their sons’ names were Child, Lad, Yeoman, Thane, Smith, Burly, Farmer, Sheafbeard, Neighbour and Bodger, Broad-beard and Gossip. But their Daughters had other names:

§ 2] THE LAY OF RIGH. 239

‘Tl.

Mistress, Wife, Lassie, Buxom, Spinster, Maid, Bouncing-girl, Widow, Maiden and Carline. Thence are come the generations of CHURLS.

III. Then Righ went on his right way. He came to a hall with the doors turned to the south; the door was down, there was a ring on the lintel. He went boldly in; the floor was strewn, the good-folk sat there looking one another in the eyes, and playing on their fingers, FATHER and MorHEer. The Master of the house sat twisting [bow] strings, bending the elm [for his bow], shafting arrows; and the Lady of the house was looking on her arms, smoothing her linen, and pleating her sleeves. Her head-gear stood out from her head, she wore a brooch on her breast, long trailing sashes, and a blue-dyed sark. Her brow was brighter, her breast lighter, her neck whiter than the driven snow. Righ knew how to make himself at home; he sat him down in the middle seat, with the good-folk of the house on either side. Then Mother took a broidered cloth of bleached flax and covered the table. Then she took thin loaves of white wheat and covered the cloth. She set forth silver-mounted dishes full of ...... old [well-cured] ham, and roasted

97. tettar braut’, W. 107. Emend.; keisti fald, W. 308. Emend. ; serk blafaan, W. 118-120, Thus emendated ; fram setti hon skutla fulla silfri varda a biod faan® fleski, W. e

Rigr kunni beim r46 at segja :

Bleikt vas har, biartir vangar; etul varo augo sem yrmlingi.

Upp 6x bar Iarl 4 fletjom: | lind nam at skelfa, leggja strengi, 135 alm at beygja, arvar skepta, flein at fleygja, frakkor dyja, hestom rida, htinom verpa, sverdom bregda, sund at fremja.

birds. There was wine in a can, and mounted beakers. They drank and talked while the day passed by. Righ knew how to make himself at home ; he rose after this, and made his bed; he laid him down in the middle of the bed, with the good-folk of the house on either side. He stayed here three nights together, then he went on upon his way.

Nine months more passed on, Mother brought forth a boy, she swaddled him in silk, sprinkled him with water, and called him Earl. His hair was yellow, his cheeks were rosy, his eyes were keen as a young serpent’s. Earl grew up in the house, he took to shaping the linden-shield, fixing the string [for the bow], bending the bow, shafting arrows, hurling the javelin, shaking the lance, riding horses and throwing dice, fencing with the sword and practising swimming.

Out of the copse came Righ the Walker. Righ the Walker taught him Spells, gave him his own name, and acknowledged him as his son ; he bade him have and hold the Udal-fields, the Udal-fields dwelt on from the days of old. He [Earl] rode on thence through Mirkwood and the Holy Hills till he came to a hall. He began to brandish the shaft, to shake the linden [shield], to gallop his horse, and fence with the sword.

138. huinom] emend.; hundum, W. 146. helug, W.

$2] THE LAY OF RIGH. 241

He began to waken war, he began to redden the field, he began to fell the doomed. He won lands, he ruled alone over eighteen townships; he began to deal out wealth, and endow his people with treasures and costly things, with fine-ribbed steeds; he scattered rings, and hewed great rings asunder [among them].

The messengers drove over the dew-wet paths, they came to the hall where Lord dwelt; he had a daughter, slender-fingered, white and gentle. Her name was Er/a. They asked her father for her hand, and drove her home; they married her to Earl. She walked under the veil of fine-linen ; they dwelt together, were happy, they increased their race, and led a joyful life, First-born was their eldest son, the second was Bairn, Baby, and Etheling, Heir, Kinsman, Cousin, and Friend, Son, and Swain. They learned swimming and tables. One of them was called Gentle, but the youngest was named KIN. But the daughters had names of their own: Grace, Bride, Swan, Haughty, Spark, Fleda, Spouse, Lady, Virgin, Girl.

Earl’s sons grew up; they busied themselves with breaking horses, rimming shields, smoothing shafts, and planing ash-spears. But Kin-theyoung knew hidden things, everlasting mysteries, mysteries of life; he

R

YNGLINGA-TAL; on, THE GENERATIONS OF THE YNGLINGS.

In the Prologue to the Lives of the Earlier Kings it is written: ‘Thiodwolf of Hwin was Harold Fair-hair’s poet; he made for King Reginwald heidum hera, the poem which is called the Genealogy of the Ynglings. (Reginwald was the son of Anlaf Gerstada-alf, and brother of Halfdan the Black.) In that poem are named thirty of his forefathers, and the death and burial-place of each is told.’ Ynglinga Saga, which is undoubtedly Ari’s work, is founded on this poem, and knew too how to save men’s lives, how to blunt the edges [of the sword], and how to still the sea; he learnt the language of birds, how to quench fire, to stay wounds’ bleeding, to allay sorrows; he had the strength and ~ pith of eight men.

• Earl capped spells with Righ, he overcame him by cunning, and outdid him. Then he came into his heritage and got the surname of Righ the Spell-wise.

Kin-the-young rode through shrub and shaw, flinging the bird-club, and stunning the birds. Up spake a crow, as she sat on a bough. Why art thou killing birds, Kin-the-young? Thou shouldst rather be riding thy steed and felling armies. Dan and Danp have costly halls, a higher heritage than you have. They are well skilled in riding the keel, in wielding the sword, and ripping wounds, (Rest of lay missing, bow ‘Kin became Bing. ) .

179. sar at] emend.; seva z svefia, W. 184. Emend.; ruinar kunna, W.

§2.] YNGLINGA-TAL. 243

in our vellums of this Saga we luckily find the poem itself inserted piecemeal by some editor. But of the thirty names we have only twenty-seven; three have therefore dropped out, whether at the beginning or end we cannot tell, yet we should suspect that the latter verses (between stanzas 26 and 27) have suffered, which may have led to the false views of the poem’s age.

Thiodwolf, who is named by Ari as Harold’s poet, has left other poems, one Haust-long (see Book vii), in honour of the well-known Lawgiver, Thorleif the Wise, the founder of Gula-Things-Law, who was the friend and adviser of Hakon Athelstan’s foster-son, who ruled in the middle (950-970) part of the tenth century. He also wrote a poem, now lost, on Earl Strut-Harold (see Skalda-tal in Kringla), father of Sigwald, who commanded the Iom Wickings c. 980, fought at Swold in rooo, and is believed to have perished in the massacre of St. Brice, in England, rooz. Thirdly, a poem on Earl Hakon I, King Harold’s contemporary. These data would fix our poem to the first part of the tenth century. Its short epic metre, with kennings and courtly phrases, well fits that date, and would be impossible a hundred years earlier. +

In the beginning of the tenth century, Norway was, for the first time, under the rule of ove king, who, starting from small beginnings, had won himself an empire. The poem is plainly composed to magnify his family, to give them the one glory they lacked, the consecration of time, by tracing them up on the spear-side to the Gods at Upsala, to Ingowin-Frey himself, through thirty generations. When we look into the poem, we find how, to accomplish his object, Thiodwolf had to take famous kings of all races and timies, and string them one upon another regardless of chronology. Thus we have Eadgils, who is spoken of in Beowulf; Godofridus, Charles the Great’s contemporary ; Dyggwi, etc. That mere traditional memory could not supply so many steps in one descending line is obvious; the Greek and Norse genealogies soon lose themselves among the Giants and Gods.

We should naturally conclude that Thiodwolf would make his poem on the dead of the family, Harald Fair-hair himself, his great contemporary, and may it not be that he has done so after all? In the last verse he says that he knows no surname under the blue sky so glorious as that of ‘ heidum-harr’ {so the best of our two MSS. reads, there is a lacuna in Kringla]. But this, on the analogy of raudum-skialdi [Redshield| and fagrom-kinni [Fair-cheek|], can only mean fair-hair. The other reading, ‘heidom-heri,’ higher than the heaths, is nonsense. Heaths are not always high, nor is there any particular splendour associated with them. But if we read Fair-hair, this surname is a glorious name, for it was a memorial of the Conqueror’s Vow and Victory. We may therefore suppose that by ‘régnvaldr reidar-stiori’ is meant the wise Earl Reginwald [Reynold], who gave the king the surname at that solemn hair-polling which marked the fulfilment of the vow. This explanation is in consonance with the Raven-Song which speaks of the King as ‘ Lufa,’ ‘Shock-head.’ The chronology is right, for Harold lived down to #thelstan’s death at least. For full discussion of this point and justification of reading adopted see Notes.

Ynglinga-tal is never cited or alluded to elsewhere: Snorri and Olaf would have taken much more pleasure in Haleygia-tal no doubt, but still the complete silence is remarkable. Of Eywind’s imitation, which is remarkably close, we shall speak below. ‘That Ari was drawn to Ynglinga-tal is not unaccountable. He himself claiffed to be of Yngling

244 GENEALOGICAL LAYS. (x. rv.

blood on one side at least. There is an originality about the poem which led to its being drawn upon as a model of such genealogies. Skioldunga and Saxo we take to be founded on some such imitation on behalf of the Danish Kings; though no Danish ‘ Skioldunga-tal’ is known to have existed. Its. absence of framework and good practical arrangement suited the court panegyrist better than the more ingenious and pindaric Western Genealogies such as Hyndlu-liod.

Before Harald’s reign and conquest, our poem would have been meaningless and even impossible; when great Kings, Tryggvason, St. Olave, had made Fair-hair’s title good, in a way undreamt of, it would have been needless. As it was, it appeared in season as a title-deed to a conquering king, the first sovereign of the whole land.

Ynglinga Saga has come down in three vellums, Kringla (A), Jofraskinna (B), Frisianus (F); at 1. 168 there is a blank of one leaf in Kringla. The proem of the poem, and at least one verse at the beginning,. are lost.

I. THERE was fulfilled the word of fate that came to FIOLNI, where Frodi dwelt, when the windless wave of the bull’s spear [horn of wine] was fated to overcome the king.

11. But the warder of the hall of the Sons of the daylight-shrinking Durni [the dwarf] beguiled SwEep1, when the high-souled king sprang after the dwarf into the rock; and the steep giant-peopled hall of the Pit-ogre [rock] yawned for the king.

111. But an ogress brought WANLAND to visit Wili’s brother [ Woden], when the fiend-born Grimhild trampled on the umpire of litigants; and the necklace-dropper, whom the Nightmare slew, was burned in the bed of the river Skuta.

1v. And the Sea’s brother [fire] did swallow the ship of the mind

§ 2.] YNGLINGA-TAL. 245

Sidvar nidr svelgja knatti:

~

[breast or body] of WisspuR, when the warders of the palace [the king’s sons] hounded the vile robber of the forest [fire] against their father; and the roaring dog of the embers [fire] bit the high-king in the hearth-bark [hall].

v. It was in former days that the sword-bearers reddened the earth with their own lord’s blood, and the people of the land wielded their gory weapons on the life-reft DomMWALD, what time the Swedish folk, eager for good seasons, did sacrifice the foeman of the Jutes.

vi. And I have often asked of wise men concerning Yngwi’s kinsman’s tomb, where DOMHERE was laid upon the roaring bane of Half [fire], but now I know that the son ef Fiolni died sickness-stricken by the river Fir [Shallow].

vir. It cannot be gainsaid but that Glitni’s kinswoman [Hell] has the corse of DyGewi for a toy, for the sister of the Wolf and Narfi picked out that royal man, yea, Loki’s maid has the mighty ruler of Yngwi’s people [the Swedes] for a plaything.

vil. I heard that the glory-loving Day had to obey the word of

18. siarvar, A; sevar, B. 24. sverd-riddendr, B. 25. -vonom] B; -vanan, A. 37. iopis, A; iodis, B. 40. at leikom] B; leikinn, A, 4l. -yrdi] B (A.S. wyrth); ordi, A. *

spak-fraamodr spars at hefna:

sloengo-pref Sleipniss verdar.

doom, when he, the soothsayer of the rods of divining, came to Worwi to avenge his sparrow; yea, the king’s men brought word from the battle on the Baltic, that the sling-staff of Sleipni’s food [hay-fork] struck the king.

1x. I count it a marvellous thing that AGNI’s people thought Skialf’s deeds natural, what time Logi’s sister heaved the Chief in the air on her golden necklace: he that was fated to tame the ice-cold horse of Signy’s husband [Hagbard’s steed=the gallows] at Taur.

x. ALRIC fell what time a brother’s weapon slew ERIC, and as men say, the children of Day smote one another with the headgear of the saddle-horse [bit]. Never man heard before that Frey’s offspring ever used horse-harness in fight.

x1. And he whom Alf slew, the keeper of the holy tabernacle, was fated to lie slain, when the envious prince reddened his blade on Ynewi. It was not meet that Bera should egg on the slayers to the slaughter, when two brothers slew each other needlessly for jealousy’s sake.

§ 2.] YNGLINGA-TAL. £44

XII. EORWIND, who died long ago, lost his life in Limb-frith, when the high-shouldered flax-steed [the *gallows] was fated to bear the slayer of Godlaug, and Hagbard’s goat-hair rope [the halter] clasped the neck of the lord of lords.

xm. Anility overcame AUN in the days of yore at Upsala, and he, clinging to life, was obliged to take the nature of a babe a second time, and turn the smaller end of the steer’s sword [horn] towards him; yea, the sacrificer of his sons drank, as he lay, from the point of the blade of the yoke-reindeer [ox-horn]; the hoary king of the East had not strength to hold up the weapon of the herd [horn].

xiv. And the much-renowned son of Tew fled from his country before the might of Tunni, but the Giant’s yoke-ox [ur-ox], a beast that had long borne a brow-pillar [horn] over the East-mark [Lithuania?], dyed red upon Ecix the sword of the stirk’s snout [horn]; yea, the sheathless weapon of the heifer struck the son of the Shelfings to the heart.

' XV. OTHERE the doughty fell by the weapons of the Danes, under the talons of the eagle, when the war-vulture spurned him, the reason-

71. ha-bridstr] thus A and B, 74. haudnu, A, B. 76. Aun] A.

viti borinn 4 Vendli sparn.

endowed, with its brute carrion-feet at Wendle. I heard the deeds of Glove and Fast told in story among the Swedish people, how Frodi’s island [Zealand’s] earls had slain the war-raising king.

xvi. I heard that the witch-wife [Hell] was fated to destroy the life of EADGILS, and that the deed-thirsty king, the son of Frey, should fall from the saddle of his steed, and that the brain-flood of the son of kings should be mingled with the dust, and that the renowned enemy of Anila was doomed to die at Upsala.

xvii. I know that the close of EySTAN’s life was hid on Lofund, and that Jutish men burned the king in the midst of the Swedes, and the fever of the cliff-weeds [forest-fire] rushed upon the king in the fire-ship [hall], when the timber-fast craft of the croft [hall] burnt, full of men, about the king’s ears.

xvii1. It came to pass that the people of Sysel sacrificed YNGWERE, the Esthlanders slew the fair-skinned prince at the heart of the sea {at Stone], and Eastmere sings ocean-songs for the joy of the King of the Swedes.

5 oF “(y

§2.] YNGLINGA-TAL. 249

God-konung f{ goegnom steig:

x1x. EANWIND was imprisoned at Heavenfell by what slew the sons of Jonakr [stones], and the bane of the bastard [stones] overpowered the fierce enemy of the Esthlanders, yea, the forwarder of Hogni’s wreck [king] was buried under the bones of the Earth [stones].

xx. And the smoke-gusher [fire] trampled on the living INGoOLD at Rening, what time the house-riever [fire] walked over the King of the Goths with burning soles; and that fate was thought the rarest by every one of the Swedish folks, that he himself should be the first to destroy his gallant life.

xxi, And by the Bay the fane-devourer [fire] swallowed the body of ANLEIF [Olave] the Woodcutter, and the ember-hot son of Forniot [fire] dissolved the frame of the King of the Swedes. So the scion of the glorious race of Upsala disappeared long ago.

xxii. Every one has heard how the doomsmen were fated to lose HALFDAN, how the Queen of cairns [ Hell] took the great king on T hotni, yea, Skereid droops in Skirings-hall over the bones of the mail-elf [hero].

129. Thus, ‘ifiorvan’ (one word), A. 130. rausudr, A, 133. yrdér] B; urdr, A. 134. siallgcervastr, B. 136. vildi, B. 137. Thus emend; Ok vid vag hinn er vidjar, A and B. 139. gléd-fialgr] B; gladfialgr, A. gaurvar, A; gotvar, B. 140. sonar, A. 141. Sva] not si, A and B. varps), B. 147. Skereid and skirissal, A. °

XXII. But EySTAN, struck by the boom, went to the maid of Byleist’s brother [Hell], and the washer of blades is now lying under the bones of the sea [stones], on the tongue of the beach [the shore], ~ where the sleet-cold Wadle-stream [R. Waddle]. runs into the bay hard by the Gautish King.

xxiv, And Loki’s daughter [Hell] called the king out of this world to the court of Woden; what time HALFDAN, that lived in Holt, received the Norns’ doom. And afterward the victors buried the prince at Borro.

XXV. GOTHFRED the MAGNIFICENT, who lived: long ago, was struck down by treason; and a deadly hate, long nursed, drew treachery upon the king, upon the drunken prince; and the cowardly traitorous messenger of Asa won a murderous victory over the king, yea, the prince was stabbed to death on the ancient bed of Stifla-sound.

xxvi. And the shoot of the tree of Woden’s son [Frey] throve in Norway. ANLEIF fOlave] once ruled Upsi, Wood, Green, Westmare, till gout was fated to destroy the war-dealer at the land’s thrum

172. Thus emend.; ofsa forum vidri grund of (ok, F) Vestmari, F, B. 174. vig nidiung, F, )

§ 2.] HALEYGIA-TAL. 251

Nd liggr gunn-diarfr 4 Geirstodom 175 her-konungr haugi ausinn.

. _ ° . . ) a

HALEYGIA-TAL; or, THE GENERATIONS OF THE HALEYG-EARLS.

AFTER the great famine of 975-6, the rule of Norway passed for twenty years from the Ynglings, Gunhild’s sons, into the hands of Earl Hakon II of Lathe. His father and grandfather were men of mark, Law-speakers in the Northern district of Norway. But his family seems beyond that to be one of no special distinction, local earls and no more. Hakon was a mighty man, who put down all opposition and saved Norway from the Danish Wickings. He was therefore in somewhat the same position as King Harold Fair-hair had been, and would welcome a poet who proved his race to be divine. Eywind was ready to fulfil this task, and with Ynglinga-tal for his model he went boldly to work, furnished him with a son of Woden (who migrated from Sweden to the North of Norway) for ancestor, and the regulation thirty generations of distinguished forefathers. Nay, he even explains, in a very ingenious way (see Agrip, cited Reader, p. 257), the fact of Hakon being called Earl and not King, though his ancestors once were kings.

The poem, probably of the same length as its prototype, has only reached us in fragments, comprising perhaps a fifth of the whole. Of these pieces those numbered 3, 4, 8, 9 occur in the Kings’ Lives, and 10 in Fagrskinna, the rest in Edda and Skalda (W).

They show a striking similarity to the original Ynglinga-tal; words, phrases, plan, all are copied, ingeniously but unmistakably. Fragment 6 is even quoted as Thiodwolf’s, the resemblance having deceived thirteenth-century critics, though it must be Eywind’s: first, because it will not fit into Ynglinga-tal; secondly, because the new clause beginning with ‘ba-es’ comes in the middle of the line, a blemish never found in Thiodwolf (who pairs off the several clauses of his sentences, like an old Hebrew poet, line corresponding strictly to line), though frequent enough with Eywind, cf. ll. 11, 15, 37, 4%, 45, 51.

[the shore]. Now the war-doughty king of hosts is lying with a barrow cast over him in Garstead.

xxvil. The best surname that I know any king under the blue sky has, is that when Reginwald the lord of Rein [place] called thee FAIR-HAIR.

be

I. Prologue. 1 wish for a hearing for the cider of Woden [my song], whilst I pay out the ransom of Gilling [poetry], whilst I tell His [Earl Hakon’s] lineage up to the gods in the cauldron-lee of the Gallows’ load [ Woden’s drink = Poetry].

II. (Of Weden)..... He, the mighty traveller, that bare on his wing out of Swart’s Pit-dales [Tartarus, Abyss]. (Woden stealing the Mead from the Giants.)

III. When the shield-sacrificing Anses’ son [Woden?] begot this tribute-bearer [under-king] with lronwood [the Giantess|, what time they dwelt in the Manham [world of Men] long ago, the friend of the sea-bone’s folk [Niord] and Skadi: yea, the lady of the snow-skates [Skadi] bore many sons to Woden.

IV. But GUDLAUG tamed the cruel steed of Sigar [was hanged], through the too great might of the Kings of the East, when the children of Yngwi hoisted the necklace-looser to the tree; yca, the corse-ridden steed of Wingi [Woden’s gallows] droops on the ness where the bays are parted. It is known far and wide Stromey’s ness, stone-marked, about the princes’ grave-mound.

§ 2.] HALEYGIA-TAL. 253 V.

VI. (Hafud-badm): pd-es heid-szi 4 fiorniss fiallom dr¥gdi.

V. The enemy of Beli [Frey]. When the foe of Earls [the King] wished to people the outlying lands.

VI. ... .. the head-beam; when he performed the sowing of gold on the hawk’s hills [hands], [i.e. when he paid his men]. WELL si and this man bore into the storm of Woden [Battle] the grey sark of the bush-hog [i. e. a wolf’s coat].

VIII. Haxon, the love of Hogni’s maid [Hilda, i.e. Battle], was weapon-bare when he fought, and the kinsman of Frey laid down his life in the spear-clash at Fialar; and there, when the friends of Griotgard’s son fell, Staffaess bay was mixed with the blood of men in the great crash of Loki’s friend [Woden].

And the earth-rulers deprived SIGFRED of life at Ogloi, him that fed the swans of the gallows-god [Woden] with the beer of Harding’s carrion-crows [blood]; yea, the undaunted Etheling of Yrna-land (the Lord of Yriar), unsparing of arm-serpents [rings], was reft of life when the rulers of the land betrayed the son of Tew in time of truce.

21. ut restr, W. 26. hrisnis, W. 31. par] pat, A and B. 39. Yrna] emend, ; i olun, Cdd, bad

IX. his son. Yngi-Freyss andurdan dag

XI.

§3. EARLY ENCOMIA. HORNKLOFI’S RAVEN-SONG.

THE foremost and oldest of its class is this poem. Its author was the ‘poet Hornklofi, an old friend of the King [Harold Fair-hair], who had always been among his courtiers from his youth up.’ Besides this brief notice we know nothing. To judge from ll. 62, 69, 81 however he must have been a Western man from beyond the Main. His name is sometimes given as Thorbiorn, but he always goes by his nickname, Horn-cleft, that is ‘ hard-beaked,’ an epithet and synonym of the Raven. The foreign fabliau in Hauks-book (Proleg., p. 160) is of course merely fastened upon him as a welJ-known person, and has no foundation in fact.

The Raven-song is a Dialogue between a Raven (in the choice of which bird the poet is probably playing on his own name) and a Lady, who we should guess from lines 5-6 to be a Walkyrie, or even a Finnish woman. The Raven, in answer to her questions, speaks in turn of the Warlike Glory of Harold the Fair-hair, his Generosity towards his Warriors and his Poets, and gives an account of his Bear-sark champions, and lastly of Andad the Fool, his learned Dog, and the Tumblers. The Raven then tells of the King’s Battles, and especially of his crowning exploit, the Battle of Hafrfirth, of which he gives a

IX. Of Hakon II. It was the least joyful meeting for the enemies of Yngwi-Frey, when the rulers of the land [Earl Hakon and his sons] sped with their fleet against the destroyers [the Ioms- Wickings], when the sword-elf drove his sea-steeds from the south against the host of them.

X. All Woden’s bride [the earth, i.e. all Norway], as far as Egdaby [to Land’s end], lies under his [Earl Hakon’s] arms.

XI. The Epilogue. The Gods’ nectar [poetry]; and I have made the Chief’s praise to stand like a stone bridge.

§ 3.] HORNKLOFI’S RAVEN-SONG. 2n8

glowing account. To have so old a description of a Northern King’s court is of high interest, especially as the picture it gives is not that which the stern gravity of the Saga would suggest, but much more that of such writers as Dudo and Wace. Andad and Gollet are among the oldest examples of the court-fool, whose character has been so powerfully drawn by Shakspere. The historical value of the poem is also very great. The light it throws on the relations between the king and the Western Wickings, whom it ranks as his most formidable opponents, the notices it affords of the ships, weapons, and even the names of the enemy (Ceotwan, probably Gaelic, and Haklang), are all exceedingly welcome, where there is such a lack of early information on such an important time as that of Harold Fair-hair. Hornklofi is in fact to his master as Asser to Alfred, and it is interesting to contrast the encomia of the two great contemporaries, each most characteristic in its way.

The main part of the Song, ll. 1-61, is found inserted in the so-called Fagrskinna Abridgment of the Kings’ Lives. There are two vellums of this book, both lost in the fire,1778. Our A (A. M. 302) is in Asgeir Jonsson’s copy of the Konungatal-vellum. Our B is Arni Magnusson’s own copy of the Attartal-vellum; which was, as may be seen by the specimen in the Reader, p. 251, remarkable for its Norwegian spelling.

As Hornklofi’s ll. 21-24 are cited in the Kings’ Lives, ll. 47-50 are cited in Flatey-book, and wrongly given to Audun [ Eadwine] IIl-skellda.

The second part of the poem, the Hafrfirth Battle, Il. 61-81, we find inserted in the Kings’ Lives (Heims-kringla), who ascribe them to Hornklofi. Fagrskinna, which also cites them, gives them by mistake to Thiodwolf of Hwin. Snorri, too, quotes ll. 78-79 as Thiodwolf’s; but they are clearly part of Hornklofi’s poem. Not only the peculiar metre, the subject, and the style fit, but the very words of the earlier part ‘Heyrdir pi’ of the dialogue. The fragments subjoined are also from this poem, of which we have perhaps two-thirds. The first is about the King’s wife, and is found in the Kings’ Lives. The second, unfortunately corrupt, ll. 85-88, is from Flatey-book i. 576, where it is given to Thiodwolf of Hwin. The third morsel, 89-90, is one of the Raven’s speeches cited by Snorri as Thiodwolf’s. The confusion of ascription is increased by the presence in Flatey-book, i. 567-568, of twelve spurious lines by a twelfth-century poet (the metre and style leave no doubt), the same probably who wrote the four spurious lines in Fagrskinna, ‘pa var lofdungr’ etc., foot of page 9 in the Edition.

The metre of Hornklofi deserves careful attention; it is a dated example of verse in Jong lines as we should expect, and with a curious mixture here and there of Didactic verses. As far as age and metre go, it might have been placed with the older Epics of our First Book. it is indeed on account of the nature of its contents that it is set here. It is, we believe, the oldest poem of any in this Book, antedating Ericsmal by about half a century.

LISTEN, ye warriors, while I tell the feats of arms of Harold the Fortunate [Fair-hair]. I will tell of a parley I heard between a fair,

2. avar-audga| B; harfagra, A (or, read hoddaw , . . Harfagra ?), bright-haired Maiden, and a Raven with whom she was speaking. She seemed a wise Walkyrie that despised wedlock, a keen Finnish maid that knew the tongue of birds. The white-throated lady spake to the rover of the sky with the quick eyelids as he sat on a peak of Wincrag :-—

‘ How is it with you, ye ravens? Whence are ye come with gory beak at the dawning of the day? There is flesh cleaving to your talons, and a scent of carrion comes from your mouth. Ye lodged last night I ween near where ye knew the corses were lying.’

The poll-feathered sworn-brother of the eagle shook himself, and wiped his beak, and thought over his answer:—‘ We have followed the young Yngling [royal hero] Harold, the son of Halfdan, ever since we left the egg. Surely, I thought thou must know the king that dwells at Quin, the Lord of the Northmen. He has many a deep keel, with reddened targets, and red shields, tarred oars, and driven [snow-white] awnings. The eager prince would drink his Yule at sea and play Frey’s game [war] if he had his will. From his youth up he loathed the fireboiler [hearth], and sitting in-doors, the warm bower, and the bolster full of down.’

Quoth the Walkyrie: How does the generous prince deal with the men of teats of renown that guard his land?

6. Partly emend.; pakkir suamo enni fram-sotto, A; peccir fin nonn hinni framghadom arom oc drifnom skioldom, B. 26. itra] ytra, B.

§ 3.] HORNKLOFIYS RAVEN-SONG. 257

Quoth the Raven; They are well cared for, the warriors that cast dice in Harold’s court. ——They are endowed with wealth and with fair swords, with the ore of the Huns, and with maids from the East. They are glad when they have hopes of a battle, they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes. Fiercely, I ween, do they churn the water with their oars at the king’s bidding.

Quoth the Walkyrie : 1 will ask thee, for thou knowest the truth of all these things, of the meed of the Poets, since thou must know clearly the state of the minstrels that live with Harold.

Quoth the Raven ; It is easily seen by their cheer, and their gold rings, that they are among the friends of the king. They have red cloaks right fairly fringed, silver-mounted swords, and ring-woven sarks, gilt trappings, and graven helmets, wrist-fitting rings, the gifts of Harold,

Quoth the Walkyrie : 1 will ask thee, thou blood-drinker, of the meed of the Bearsarks. What is given to them, men daring in war that plunge into the battle?

Quoth the Raven: Wolfcoats they call them, that bear bloody targets in battle, that redden their spear-heads when they come into the fight, when they are at work together. The wise king, I trow, will only enrol men of high renown among them that smite on the shield.

s

Quoth the Walkyrie: 1 have not asked thee yet of the Players and Tumblers. What is the meed of Andad and his company at Harold’s house?

Quoth the Raven: Andad dandles his crop-eared dog, and plays the fool, making the king laugh. There are others of them that carry burning chips across the fire, the tripping fellows tuck their flaming shock-locks under their belts.

Il. Quoth the Walkyrie; Hast thou heard how yonder in Hafrsfirth the high-born king [Harold] fought with Ceotwan the wealthy?

Quoth the Raven: Ships came from the West, ready for war, with grinning heads and carven beaks. They were laden with warriors, with white shields, with Western spears, and Welsh [Gaulish] swords. They tried their strength against the eager king, the Lord of the Eastmen that dwells at Outstone, and he taught them to flee. The king launched his ship when he looked for the battle. The Bearsarks roared in the midst of the battle, the Wolfcoats howled and shook the iron [spears]. There was hammering on bucklers ere Haklang fell. The thick-necked king [Haklang] could no longer keep the land against Shock-head [Harold], he put the island between them as a shield. They that were wounded

54. aurgati] thus A (cergati); arghari, B. 56. elskr] emend.; elskar, A.
55. idfur] iour, B, 60, lufom] emend.; hufum, A, B. 64. vestan] emend. ; austan, Cdd.

ae,

§ 3.] EIRIKS-MAL, 259

Svafniss sal-neefrar seggir hyggjandi.

EIRIKS-MAL; or, THE DIRGE OF KING ERIC.

ERIc Blood-axe, the brave and luckless son of Harold Fair-hair, being driven from Norway, went off West of the Main asa sea-king. The Northumbrians, having dethroned their king by one of those violent revolutions so commen in their history, chose Eric in his room. So he reigned in York for a few years, but at last he too was thrust forth from his second realm in 954, according to the English chroniclers, whom we must follow. Not long after, he was slain by Anlaf, an underking of ‘Edmund [Eadred?] Edwardsson’ King of the English, as Fagrskinna tells, in a battle in which he fell with all his host.

‘After Eric’s death, Gundhild [his wife] had a poem made on him, telling how Woden welcomed him toe Walhall.’ Gundhild, Motherof-kings, to whom we owe this noble Dirge, is a famous figure in Northern tradition. She is drawn as a Jezebel or a Catherine dei Medici, lustful, cruel, and greedy of power. ‘The miseries of Norway under her son’s rule may have coloured this picture.

threw them down beneath the benches, they turned their tails up, and jammed their heads down to the keel. The cunning fellows let the shingles of Walhall [their shields] shine on their backs, as they were pelted with stones. The Eastern fellowship [the Northmen confederates of the Wicking invaders] ran over Iadar away from Hafrsfirth, thinking on their mead at home.

Corses lay on the sand there given to the one-eyed husband of Frigga [Woden]. We [Ravens] rejoiced at such a deed of fame.

Il. Quoth the Raven when the Walkyrie asked him of Harold’s wife: He scorned the Holm-rygians, and the maidens of the Hords, all the Heins, and the race of Halgo-land: the high-born king took a Danish wife... .

The bondmaids of Reginhild [the Queen], that proud woman, shall have other things to gossip over at their cups, than that ye be slavewomen that Harold has starved....

80. aust kylpor, Cd. (Kringla)s $2

The unknown poet, no doubt a Western man, whom she trusted to celebrate her husband’s fame and fate, must have composed his Dirge within a few years of Eric’s fall. The poem is markedly original in conception, and curious as a pure heathen dirge on a baptized king composed by the order of a Christian queen.

There are two metres used, a daring innovation, the long-lined epic for the opening, the dialogue metre for the dramatic body of the poem.

It is only found in the ‘ 4ttartal’ vellum of the so-called Fagrskinna (A). One of the many blanks of the other vellum, ‘ Konungatal,’ unfortunately falls just where our poem stood. In the A-text the latter half is missing, and we can only guess at the whole length and plot by the help of the copy, Hakonar-mal, which follows it very closely. We may suppose that the whole poem was some seventy lines long. The last scene represented Eric entering Walhall, and his meeting with Woden, a piece we should like to have; as it is, we know it only from Eywind’s copy (ll. 42-57). One would fain have the feats of the five Kings, though the names are given by Ari from our poem.. Snorri quotes the first five lines in Edda.

There are a few weak spots and gaps, one (ll. 26-27) of which we are able to fill up from Hakonar-mal, ll. 62-63.

First SCENE.—Within Walball.

Woden wakes in the morning, and cries as he opens his eyes with his dream still fresh in his mind :—

Wuart dreams are these? I thought I arose before daybreak, to make Walhall ready for a host of slain. I woke up the Host of the Chosen, I bade them rise up to strew the benches and to fill up the beer-vats, and I bade Walkyries to bear the wine, as if a king were coming. I look for the coming of some noble chiefs from the Earth, wherefore my heart is glad.

Bragi Woden’s Counsellor now wakes, as a great din is heard without, and calls out :-—

What is that thundering, as if a thousand men or some great host were tramping on—the walls and the benches are creaking withal—as if Balder were coming back to the hall of Woden?

ee ate eee

§ 3.] EIRIKS-MAL. 261

Woden answers: Surely thou speakest foolishly, good Bragi, although thou art very wise. It thunders for Eric the king, that is coming to the hall of Woden. Then turning to his heroes he cries: Sigmund and Sinfiotli, rise up in haste, and go forth to meet the prince! Bid him in if it be Eric, for it is he whom I look for.

Sigmund answers: Why lookest thou more for Eric the king to Woden’s hall than for other kings?

Woden answers ; Because he has reddened his brand and borne his bloody sword in many a land.

Quoth Sigmund; Why didst thou rob him, the chosen king, of victory then, seeing thou thoughtest him so brave?......

Woden answers ; Because it is not surely to be known when the grey Wolf shall come upon the seat of the Gods.

SECOND SCENE.—Without Walhall.

Sigmund and Sinfiotli go outside the Hall and meet Eric.

Quoth Sigmund; Hail to thee, Eric, be welcome here, and come into the hall, thou gallant king! Now I will ask thee what kings are these which follow thee from the clash of the sword-edges ?

Eric answers; They are five kings; I will tell thee all their names; I myself am the sixth. (The names followed in the song whereof the rest is lost.)

12. Read skalattu? 17. goegn] gongi, A. 19g. eromk] er mer, A.
13. Added by guess from 1. 15; om. A. 25. Added from Dirge of Hakon, 1. 6.

HAKONAR-MAL; or, THE DIRGE OF HAKON ATHELSTAN’S FOSTER-SON.

Hakown the Good, the foster-son of Athelstan, fell before the Sons of Gundhild about 970, and a time of misery and famine followed his death, as long as Gundhild’s sons ruled; the culminating woe being the great famine of 976. To judge from il. 68-69 it was about this time (not immediately after the king’s death) that Eywind made a Dirge on |

Hakon, ‘composing it according to the one which Gundhild had had made for Eric, in which Woden bids him home to Walhall.’ It is a fine poem in its way, but not original. Instead of the opening of Woden’s Dream, the Walkyries are sent to the dying king, as Swafa comes to Helgi at Sigar’s-field; he goes with them to Walhall, and there Woden bids Hermod and Bragi welcome him, just as in Eriksmal Sigmund and Sinfiotli are told to do. In the latter part the copy is no doubt as close, but unluckily that half of Eriks-mal is lost.

It has been supposed that Eywind’s nickname, Skalda-spillir, the Poet-spoiler, was given to him on account of his ‘spoiling’ all other poets by his superiority, eclipsing them all. But the word will not support this strained and affected meaning; ‘spillir’ means simply ‘robber,’ that is, in this case, ‘ plagiarist.’ To names such as this, first applied by enemies, later accepted by all without any notion of dishonour, we have analogies. Thus one of Harold Fair-hair’s poets, Audun (Eadwine), is known as Ill-skellda, ‘Bad poet’ or ‘ Poetaster,’ and his poem was nicknamed Stolin-stefja, ‘Stolen-stave,’ from his plagiarism of a refrain (stef).. Even if we had not this name, or any )

express record (as we have, clear and distinct as possible), the fact would still remain visible, that Hakonar-mal was a copy of Eriks-mal and Haleygia-tal of Ynglinga-tal, so close and unmistakeable is each imitation. We may even fancy that it was the Haleygia-tal (glorifying as it does Earl Hakon and the new dynasty by its certificate of ‘ legitimacy’) which drew down on Eywind the nickname.

There are a certain number of lines, of different metre and spirit, a high-sounding tinkle of words, perhaps from some other poem of Eywind’s, thrust into the middie of this Hakon-Dirge in the MSS. These we have set as appendix. Two stanzas, 3 and 4, better than the rest, we have ventured to restore to the original didactic metre.

Our poet uses the didactic metre also for narrative, for the first time in old poetry.

The Poem has been preserved in the Heimskringla, where it is entered at full. The MSS. are the same as in Ynglinga-tal. Cod. B (Jofra-skinna) yields some good readings, e. g. 1. 30.

The tit/e, warranted by the MSS., is also in imitation of Eriks-mal,

THE God of the Gauts [Woden] sent Gondul and Skogul [ Walkyries} to choose among the kings one of the race of Yngwi who should enter

§ 3.] HAKONAR-MAL, 263

Woden’s service and dwell in Walhall. They found Beorn’s brother [K. Hakon] clad in his mail, the chosen king, standing under his warbanner, the wound-oars [blades] were drooping, and the darts were quivering, the battle was just begun. The Earls’ slayer cheered on the Holm-Rygians and the Halego-men, the terror of the Island-Danes had brave backing of the Northmen.

He tore off his weeds of war, he cast his mail-coat upon the field, the lord of henchmen. The gladsome warrior with the golden helm stood and played with the sons of song.

The battle over, the two Walkyries appear in the dawning of the day to the wounded |dead ?| king on the battle-field.

The king was sitting with his drawn sword, his shield was scored and his mail shot through. The host of s/ain, that were bound for Walhall, were in no gladsome mood.

Then spake Gondul, as she leaned on her spear-shaft: ‘ The Gods’ army is waxing great, now that the Powers have bidden Hakon and a great host with him home to them.’

The king heard what the noble Walkyries were saying as they sat on

B, F. darrar, B. 10. Thus B; sa es her kallar, A. ir and 13. Metrically restored for, iarla einbani fér til orrosto and, cegir Ey-Dana stéd und arhialmi, Cdd. verja | gramr inn gladveri stéd und gull-hialmi, Cd., upon which follow the 16 lines in Appendix. ’ e horseback bearing themselves so fairly, sitting helmed with their shields before them.

Quoth Hakon: Why didst thou sway the fight so yesterday, Skogul, we surely deserved a victory from the Gods?

Skogul answered; Yea, and we ordered it so, that thou shouldst keep the field and all thy ‘foes should fly. But now we must ride (quoth the mighty Skogul) to the green city of the Gods, to tell Woden that a mighty king is coming thither to see him.

SECOND SCENE.—In Walhall.

Woden. Hermod and Bragi (said Woden) go forth to meet the warrior, for a king, who is deemed a hero indeed, is coming hither to our hall.

Hakon. The king spoke, he was come from the battle, all-dripping with gore: Evil of mood seems Woden to me, I mistrust his goodwill.

Bragi. Thou shalt be truce-plighted by all the Host of the Chosen. Take ale with the Anses, thou conqueror of earls, thou hast eight brothers here already (quoth Bragi).

Hakon. Our harnesses we will keep, one half of us (quoth the good king). One should well take care of one’s helm and mail-coat.- ‘’Tis good to have things ready at hand.’

28. sito] B; stddo, A. 30. i goer] thus B; Geir-skogul, A. ga. voldom] thus, pret. not pres. 34. tikja] B; rika, A. 35- groena, A

varar, A. 51. halfir] emend.; sialfir, A, B, F.

§3.] HAKONAR-MAL. 265

APPENDIX.

Then was made manifest how the king had wisely spared the sanctuaries, when all Gods and Powers bade Hakon welcome. In happy hour is that prince born, who wins such love as this. His reign shall ever be spoken of for good. The mighty Wolf shall be let loose upon mankind ere king so good shall come into his empty court. Cattle die, men die, land and lea are laid waste: since Hakon went among the heathen Gods, many people are inthralled.

THE sword in the king’s hand bit through the weeds of Woden [mail] as if it were whisked through water, the spear-points clashed, the shields were shattered, the axes rattled on the heads of the warriors. Targets and skulls were trodden under the Northmen’s shield-fires [weapons] and the hard heels of their hilts. There was a din in the island, the kings dyed the shining rows of shields in the blood

53- geyrs, B (idem). 68. for] B; om. A. 3. broddar] A; oddar, B. 4. B; glymringar, A. 5. tusom] emend.; tys ok, Cd. Of the following verses B only gives the beginnings. 6. ok] add F. =.

a |

wy. Ae See

§4. EGIL SKALLA-GRIM’S SON. HOFUD-LAUSN ; or, THE HEAD-RANSOM.

ONE of the first generation of Icelanders, son of a distinguished settler, who founded a great house, Egil, spent most of his active life abroad. Born about gro he went to Norway and afterwards to England, where he served under K. Athelstan, and fought at the famous battle of Brunanburh, 937. For many years he led a wicking life, ‘ visiting the courts of many kings.’ An adventure in York, after thelstan’s death, with K. Eric Blood-axe, the hereditary enemy of his family, was the cause of the first of his three great poems, Head-Ransom. He seems after this to have returned home, whence he sent his second poem, Arinbiorn’s Lay, to Norway. His third poem, the Sons’ Wreck, was composed in his old age at Borg, where he passed the latter years of his life, dying full of years and blind about 990. He was thus a contemporary of Dunstan, whom indeed he may have seen at the English court. For the chronology of Egil’s life, which must be based on the data of the O. E. Chronicles, we must not trust the Saga, nor can we accept all its romantic details. Indeed the Songs show Egil a far higher and nobler character than the somewhat brutal warrior drawn by the Saga-writer. Again, four-fifths of the single verses ascribed to Egil in the Saga are clearly false; the few which may be true are printed in Books vi and vii.

HOFUD-LAUSN or HEAD-RANSOomM is said by the Saga to have been composed on the following occasion. Egil was wrecked at York, where he was seized and set in prison, shortly to be executed. At the suggestion of his high-minded friend Arinbiorn, a liegeman and favourite of K. Eric’s, he made a song of praise on the King, who in consideration thereof, and at the earnest intercession of Arinbiorn, spared his life. Whether the Lay was made in one night, as the Saga says, may of men. The wound-fires [blades] burnt in the bloody wounds, the halberds bowed down to take the life of men, the ocean of gore dashed upon the swords’-ness, the flood of the shafts fell upon the beach of Stord. Halos of war mixed under the vault of the bucklers; the battle-tempest blew underneath the clouds of the targets, the lees of the sword-edges [blood] pattered in the gale of Woden. Many a man fell into the stream of the brand. :

§ 4.] HOFUD-LAUSN. 267

be questioned ; the poem itself, ll. 1-8, seems to contradict it, and the very elaborate versification almost to forbid it. The whole incident is rather to be gathered from drindiorn’s Lay, which is our only safe authority.

The metre is what is known by later metrists as Run-henda, i.e. Rimhenda, in end-rhyme as well as alliteration, a foreign innovation learnt, we think, from the Latin hymns. It is also the first example of a drapa or praise-song with regular divisions and burdens, Its scheme may be thus given :—

I. Beginning. Five four-lined stanzas,

II. The Staves or Body. Three pairs of four-lined stanzas, separated from each other and from the beginning and end by four two-lined durdens.

Ill, The End. Five four-lined stanzas, followed by an Envoy of two lines.

I, II, III.

This poem does not occur in all the copies of Egil’s Saga, where only the first four lines are generally given. The basis of our ¢ext is as follows :—Ketill Jorundsson, the grandfather of Arni Magnusson, a wellknown Icelandic copyist, made a copy of a vellum of Egil’s Saga which contained the song in perfect form. And among the fragments of vellums at Copenhagen, AM. 162, the Editor twenty years ago discovered portions of this very MS., and one leaf on which was Héfud- lausn down to 1. 69. It is in a most miserable condition, but with great trouble he was able to verify Ketil’s text, and in sundry places to mend it. This vellum we have called A.

In Ole Worm’s Litteratura Runica is printed a transcript by Magnus Olafsson, d. 1636, of a good text from some lost Egil-Saga vellum in his possession. Thisis our B. For Magnus and Ketil, see Prolegomena, p- 142.

Our C is the Wolfenbiittel MS., a fine codex in good preservation, but its text of the poem is bad and the order of stanzas extremely confused and different from that of the other MSS. We have thought it right to give it at the end of this volume, that the reader may have the whole evidence on the subject before him.

Seven lines, 1-2, 5-6, 39-40, 59, are cited in Edda. We have an early unprinted commentary, c. 1630, on our poem by Biorn of Skardsa (see Prolegomena, p. 142), who in a little ditty says that people will surely laugh at him for working twelve months to explain a song which Egil composed in one night—

Biorn used Magnus Olafsson’s text. The name of the poem is vouched for in the Lay of Arinbiorn, |. 32, and also Egil’s Saga. The date is c. 950-954.

PROLOGUE. I CAME west over the sea, bearing the sea of Woden’s heart [my song]; that was my way. I launched my ship afloat from Iceland, I loaded the stern of my mind-vessel [my breast] with a cargo of praise.

2. strindar, B. °

“a Vasat villr stadar vefr darradar

The king has given me a welcome; I owe him a song of praise. I bring the mead of Woden into England. I have made a Song of Honour on the king; I laud that Prince. I ask him for a hearing now that I have devised my song of praise.

Hearken, O king, it will become thee well, how I deliver my song, now that I have got silence! Every man has heard how the king fought, but Woden saw where the slain lay. The clatter of brands waxed against the rims of the bucklers, the war grew high about the king, the king pushed on. There was heard the weird-song of weapons rattling, the sword-river did flow, its surf was very great. The web of darts [standard] faltered not above the king’s merry ranks of shields, where the troubled waters [seal’s field] surged in blood and roared underneath the banners.

SECOND PART.

First Burden. The host sank on the shore at the clink of the javelins: Eric got renown there. First Stave. Farther I will tell, if men will keep silence, we have heard more of their deeds. Brands broke against the black targets, wounds thus (enn brimils modi), A. 20. veum] thus (vei), A; und um glumdi, B.

21. hne firda fit, B. 24. frama, B.

Pee ee ee ae ee

§ 4.] HOFUD-LAUSN. 269

waxed when the princes met. The blades hammered against the helmcrests, the wound-gravers, the sword’s point, bit. I heard that there fell in the iron-play Woden’s oak [heroes] before the swords [the swordbelt’s ice]. |

Second Burden. There was a linking of points and a gnashing of edges: Eric got renown there.

Second Stave. The prince reddened the brand, there was a meal for the ravens; the javelin sought out the life of man, the gory spears flew, the destroyer of the Scots fed the steed of the witch [wolves], the sister of Nari [Hell] trampled on the supper of the eagles [corses]. The cranes of battle [shafts] flew against the walls of the sword [bucklers], the wound-mew’s lips [the arrows’ barbs] were not left thirsty for gore. The wolf tore the wounds, and the wave of the sword [blood] plashed against the beak of the raven.

Third Burden. ‘The lees of the din of war [blood] fell upon Gialf’s steed [ship]: Eric gave the wolves carrion by the sea.

Third Stave. The flying javelin bit, peace was belied there, the wolf was glad, and the bow was drawn, the bolts clattered, the spearpoints bit, the flaxen-bowstring bore the arrows out of the bow. He brandished the buckler on his arm, the rouser of the play of blades—he muna hring-dofa hodd-Freyr lofa:

gall y-bogi at egg-togi :

isa mighty hero. The fray grew greater everywhere about the king. It was famed east over the sea, Eric’s war-faring.

Fourth Burden. ‘The prince bent the yew, the wound-bees [arrows] flew: Eric gave the wolves carrion by the sea.

THIRD PART.

Again I must set forth before men the stout heart of the king; let me hasten with my song of praise. The Lady of strife [Walkyrie] makes the waves be awake about the gunwale, and the timbers break on the sea-king’s steed [ship]. He breaks the wrist-glow, the giver of the wrist-bits; this Lord of hoards does not praise niggardliness. He gladdens a multitude of men with Frodi’s meal [gold], the arm’s -ore is much spent by the king.

The lover of the people withstood death, the yew-bow screamed when the sword-edge was drawn. The wave splashes from the prow, and the Raven [the Norse banner] holds the land of York. He is most worthy of praise.

Epilogue. Consider, O prince, how I have wrought over my song; I am glad that I have hadsilence. I have drawn Woden’s flood from the depth of my mind here at York. I have borne the praise of the king till the silence was broken [to the end of the time given me]. I know the

63. or iofra landi, A. 63. ez oraf, A. 67. B; marar, A. 68. lofor-] Toru, B and A, =iofur-fegi (i. e. York). 7o. B; manna miot of mala siot, A.

me ee

‘

§ 4.] ARINBIORN’S LAY. out

ARINBIORN’S. LAY.

THIS poem, according to the Saga, was composed by Egil, in Iceland, and sent to his old friend and saviour Arinbiorn, on the occasion of his returning from exile, with the sons of his dead master, Eric. This would make its date about 970. One is inclined to put the date earlier, at c. 960; for after Eric Blood-axe’s death, Arinbiorn in fact went home to Norway, which would afford a fit occasion. Surely many years must have intervened between this and Egil’s third and last poem; fifteen or twenty years would not be too much. That it was not spoken to Arinbiorn, but delivered by a messenger or proxy (for writing was unknown), would seem confirmed by the poem itself. It is a noble monument of the friendship of the two men [the David and Jonathan of their day], and has, as Egil wished, immortalized his faithful preserver. Arinbiorn was well born, his forefathers were barons of the Firth in West Norway. Bragi the poet was his great-grandfather.

The metre is the brief epic line of Ynglinga-tal type. There appears to be a distinct stanza arrangement, four lines in each stanza, and it is the first encomium which is built up into regular strophes, without burdens.

The chief vellum of Egil’s Saga, Arna-Magn. 132, ends on the left side of a leaf, the last of a sheet: on the right, blank side, in different but contemporary hands, our poem was written. It filled that page in double columns, of 41 lines, and was, no doubt, continued on another page which is now lost.

This, the only MS. of Arinbiorn’s Lay, and sole foundation for the text, is almost illegible. There have been several attempts to read it. Arni Magnusson’s, c. 1700, which copy we have in Asgeir Jonsson’s hand (in AM. 146, folio), Later, c. 1790, the Editor of Egil’s Saga, published posthumously, 1809. The present Editor took great pains to read the washed-out ghostly marking on the bleak greasy page, in 1860, and was able after long efforts to read nearly all the first column, with the top half and a few words here and there down the second column. . His copy is printed in an Appendix. See also Ny Felags-rit, 1861. He was able for the first time to fix the place of one of the two quotations in Edda from the lost part of the Song, and to make corrections in the previous copies.

What is left of the poem can only be half of the whole, as can be seen from the plan, which begins with a Proem and Introduction (ll. 1-52)

measure of speech in the assembly of men. 1 have brought the noble chief’s praise out of the abode of laughter [my breast], so that he learnt it.

The Envoy. Enjoy, O king, the Drink of Beag fee song|, as Bragi doth the eye, Woden’s pledge, and the cauldron of tears.

telling the tale of the Head-Ransom, followed by an encomium upon Arinbiorn’s generosity (ll. 61-86), The next part, to guess from legible words here and there, was on his va/our ; the third part (cp. tvenn ok prenn, 1. 60), probably on some other of his noble qualities, with an Epilogue (lost), which concludes with an Envoy (Il. 92-95) preserved in Skalda. The #it/e of the Poem has not reached us.

Besides the two citations (eight lines) from the lost part, there are nine lines cited from the first half, ll. 29-30, 44, 57-60, 67-68.

Egil is fond of puns, similes, and conceits: he uses the quaintest fancies in speaking of eye, ear, head, tongue, mouth, and hand. The poet’s work is likened to carpentering or a housewright’s work; his materials are the timber or stocks, his tongue the plane. He plays upon the name of Arinbiorn. Note his description (ll. 25-35) of his own features, a huge head, gaunt dark face, craggy eyebrows, black eyes, wolfish grey hair—one sees the man.

In the foot-notes, A=the vellum; AM.=Arni Magnusson’s copy; GM.=Gudmund Magnezus, the Editor of Egil’s Saga, died 1798; W.= Edda and Skalda, Cod. Worm.; 748=AM. 748, a sister MS. to W.

I am quick of speech when I praise a king, but my pleading is marred when I deal with a niggard: I am frank-spoken about princely deeds, but tongue-tied towards a slanderer: full of scorn toward them that bear false witness, but fair-spoken of my friends. I have visited the courts of many kings in guileless poet’s wise.

I had fallen under the wrath of the mighty king, the son of the Ynglings. Boldly I pulled the hood over my dark face, and went to seek the lord [Arinbiorn], where the far-ruling protector of the people [King] reigned under the helm of Awe, where the king with stern heart ruled over the wet land at York. It was neither a safe thing nor a thing without terror to face the beam from the stars of Eric’s brow [his

2. gleggvinga, A. 5. gnegr. 7. margra] emend.; morg, A.
3. Emend.; diarf hautt, A. 14. liod framadad’, A. 16. Iorvik, A. hiarli] not hiaurfi, very faded in A, 17. trukt, A.

esate ah

§ 4.] ARINBIORN’S LAY. 273

eyes], when the sheen of the moon of the king’s forehead shone serpent-keen with beams of awe. Yet I dared to deliver my Head Ransom | Pillow-mate-Ransom] before the Lord of the Humbers-march, so that Ygg’s cup [poetry] came foaming to the ear-mouths of every man. The poet-meed I won [my head] seemed little fair of hue to men in the king’s house, when I received at the prince’s hand my wolfgrey helm-stock [my head] in return for Woden’s mead. With it there followed the favo lights, and the swart-hued pits of my jutting brows [eyes and brows], and the mouth that delivered my Head Ransom

_ before the knees of the king; furthermore I received a multitude of teeth, and a tongue, and the tents of hearing [ears] endowed with earpassages; but this gift of the great king was more acceptable than gold. There stood at my side ‘my best of brothers-in-law’. ... my trusty friend, in whom I could put my trust, the giver of fees.... Arin-

22. m°a hoengs, A. 28, Not hatt-staup. 29. tiror] tiru, W; faded in A.
23. samleit, W. 32. héfud) thus, h’fd at the end of a line, A, forgetting the second part of the compound at the beginning of the next line. 37. betri] vat’,

_ AM; read, maga baztr? 38. Faded; hob finda in’, AM. 40. Emend. ; heip°adc, AM. 44. i herska hilmis riki, W. 5-48. Unreadable, T

biorn, the foremost of heroes, who alone delivered me from the king’s wrath—the prince’s friend that never lied—in the court of the warlike king. And [a mangled verse]..... I shall be called the thief of friendship, and the belier of my boast at Woden’s toast [Song], unworthy of praise, and a vow-breaker, unless I pay some ransom for those benefits.

Now it is easy to see, where I must fix the strands of my song .... before the multitude, before the eyes of many the praise of the ‘mighty’ child of Lords [Arinbiorn].

Now the timbers of praise of my friend, the son of Thori, are easily planed by the voice-plane [the tongue], because they lie in mighty length, by twos and threes, upon my tongue,

I shall count frst, what every one knows, and has come to all men’s ears, how bountiful Arinbiorn seems to men. It is a marvel to all the world how he bestows gifts on men, for Frey and Niord have blessed Grit-bear with a store of wealth. On the head of Hroald’s stock great abundance of riches fall.... like the rain [waters] from all quarters upon the wind-bason’s wide bottom [wide earth-plain].

50. A, i.e. van-liugr. 51. eyrvirdr, A. 54. Thus, though nearly illegible ; bogit fotom baug stiginn, AM. 56. Faded; mectigs, AM and A (as it seems).
51. valig] A and W; valid, 748. 62. Emend.; eyrun, Se 65. allzin A. 71. So as it seems in A (vimr-eldar?), certainly not ‘ vin-reid,’ 73- Faded; dvg seil, AM, an impossible word; read, arsima ?

1 eT Rats 4 SS

my Whe ase PD pid a

| :

ARINBIORN’S LAY. 275

. . * .

H . . .

He, king-like, dealt out [gold] among men untold; he the darling of the Gods, the friend of Wether-worm the champion of the Watlings. __ He does that in which most men, though they be wealthy, will fail, for the houses of the magnanimous are far between, and it is not easy to shaft every man’s spear [to suit all]: No man ever went from Arinbiorn’s house followed by scorn or evil words, or empty-handed. He that lives at Firth is a mammon-hater, and the enemy of the offspring of Dropper [rings=money].... H....

It were a pity if the gold-spender [Arinbiorn] should have thrown the many benefits he did me upon the path of the mew [the Deep] hard-trodden by the steeds of Rokkwi [ships].

The final Stanza: 1 was early awake. I put word to word, with the mighty labour of my slave of speech [tongue]. I have reared a pillar of praise, which shall long stand imperishable in the court of Bragi [ Woden as the God of Song]. .

74. beyrnar? rather than hiarnar. 75. avardr] thus A. 76. Thus, vep’orms, A, not veporins; AM has also read Vedorms. _ Veilinga rather than Veclinga, A. 86. Six lines here unreadable. O& After this comes the great gap. 93. megin-] W; morgin-, 748. 95. ubrot-, W.

SONA-TORREK ; or, THE SONS’ WRECK.

THE occasion of this touching poem is told in Egil’s Saga. The old poet’s son*Gunnar was snatched from him by a fever, his second and favourite son Bodwar was drowned soon afterwards. The news nearly broke his heart; he took to his bed, refused all food, and was only induced to refrain from starving himself to death by the affectionate stratagem of his daughter, who furthermore persuaded him to make a dirge on his dead son. When he had finished the poem he was comforted. This pathetic story (see Icel. Reader, p. 82) is, we believe, a romantic version of what really took place, but we must turn to the Dirge itself to know the conditions and feelings of the poet when he composed it.

The poem, even in its mangled lines, has something of the Hebrew Patriarch in it; a deep heartfelt sorrow, tender and affectionate, with a strong sense of the bonds of family; the imagery on that head is worth noticing. It was no mere brutal pirate manslayer (as the Saga too often depicts him) that could feel and express such grief.

The text rests upon a transcript of Ketil Jorundson, of the poem as given in the same lost vellum, we believe, from which he got . Hofudlausn. There is a double copy in Ketil’s hand (AM. 453 and 462), but one is derived from the other. It gives the whole song, but often corruptly. This slender basis is only supplemented by one citation of six lines (ll. 87-92) in Edda (W), and the four first lines given in AM. 132: this is all. We have transposed ll. 68-71 from between 83 and 84, and moved 62-63 four lines up.

The metre is the same as that of Arinbiorn’s Lay. It is partly in strophic divisions, but the stanzas are irregular. ‘The parallelisms are frequent and perfectly finished.

The poem throws many glimpses of light upon the poet’s life—the pious remembrance of his mother and father’s death (how different from the coarse account given in the Saga!)—his warm remembrance of his faithful friend Arinbiorn—the absence of outspoken allusion on the loss of a brother (Thorwolf)—his solitary friendless life. To be marked too is the creed of a Norseman who had been at King Athelstan’s court, a gleaming twilight between Heathen and Christian.

The date of the poem would be about 975-980. Egil speaks of himself as old (1. 36), and as friendless and alone.

The text is especially unsafe in ll. 9-12, 54, 55, 59-61, 65-66, 77; we have been fortunate enough to restore the final lines, confirming the testimony of the Saga, ‘He called this poem Sona-torrek’ (the Saga, Reader, p. 85, l. 11).

The structure of the poem. First grieving that his wish to sing is struggling against his fresh grief for the son he has just buried at Naustness, he tells over the tale of his losses, mother, father, sons. The great wrong that the Giant of the Sea has done in taking his dear son Bodwar, a wrong he is helpless to avenge, the cruellest blow he has had since Gunnar his mainstay was snatched from him by fever. He has no one now to stand at his shoulder, it is sad to remember the good friends that are gone, Arinbiorn the trusty kinsman above all. Then coming back to the death of Gunnar he reproaches Woden, in whom he had trusted, for his unkind dealing, but ends with acknowledging that he had received _from him good as well as evil, and that the greatest comfort, the power of song, was his gift.

‘aha ee ee i t 3

Rie AE TO a ee Ot

~ SERRE REA tah Fal

SONA-TORREK. 240

I Am hardly able to raise my tongue, the steelyard of sound, from the

‘roof of my mouth. I have little hope of winning Woden’s theft

[poetry], nor is it easily drawn from the recesses of my mind. It is not easy to make it flow from the place of thought [my heart], that noble find of Frigg’s husband [Woden], borne of yore from Giant-land, Heavy sorrow is the cause thereof. ‘Ever since I laid my kinsman’s corse... underneath the Giant’s [Ymi’s] bones’ [the rocks on the shore] before the Dock-mouth: for my lineage is come to its end like the leafless branches of the forest. No hale man is he who beareth the bones of his kinsmen down from his house. ~

But jst I will tell of my mother’s funeral, and my father’s end. I carry out of the word-fane [mouth] song-timber leafed with speech.

Cruel was the breach which the billow made in my father’s wall of kinsmen. I see it standing unfilled and unclosed, the sons’ gap which the sea caused me.

4. fylgsni, Cd. 5. Emend.; and peist, Cd. (Ketil gives the poem in his own spelling, he never uses y). 7. Friggjar] emend.; fagna (not pagua-) fagna fundr priggja nidja, Cd. 11. flota} Cd.; not piota. 12. nains nidr, Cd.
5. Emend.; hre barnar hlifit, Cd.; a maimed text, meaning ‘as a leafless tree.’ varum, Cd, .

s{dan-es mfinn 4 mun-vega vasat illz pegns efni vaxit, pdtt all pidd annat segdi;

Ran [the Giantess of the Sea] hath handled me roughly; I am bereft of my loving friends; the Sea hath cut the bonds of my race, the strong strands that bound me. .

Behold, shall I take up my cause with the sword against the Brewer of all the Gods [Eager the Giant of the Sea], and wage war with the awful maids of the Breaker [Eager’s daughters, the Billows], and fight a wager of battle against Eager’s wife [Ran]?

But I felt I had no strength to hold my own against the Destroyer of the ships [Eager], for an old man’s helplessness is evident to the eyes of all men.

The Sea hath done me great damage, it is hard for me to tell over my kinsmen’s destruction: yea the cruellest since the buckler of my race [Gunnar] turned from life into the path of Bliss.

I know very well that there were the parts of a good gentleman in my son, if that shield-tree [young lime tree: Hero] had been allowed to grow till the hands of the Lord of Hosts [Woden] gathered him. He ever held fast to his father’s word, though every one else spoke against it, and held me up at Walberg [Walfell, the Moot-Hill near Borg], and was the great stay to my strength.

ees Pe ee

NO ee ee ae Set Paneer

TT Dp QU oh AL Re rn BR aT ST Te Ee eae ieee eee See lee PA ele eL Pere TA Bee MITE hey te OE TOS ,

SONA-TORREK. 249

{ God-heim Gauta-spialli

Arinbiorn’s Foster-brotherhood often comes into my mind [gale of the Giantess]. I think over it when the battle is waxing, I ponder over it, and meditate thereon what second chief that loves me will stand by my side with wise counsel, I often lack.... I go with drooping flight, since my friends have dropt from me. It is right hard to find a man to trust among all the people of Iceland, for there is.... sell his brother’s body for money. I often find it when .... the fellowship of the people is little friendly to me, though every man keeps himself from open war.....

Yea, it is said that no one can get full ‘recompense for a son, nor can one, born of another father,’ stand in a brother’s place.

The second thing I remember is how the Friend of the Gauts [Woden] raised up into the World of the Gods the ash of my race that grew out of me, and the branch of the kin of my wife.

Yea, Gunnar. ...my son, the son of my wife, is gone to stay in the City of the bee’s ship [the Born of the Fates = the heavens].

49. Arinbiarnar] m® biarnar, Cd, 50. byrvind, Cd. 52. hygg, Cd. 54- steypist ? 60. hrér] hier (=hér), Cd. 61. Here some lines seem lost.
50. pekkt] emend. ; pokkt, Cd. 63. Something lost, 64. mangi] emend. ; engi, Cd. 66. No alliteration. 72. burrjebyrr, Cd.

280 EGIL SKALLA-GRIM’S SON. Bik, 2

The Lord of the ancient Mead [Woden] presses heavily on me. I cannot hold my mind-chariot [breast] upright ‘before the Lord of the Earth’ [Woden]: since the deadly fire of sickness took my son out of this world, whom I knew to be blameless and forbearing from wicked speech.

z was friendly with the King of Spears [Woden], and became trustful in putting my faith in him, till thed_ord of the Wain [Woden], the Judge of victory, broke friendship with me.

Therefore I do not willingly worship Wili’s brother, the Chief of the Gods [Woden]. Yet the Friend of Mimi [Woden] hath given me recompense of my wrongs, if I am to count the good [he has done me]|:—The war-wont Wolf’s foe [Woden] hath given me the blameless Art [poetry], and the gift of Song to turn open foes into well-wishers,

Epilogue. Now the Loss oF MY Two SONS is sung through. Niorvi’s daughter [Night] is near at hand. Yet I will gladly, and with a good will and without fear, abide Death.

75. forns| emend.; fanst, Cd. 77. Thus Cd.; iarpar? 78. ‘retti,’ not rettri, Cd. (metaphor from a ship drifting ?). 85. -haufunde, Cd. god iardar, W. sia] r; sé, Cd. and W. 88. W; mis vinr, Cd. 89. W ; telda, Cd. go. of bagi] emend.; ok, Cd. and W. 93. viljondom] emend.; velaundum, Cd. 94-95. Emend.; Nu er m’ torveldt tveggia boga niorva nipt a nesin stendr, Cd.

Pl MA 2 eT

at

$5-] DARRADAR-LIOD. 281

¢5: SIGTRYGGS POET.

DARRADAR-LIOD; or, THE LAY OF DARTS.

THERE were several Icelanders from the East, both of the company and kindred of Flosi and of other chiefs of that quarter, at the great battle of Clontarf, fought on Good Friday (April 23rd), tor4. From their stories of this famous fight grew a Brian’s Saga, which is quoted in Thorstein Hall 0’ Side’s son’s Saga, and was partly incorporated in an abridged shape in Nial’s Saga, but is lost as a separate and complete _story. In-the part of Brian’s Saga taken into Nial’s Saga were inserted parts of a poem called Darradar-liod.

This Lay refers undoubtedly to Brian’s Battle, and is a song of praise over a young king. It is supposed to be spoken by Walkyries, weaving a Web of War in which the Northmen, ‘those who dwell on the outskirts,’ and the Irish are to be engaged. They chant a weaving song, in which is foretold the death of a ‘mighty king’ and ‘earl’ [the first is Brian, and the second Sigurd of Orkney, or Brian’s son], and then a charm by which the ‘ young king’ is to be preserved. When the web is woven, they mount their steeds and ride off.

It is undoubtedly a Western Lay. Gagarr (I. 14) is a Gaelic word.

The chronology of the poem is a little difficult. It must either have been composed soon after 1014 or else a generation later, when Earl Thorfinn of Orkney was beginning his successful career.

The metaphor ‘ Web of War’ had been already used by Egil in his Hofud-lausn, |. 17, but that is no evidence of imitation or plagiarism in our poet, whose style is remarkably powerful and original, with a certain weird humour and inspiration that recall the Old Testament prophets.

There are many vellums of Nial’s. Saga, but most of them are defective at the end. Our best MSS. are AM. 468, AM. 132 folio, and Royal Library, 2869 and 2870. See Prolegomena, p. 145.

The story in Niala of a man Darrad, who saw the vision of the weaving Walkyries, is contradicted by the name ‘ Geir-hliod’ (l. 42), which evidently gives the true ¢it/e of the Lay and equals ‘ Darradar-liod.’ We have interchanged Il. 33-34.

The weird sisters appear before the Battle of King Brian weaving the web of Ireland's fate.

WIDE-STRETCHED is the warp presaging the slaughter, the hanging cloud of the beam; it is raining blood. The gray web of the hosts is raised up on the spears, the web which we the friends of Woden are filling with red weft.

282 SIGTRYGG’S POET. _ [Bx. rv.

This web is warped with the guts of men, and heavily weighted with human heads; blood-stained darts are the shafts, iron-bound are the stays; it is shuttled with arrows. Let us strike with our swords this web of victory!

War and Sword-clasher, Sangrid and Swipple, are weaving with drawn swords. The shaft shall sing, the shield shall ring, the helm-hound [axe] shall fall on the target.

Let us wind! let us wind the web of darts, and then ride to war with the king [Sigtrygg]. Battle and Gondol that guard the king shall bear bloody shields.

Let us wind! let us wind the web of darts which the young king.... Let us go forward and plunge into the ranks of battle where our friends are crossing weapons.

Let us wind! let us wind the web of darts where the banners of the men of war are streaming. Let not his life be taken! We Walkyries can order the battle.

They shall rule over the land, that formerly dwelt on the outskirts thereof [i.e. the Northmen]. I say that death is fated to a mighty king [Brian], and an earl [Brian’s son] shall sink before the point of the obscure ; maybe some lines are missing here. 22. varir, 468. 26. vigs} 132, 2870; vals, 468. :

OANA)

DARRADAR-LIOD. 283

Ridom hestom hart tt berom, brugdnom sverdom 4 brot hedan!

spear, and the Irish shall suffer a woe that shall never grow old in the minds of men. Tidings of the devastations of the Goths [Norsemen ?] shall spread over the land.

Now the web is woven and the field made red. .. . Now it is awful to look around, for gory clouds are gathering over the sky, the air shall be dyed with the blood of men. ......

They now go on with a charm which shall save the young king’s life. A song such as seeresses know how to sing.

We have spoken words of might round the young king, we have sung him many a joyous Lay.of Victory, many a Lay of Spears. Now let him that hath heard them, learn them and sing them to men.

Let us ride away fast on our bare-backed steeds, with our drawn swords in our hands, far away. °

——

BOOK V.

THE LATEST EPICS.

THESE poems are mainly those occurring after the great lacuna in the vellum R. They deal with the second part of the Hniflung story and other legends of the Goths and Huns, circling round Sigfred, Brunhild, Gudrun, Attila, etc. They are, we believe, mainly by Western poets. The lost lays of the lacuna would fit into this Book, and belong to § 2.

The metre is epic throughout. But the first three sections are in the short late metre, a development of that of Book iii, §1. That of the fourth and fifth sections is founded on the Jong metre of the oldest epics of Book i, § 5.

We have grouped these poems by subjects, which roughly gives the chronological order.

SECTION 1 contains a poetic summary of Sigfred’s life, and will serve as an introduction to the following poems. It is the only one that stands in R defore the lacuna.

SECTION 2 deals with Brunhild—her revenge, remorse, and death.

In SECTION 3 are the poems which have Gudrun for heroine, and tell of her weary life, her three husbands, and her own death.

Next comes Attila’s SECTION 4, containing a long poem by a nameless Greenland poet, and a fragment of a lost Lay.

SECTION 5 is all that remains of a poem relating to the conflict between Huns and Goths, and the long-famed battle of the two nations at Dunheath, where brother slew brother, and the Hunnish invasion was stayed by the valour of Angantheow :—fading memories of old history.

SECTION 6. The remains of a class of poems resembling Homer’s Catalogue, the most famous of which related to the great struggle between the two kings, Harold Hilditann and Ring at Bravalla-feld in South Sweden, of which Starkad was the hero.

To this Book would have belonged the lost lays of Starkad-cycle, of which we have paraphrases in Saxo.

§1. SIGFREDS BALLAD POET.

THE LAY OF GRIPI.

FouND only in R, leaves 27 and 28, touched on but not used by the Wolsunga paraphrast. Among the popular songs collected by Landstad in Thelemark is one, No. ix in his collection, beginning ‘ Hoyre du Greip min morbroder, which is plainly derived from our poem. Indeed, the plain and easy language, the good subject and regular four-lined stanzas mark it out, like Thryms-kvida, for treatment by the ballad-maker.

The subject is very simple. Sigurd (Sigfred) goes to his wise uncle Gripi to ask his fate, which Gripi reluctantly unfolds. The guileless innocence of the young hero is almost pathetic. The situation is like that in Laxdela, between Gudrun and Guest the Wise, but there it is more poetically treated than by our gentle but somewhat tame poet.

It is in good preservation, and we have had little trouble with the text. We have interchanged ll. 165-168 with ll. 169-173. It is noteworthy that Sigrdrifa and Brunhild have not yet been identified, but are treated as distinct persons. It is the only old Lay indeed, save her own

• Lay, where Sigrdrifa is alluded to. The #it/e is lost.

FIRST SCENE.—Sigurd at the gate of Gripi’s castle.

Wuo dwells here in this hall? What is the name of this mighty king ?— Geiti, the warder, outside: Gripi is the ruler’s name, who reigns over the land and folk.—Sigurd: Is the good king at home in his land? Will the prince come and speak with me? A new comer wishes to talk with him; I would speedily see Gripi.—Geiti: The good king is sure to ask me this, Who is the man that asks speech of Gripi.—Sigurd: My name is Sigurd, Sigmund’s son, but Hiordis was my mother.

SECOND SCENE. Now Geiti went in and told Gripi, ‘ Here is a man outside, a stranger; he is noble to look on, he would have speech of thee, my lord.’ .

The king of men goes out-of the hall, aad welcomes the strange hero, (saying): ‘Take quarters here, Sigurd, would thou hadst come before ; but do thou, Geiti, see to Grani!’ (the horse.) The two heroes, wise of counsel, began to speak and talk over many things, now that they had met.—Sigurd: Teil, if thou knowest, uncle dear, How will life turn out for Sigurd ?—Gripi: Thou shalt be the greatest manunder the sun, and highest-born of all kings, free with thy gold, and chary of flight, noble to look on, and wise in speech.—Sigurd: Tell me, good king, more than I ask, if thou thinkest thou canst foresee it: What fortune shall first happen to me when I leave thy court ?— Gripi: Thou shalt first avenge thy father, and wreak all the wrong of Eylimi; thou shalt fell the brave and brisk sons of Hunding, thou shalt have victory.—Sigurd ; Tell thy kinsman, noble king, very frankly, now that we have opened our hearts: Canst thou foresee exploits for me that shall soar very high under the borders of heaven ?—Gripi: Thou alone shalt slay the keen dragon, that lies in his greed at Glisten-heath ;

23. merr] mer, R,

THE LAY OF GRIPI. 287

bu munt finna Fafniss beeli, biart { brynjo, sveipin bana lindar:

Pui munt heeggva hvasso sverdi, thou shalt be the slayer of both Regin and Fafni; Gripi tells true.— Sigurd: Having wrought this slaughter by my valour, I shall have great treasure, as thou tellest me for truth ; consider in thy mind and tell me at length, How shall my life go then ?—Gripi: Thou shalt find Fafni’s lair, and take up the fair treasure; load the gold on Grani’s saddle, then thou shalt ride to Giuki’s, victorious king.—Sigurd: Open thy heart, prophetic chief, and tell me more: When I am Giuki’s guest, and leave him, how shall my life go then?—Gripi: A king’s daughter lies asleep on the mountain, bright in mail, wrapped in flames. Thou shalt hew with thy keen sword, slitting the mail with the killer of Fafni.—Sigurd: The mail-coat is broken, the maid begins to speak, the lady is awakened out of her sleep: What then will she say to me that may be to my furtherance ?—Gripi ; She shall teach thee every mystery men wish to know, and to speak in every man’s tongue, healing and leech-craft. Live and hail, my king!—Sigurd: Now that is done, and I have learnt the wisdom, and am ready to ride abroad,

47. lengi, R. 58. sveipin bana lindar] emend,; eptir bana Helga, R, (cp. p. 158, l. 68, and 166, |. 79). 68. lif, i.e. ly&

consider in thy mind, and tell me at length, How then shall my life go? —Gripi: Thou shalt light on Heimi’s dwelling, and be the glad guest of the great king. I have told all, Sigurd, that I can foresee; ask.no further of Gripi.—Sigurd: What thou now sayest makes me sorry, because thou canst see further, O king; thou canst see a great sorrow for Sigurd, that is why thou wilt not, Gripi, tell it me clearly.— Gripi: I neglected whilst young ‘the craft of prophecy.’ I am not rightly called prophet, nor a true seer; what I knew is gone.—Sigurd: I know no man above ground that can see farther forward than thou; hide it not, though it be foul, or though there be some blot in my life.—Gripi: There are no blots in thy life, hold that in mind; for thy name shall ever be high while men live, my hero.—Sigurd: That is least to my mind to part from thee thus. Shew me my path, for all is predestined, if thou wilt, my uncle.—Gripi: Now I will tell thee, Sigurd, clearly, as thou forcest me so to do; thou shait surely know that I lie not: a day is set for thy death.—Sigurd: I would not have

§1.] THE LAY OF GRIPI. 289

thine anger on me, O king, but rather get thy good counsel. Now I must know for sure, though it be not pleasant, what lies before my hand.—Gripi: There is a maid at Heimi’s, fair to see, they call her Brunhild, Budli’s daughter, a proud lady, but Heimi, that great king, fosters the proud maid.—Sigurd: What is that to me, though there be a maid, fair to see, fostered at Heimi’s? Thou shalt tell me this exactly, Gripi, because thou seest all fate before thee.—Gripi: This Heimi’s foster-daughter, fair to see, shall rob thee of all thy happiness; thou shall not sleep a slumber, nor go to court, nor care for any man, except thou look on that maid.—Sigurd ; What comfort is there set for Sigurd? Tell me this, Gripi, if thou knowest it: shall I buy the maid with dowry, that fair king’s daughter?—Gripi ; Ye shall swear all oaths fully, but ye shall hold few. When thou hast been Giuki’s guest one night, thou shalt remember no more the brave foster-daughter of Heimi.— Sigurd; How is that, Gripi, tell it me; seest thou any lack of honour in my mind, that I should break my word to the maiden whom I loved with all my heart?—Gripi: Thou shalt be the victim of another’s

102, godrads, R. 103. vilk] vill, R; viltRi, Bugge; vilkit, R. U

treason, and shalt suffer for Grimhild’s schemes. That bright-haired lady shall offer thee her daughter, drawing her wiles around thee.— Sigurd; Shall I then marry into Gunnar’s family and wed Gudrun? That would be a good match if no heart-sores befall me.—Gripi - Grimhild will surely beguile thee, she will stir thee up to woo Brynhild for Gunnar the king of the Goths, and thou shalt straightway promise her to go.—Sigurd:; There is ill luck then before my hands, I see so much; my life goes clean wrong, if I am to woo the noble maid, that I love best, for another.—Gripi: Ye shall all of you, Gunnar and Hogni, and thou the third, swear oaths to each other. Ye shall take each other’s form, Gunnar and thou, when ye are on the way. I lie not.—Sigurd: How can that be? how can we change face and form when we are on the way? Some, other treason must surely be ‘brewing. Say on, Gripi.—Grifi: Thou hast put on Gunnar’s face and form, but thy speech and thine heart are still thine own. Thou shalt betroth thee Heimi’s haughty foster-daughter...... —Sigurd: I think that is the worst, that, [if this be so,] I shall be called faithless among

136. mein-tregar, R. 156. False alliteration, somehow wrong.

ae ke ee

= in

§ 1.) ' THE LAY OF GRIPI. 291

men. I would never treacherously ensnare the king’s daughter whom I honour most.—Gripi: Thou shalt sleep, prince, by the maid as if she were thy mother. Therefore thy name, O king, shall be held high while men live.—Sigurd: Shall the famous Gunnar wed the noble lady, —tell me, Gripi,—after she has slept those nights by my side? It is not ~ to be looked for.—Gripi: Both bridals shall be drunk together, thine and Gunnar’s, in Giuki’s hall; when ye come home ye shall change forms again, but each shall keep his own heart.—Sigurd: What after happiness will there be in this match? tell me, will it turn out to Gunnar’s happiness or my own?—Gripi: No, thou shalt remember the oaths, though thou must be silent ; thou wilt not begrudge Gudrun her luck; but Brynhild will think she is ill-matched, and she will contrive means for revenge.—Sigurd: What redress shall she get, since we beguiled her? she having my sworn words, none fulfilled, and no happiness.— Gripi: She will persuade Gunnar that thou hast not kept thy oaths to him, when he, the son of Giuki, trusted thee with all his heart.—Sigurd : What is this? Gripi, tell it me, shall I be guilty of this charge, or does vitro vifi; veldr pvi Grimhildr.

the belauded lady belie me and herself? Tell me this, Gripi.—Gripi : The mighty maid shall, for wrath and out of her despair, deal ill with thee. It was no fault of thine, though ye did ensnare that fair princess. —Sigurd: Shall the brave Gunnar, and Gothorm, and Hogni follow her egging afterward? Shall the sons of Giuki redden the edge of the spear with my blood, their kinsman? Tell me more, Gripi.—Grii ; Gudrun’s heart shall be cruelly used when her brothers slay thee. That wise lady shall nevermore be happy; this is Grimhild’s fault. I will comfort thee with this, my prince, that this blessing shall rest on thy life that no better man shall ever come upon earth under the seat of the sun, than thou, Sigurd, shall be held.

Sigurd; Let us part in peace. No man can withstand his fate. And thou, Gripi, hast done just as I bade thee. Thou wouldst fain have told my life brighter, if thou hadst been able.

193. muna] mun, R, 199, 4 sifiungi mer] Bugge; sifiugom, R.

ag Meo ee

—

uly

§ 2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 293

2 fe SeUNHILD POET.

THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD.

AFTER the great lacuna in R, there come a series of poems of a different character. All, save one, are ina cluster on leaves 33-44. We have classified them, according to the chief persons, as Brunhild-Lays, Gudrun-Lays, and Atli-Lays. The missing Lays in the lacuna, to judge from the Wolsunga paraphrast, were of the Brunhild type, with Sigfred and Brunhild for hero and heroine. The remaining Lays all deal with events subsequent to Sigfred’s death, and hence there is no real Sigfred Lay among those we know of.

The first in order and importance of the BRUNHILD GRouP is the Long Lay of Brunbhild, headed ‘ Kvida Sigurdar’ in R simply from the first line having Sigurd’s name in it; it is par excellence the Brunhild Lay. The editions call it the Third Lay of Sigurd, and split the later section off as a separate poem, which they call the Hed/-ride of Brunhbild, though it is not marked off in R, and is plainly part of the poem it is joined to. The author of Norna Gest, whom we may take to be the Wolsunga paraphrast, used this part of our poem, but his text is, like that of Wolsunga, so bad here that one is scarcely able to draw a single reading from it.

The text of this long poem is sadly mangled in parts. We have been

_ able to mend it here and there (as |. 254), but it is still thickly studded with obelized words, phrases, and lines. The text is literally rotten in ll. 158-210. The passage telling of the Bale-fire (202-272) offered great difficulties; it has been partly restored by the help of the Wolsunga Paraphrase. We have moved Il. 63-64 four lines down, and ll. 160-

• 164 from between Il. 142 and 143.

The story: Brunhild, distraught by disappointed love, eggs on her husband Gunnar to murder Sigurd. After that hero’s death, which is briefly passed over, her passion changes into a loathing of life; and after a long tale of woe she stabs herself, has a stately pyre and bale-fire made, and is burnt thereon with Sigurd’s body. As she rides down the path to Hell in her chariot, she meets a Giant-witch, who accosts her and refuses to let her pass. After some dialogue the giantess sinks into the earth and Brunhild goes on her way.

One of the longest poems that survive; it is founded on a grandiose conception, though most unequal in execution.

It was in the days of old that Sigurd, the young Wolsung who had slain [Fafni], came to Giuki’s. He received the troth-plight with two brothers; the doughty heroes interchanged oaths, They [the sons of Giuki] offered him the maid Gudrun, Giuki’s daughter, and a great dowry ; they drank and took counsel together many a day, the young Sigurd and the sons of Giuki, till they went to woo Brynhild with Sigurd riding in their company, the young Wolsung,.... he was to win her if he could get her. ... The Southern hero laid a naked sword, his sign-painted brand, between them twain; nor did the Hunnish king ever kiss her, neither take her into his arms; he handed the young maiden over to Giuki’s son.

She knew no guilt in her life, nor was any evil found in her when she died, no blame in deed or in thought, it was the cruel Fates that meddled. She sat out of doors alone in the evening, she spake once and no more:—lI will have Sigurd, that young man, in my arms, or else die. I have spoken a word that I repent of now. Gudrun is his wife, and I am Gunnar’s. The foul Fates have doomed us long sorrow.

She would often walk about the house ‘full of anger,’ with her heart sore every night when Gudrun and her husband went to bed, and Sigurd the Hunnish king clasped her, his fair wife, in the linen. ‘I walk

23. eitt ord] emend.; bert, R. 28. okkr] oss, R. 2g. angrs] illz, R.
24. .... eiskialdi] partly emend.; isa z iocla, R. 33. frida] emend.; fria, R.

i i a a ta

§ 2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 298

fyrr skal-ek mino fizorvi lata, an peirrar meyjar meidmom tyna.

loveless, husbandless, sonless; I must lull myself with cruel thoughts.’ © Out of this passion she whetted herself to murder. ‘Thou shalt straightway lose my land and myself, Gunnar, I will live no more with thee; I will go back where I dwelt before with my next-of-kin; there I will sit and dream my life out, unless thou wilt put Sigurd to death and make thyself king above all others. Let the son perish with the father ;

• One cannot foster a wolf-cub long.” Revenge is sought by every son, and *‘ The feud is fresh as long as a son lives.”’’

Gunnar was sad and bent down his head; he sat all day casting about in his mind, for he did not know clearly what was most seemly for him to do, or what was best for him to do, for he knew that he was [beholden] to the Wolsung, and that he would have a great loss in [losing] Sigurd. He cast about as long on this side as on that. It was not every day’s hap for a queen to leave her king. ‘Brunhild, the child of Budli, is better than all; she is a paragon among women. I would sooner lose my life than lose that maiden’s dowry.’ He betook him to call Hogni to counsel with him, for he ever put most trust in him. ‘Now wilt thou betray the King [Sigurd] for his wealth? It were sweet to own the hoard of the Rhine, and wield that wealth in happiness, and sit and enjoy it in peace.’ With that Hogni made answer, ‘Surely it beseems us not to do such a deed.... the strong ties of marriage, the sworn oaths, the oaths sworn, and the plighted faith. We know no men on earth happier than we, while we four rule the people, and this Hunnish champion is alive, nor any mightier kindred on earth, if we five were to beget young sons, and could keep up and multiply our goodly race. I know well whence this .... proceeds; great are the wiles of Brunhild.’ —Gunnar answers: ‘ Let us make Gothorm do the murder, our younger simpler brother ; he was outside all the sworn oaths, the oaths sworn, the plighted faith.’

It was easy to egg the reckless youth; the sword pierced Sigurd to the heart.

The hero took his revenge there in the hall; the bright sword Gram flew out of his hand and struck Gothorm. His enemy fell in two sl

§2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 297

pieces, the head and arms falling one way, and the legs and belly falling down where he stood.

Gudrun was sleeping peacefully in the bed, but she awoke to woe. She was bathed in the blood of Frey’s friend [Sigurd]. She wrung her hands so sorely that the strong-hearted hero rose up inthe bed. ‘Weep not so terribly, Gudrun, thou fair young bride, for thy son is alive. Yea, I have yet a young heir, though he will hardly escape from this house of foes. ‘They have dealt sorely and foolish by themselves, though they have cunningly contrived these counsels. They will never ride to the assembly with such a brother-in-law [though they be all together]. I know very well how things are: Brunhild alone wrought all this wickedness; she loved me above all other men, but I never dealt wrongfully by Gunnar, I observed our kinship by marriage, and the oaths we swore, lest I should be called the lover of his wife.’

The lady breathed a sigh, but the king breathed out his life: so loud was the cry of Giuki’s daughter that the cups rang on the wall, and the geese screamed in the yard.

g8. svaran] emend.; svarar, R. tor. burr lifir] emend.; breedr lifa, R. repetition from 1, 98.

hann mun ykkar and sfdari Segja man-ek per, Gunnarr,—sialfr veiztu goerla,—

Then Brunhild, Budli’s daughter, laughed once and no more, with all her heart, when she heard it in the bed, the loud cry of Giuki’s daughter.

Then spake Gunnar, the king of men: ‘Thou laughest not for joy now, thou revengeful woman, or for any good.... Why dost thou put away the white colour of thy face, thou mother of evils? I hold thee death-doomed. Thou wert most deserving of this, that we should smite down Atli before thine eyes, that thou shouldst see bleeding wounds on thy brother, and shouldst have to bind his gory wounds.’

Brunkild answered: ‘No man can deny it thee, Gunnar, thou hast fulfilled a deed. Atli cares little for [thy pride], his breath will outlast thine, and he will ever be of greater might. I will tell thee, Gunnar, thou knowest it very well thyself, how ye first began the fray. I was young [and not full-grown], and richly nurtured in my brother’s house, and I desired not that any husband should wed me, till ye Giukings, three mighty kings, rode into the court on horseback ; but would they had never ridden thither. Moreover, Atli spake secretly with me, saying that he would never give me my portion save I agreed to be given in marriage, neither gold nor land, nor any part of my rightful wealth, q a ge er cage ett =

§ 2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 299

magom mfnom at munar str{di.

which was given to me when I was yet a babe, and the ounces which were counted out to me while I was yet a babe. Then my mind was turning this way and that over the matter, whether I should betake me, boldly clothed in mail, to fighting and felling corses, because of my brother, or no. It would become known to all people as a defiance to my kinsmen, but in the end we joined covenants together. I inclined rather to take the dowry, the red rings of

' Sigmund’s son, but I would take no other man’s ounces.... To love him only, not choosing first this, then that, my mind was not turning this way and that. 1 promised myself to the mighty king as he sat with the gold on Grani’s saddle. He was not like you in the eyes, nor in any part of his countenance, though ye think yourselves great kings. ...... Atlishall find this out afterward, when he hears of my violent death [at my own hands], that I will not, like a weak-minded woman, set my love on another woman’s husband.’......

Up rose Gunnar, king of men, and threw his arms about his wife’s neck ; one by one they all came up, with kindly hearts, to try and stay

‘Pagdo allir hugdo at rodom,’ 200

her, but she cast her husband from her neck, nor would she let any one stay her from her long journey [to Hell]. Then he called Hogni to take counsel with him. ‘I would that all men should come into the hall, thy men and mine together, for we are in great need, to see if they may stay her from slaying herself... ..’ Hogni made answer once and no more. ‘Let no man stay her from the long journey, that she may never be born again; she was a curse even from her mother’s knees, she has been born ever to evil, a grief to the heart of many a man.’

She turned [scornfully] from their talk, where she was dealing out her treasures; she [was looking over all her wealth] . . . . bondmaids, and house-women. She put on a [golden mail-coat], in no happy mood, before she thrust herself through with the edge of the sword.

She sank on the bolster on one side, and began to.... wounded as she was with the brand. ‘ Come hither, all ye of my bondmaids that wish for gold, and take it at my hands. I will give each of you a broidered gown, a plaid, and dyed linen, bright raiment.’

They held their peace, .. . . made answer all together, ‘.... to do

» aad

‘ hy +

IM

§ 2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 304

‘66 mun 4 beinom brenna ydrom neit Menjo g66 mfn at vitja. 210 Seztu nidr, Gunnarr, mun-ek segja ber

Iffs cerveena lidsa brudi;

Muna-ydvart far allt { sundi,

‘skeyti skeda,’ skatna mengi; muna at vilja ver-sel gefin ; hana mun Atli eiga ganga pa-es mik sdrla svikna haofdot ;

Mundo Oddrtno eiga vilja; id munod lita 4 laun saman ; honour.’ Till the young linen-veiled lady spake again wisely, ‘I will have no man ... . lose his life for our sake .. . .’ the costly flour of Menia....

Sit down, Gunnar, I will tell thee, thy fair wife despairing of life. Your ship shall not be all afloat when I shall have breathed my last, Gudrun and ye shall be reconciled sooner than thou thinkest. She shall have a daughter by the king, born to her dead husband. There shall be a maid-child born, her mother shall bear [a daughter]; she, Swanhild, shall be whiter than a sunbeam in the bright day. Thou shalt give away Gudrun to a certain good husband, a king .... She shall not be given away at her own pleasure; Atli, Budli’s son, my brother, shall wed her. I have many things to remember of your dealings with me, how sorely ye betrayed me. I was ever joyless as long as I lived. Thou shalt desire Oddrun to wife, but Atli will not permit it. Ye shall at Atli mun ando tyna :

come together in secret, she shall love thee as I ought if our destiny had been kindly decreed. Atli shall entreat you evilly, he will put you into a narrow pit of serpents. It shall not be very long afterward ere Atli shall lose his life, his happiness, and the life of his sons, for Gudrun, out of her cruel heart, shall make gory his bed with the sharp sword-edge. It had been seemlier for your sister, Gudrun .... the husband of her youth .... , if she took good counsel, or if she had a heart like mine. I have spoken many things, but she shall not . . . . lose her life. The high billows shall carry her to the heritage of Ionakr; she shall bear him heirs, sons, heirs to Ionakr. She will send Swanhild, her daughter and Sigurd’s, out of the land, and Bikki’s plot shall wound her, for Eormunrek shall tread her with horses. Then is all the race of Sigurd perished, and Gudrun has one sorrow more.

I will beg one boon of thee, it will be the last boon in this world. Do thou make a broad pyre on the plain, big enough to hold all of us that are going to die with Sigurd. Deck the walls of the pyre with awnings

238. sona] Bugge; sofa, R. 239. gytja man] emend.; grym’ a, R. 241. ykkor] okkor, R. 244. likan, R. 245. cerit] emend.; oavrt, R. 240, R omits this line, 250. erfi-vord0] Bugge; ero ivarvdo, R. sono] sonom, R.
239. Emend.; pvi-at-lormunrekr oparft lifir, R.

§ 2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 303

and shields, with Welsh [Gaulish] stuff well-dyed, and with Welsh.... Burn the Hunnish king on one side of me, and on the other side of the Hunnish king my five bondmaids decked with necklaces. Eight menservants of noble blood, my nurse and my fosterer whom Budli gave to his child [me].... Put two men at our heads and two at our feet, [two horses, two hounds,] and two hawks, so all shall be shared equally between us. Lay between us the ring-fitted sword, the iron with whetted edges; lay it again, just as when we two lay on one bed and were called by the names of man and wife. Then the ring-locked doors of Hell shall not fall on his heels; if my company follow him hence our convoy shall be no poor one, when five bondmaids follow him, eight men-servants of noble blood, my nurse, and my fosterer, whom Budli gave to his child.

Much have I spoken, but I would speak more if Fate gave me a longer time to speak in. My voice is failing me, my wounds are swelling. Nought but truth have I spoken. Now I must depart.

264-272. Attempt at restoration by help of Wolsunga Paraphrase and Il. 281-284

II. Gyg SKALTU { goegnom ganga eigi q. gridti studda garda mina. 290

Brunhild, riding to Hell in her funeral chariot, encounters an Ogress.

Ogress: Thou shalt not pass my rock-supported court; it would beseem thee better to sit at the broidering, than to be in company of another’s husband, Why comest thou from Welsh-land [Gaul] to my house, thou fickle being? Thou hast, lady, if thou wilt know it, ... washed human blood off thy hands.—Brunbild:; Blame me not, thou bride of the rock, though I were once a wicking. I shall always be held the better of us two, wherever our kindred is known.—Ogress : Thou wast, Brynhild, Budli’s daughter, born into the world in evil hour. Thou hast destroyed the sons of Giuki, and [laid waste their good house].

Brunbild ; 1 will tell thee a true tale out of my woe, if thou wilt know, how Giuki’s heirs made me loveless and plightlorn. I lived at Heimi’s in Lymdale eight years, and enjoyed life. I was twelve winters old, if thou wilt know, before I plighted my troth to any prince; they all in Lymdale called me Hild [war-goddess] the helmed, whoso knew

TY ws

2 hh iQ ET,

§ 2.] THE LONG LAY OF BRUNHILD. 305

havan brenna her allz vidar hvartki knatti haond yfir annat me. Then I made the old Helm-Gunnar in Gothland go down to Hell, but gave victory to the young brother of Auda. Wodin was very wroth with me for that. He hemmed me round with shields, red and white, in Skatesholt, so that the rims of them touched; he decreed that he alone should break my sleep, who never felt fear. He let a high flame burn round my southern hall; and decreed that he alone should ride through the fire that brought me the gold that lay under Fafni. The good prince came, riding on Grani, to the hall where my foster-father lived. There he was held better than all the Danish wickings in the court. We slept and lay in one bed as if he had been my brother. Neither of us laid a hand over the other for eight nights. Gudrun, daughter of Giuki, reproached me that I slept in

_Sigurd’s arms. It was then I knew what I would not, that they had beguiled me in my husband (giving me a wrong one). _Men and women shall now and always be born to live in woe. We two, Sigurd and I, shall never part again.—Sink now, Ogress!

FRAGMENT OF A SHORT BRUNHILD LAY.

TuIs poem, half of which has perished in the lacuna of R, is on the same subject as the preceding. It is used by the Wolsunga paraphrast, though he does not follow it much, for it does not contain his version of the hero’s death, but makes him to have met his end on the open field beyond the Rhine. — It is only here (1. 36) that the sons of Giuki are made jive, not three. Peculiar to it are the talk of the Raven and Eagle, 1. 18 (missing), and the way in which Brunhild bursts out into lament in the night, against the murderers she has egged on. There is no Pyre-scene or the like, and it is possible that the end of the poem is lost. What remains is not in a good state. Lines 15-18 have been moved up from after 43; Il. 19-22, 45-51, 56-57, from after 55, where they are in R disorderly clustered together.

Hrafn af meidi hatt kalladi:— Ykkr mun Atli eggjar ridda; muno ‘vig-ska’ of vida eidar.

The end of a song describing how, by treason, Sigurd was slain by Gothorm in a wood.

[ Hogni quoth: . .. ‘ What is Sigurd’s] guilt, that thou wouldst take the hero’s life ?’—-Quoth Gunnar: ‘Sigurd swore oaths to me, swore oaths, that are all belied; he beguiled me when he should have been a true keeper of all oaths.".—Quoth Hogi; ‘It is Brynhild that has egged your hate to do this wickedness, to bring about this crime. She grudges Gudrun her good match, and grudges thy possession of herself.’

Some gave Gothorm boiled wolf’s flesh, some sliced serpents, some.... before they could persuade him to lay hands on the gentle hero.

Sigurd died south of the Rhine. A raven called loudly from the

Mew. we ¢ — tae “rg oe ba y PR a i i | de vA ‘" ee utter

$2.) FRAGMENT OF A SHORT BRUNHILD LAY. 307

‘Fiald’ nam at hlcera, fiold nam at spialla; tree [to the murderers]: ‘Atli will-redden the sword upon you, he shall overcome you.... for your broken oaths.’

He listened much; he caught up many words. The warrior bethought him of what the twain, the raven and the eagle on the tree, were talking when they were on their way home.

Gudrun, Giuki’s daughter, stood without, and this was the first word she spoke: ‘ Where is Sigurd, the king of men, that my brothers are riding in the van?’—Hogni made answer to her words: ‘We have hewn Sigurd asunder with the sword, the grey horse may droop his head for ever over the dead king.’

Then spake Brunhild, Budli’s daughter: ‘Have great joy of your weapons and hands. Sigurd would have ruled everything as he chose, if he had kept his life a little longer. It was not meet that he should so rule over the host of the Goths, and the heritage of Giuki, who begot five sons that delighted in war and the havoc of battle.’

Brunhild laughed, the whole house rang: ‘Have long joy of your hands and weapons, since ye have slain the keen king.’ Then spake Gudrun, Giuki’s daughter: ‘Thou speakest very marvellously .... murderous mood shall be revenged.’

Gramir hafi ‘Gunnar’ gatvad Sigurdar ; pat-es hlejandi halda beiddi.

Then spake Brunhild, Budli’s daughter: ‘Egg me or stay me—the deed:is done.’.... They were all silent at that word, no one could understand how she could weep when she spoke of what she had laughed at when she egged them on.....

The evening was far gone, they had drunk deep, they had talked their fill..... They all slept when they came into their beds, Gunnar alone of them all kept waking longer.....

Brunhild, Budli’s daughter, kinswoman of kings, awakened a little before the day, saying, ‘I dreamed evil dreams in my sleep, Gunnar, it was all chilly in the hall, I had a cold bed, but thou, O king, didst ride, bereft of joy, fettered on thy feet, into the ranks of thy foes. So shall all the race of you Hniflungs be reft of strength, for ye are oath-breakers. Rememberest thou that clearly, Gunnar? how ye twain [Sigurd and thyself] did let your blood run together in the footprint [swearing brotherhood], but now thou hast repaid him with ill for it all, for showing himself ever the first of men. It was proved when he rode in his boldness to woo me, how the host-queller kept

66. pit, R.

F 4

—_—

{

§ 2.] ODDRUNAR-GRATR. 309

marg-d¥rr konungr 4 medal okkarr;

ODDRUNAR-GRATR;; or, LAMENTATION OF ORDRUN.

ONLY preserved in R, leaf 39. It is not used by the Wolsunga paraphrast, nor cited anywhere.

As the text stands alone it is difficult to correct it, and lines here and there are obelized. Lines 96, 97 have been interchanged, and lines 107, 108 moved three places down.

The chief interest of the poem lies in its containing a fresh version of the quarrel between Attila and the Hniflungs. Ordrun, Attila’s sister, and Gunnar are lovers; their intrigue is detected, and denounced to Attila. He has Gunnar cast into a pit full of snakes. Hoping to be delivered by Ordrun, Gunnar strikes the harp in his pit, and though perchance far away, she hears it and hastens to help him, though too late, for the witch-snake stung him to the heart. There is an unfortunate gap where the lovers are denounced (I. 97), so that we do not know exactly how Attila sets about wiling Gunnar into his power.

This sad story has its framework. Ordrun tells it to Borgny, whom she has come to help in her travail. She does this because of a vow (the nature of which is obscure, as we have corrupt lines here, 35-39). We hear, however, that Borgny, now herself with child by Wilmund, had formerly reproached Ordrun with her lawless love for Gunnar.

There is something individual about the poem which suggests a different authorship from the other lays it is in company with.

his oaths to the young king [yourself]. The good king laid the gold inlaid wound-wand between us, its edges outside were wrought in the fire, but the inner part [of the blade] was stained with drops of venom,....

In stories of old I heard tell how a maid came to Morn-land. Heidrek’s daughter [Borgny] could get no help on earth [in her labour]. Ordrun, Atli’s sister, heard that the maiden was in sore labour; she took the bitted steed from its stall, and set the saddle upon

2. Morna-landz] read Morua landz, i.e. Moravia.” 7. Read stufi.

unz at hari kom hall standandi: 10

Her liggr Borgny of borin verkjom the black charger. She rode her horse through the flat paths of earth, till she came to the high-towering hall. She swept the saddle off the slender steed, and went in up the hall and spake this first of all: ‘What is the last news in this land, and what is the... .in Hunland?’

The Bondmaid answers: Borgny, thy friend, lies here overcome with the throes of labour. Ordrun, see if thou canst help her.—Ordrun answers: Who has brought this dishonour on her? Why have the sharp pains come upon Borgny ?—Bondawoman: Wilmund the hero is his name, he lay with the maid five nights, and she hid it from her father.

They spake no more then I think, but the gentle lady went in to sit before the maiden’s knees [that is, to act as midwife to Borgny]. Mightily chanted Ordrun, powerfully chanted Ordrun keen charms over Borgny..... The child is born. ‘Then the labouring lady began to speak ; these were the first words she said: ‘ May the gracious powers, Frigg and Freyja, and many other divinities, help thee as thou deliverest me from my labour!’—Ordrun: ‘I did not bend to help thee because... .

19. vifi] Bugge; visir, R. 23. Emend.; vetr alla, R. 28-29. Maimed text. 36. A word wanting.

§ 2.] ODDRUNAR-GRATR. 311

I vowed, and I fulfilled what I spoke, that ever I should render help, whereso.’....

Borgny: Thou art surely distraught, Ordrun, and beside thy wit, to speak so many hard words to me, [er words must have been in the preceding blank.| But I was wont to follow thee over the earth, as if we had been born of two brothers.—Ordrun.: I remember what thou saidst one evening to me when I took Gunnar to my bed. Thou didst say that such misfortune would never befall any maid but me.

Then the sorrow-stricken maid [Ordrun] sat her down and began to tell over the tale of her wrongs and woes. ‘I was bred up in a king’s hall with every bliss, as men say. I enjoyed my life and the wealth of my father for five winters, as long as my father was alive. It was the last word he spoke, that stern king, ere he sunk in death. He bade them endow me with red gold, and send me south as wife to Grimhild’s son [Gunnar], and build a castle for Brunhild, saying that she should be a wish maid [to be wooed for], for he said that no maid more renowned than she should ever be brought up on earth, save the Judge [Fate] cut her life short. Brunhild wrought at the broidery in the bower, she had [a wall of flame] about her, the earth

45. tekkjo] emend.; drecco, R. 51. Emend.; flestr, R. 58. borg geta] emend,; hialmgeta,R. 59. Readskiald-mey? 60. gpra,R. 63. Corrupt.

312 THE BRUNHILD POET. [ox. v, unz peer velar vissi allar.

bauga-deili, sem Brynhildr skyldi. 75 Budo peir Atla bauga rauda,

Melto margir mfnir nidjar, maodr fyr annan, par-es munod deilir.

quaked and the heavens above when Fafni’s slayer sought out the stronghold. Then a fight was fought with the Welsh sword [from Gaul], and the stronghold of Brunhild was broken. It did not last long, but a short space only before she knew all the wiles [that she had been deceived by Sigurd|. She wreaked a dire revenge for all this, of which we have proofs enough. It shall go forth through all lands how she let herself die with Sigurd. But I loved King Gunnar, as Brunhild should have loved him. They offered Atli, my brother, red rings enough and no small ransom. He [Gunnar] offered fifteen homesteads for me, and the burthen of Grani, if he [Atli] would take it. But Atli said that he would never take the bride-fee from a son of Giuki. Albeit we could not withstand our love, nor deny my promise [of Love] to the King [Gunnar]. Many of my kinsmen bore witness that they had found us two together, but Atli said that I should never devise any wrong-doing or dishonour; yet no man should speak words of denial on another’s behalf, in a matter of love. Atli sent his messengers through Mirkwood to prove me, and they came where they should not have come, when we lay in one sheet together. We offered

83. heitom] emend.; havfdi, R.

i as tN a RY

an Nas) OS

$2.) ODDRUNAR-GRATR. 313

them red rings not to tell Atli thereof, but they hastened home forthwith and told it eagerly to Atli.... tli and his men thereupon devise a plot to avenge his Sister’s dishonour upon Gunnar, but they hid it [the treachery] from Gudrun, who should have been the first to know it. There was a clattering of gold hoofs to be heard when the Heirs of Giuki rode into the courtyard. They cut the heart out of Hogni, but put his brother in the pit of snakes. The good king began to strike the harp, for the noble king thought that I should come to his help. At that very hour I was away at Geirmund’s at a banquet. I began to hear as far as Hlessey how the strings rang amain. I bade my bondmaids to make ready, I wished to save the king’s life. We ferried over the Sound until we saw the halls of Atli. Then there came speeding out the accursed [snake-dam],—may she pine away !—and “#3 pierced to Gunnar’s heart, so that I could not save the famous ing.

113. farland] far-lund, R; farlond, some localname of a water.

314 THE BRUNHILD POET. [px. v.

FRAGMENTS FROM LOST LAYS OF LACUNA.

THESE are placed here as nearest akin to the poems yet preserved of the Brunhild section. The paraphrast has known and used them, and we are thus able to tell something about their contents, order, length, &c.

Swerri’s Saga supplies the first fragment [King Swerri thus accosts his son flying before the enemy], which would seem to be part of a poem dealing with the early part of Sigfred’s life; we recognise it in two places in the paraphrase, Regin egging Sigfred on, Vols. Saga, ch. 13 or 18.

The second, from Wolsunga Saga, deals with Sigfred, but is part of a different poem.

The third, from the same Saga, is part of the quarrel between Gudrun and Brunhild, in the same Brunhild-poem.

The last, also out of Wolsunga Saga, is all that is left of a long and fine Sigfred Lay (Sigurdar Kvida), of which, judging from the passion of the fragment and the paraphrase, we must much regret the loss.

I often wonder how I could keep alive after the king, for I thought I loved the dauntless hero as myself.

Thou hast sat still and listened while I have told thee many evil haps of mine and theirs. Every one must live as his mind bids him.

The Minstrel’s Epilogue. The LAMENTATION OF ORDRUN is finished.

I. Regin to Sigurd: Thou art unlike thy kinsmen that were ever foremost in former days.

Il. Sigurd riding through the Waver-lowe. The fire began to rage and the earth began to shake, and the lofty flame towered up against the sky. None of the king’s men dared to ride the fire or step over. it.

Seog

120. bor? Gunnar is meant. 1. olikr, Cd. 3. nam] man, Cd.

§ 3.] GUDRUNAR KVIDA IN FORNA. 315

IV.

sva-at ganga nam gunnar-fiisom sundr of sidor serkr iarn-ofinn.

(3 THE GUDRUN’ POET.

GUDRUNAR-KVIDA IN FORNA; ox, *

THE OLD LAY OF GUDRUN.

THE longest and most important of a little group of Songs, of which Gudrun is the heroine, giving the whole story of which the others take merely incidents.

The poem rests on R and the Wolsunga paraphrast, whose text was slightly better than ours in the wording, though the derangement and disorder was the same.

The framework of the poem is, that Gudrun tells the sad story of her life to Thiodrek, who was then an exile at the court of Attila. She begins with the death of Sigfred, slain in the wood, on the way to [or from] an assembly (1. 9). She tells us how she sat out in the wild wood,

Sigurd spurred Grani with his sword, the fire slaked before the king, the flame abated before the fame-seeking hero; the saddle that Regin had owned gleamed.....

III. Dialogue between Brunbild and Gudrun. Quoth Brunbild: Sigurd overcame the Serpent, and that shall never grow old [in men’s minds] while mankind remains, but thy brother never dared to ride the fire nor step over it.

IV. Sigurd turns away after his last interview with Brunbild. Sigurd, the beloved friend of man, went out from their talk, bowed down [with grief], so that the iron-woven sark began to rive asunder from the sides of the war-eager hero.

Io. reidi] reid, Cd. 16. hnipfdi, Cd.

316 THE GUDRUN POET. [Bx. v.

when the wolves were howling round her, over the body of her husband; a powerful scene, the mutilated text whereof we have but partly been able to restore. Thence she wanders off to Denmark, where she sits embroidering the deeds of heroes, Sigmund, Sigar, and Siggeir, on tapestry, - —a circumstance which helps to fix the date of the poem, and reminds one of the Bryhtnoth tapestry at Ely, and the ‘toilette’ at Bayeux. The next scene is not quite clear, owing to gaps and faults, but we gather that her mother sends her brothers to offer atonement and bring her home. She comes home, and kings come wooing to her (Il. 79 sqq.), but like Penelope, though for other reasons, she refuses them all. At last Grimhild determines to marry her to Atli, who is at feud with her brothers on account of Brunhild his sister’s death. Still Gudrun is stubborn, but her mother has recourse to a potion of forgetfulness, and she is borne off to Hunland with a grand train. It has been necessary to make transpositions here in the text to get sense. For it is absurd, as the disordered text of R gives, that she should go on arguing with her mother after she has drunk the potion, but the tale goes clearly on when the necessary shifting is made, due allowance being made for gaps and slighter errors. Gudrun goes on to mention her arrival at Attila’s court; the great gates are thrown open, and—here the poem abruptly breaks off. In the MS. a fragment, headless and tailless, of ~ wholly different metre and subject, follows on here. This, from its manifest affinity to the Attila group, has been moved to § 4, after the Atli Lay.

The text is rather disordered than corrupt on the whole. We have moved the Potion scene (ll. 120-133) down from before 1. 80, also interchanging ll. 68 and 79. There are two interpolations (four lines after 1, 4, and four lines after 1. 36),—a duplicate text from the Lay of Gudrun (Gudrunar Kvida), in which they occur in their proper place. These we have left out here.

The poem is highly pathetic in parts, as where Grani grieves for his master ; interesting all through, from the fulness of the details introduced. Thus, the horn in which Grimhild gives the potion is the very fellow of the Golden Horn. The Homeric descriptions of the broidery, the wooing kings, and the journey are all to be noted. The #it/e is warranted by a passage in one of the prose pieces of R saying that in ‘Gudrunar Kvida in forna’ it is told that they all rode to an assembly, and that then Sigurd was slain; which agrees with |. 9 of our poem.

Gudrun speaks ; 1 WAS a maid of maids, my bright mother brought me up in her bower. I loved my brothers dearly, till Giuki endowed me with gold, endowed me with gold and gave me to Sigurd, till my brothers begrudged me a husband who was foremost of all. They could neither sleep nor sit in court before they put Sigurd to death.

Grani galloped from the assembly, the rattle [of his hoofs] was heard, but Sigurd himself never came back. All their horses were splashed

§ 3.] GUDRUNAR KVIDA IN FORNA. 317

with blood, and stained with soil beneath their riders. I went weeping f to talk with Grani, with wet cheeks I asked the steed to speak. Then Grani bowed his head and sunk it in the grass; the steed knew that his master was dead. I wavered a long while, for a long while I divided ( my mind, before I asked the king [Gunnar] about the prince [Sigurd]. Gunnar bowed his head, but Hogni told me that Sigurd lay dead of his wounds; saying: ‘The slayer of Gothorm lies smitten beyond the water given to the wolves, Seek thou for Sigurd in South-way. Thou shalt | hear the ravens scream, the eagles scream for joy of their quarry, and | the wolves howl over thy husband.’

Quoth Gudrun: Why dost thou care to talk to me so cruelly, me a desolate woman? May the ravens tear thy heart.....

Hogni made answer once and no more, with an angry heart greatly moved with pity : ‘ Thou wilt have more still to weep over, Gudrun, if the ravens tear my heart.’

I turned away from our talk into the heritage of the wide-roving hvarfap, R. 36. Emend.; auip lesar, R (Lex. 714). R here adds—Geerdiga- Sigurdi.—A duplicate, See p. 324, ll. 3, 4.

re REY are Samer orm * —

ulfar puto allo megin, eti birnir mik sem birkiu-vid.

randir raudar, rekka Hina, 50

skip Sigmundar skrido fra landi, gyldar grimor, grafnir stafnar :

pra-giaorn 4 tal, bess at spyrja:

Goerr lezk Gunnarr goll at bidda, wolves [forest]. The night seemed moonless [pitch-black] to me, as I sat sorrow-stricken over Sigurd. The wolves howled on all sides.... [would they had devoured me, and] the bears had gnawed me to pieces as they do the young sap-shoots of the birch. I wandered over the mountain five whole days told, before I lit on Half’s high hall. I stayed with Thora, Hakon’s daughter, in Denmark, seven seasons [years]. She embroidered in gold, to please me, southern halls and Danish swans. We had on our rolls the play of warriors [i.e. pictures of battles wrought in needlework], and on our handiwork the king’s thanes, the red shield, the Hunnish warriors, a sworded company, a helmed company, the king’s guards. Sigmund’s ships were gliding from the shore, with gilt figure-heads and carved bows. We broidered on our broidery how Sigar and Siggeir fought south in Fife. But now Grimhild, the Gothic lady, heard where I was living, in a friend’s dwelling. She asked my brothers, her sons, holding a parley with them, asking over and over again if they would recompense their sister for her son, or pay her weregild for her slain husband, Gunnar said that he

See ie .

5 aA Pe eae hee ae

PA ee Fe “TI

i - Va! oli Shae ih A ei tea ttt oe a ena

$3.] GUDRUNAR KVIDA IN FORNA. 319

vigg at sadla, vagn at beita, 65 hesti rida, hauki fleygja, erom at skidta af ¥-boga.

Langbarz lidar, hafdo loda rauda, skreyttar brynjor, steypta hialma, skalmom gyrdir, hafdo skarar iarpar :

Grimh. Gef-ek per, Gudrtn, goll at piggja, 80 q. ficold allz fidr, ‘at pinn fador daudan,’

hringa rauda, Hlcedvess sali,

Hunskar meyjar, pzr-es hlada spialdom, ein skaltu rada audi Budla was willing to offer gold to recompense her claim, and Hogni said the same. Moreover, she asked who would go to saddle the war-horse, to horse the wagons, ride the steed, fly the hawk, shoot arrows out of the yew bow.....

Three kings came before my knees: Waldar of the Danes and Iarisleif .... Eymund was the third of them, and Iariscar: in they came like kings, the company of the Lombards; they wore red fur, variegated mail-coats, enamelled helmets, were girt with short swords, had brown hair cut across their brows. Each of them would gladly give me choice gifts, yea, choice gifts, and speak lovingly to me, to try and make me comforted. ... but I would not put my trust in them.... ere she herself [my mother Grimhild] called on me to speak my mind, saying ; ‘I give thee gold to take, Gudrun, plenty of all wealth, thy dead father’s heritage, red rings, Lothwy’s hall, all the hall-hangings the fallen king left, Hunnish maidens that can weave checkered linen and work beautifully in gold, so that it shall please thee; thou shalt have all Budli’s wealth for thine own, thou shalt be endowed with gold and given to Atli..—Then I answered: 1 will not have him for husband, nor wed the brother of Brunhild; it beseems me not to have children by the

71. likir, R, 73. skreyttar] thus R * stuttar, V.

son of Budli, or live with him. — Grimbild answered: Do not thou entertain hatred against the kings [thy brothers and Atli], albeit we were the first to begin it. Do thou rather, when thou bringest up thy sons, make as if Sigurd and Sigmund were yet alive.—Then I said: | cannot make merry, Grimhild, nor plight my faith to the hero [Atli], since the greedy corse-harpies drunk the heart’s blood of Sigurd together.—Grimbild answered: He is the best-born of all kings I have known, and the boldest of heroes. Him thou shalt wed, or else be husbandless until old age overcomes thee, save thou take him.—I said: Do not continue to thrust upon me, with importunity, that cursed race. He shall [one day] deal a deadly blow to Gunnar, and cut the heart out of Hogni, and I shall never rest till I have taken his life in the prime. Then Grimhild, weeping, broke in upon her words, when she [Gudrun] foretold ills to come upon her [Grimhild’s] sons, and sore affliction to her offspring.—Quoth Grimhild: 1 will give thee yet more lands and servants,

Wincrag, Walcrag, if thou wilt take them; keep them all thy life and rejoice in them, daughter.—Then I said: I will not choose him among kings, nor have him thrust upon me, among all his kin. A husband will bring ae al ba |

§ 3.] GUDRUNAR KVIDA IN FORNA. 321

me no joy, nor will he, that shall be the death of my brothers, be a shelter to my sons. .

But Grimhild brought me a beaker of drink, cold and bitter, whereby I forgot my wrongs. It was blent with the might of the earth, with ice-cold sea-water, and with the blood of sacrifice. On this horn there was every kind of letter engraved and painted in red (I could not read them), long ling-fishes [snakes], and unreaped corn ears ‘ from the land of Harding [the cement and the guts of beasts. In this beer there were many evil spells mixed, . . . . and hearth’s soot, the inner hs of beasts slain in sacrifice, boiled hog’s liver because it allays Strife. 5: .

Then every hero was seen on his horse, and the Gaulish wives lifted up on the wagons. We rode seven days over the cold land, and seven days more we worked our way over the waves, and the third seven days we went upon the dry land. The warders of the lofty forts opened the gates when we rode into the court .... (rest missing).

119. bani] emend.; baul, R. 122. iardar} urdar, R. 129. akara brunnin, V. 135. hafit, R.

‘THE ORDEAL OF GUDRUN.

THis little poem only occurs in R; the Wolsunga paraphrast, though he knew it, does not use it. We have been able to mend it, so that it is practically perfect. It is in close relationship of plot with the preceding piece, dealing as it does with Gudrun and Theodric; the word ‘spennor,’ 1. 15, refers expressly to the talks in which the lady told the tale of her woes to the hero. The chief value of the poem lies in its full account of the ordeal.

Gudrun Per mun-ek allz bess eida vinna q: at inom hvita helga steini: 10

Quoth Gudrun: How goes it with thee ever now, Atli, thou son of Budli? Art thou heavy of heart? thou never laughest! Thy gentlemen would be better pleased if thou wouldst talk with men and look upon me.— Quoth Atli: This is my grief, Gudrun, thou daughter of Giuki. Herkia told me in the hall that thou and Theodric had slept under one roof, and lightly spread one bed for the twain of you.— Quoth Gudrun; 1 will take an oath about all this matter, upon the white holy stone, that I have never dealt with the son of Theodmar as man and wife are wont, save that once I fell upon the neck of the king of hosts, the blameless prince,—and no more embraces had we,—as we twain bowed our heads together as we talked of our woes. Theodric came here with thirty men, no one of those thirty men is left. I am bereft of my brothers and of my young son, I am bereft of all my next

2. pd] emend.; pv, R. 7. pit, R. 11. piddmars son] emend.; piodmar, R. 12. vord] vordr, R. 15. varot] emend.; voro, R. okkrar]} crar, R. —spennor] not speccor, R. ey. xan R, 18. tego, Cd, 1g, 20.

hneppt em-ek] emend.; hrinctomik,R. 1g. buriungom] emend.; brynjodom, R. ~

• ieige

$3.) GUDRUNAR KVIDA. oe

GUDRUNAR-KVIDA; or, THE TALE OF GUDRUN.

A LAMENTATION also; this poem, from its lack of action, is not used by the Wolsunga paraphrast, so that we have only R to depend on.

It alone among these songs has a refrain, and is of a more modern cast of thought, with a subject of psychological interest quite alien to the other poems.

We have been able to mend some of the worst places, but it is pretty fairly preserved on the whole.

of kin. Now do thou send to Saxi, the lord of the Southerners, he knows how to hallow the boiling cauldron.

Seven hundred men came into the hall to see the king’s wife deal. with the cauldron.

Quoth Gudrun: Gunnar shall not come, I shall not call Hogni, I shall never see my sweet brothers more. Hogni would have avenged me of this foul charge with the sword, but now I must clear myself of this charge with my own hand.

She dipped her white hand to the bottom [of the cauldron] and took out the precious stones. ‘See now, men, how the cauldron boils! I am proved guiltless according to the holy custom.’ Atli’s heart laughed in his breast when he saw Gudrun’s hands whole. ‘Now Herkia must go to the cauldron, she that imputed guilt to Gudrun.’

He has never seen a pitiful sight that did not see how Herkia’s hands were scalded that day. They led the maid to a foul slough.

Poet’s Epilogue: Thus was Gudrun proved guiltless of the foul charge.

40. Emend.; sva pa Gudrun sinna harm® R. Y2

For lines 3-4 and 65-71, we have the assistance of the duplicate text, interpolated in the Old Lay of Gudrun (p. 316). On the other hand, we have to cast out two lines after 59 borrowed from the Brunhild Lay, ll. 115-117, and wrongly inserted here: The silent weeping of the gentle heroine, with tears flowing through her tresses, is not to be confounded with the /Joud passionate crying of the Brunhild’s Lay Gudrun, to which the whole household responds, the geese screaming, the cups rattling, etc. This would alone authorise one in cutting out these lines here.

The zit/e is warranted by the superscription in R.

tn Vee ie ee! he °

It was in the olden time, Gudrun was nigh to death, as she sat sorrowful over Sigurd. She made no loud cry, nor wrung her hands, nor wept as other women use. The wise men came and tried to soothe her heavy heart.

Nevertheless Gudrun could not weep, she was so oppressed, her heart was like to break.

The gentle ladies, dight with gold, sate before her. Each of them told her her own sorrows, the bitterest woes she had endured. Then spake Giaflaug, Giuki’s sister: ‘I hold myself the most forlorn woman. on earth. I have lost five husbands, two daughters, five sisters, eight brothers. I alone am left alive.’

Nevertheless Gudrun could not weep, she was so oppressed at her —

husband’s death, so heavy-hearted over the king’s corpse. Then spake Herborg, the queen of Hunland: ‘I have heavier losses

§ 3.] GUDRUNAR KVIDA. 325

Hefi-ek hardara harm at segja:

Minir siau synir sunnan-landz,

Sialf skylda-ek geaofga, sialf skylda-ek gzatva, sialf skylda-ek haondla hroer peirra ; siau misseri ‘sidan verda;’

fann-ek htiss-guma hvergi in betra, to tell. My seven sons from the land of the South, and my husband the eighth, fell in battle. My father and mother, my four brothers, the wind of the deep played over them, the billow dashed them against the gunwales. They had none but me to wash them, none but myself to bury them, none but myself to lay out their corpses. All this I suffered in one season, nor was there any one to comfort me. After this I was taken captive, and for seven years held a prisoner of war [as the vilest of women], and put in bondage. I had to dress and bind the shoes on the lord’s wife every morning. She would threaten me in her jealousy, and drove me with heavy stripes. I never saw a better goodman anywhere, nor ever anywhere a worse goodwife.’

Nevertheless Gudrun could not weep, she was so oppressed at her son’s death, and so heavy-hearted over the king’s [her husband’s] corpse.

Then spake Goldrand, Giuki’s daughter: ‘ Thou knowest not, fostermother, though thou be wise, how to comfort the young wife.’ She bade them uncover the king’s body, and swept the sheet from off Sigurd, casting it to the ground before his wife’s knees. ‘Look on

29. hroer] Bugge; h’ for (=hreor), R. 31. mangi] Bugge; ~ engi, R. 33- Emend.; sams misseris, R, verda] read varda? siduSf varda ?

3.26 THE GUDRUN POET. aeons franar sidnir fylkiss lidnar, hug-borg iafurs hiarvi skorna.

haddr losnadi, hlyr rodnadi; thy love, lay thy mouth to his lips as if thou wert clasping thy living lord,’

Gudrun cast one look upon him, she saw the king’s hair dripping

• with blood, his keen eyes dead, his breast scored by the sword, Then she fell upon the pillow, with loosened hair and reddened cheek; her tears trickled like rain-drops down to her knee. And now Gudrun, Giuki’s daughter, wept so, that the tears soaked through her tresses.

Then spake Goldrand, Giuki’s daughter: ‘The love of you two is the greatest I ever saw upon earth. Thou couldst never rest, my sister, within doors or out, save thou wert at Sigurd’s side.’ .

Then spake Gudrun, Giuki’s daughter: ‘As the tall garlick above the grasses, or like a high-legged hart among the fleet deer, or like ember-red gold to the gray silver, or like the glittering gem upon a thread of beads, so was my Sigurd among the sons of Giuki, above all lords beside. Among the king’s champions I was held higher than any other maid of Woden, but now I am brought as low as a willow shrunk of her leaves, by the death ‘of the king; at board and at

48. & vengi] emend.; vengi, R. 59. tresc, R (a Romance. word). 59-60. R adds—ok gullo vid gess i tuni | merir foglar er mer atti—From The Long

§ 3.] GUDRUNAR KVIDA. 04

bed I miss my gossip. It was the sons of Giuki, it was the sons of Giuki that caused my misery, the sore tears of their sister. May ye [keep land and lieges] according as ye kept your sworn oath. Thou shalt never profit by the gold, Gunnar, those rings shall be thy death, for the oath’s sake which thou didst swear to Sigurd. There was far greater joy in the court when my Sigurd saddled Grani, and ye too went forth to woo Brunhild, that accursed being, in an evil day.’ Then spake Brunhild, Budli’s daughter: ‘ May that being lack both husband and children that moved thee to tears, Gudrun, and gave thee the power of speech this day!’ Then spake Goldrand, Giuki’s daughter: ‘ Hold thy peace, thou hateful woman, from such words. Thou hast been an Evil Fate to princes, . » a sore sorrow to seven kings, and a bereaver of many a wife.’ Then spake Brunhild, Budli’s daughter: ‘ Atli, my brother, the son of Budli, alone wrought this woe, when, in the hall of the people of the Huns, we saw the fire of the lair [Sigurd’s spoils, Fafni’s hoard].

96. Thus hyerr (not hver), R. -

eldr or augom, eitri fneesti

TREG-ROF GUDRUNAR; or, GUDRUN’S CHAIN OF WOE.

AT the end of R, last poem but one, under the title Gudrunar-hvaut, comes, as we have noted above (Book i. p. 52), a strange heterogeneous jumble of verses. When one looks into them, one sees that they fall into two lots. The frst Jot, broken fragments on the Hamtheow Story, some parallel to, others filling gaps in Hamtheow’s Lay, in a metre such as that of Hamtheow’s Lay, and with the fierce haughty Gudrun we know from Atli’s and Hamtheow’s Lays for a heroine.: In the second lot all this is reversed; the metre is that of Book v, the heroine is the sweet gentle woe-begone Gudrun of the later Epics, the subject, her Death-Song, is widely different from that of the jirst Jot, into which it cannot be linked; moreover, it is regularly finished off with an epilogue containing the title. One is forced to the conclusion that we have here tave fragments of two different poems, the first one being a B-text of Hamtheow’s Lay, the latter a separate poem, called Gudrun’s Chain of Woes, of which the first half or more is lost. This one we print here.

Lines 16-18, and even 13-20, we incline to think belong to Hamtheow’s Lay, part of Gudrun’s address to hersons. Hamtheow’s words, ll. 30-37 of that Lay, azsqwer them. Moreover, the metre and wording are that of the old Lay.

After all her weary life of sorrow, Gudrun comes forth while her funeral pile is being made ready in the fore court of the palace (ta), and ere she mounts it sings her Ta/e or Chain of Woes. Then she calls on her love Sigfred to come and welcome her among the dead, and throws herself into the blazing pyre. The poem unhappily is not perfect; besides gaps, the beginning is lost save the first four lines, which, corrupt though they are, we can recognise by metre and meaning to belong here, and not to the place in which they are found in the vellum (at the head of Hamdis-mal). A few lines defy treatment as yet. We have, however, been able to recover the title of this poem, Treg-raf Gudrunar, from the last line, and by help of Skalld-Helga-Rimur, the author of which, Thomas, an Eastern Icelander of the sixteenth century, must have had the last verse in his head when he wrote, ‘ ollum verdi er inni eg fra angr sitt at hegra;’ 1.56 has been put right.

For that journey of Sigurd I have paid dearly, [for that never-to-beforgotten sight ].’

She stood by the pillar, she.... Fire was kindled in the eyes of Brunhild, Budli’s daughter, the venom spirted from her mouth when she saw the wounds of Sigurd.

105. Maimed verse. 106. Mangled text.

“a Dial —

§3.] _ TREG-ROF GUDRUNAR. . 329

First four lines cannot be translated. Subject: The pyre is being reared in the court (ta).

GUDRUN, Giuki’s daughter, sat weeping in the court; she [began sorrowfully to number her woes], and with tearful cheeks to tell over her sorrows in manifold ways.

I have known three fires, three hearths; I have been carried to the houses of three husbands. The first was Sigurd, the best of them all, whom my brothers did to death. I neither saw nor knew.... I thought it a still harder trouble when they gave me to Atli. [I called my brave little sons apart to talk with me. I could find no recompense for my wrongs till I cut off the heads of the Hniflungs.]

I went down to the strand; angry with the Fates I was, [I wished to defy their hateful curse]; but the high waves bore me up without drowning me. I reached the land, for I was fated to live.

I went for the third time to the bed of a mighty king, hoping for better fate, and I bore children, sons,...to Ionakr. But the bondmaids

4. Agreatlacunahere, 18, niflungom,R. 20. heiptom? 26, sonom, R.

330 THE GUDRUN POET. [Bx. v.

sat round Swanhild, whom I loved best of my children; she was like a glorious sunbeam in my bower. I endowed her with gold and goodly raiment before I married her into Gothland. That was.the hardest of all my sorrows, when they trod Swanhild’s fair hair in the dust under the hoofs of the horses: but the sorest when they slew my Sigurd, robbed of his victories, in my bed: and the cruellest when the fierce snakes pierced Gunnar to the heart: and the sharpest when they cut Hogni the hero to the heart, while he was yet alive. I can remember many woes. Harness, Sigurd, thy white steed; let thy fleet horse gallop hither, for here sits neither daughter-in-law, nor daughter, to give gifts to me. Remember, Sigurd, what we promised one another when we both went into the bed of wedlock, that thou wouldst come from Hell to seek me, but that I would come to thee from earth.

Then before she climbs upon the pile, she calls to those present to pile up the logs.

Pile up, good gentlemen, the oaken pile; let it stand high under

§ 4.] - ATLA-MAL, 331

eldr-ae Iatta peace "i. sore. 55

§4. THE ATLI POET.

ATLA-MAL IN GRANLENZKO; or, THE GREENLAND LAY OF ATLI.

FOUND only in R, leaves 41-43. The Wolsunga paraphrast used a sister text to ours, to which he adheres so strictly in his prose, contrary to his usual custom, that in some places we are able to correct our text from it [e.g. ll. 315, 345, 397]. In one instance [89-90] two lines have dropped out in our copy, which we have been able to recover from his prose. It is evident that our text was taken from a somewhat old and faded copy. We have transposed I. 268 three lines up.

The tit/e is given in R, and is no mere name, for the ‘ White bears’ in the dream fix the locality, and we cannot date it earlier than the eleventh century.

The story, though spun out, is the same as that of the old Atla-kvida (Bk. i. § 5), which this poet is well acquainted with and follows closely, sometimes even in phraseology, so that one is able to mend the text by the recurring words in the other poem [e.g. |. 231]. The chief peculiarity is the original treatment of Gudrun, who is here a furious Medea, quite alien in nature to the gentle Andromache or Electra of the poems in §§ 2 and 3. There is a savagery and grimness altogether about this Lay which is very appropriate to the wild life of the early Greenland colonists, and their terrible climate. The characters, the brutish credulity of Atli, for example, are not over-well drawn—still the vocathe heaven. May my sorrow-laden breast burn, may the flame... . my heart . ... may my sorrows melt away.

The Gleeman’s Epilogue :— May all gentlemen’s griefs be bettered! May all ladies have less of sorrow! Now is Gudrun’s CHAIN OF WOES told out.

bulary is rich, particularly in law terms, and contains a little hoard of rare words, some of which occur nowhere else. The style is marked by interjectional phrases, broken ‘asides.’ The metre is peculiar and almost monotonously regular.

MEN have heard the dreadful tale, how the heroes held a parley together—good to nobody; they held a secret meeting, whence came woe upon themselves, and also to the sons of Giuki who were betrayed. The Norns let their doom wax high, since they were doomed to die. - Atli took an evil step although he was a wise man; he hewed down a mighty pillar and did himself great harm, when he sent off his messengers to bid his brothers-in-law seek him without tarrying. The goodwife was brave, she used her wit, she caught the drift of the words which they were speaking in secret. The wise lady was hard put to it, she desired to help them, but they must cross the sea, and she herself could not come, so she graved runes; but Wingi—bent on treason was he—put them wrong ere he gave them [to her brethren].

Forth went the messengers of Atli and crossed Lim-firth, where the princes dwelt. They were merry with wine and kindled the fires—they thought not on guile—when the messengers came. They took the gifts their sister had sent them, and hung them on the pillars, they thought them of no moment, Then came Kostbera,—she was Hogni’s wife,— a most merry lady, and greeted both the brethren. And Glaumvor,

§ 4.] ATLA-MAL, 333

Gunnar’s wife, was glad also. She never lacked sure wisdom, she busied herself with the needs of the guests. They [Wingi and his fellow] begged Hogni to come, that Gunnar might be more willing to come— the treachery was clear, if they had but paid heed to it. Then Gunnar asked if Hogni would go. Hogni said that he would stand bythe other’s will.

The ladies served the mead; there was store of all good cheer; they bore drink-horns a many, till men had drunk their fill. The two [Hogni and his wife] went to rest as seemed good to them. Kostbera the kindly, she knew how to read runes; she read through the letters by the light of the fire, she kept guard on her tongue between her teeth; the letters were so dark that it was hard to read. Then she and Hogni went to bed. The gentle lady had a dream—she hid it not, but told it to her husband as soon as she awoke. ‘ Thou art going away from home, Hogni, take heed to what thou doest. Few men weigh what is before them; go this journey another time. I have read the runes thy sister engraved, she has not bidden thee to her this time. And I wonder at one thing, and cannot make it out, how it came about that she cut them wrong, for there were hints therein as if the death of you both were awaiting you if you go now; either she missed a letter or another has put them wrong.’—Quoth Hogni: .... The king [Atli] will endow us

28. nytti] emend. ; nitti, R. 48-49. Text unsafe.

with ember-red gold, I am never in doubt, though I do hear any rumour of ill.—Quoth Kostbera; It shall be ill with you if ye go thither now, it will not be a friendly meeting this time. I dreamed, Hogni,—I will not hide it,—that it will go hard with you, and I fear it will be so. I thought thy sheets were burning in the fire, and that a high flame was showering sparks through thy house.—Quoth Hogni.: Here lie linen rags cast off, they will soon be burnt, and they are the sheets thou sawest in thy dream.—Quoth Kostbera : | saw a bear come in and tear up the seat-pillars, he shook his paws so that we were frightened. He held many of us in his mouth so that we could do nothing, there was no small trampling there too.—Quoth Hogni: The weather shall wax and soon grow to a gale; thou didst dream of a white bear, that means a snow-storm from the east.—Quoth Kosthera: 1 dreamed that an eagle flew in, all up the hall, spattering us all with blood, that will certainly bring us ill. I saw from his fierceness that it was the fetch of Atlii—Quoth Hogni : We shall make a big slaughter; then we shall see blood; it often means oxen when we dream of eagles, Atli’s heart is single whatsoever | thou dream.

Then they ceased. Every speech comes to an end.

The well-born [king Gunnar and Gleamwor] awakened, it was the same story with them. Gleamwor said that she had had evil dreams... .

68. heiptom] emend,; heitom, R.

§4.] - ATLA-MAL. © 335

Glaum. Goervan hugda-ek per galga, gengir pti at hanga; Gunn. q. (The answer lost.). gq. byti af-pidsti, peystisk of bekki; warning Gunnar not to go.—Quoth Gleamwor : I dreamed of a gallows set up, and that thou wast going to be hanged thereon. I saw thee eaten”

alive of serpents, so that I lost thee. There came the crack of doom. Tell me what it means.—Quoth Gunnar ; (Answer lost.)—Quoth Gleamwor: I saw a bloody blade drawn out of thy shirt. It is hard to have to tell such dream to a husband, I thought I saw a spear smitten through thy body, while the wolves howled at either side.—Quoth Gunnar ; It was curs running, barking very sharply. The flight of spears often means dogs’ baying.—Quoth Gleamwor ; I thought I saw a river rushing up the hall; it roared with fury, dashing over the benches, and broke the legs of both of you brothers; the water was pitiless. That must mean something.—Quoth Gunnar : There corn-fields shall be waving where thou sawest a river; the awns catch our feet when we walk through a field.—Quoth Gleamwor; 1 thought I saw dead women, poorly clad, come in here to-night; they wished to choose thee, and bade thee come to their hall without tarrying. I fear thy good fairies have dropped away from thee.—Quoth Gunnar ; It is too late to talk ; now it is settled, we cannot escape our doom. We are bound to go now, yea, though it is not unlikely that our lives may be short.

When the dawning showed they all arose and made them ready, but

From the Paraphrase, g6. feigd] emend.; for po, ®.

of - 65°

their wives would have held them back. They went forth five together, and twice as many henchmen—it was ill devised :—+they two, Snowar and Solar, Hogni’s sons ; and Orkning was the name of the last, this blithe hero was Gleamwor’s brother. The fair-clad ladies went with them till the firth parted them ; they would alway have held them back, but they were the more bent on going. Then Gleamwor, whom Gunnar wed, began to speak, talking to Wingi as she thought best: ‘I know not whether ye will reward us according to our desert. It is foul shame to the guest if any ill happens through him [to the host].’ Then Wingi swore, he did not spare himself: ‘May the giants take me if I lie to you; may the gallows have me body and bones if I thought on any breach of faith.’

Bera blithe-hearted began to speak: ‘Sail in safety, and speed ye well! May ye fare as I wish you....’ Lovingly Hogni answered his wife: ‘Comfort you, gallant ladies, whatsoever betide....’ Then they kissed each other ere they turned away; their fates lay apart when their ways parted.

They began to row amain,.... keel....; they bent full on their backs, they waxed very furious, the oar-thongs split, the tholes broke. They did not moor the boat before they turned away. I must tell all

$4.) — ATLA-MAL. 337

Ord kvad pa Vingi, paz 4n vesi: 130 bratt hefi-ek ykr brenda; bragds skolod hceggnir. Ord kvad hitt Hagni,—hugdi litt vega, 135 exar at lagdo, medan { and hixti. 140 -gengo sv goervir at vas gardr milli; urposk 4 ordom allir senn reidir: hatt fyr hallo heyrdo prel segja.

to the end—they could see the hall that Budli owned standing a little farther on. The gate-bars creaked when Hogni shook it.

Up spake Wingi then, he had best held his peace: ‘ Keep off from the house, ye may look for an ill welcome. I shall soon see you burnt, ye shall soon be slaughtered. With fair words I prayed you to come here, but there was falsehood beneath them. Get you gone, unless ye be willing to wait till I cut you a gallows.’—-Up spake Hogni, he had no thought of yielding, he feared nothing that might befall: ‘Never think to frighten us! Thou wilt not! If thou speak another word it will be the worse for thee.’

They thrust at Wingi and smote him to death, they hewed at him with their axes while the breath rattled in his throat.

Atli’s men gathered, and did on their mail-coats; they marched in such wise that the wall was between them. They began to shout to one another, all in wrath together,

Quoth Atli: ‘ We had settled beforehand to take your lives !’—Quoth Hogni: ‘It looks little as if ye settled it beforehand, ye are still unready, and we have slain one of you, smitten him to death; he was one of your host.’ They waxed wroth when they heard those words, they put forth their fingers and took hold on the strings, they shot sharply forth, covering themselves with their shields.

With that there came a message into the hall that told what was doing outside ; they heard a thrall shouting loudly without: ... Gudrun

“see -

Morgin mest v@go, unz midjan dag lfddi, was roused when she heard this bad news; she was laden with necklaces, she tore them all away, she flung the silver down so that every link was snapped asunder. She went out of the hall forthwith; it was not softly that she threw back the doors, it was in no fearful mood that she went out to welcome the new comers. She turned to the Hniflungs—it was their last greeting, and there was earnest in it; moreover, she said, ‘I tried to save you and keep you at home, and yet ye are here. No man can fly from fate.’ She spake wisely, trying to make peace, but they would not be counselled [or accede to it], all of them said No. When the high-born lady saw that the game was a bloody one, she hardened her heart, and threw off her mantle, took a naked sword in her hand and fought for the life of her kinsmen. She was no weakling in the fight, wherever her hand fell; Giuki’s daughter struck down two warriors. She smote Atli’s brother ....she shaped her stroke so that she smote off his foot, and struck down the other so that he never rose again, sending him to hell. Her hand faltered not.

The fight they fought, it was famed far and wide; it was greater than all the other feats of the children of Giuki. It is said that the Hniflungs, as long as they were alive unwounded, never ceased to deal blows with their swords, riving mail-coats and hewing through helmets, as their hearts bade them. They fought all through the morning, through the first watches and the forenoon till mid-day was past—less would be a

158. nifl-, R, here and elsewhere, 175. O-sarir] emend, ; sialfir, Rs

§ 4.] _ ATLA-MAL. 339

good fight—the field was a-swim with blood. The two sons of Bera and her brother slew eighteen. They were the victors.

The hero {Atli] broke into speech, though he was very wroth: ‘It is ill to look on, it is your doing; we were thirty fighting men, but eleven of us are left alive; we are asa remnant from the fire. We were five brethren when Budli died. Hell holds half of us now; two lie smitten down. I made a hard match—it cannot be gainsaid—thou woeful woman, I have little comfort from thee. I have never had rest since thou camest into my hands; thou hast bereft me of my kindred, defrauded me of my wealth, sent’ my sister to death. Needs must I feel it sorely.—Quoth Gudrun; Speakest thou so, Atli, yet thou didst begin it. Thou tookest my mother and murdered her for her riches; my sweet cousin thou didst starve ina cave. It is a laughter to me, that thou talkest of thy wrongs. I thank the Gods that thou farest ill.— Quoth Atli: Now I rouse you all, my men, to heap up hurt on this proud wife of mine; I would fain see it. Do your best to draw tears from Gudrun, I would gladly see her in distress. Take Hogni, and flesh him with a knife, cut out his heart, make you ready! As for the fierce Gunnar, tie him up to the gallows; be not afraid; call the snakes to their meal!

Quoth Hogni: Do thy will, I shall gladly endure it; I shall prove myself steadfast; I have been tried more sorély. Ye were shamefully beaten as long as we were sound, now we are so wounded thou must have thy way.....

Then said Beiti, Atli’s steward: ‘Let us take Hialli and spare Hogni. Let us do half the work only. Hialli is only fit to die, however long he live he will always be known as a good-for-nothing.’ The kettle-keeper was sore afraid, he did not wait, [but ran away and] fell to whimpering, and hid away in every corner he could find, crying that it was a woeful battle indeed if he were to pay for all the hurt done, and a black day when he must die and leave his swine, and all the good fare that he had had. But they took Budli’s cook and lifted up the knife; the coward thrall cried out before he felt the blade, praying them to spare him ; he said that he would be glad if his life were but left him to dung the field, to do the meanest work, if only he might live.

Hogni heard this; few would have done as he did, plead for the thrall that they would let him go: ‘It would trouble me less to play out the play, why should we be made to listen to this screeching ?’? Then they laid hands on the hero; there was no further choice for them to put it off any more. And Hogni laughed, the henchman heard it; he knew how to bear it, he suffered the torture bravely. :

§ 4.] _ ATLA-MAL, 341

bd

“Gunnar took a harp and struck it with his toes, he knew how to play, so that the ladies wept and the men fell a weeping when they heard it.

When he died the day was yet young.....

Atli thought much of this, that he had overcome them both; he spake to the gallant lady and spared not to taunt her: ‘It is still morning and thou hast lost both of those thou lovedst. Much of what has happened is thine own doing.—Quoth Gudrun ; Thou art merry, Atli, giving notice of thy murders. Yet shalt thou rue it if thou try it to the end. A heritage of woe shall remain, I tell thee verily, which will always go ill with thee as long as I live.—Quoth Atii: I will traverse that, I can see another way, better by half. Let us not throw away our good luck: I will atone to thee with gifts of slaves, and costly treasures, and snowwhite silver to thy heart’s content.—Quoth Gudrun: There is no hope of that. I refuse it. I have broken atonements where there was less cause. I was always thought hard to deal with, but now I shall be so; I could put up with everything as long as Hogni was alive. We were brought up in one house, we have played many a play together, we grew up to- . gether in the Grove. Grimhild used to deck us with gold and necklaces.

Thou canst never recompense me for my brothers’ death, nor do any- —

thing to please me. Men’s tyranny often over-rides women’s wishes. The king is mated if the pawns are taken. The tree must fall if the roots be cut; thou shalt have thine own way now, Atli. -

The king believed her, through his over-foolishness, yet the treachery was easy to see if he had paid heed withal. Gudrun was crafty, she knew how to dissemble; she made as if she took it lightly, she played a double game.

They ceased speaking, the banquet was prepared; she made a banquet of ale for the funeral of her brothers, and Atli one for his men. This feast was uproarious; her heart ‘was hardened, she waged war against the race of Budli. She planned too great a vengeance on her husband. |

She called to her children that were tottering about the pillars of the seats, the fierce boys whimpered but they did not weep, they went to their mother’s arms and asked her what she wanted.—Quoth Gudrun : Do not ask me, I mean to kill you both. I have long meant to save you from old age. [The bearing of the boys’ answer not clear,] Try to give rest to thy anger for a little while. The passionate woman slew the two brothers in their childhood—an evil deed it was—she cut both their throats.

alien lla ee ee

§ 4.] ATLA-MAL. 343

But Atli asked where the boys had gone to play, since he saw them not.—Gudrun answered: 1 will tell thee a thing, Atli, that passes all others; I will not hide it from thee. Thy joy shall be minished, Atli, when thou hast heard it all. Thou didst waken no small woes when thou slewest my brethren. I have slept little since they fell. I promised thee evil, I gave thee full warning. It was in the morning that thou didst speak to me, I remember it well [of my brother’s death], now it is evening and it is thy turn to give ear. Thou hast lost thy sons in the worst of ways! know that their skulls have been used as alecups. I eked out thy drink, I mixed it with blood, I took their hearts and roasted them on the spits, and gave them to thee, telling thee they were calves’ hearts. Thou atest them up all, leaving nought; thou didst mumble them greedily, trusting in thy teeth. Thou hast eaten thine own children, the worst fate a man can have. It was my doing, yet I do not boast thereof.— A¢/i said: Cruel indeed thou wast, Gudrun, to do such a deed as to mix my children’s blood with my drink. Thou hast slain thine own children, the worst thing thou couldst do; thou leavest me no peace, evil follows evil. — Quoth Gudrun: I am minded to do more, to slay thee also. One cannot do too much harm to such a king as thou art. Thou hast done deeds such as none have ever done, foolish cruelties in this house; and now thou hast added to it as I have lately heard, falling into great crimes. Thou hast drunk thine own funeral feast.—Quoth Atli: Thou shalt be burnt on a pyre, and stoned to death. Then thou shalt have earned that which thou hast always been seeking.—Quoth Gudrun: Tell to-morrow such prophecies of thyself. I am minded through a seemlier death to pass into another light.

They sat in the same chamber, each bearing a deep grudge against the other, bandying words of hate; neither of them was happy. The Hniflung’s [Hogni’s son’s] wrath waxed high, he planned a mighty revenge, telling Gudrun of his hate for Atli. She remembered how they had dealt with Hogni; she said that she should be happy if she could revenge his father. Within a little space Atli was smitten. Hogni’s son and Gudrun herself smote him.

The king broke into speech; starting from his sleep, he felt his wound and said that he was past need of bandages: ‘Tell me the whole truth, who has smitten the son of Budli. I have been hardly dealt with, I have no hope of life.’-—Quoth-Gudrun : Grimhild’s daughter will not lie to thee. It was my doing that thy life is fleeting, and the doing of Hogni’s son that thy wounds overcome thee. — Quoth Atii : Ye have made haste to slay, though it was wrong of you; it is ill to betray the friend that trusted in thee. I left my home in love to woo

314. Emend. (V); seg mer slikar sorgir ar morgin, R. 315. Emend. (V) ; fridra vil-ek daudra, R.

A ie we

§ 4.] ATLA-MAL. : 345

férom of landi; fylgdom Sigurdi; 355 erkodom at audno, unz ver austr kv®mom. Konung drapom fyrstan; kurom land padra; thee, Gudrun ; thou wast praised in thy widowhood, and renowned for thy pride; it has turned out no lie now that it has come to the proof, Thou didst come home hither and a host of men with us, our company was altogether glorious ; there was a mighty show of noble men, store of cattle, and we had great pleasure therein, there was wealth of money, and many took share thereof. I paid thee the bride-price, abundance of treasure, thirty thralls, seven good bondmaids,—that was an honour to thee,—and silver to boot; but thou didst take all this as if it were nought, unless thou shouldst rule over the land which Budli left me. Thou didst plot [under mine].... Thou didst make thy mother-in-law to sit ofttimes in tears. I never found any household at peace since thy coming.

Quoth Gudrun ; Thou liest now, Atli, though I reck little thereof. I was seldom easy to deal with, but thou didst magnify my wrath. Ye young brethren fought with one another, strife arose between you, the half of thy house went to hell thereby; all that should have been peaceful quivered with hate. We were three, brothers and sisters, deemed unyielding; we went abroad and followed Sigurd, we roved about, every one steering his own ship; we set forth to seek adventures, until we came to the east [here]. Before that we slew kings, and divided their lands; the nobles did homage to us, in token of their terror of us.

We inlawed by force those whom we would justify, and filled him that

• had nought with good things. When the Hunnish king [Sigurd] died, our glory departed in a moment. Sore grief was mine to be called a widow, bitter pain to me to come into Atli’s household. A champion was my first husband, his loss was ill to bear; but thou, as far as I know, never camest from the Court, whether thou wast pleading thy suit or sitting on the suit of another—thou couldst never carry it, or hold thine Own..... —Quoth Aili: Thou liest, Gudrun, there is little to choose between our lots, our lives now are maimed altogether. But I pray thee, Gudrun, entreat me honourably when they bear me out [to bury me].—Quoth Gudrun: 1 will buy thee a ship and a stained coffin, I will wax the sheet well that shall shroud thy body, and provide all ‘that is needful, as if we had loved one another.

Now Atli became a corpse; the grief of kinsmen was pies the high-born lady fulfilled all that she had promised. The wise Gudrun tried to slay herself, but she was respited; she died another time.

Poet’s Epilogue: Happy is he that shall beget such a bold lady as Giuki begat. The TALE of their QUARREL [Gudrun’s and Atli’s] shall live after them, in every land, wheresoever men hear it told.

363. namn] nam, R. 367. slekpir, R. 369. Blank in R.

ain ee ee a ee ey cantieieliee a! eeee

§ 4.] FRAGMENT OF AN ATLI LAY. 347

FRAGMENT OF AN ATLI LAY.

THIs little fragment is found tacked on to the Old Lay of Gudrun (p. 316), from which it differs in both style and metre: whereas its whole character is near in kind to di/a-ma/. But that the metre is not exactly the same, one would have supposed it a piece somehow dropped out of that poem. And one would be led to favour that conjecture the more from the fact that there seems to be something lacking in Atlamal, just where the poet would be dealing with the same subject as our fragment here.

Asa piece of, at all events, a parallel Lay, we have placed it here.

Gudrun speaks ; ATLI woke me, but I lay thinking, full of evil designs, - on my kinsmen’s death.—Said Atli: The Norns have just waked me with forebodings of evil. I would have thee interpret them. I dreamed that thou, Gudrun, Giuki’s daughter, thrust me through with a poisoned sword,—Gudrun answered ; To dream of iron means fire, to dream of a woman’s anger means sickness and sorrow.... I shall blister thee against some sickness, heal thee, and nurse thee, though thou art.... to me.—Said Atli: 1 dreamed that there fell down in the croft two saplings, which I would not have seen withered, torn up by the roots, red with blood; they were laid on the table, and ye bade me eat them. I dreamed that two hawks flew off my hand famished for food into....

Alli Lega-ek sidan, ne sofa vildak,

§s. THE HUNS’ CYCLE.

HLOD AND ANGANTHEOW’S LAY.

In the introduction to the Battle of Samsey and the Waking of Angantheow (Book iii. § 1, p. 159), the first part of the Angantheow cycle has been told, down to the death of King Heidrek the Riddle-wise, with whom Woden capped riddles (see Book ii. § 1, p. 86). Woden’s prophecy came true. Heidrek was slain by his own thralls, with his own sword Tyrfing. He left an Amazon daughter, a second Herwor, and a son, Angantheow the Second (called after his great grandfather), by his wife; and by his bondmaid the daughter of Humbli, king of the Huns, a bastard named Hlod. Angantheow recovers the sword from the thralls and takes the kingdom of Arham, ruling at Danpstead after his father. Hlod comes from the court of his grandfather, Humbli, to claim his share of the heritage. Angantheow will not acknowledge his right, but offers him wealth and favour. All might have gone well but for Angantheow’s old counsellor, Gizur, king of the Greothings, who rouses Hlod’s pride and Angantheow’s anger. Snorri (1238) makes Gizur to be Wodenin disguise, who eggs the kings against each other,—an evil mentor. (See Hakonar S., Rolls Ed., ch. 194.) Whether Woden or no, he has wakened war. Messages of defiance pass between Goths and Huns, and on Dunheath at Dylgy is fought a famous fight between countless hosts of either king. Herwor is slain, Hlod is wounded to death by Tyrfing, and the Goths remain the victors. Anganthéow’s last interview on the battle-field with his dying brother is touching, and closes the scene. The

. curse of Tyrfing is working still. Hauks-book fails us for these poems;

I dreamed that in sorrowful mood I ate their hearts, all full of blood, dressed with honey. I dreamed that I slipped two whelps from my hand, they were mute, they both..... I dreamed that they were turned to carrion, and that I was forced to eat them, though it was a sin to do it.— Gudrun answered ; Men will soon be fixing the slaughtering [the autumn butchery for the winter’s food] and shall cut off the heads of two young white bears, the household will feed on their carcases a few nights hence.....

Atli went on: Afterwards I lay, without being able to sleep, hard put

“a

~—

§ 5.] HLOD AND ANGANTHEOW’S LAY. 349

‘the B vellum (Cod. Reg. 2845) helps us down to I. 37, after which we depend upon bad copies from what was probably a blotted and fading vellum. Much of the poem is in so bad a state that we have printed it in small type. The end verses are again clearer.

Saxo knew fragments of this poem, and paraphrases the story. For ll. 98-103 see Appendix. Skioldunga also contained a paraphrase of part of it. The poem is interesting historically, as containing faint reminiscences of the great wars between Goths and Huns in the east of Europe. Such words as Danp (Danube or Dnieper) and Harvada-fioll (Carpathian Hills) have survived in it to the eleventh century.

The readings borrowed from the copies of Hauks-book we mark a.

In the days of old, they say Humli ruled the Huns, Gizur the Greothings, Angantheow the Goths, Waldar the Danes, and Kiar the Welsh [Gauls], Alrick the Bold the English people. It was then that Hlod was born in Hunland on the Holy Mark, with knife and with sword, with long mail-coat, with ring-fitted helm, and the whetted brand, and well-broken war-horse.

Hlod, Heidrek’s heir, rode from the East; he came to the Hall in Arham, where the Goths dwell, to seek his inheritance, where Angantheow was drinking the arval over Heidrek. He found a warrior outside before the high hall, and spoke to the late roamer: ‘Go in, man, to the high hall; ask Angantheow to talk with me.’

The Warder goes into the Hall, and spake to Angantheow, saying: ‘Hlod, Heidrek’s heir, is come hither, thy bastard brother; the young man sits high on his horse’s back, he wishes to speak with thee, O king.’

There was an uproar in the hall, a stir among the Goths, every one

1. Hinom] a; fyr her, B. 2. Grytingom] emend.; Gautom, B, 18. bed-skami] thus B, — 21, Gotom] godom, B. «

wished to hear what Hlod wanted, and what answer Angantheow would make.

Then Hlod came in and said: 1 will have half of all that Heidrek owned ; of cow and calf, and the murmuring hand-mill, of awl and of edge .... of bondwomen and thralls and their children; the famous Forest that is called Mirkwood, the Holy Grave that stands in Gothland, the famous Stone that stands in Danpstead, half the war-harness that Heidrek owned, the land and folk and bright rings.

Angantheow made answer : The white-shining shield shall be cloven, —

brother, and cold spear strike on spear, and many a man sink to the grass, before I give thee half of the heritage, or cut Tyrfing in two between us, thou son of Humli. I will offer thee fair rings, wealth and treasures in plenty, as many as thou couldst wish. I will give thee twelve hundred men, I will give thee twelve hundred horses, I will give thee twelve hundred grooms to bear their shields. I will give every man.... I will give a maid to every man, and to every maid a necklace to clasp her neck. I will measure thee in silver as thou sittest, and cover thee goto piodar, B. 31. her-borgir] a; heruodir, B. 34. B om. this verse.

! /

(a a eae SaaS: a Claim

—

HLOD AND ANGANTHEOW’S LAY.

‘gnefar’ ydur gunnfani, gramr er ydr with gold as thou standest,.so that the rings shall roll all over thee; the third part of the Gothic people for thee to rule alone.

Then Gizur, the hero of the Greothings, Heidrek’s foster-father ,when he heard this» offer, said: This is surely an offer to be taken by a bondwoman’s son, by a bondwoman’s son; yea, though he is | begotten by a KMS Sines

Hence only a partial translation :

Hlod, angry at Gizur’s words, refuses Angantheow’s offer, and goes home to his grandfather Humli, who agrees to help him to avenge him on his half-brother, saying, ‘{We will go forth with the full war-levy] with men twelve winters old, and foals two winters old!’

_Wormbere is sent to bid defiance to Angantheow ; he says; 1am come from the south to tell thee this message; all the march is burnt up and the forest of Mirkwood, all Gothland is soaked with the blood of men. [TAy sister is slain], she that was merrier in the battle than when she talked with her wooers, or walked to the bench at a bridal.

When Angantheow in his anger offered a reward to him that would go and pitch a battle-ground against the Huns, Gizur said: 1 will never ask thee tor a single ounce, nor the ringing shard of gold [dut will go gladly|. Where shall I challenge the Huns to battle?

Angantheow answered ; Challenge them to Dylgy, and to Dunheath, and under Iosur-fells, where the Goths have often fought and gained a glorious victory.

Gizur accordingly challenges the Huns and casts his spear against them: Your ranks are panic-stricken, your king is doomed, your war-banner droops, Woden is wroth with you! I challenge you to Dylgy and to hresi ydr & ha hverri, [meeli, Miki’

Humili q. [saman.

FRAGMENT OF AN ANGANTHEOW LAY.

Dunheath, to battle under Iosur-fell,....and may Woden let the javelin fly according to my words.—Cried Hlod: Take Gizur, Angantheow’s man of Arham!—Humbli: Nay, never hurt a single man !— Gizur: Your Bastards shall not frighten us out of our wits.

He comes back and tells his lord; Great is the company of them! There are sixteen hosts of men, in every host five thousand, in every thousand thirteen hundred, in every hundred four times forty men.

The Battle was fought. Hlod was wounded to death, and Angantheow came where he lay and spake to him: 1 offered thee, brother, wealth unstinted, riches and store of wealth, as thy heart could most fully desire. Now thou hast neither the bright rings nor yet the land as battle-wages.

There is a curse on us, brother. I was ordained to be thy slayer—it shall never be forgotten! Evil was the Doom of the Fates. ?

When Angantheow was wandering through the woods after his father’s murder, he came on some runaway thralls fishing in a river. One of them caught a big pike, and called for the knife to cut off its head, saying as he used it—

Tuis pike hath paid here at Grafe-mouth, for the slaughter of Heidrek under the Carpathian hills. In the gleaming blade Angantheow recognised the lost Tyrfing, and knew that the thralls were his father’s murderers. He therefore caught up the sword, and slew them with it. But in regaining the sword, he brought the curse that accompanied it upon himself.

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§ 6] HEROIC MUSTER-ROLLS. 353

§6. HEROIC MUSTER-ROLLS.

THERE are here printed the remains of a class of compositions, of which the chief example must have been the Catalogue of the Heroés at the Battle of Bravailia, which was to the early Scandinavians what the struggle at Troy was to the Greeks. The names of the Heroes are, for the help of the memory, thrown into a chain of alliterative couplets, just as we now roughly index things in alphabetic order. The Thulor-compilers applied the same system to their lists of words in a later age.

The original poem on the Bravalla-battle, besides the Catalogue (which is of an Homeric character, giving information respecting the names and nicknames of over fifty heroes, their countries, and their place in the battle-array), seems to have dealt with the struggle itself. We have two prose paraphrases, one in Latin, by Saxo, Book ix. 11, which is amplified in that author’s usual style, even Icelanders being introduced; the other, in Skioldunga, we print here :—

But besides this, we have in the spurious poems of the Mythical Sagas Lists of Champions which are manifestly the echoes of genuine older verse, and may probably contain passages borrowed from them. Of these we have the list of Half’s Champions, No. 1, which is the nearest of all to the Bravalla Catalogue. No. 2, the List in the Death-Song

1 Emend.; Tollus Steinn, Cd. 2 An echo from Try®gvason and Swolder. Aa of Hialmar (as in Orvar-Odd’s Saga) of ‘the mighty men that sit in the hall of my father.’ No. 3, the List of Wickings in the Lay (late and imitative, see Book ix) of Asbiorn the Proud. No. 4, one of the late and spurious fragments relating to Starkad in Gautrik’s Saga. Far more interesting than any of these would have been the poem on the Crew of the Long Serpent which has been used for the prose lists of King Olaf Tryggvason’s mighty men in the Book of Kings. Of this there are five recensions, three in Odd, one in the Heimskringla text, one in the full Life of the King; they should some day be carefully harmonised and edited. They tell, like the Bravalla Catalogue, the names, homes, and quarters of some forty-five of King Olaf’s picked guard, —a bird’s eye view as it were of Norwegian politics and patriotism. The splendid roll of the Conquerors and their exploits in Wace’s spirited account of the fight at Senlake will at once strike the reader as a later parallel.

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FRAGMENT OF A STARKAD LAY.

IV.

FRAGMENT OF A STARKAD LAY.

PRESERVED in Skalda, part of a poem paraphrased by Saxo; see Appendix, in which the Danish hero reviews his past life and exploits. Our lines answer to Saxo’s ll. 118, rrg.

we

OF all human warriors this is the strongest I ever met.

BOOK; Vi.

SCHOLIA,

TuIs Book contains a small anthology of Ditties or Scholia, spontaneous improvisations of a popular character; these are classified according to metre and subject. More ditties of a like kind might be picked out of Sturla’s work, but we suspect their authenticity; they have the look of book-made, not spontaneous ditties, and there is a flatness and sameness about them: are they by Sturla himself?

SECTION 1 comprises the scholia proper, in epic short metre, with few exceptions, No. 13a in didactic metre; with rhymes Nos. 1, 2, 18, 28, 30, 35, 38, 42, 46, 48, 50, 55, 60, 61-65, Nos. 22, 61, 67-69 with end rhymes (No. 71, without alliteration, stands alone as a modern ballad), arranged as follows :—

Nos. 1 to 14: Ditties referring to myths, ghosts, dreams, goblins, etc.

Nos. 15 to 36: Improvisations of historical or anecdotic interest touching Icelanders.

Nos. 37 to 56 are of a like character, but refer to Norwegian history.

Nos. 57 to 71: Epigrams and Satires, ‘nid,’ ‘flimt,’ ‘ qvidling,’ ‘danz,’ as they are called; see Dict. sub voce danz, p. 96.

No. 72 sqq.: Epitaphs on Rune-stones, all, save the Norwegian No. 80, from Sweden.

SECTION 2, Compositions of a song-like or lyrical character in a marked and rare metre, which we may style the Turf-Einar metre, a metre which forms a link between the Epic of earlier and the courtmetres of later times. We have set first Turf-Einar’s own Poem, and after it a few snatches and staves of Wicking song.

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§ 1. DITTIES.

By rough estimate we should put Nos. 1-11, 15-35, 37-41, 57-63 to the tenth century [900-1010], Nos. 12, 42-48, 72 sqq. to the eleventh, Nos. 13, 14, 49-55 to the twelfth, and Nos. 56, 66-71 to the thirteenth century. Of several the age must be doubtful.

I. Mythical, Ghosts, Dreams.

1. Poet and Ogress, emblems as it were of the two spirits of Destruction and Creation, meet in the twilight and hail one another—Who art thou? The Monster answers: They call me Troll [fiend]: Gnawer of the Moon, Giant of the gale-blasts, Curse of the rain-hall [heaven], Companion of the Sibyl, Night-roaming hag, Swallower of the loaf of heaven’ [sun]. What isa Fiend but that? Says Bragi: They call me Poet: Mixer of Woden’s wine, Finder of Woden’s gift, guileless Bard, Bearer of Woden’s ale, Brewer of Modi’s inspiration, Craftsman of song. What is a Poet but that?

2. 4 proverb (relating to some adventure, the tale of which is lost), quoted by Sturla as ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferenteis :’ I dare not trust thee, fiend! quoth Hoskold. |

3. The many-tailed Goblin-Vixen (like the Vampire-Cat of Nabeshima), an Icelandic Bogie: Here comes Gryla down to the farmyard, with fifteen brushes behind her, son pinn, kona, seldan Odni. Halfs S., ch. 1.

4. A merman is caught, they try to get good counsel from him (as Menelaos does from Proteus), asking him what is best, but he will not speak till they promise to let him go again, then he cries out: Cold water for the eyes! Flesh for the teeth! Linen for the body! Put me back in the sea. No man shall draw me up to his boat from the bottom of the deep again.

5. King Alrek promised to marry which of two ladies brewed him the best ale. Signy prayed to Freya, but Geirhild vowed to Woden what was between her and the brewing-vat. When it came to trying the ale, hers proved the best, and King Alrek cried: Geirhild, my girl, good is thine ale, if there be no curse on it; but I can see thy son, woman, hanging on a high gallows given to Woden. For Geirhild was with child. Her son Wikar afterwards met the predicted fate.

6. A Brobdignagian story, the hero Arrow-Ord in Giant-land dandled by the Giantess, who sings this lullaby: Little babe with tufted chin. Godmund, born yesterday [the giant-child], was bigger than thee.

7. Before the burning of Nial dire portents are seen. One night there appeared in the west a halo of fire, in the midst of which was a dark form on a grey steed whirling lighted firebrands in his hands, as be sped swiftly through the air. As he dashed past the horror-stricken gazers, he shouted: I ride a steed with rimy mane and dewy crest, and evil foreboding. Then, as he hurls his brands through the air, he goes on,—There is fire at the ends and poison in the midst thereof. Flosi’s plans run like a roller.

8. The shepherd hears a voice from the earth at Geirvor-shore, where a battle is to be fought. Geirvor is reddened with the blood of men. She shail hide the skulls of men.

$1] MYTHICAL. 359

9. A voice heard from a cloak hung up to dry: Hoodie-cloak hangs wet on the wall, washed and set to dry. She knows a ‘braid.’ I will not say she does not know two. :

10. The fetch of a doomed man sings: Let those that think themselves the best strive to beware of Snorri’s wiles. But no one can beware; Snorri is so cunning.

11. The ghost on the housetop beckoning his friends up to avenge him on his slayers: 1 sit on the house and look down on the game, hence will come revenge for me. To the south, to the south, thither go we! It is here! It is here! Why should we go farther? Later on he cries ; There is a din over all Swarfad’s dale, our friends are at the slaughter. Push on! Push on, Charles’ men! Let Liotolf the chief lie under the stone-heap !

12. A king hears of a yeoman who knows the language of birds ; he sends his men to kill his horse secretly and bring the head to him, then he bids them fetch the old man. When he comes he seats him on the skull and talks to him as he rows. While they are talking a crow flies over their heads cawing ; the yeoman is rather disturbed. A second follows the first ; the old man drops his oar in astonishment. But when the third flies by, cawing louder than the rest, he springs to his feet in his agitation. What is the matter? says the king. The old man replies: This year’s bird speaks ; she knows nothing! The two year old bird speaks, but I don’t believe her either. The three year old bird speaks, but I don’t think it likely: she says I am sitting rowing on my mare’s skull, and that thou, O

king, art the thief of my cattle! -

Il. Historical and Anecdotic of Icelanders.

r% Tveir ro inni—trui-ek bddom vel—

13. In 1209 a man in Selardale in Iceland dreams that he sees a black hideous-looking man, who says: My name is the Death that walks. I go among mankind. I am no appeaser of treasons; I will slay men with dismal death and batten on their corses. He wakes, but falls asleep again and sees the same figure, who sings to him: Lo, where the souls of sinful men are fluttering between the worlds! Spirits are being tortured in the jaws of the Serpent, the mighty sun quivers; I bid thee awake.

14. 4 vision of two Walkyries (degraded to hags, like Shakespere’s weird sisters) sitting blood-dabbled in a hail rocking sideways, while a shower of blood drips on them through the luffer. One of them sings: Let us rock, let us rock, it is raining blood. War and Battle are we, before the fall of men. Let us go to Raft-lithe, where we shall be cursed and banned, Another man dreams he sees two men clad in black with grey hoods in a little room, sitting on a bench hand in hand, rocking backwards and forwards so violently that the walls tottered and were nigh to fall, and while they rocked they sung: Men deal hard blows and the walls are tottering. Peace does not hold long when we Greyhoods [Woden and his mate?] come in. Deeds, in which is no honour, shall be reckoned up when men meet at the last day. Like the former visions, these portents refer to the Civil Wars of Iceland.

15. King Hior’s wife gave birth to two sons while he was away warring, one called Geirmund, the other Hamund; her bondmaid bore a son called Leif. He was so fair and the twins so dark-skinned, that the queen changed sons with her, and the young thrall was brought up as a prince. One day, while all the men were out hunting and the women nutting, the three boys were playing in the empty hall, and no one by but old Bragi the poet. Seeing the boldness of the twins and the cowardice of Leif, he went up to the dais-curtain behind which the queen was sitting, and touched it with his staff, saying: There are two here whom I trust well, both

§1.] , HISTORICAL. 361

bana-ord—Bldstu meirr! Landn. iv. 12.

of them, Hamund and Geirmund, Hior’s sons; but as for the third, Leif, Shag-hood’s son, none viler could be. Thou didst not bear him, queen! So the queen took heart of grace and presented her two black boys to the king when he came home. ‘Take them away, said he,‘ I never saw tavo such Hell-skins.’ But the Hell-skins grew up famous men, and after lives of war settled and founded a notable family in Iceland.

16.-Wemund, a great smith and renowned fighting-man, chaunts at his forge, to his brother, who blows his bellows: 1 alone have overcome and slain eleven men! Blow harder thou!

17. Hallstan, sailing out to his heritage in Iceland, after his father Thengil’s death, cries as he makes the haven and sees the dark gloomy hills and fair green slopes: The Hill o’ Head is mourning, for Thengil is dead, but the hill-sides are laughing to greet Hallstan.

18. Thori, leaving his old home Kaldakinn and sailing off to find another settlement, looks back to land and cries to his captain, Helm-Gaut: There lies Cold-Side for ever, master! But we two, mess-mate Helm-Gaut, are sailing safely away.

19. Thorleif the Earls poet and his brother Olaf had been gathering herbs for dyeing on Boggwi’s land; Boggwi hacked the herb-bag in pieces in his anger at their trespass, whereon Thorleif said; Barleycorn [Boeggvir] hacked my neat bag in pieces and Olaf’s strap and gaberdine, so shall Barleycorn be miserably hacked in pieces in the same way if we live. Hence arose the Swarfdale tale.

20. A prophecy from a dream of Snowbiorn, portending woe to the early explorers of Greenland. 1 foresee the death of both of us; it is altogether veit-ek af sliko Snzbiarn veginn.

Landn., (Hauksbok) ii. 8.

dismal north-west in the ocean; frost and cold and horrors on all sides. I think that Snowbiorn will be slain by them.

21. Heriwolf, when a boy, slew a wood-bear because it had killed one of his goats, whence came the ditty; Bear the burnt-buttocked bit Heriwolf’s goat, but Heriwolf the rough-buttocked revenged the goat upon Bear.

22. The song of the cairn-breaker. 1 leaped into the old barrow; I did not sleep late into the morning; I carried away the clasp of Corn’s belt. Thorarin Corn was a noted hero of the Settlement days.

23. 4 ditty on the beautiful Ingolf, the fairest man in all the North: All the maids wished to go with Ingolf, they that were full-grown. ‘Woe is me, I am too young,’ says the child. ‘1 too,’ says the old crone, ‘will go with Ingolf as long as two teeth dangle in my upper gums.’

24. Two champions swimming a match, Steinar Dallasson tears the bag of charms off Bersi’s neck, and cries: 1 have lived long; I have let the gods have their way. I have never worn a murrey stocking about my neck, 1 have never carried a bag at my neck full of charms, yet I am still alive. -

25. Bersi the old champion is lying in the hall alone with Halldor the baby, while all the household are out haymaking. The baby tumbles out of his cradle and lies sprawling on the floor, but Bersi is bed-ridden and cannot pick him up. He looks at him and cries: We are both of us lying helpless on the floor, Halldor and I. Youth is the matter with thee, and old age with me. Thou wilt get better, but I never shall. ~

ENP

§1.] HISTORICAL. 363

eino { Drafni at Johannis-kirkjo. 110 Kristni Saga, ch, 12.

32. Vel kann Skapti skilja, skaut Asgrimr spidti, villat Holmsteinn flyja, vegr Porketill naudigr. Niala, ch. 146.

26. Egil in his old age lying at the hearth thrusting his feet close up to the fire. The servants tell him he is in their way. He answers: Here are two frozen widows [heels]: poor women, they need the fire ! [c. 990].

27. Thrain’s cry of defiance as his good ship the Vulture runs out to sea out of the king’s power with the prisoner whom he has saved on board : Let us make the Vulture fly. Thrain will never quail.

28. Skeggi cuts with his sword Warflame at Gisli, at their wager of battle on Saxey, and shouts: Warflame is whistling, gladdened, is Saxey. Gisli answers with a blow of his halberd which hews off Skeggi’s foot, The carrion-halberd quivers, as | cut at Skeggi; and Skeggi limps home with a wooden leg.

29. Thorkettle, Gisli’s brother, as he overhears the women’s gossip which causes all the lifelong misery of Gisli, says: Hearken to a great marvel! hearken to words of doom! hearken to a great speech! hearken to the doom of men, of one or more!

30. Gish and Thorgrim are playing at curling; Thorgrim is tumbled down roughly, and gets up in anger, muttering, in allusion to a past quarrel: The spear clashes in the wounds of men, and right it is that it should do so. Gisli strikes the ball so that it hits Thorgrim between the shoulders and fells him, saying: The ball bursts on the shoulders of men; and right it is that it should do so.

31. Brand the traveller tells of the grave of Thorwald Kodransson, the famous missionary to Iceland: 1 have been where Christ gives rest to Thorwald Kodransson. He is buried on a certain high mountain at John’s Church of Dramn [in Russia].

32. Snorri’s epigram on the battle at the Althing : Skapti [the speaker] knows it well, it was Asgrim [who wounded Skapti] shot the spear. Holmstein would not flee, but Thorkettle fightg against his will [c. toro].

Historical and Anecdotic of Norsemen.

33. Thorgils finds an oar floating on the sea off Greenland, on the blade of which was cut this verse in runes: 1 was no laggard when I was pulling thee all day on the gunwale; it made my hands sore, whilst the stay-athome [the man the sailor is mocking] was hammering at the red- hot iron.

34. One of Karlsefni’s men in America calls to Karlsefni about a one- Sooted man whom they had found and given chase to; The men chased a One-F ooter down to the shore, (my tale.is very true); but the strange fellow ran as hard as he could over the stubbles. Listen, Karlsefni !

35. An old Icelandic ditty on love: The eyes tell the tale if a woman loves a man. :

36. A dream in which a woman appears on horseback bewailing in a verse the lost freedom of Iceland: Times were better when Brand the open-handed and the son of Skati swayed the rings, but now King Hakon and his sons rule the land, and long will they do so [c. 1260].

37. The Hord Warlock Witgeir reproached for his witchcraft, answers the King Harold Fairhair: It is little hurt though we yeomen’s sons and old wives work witchcraft, since Harold’s proud son Reginwald Spindle-shanks works witchcraft in Hadeland.

38. Earl Einar of the Orkneys slew two Wickings, Thori Wood-beard and Calf Scurf, and boasted of it: He gave Woodbeard to the Fiends, yea, Turf-Einar slew Scurf [c. 920].

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§1.] HISTORICAL. 365

39. Popular ditty on the beauty of King Harold Greyfell, Gundhild’s scn: My eyes are ever drawn across the fire towards Greyfell [c. 970-976].

40. Wigfus carries a huge club into the battle against the loms-Wickings ; Earl Hakon asks him what it is for;~he answers: 1 hold in my hand ready for head-breakjng the breaker of Bui’s bones, the bane of Sigwald [4e and Bui are the two Wicking leaders], the woe of the Wickings, the buckler of Hakon. This oak club, if I live, shall be a curse to the Danes [c. 980].

41. Hrut, one of the Toms-Wickings, after the battle in which their power was broken, is led a prisoner to be beheaded. As he walks to the log, he says ; 1 gave the earl a scar last spring, it was my turn then, but now itishis. |

42. The boy Harold fled after the battle of Sticklestead in which his brother St. Olaf had fallen, and while he was lurking about in hiding, till he could leave the country, he was heard one day to hum over to himself: 1 am creeping now from copse to copse in little honour enough, who knows but later on I may become a famous man! [c. 1030].

43. A franklin who cannot get audience of King Magnus, son of St. Olaf, grows wrath and shouts to him across the crowd of courtiers: Speak to me, King Magnus, for I was in thy father’s following, and bore my head off hacked from the spot where they put the king to death. But thou lovest this wretched set, the traitors who made the Devil laugh! For among these courtiers were St. Olaf’s slayers [c. 1038].

44. King Harold the Stern on one of his forays in Denmark escapes from the Danes by a stratagem, so that it became a proverb in his camp, Harold bolted out of the hands of the Danes [c. 1054],

45. Framm gango ver f fylkingo brynjo-lausir und blar eggjar, hialmar skina,—hefkat-ek mina, 150

45. King Harold’s last verses, which he sung as he saw the English march upon him on the morning of the battle at Stamford Bridge: Forth we march in battle-array without our mailcoats against the blue edges; helmets are glittering, but I have not mine; our rigging is lying down at the ships [c. 1066].

46. The motto of Harold’s son, Olaf the peaceful [died 1093]: I like the farmers best, tilled land, and standing peace.

47 King Magnus Bareleg chases the rebels of whom Thori is chief. As his ship comes up with theirs, a king’s man halloos, ‘What cheer, Thori?’ ‘ Hale hands, but tottery legs,’ answers he. When Thori was taken and led to the gallows, he looked up at them and said: We were four messmates, we put one at the helm [c. 1094].

48. Magnus Bareleg is harrying in Gautland; his men, eager for battle, make the ditty: Ingi Broad-buttocks [the Swedish king] is long coming down! [c. 1095].

49. Ingomar of Ash, one of the first victims of the Civil Wars, doomed to death at the battle at Fyrileif [1134], bemoans himself: The Devils egged me to Fyrileif; I never wished to go into battle. The arrows of the elm bow have bitten me; I shall never get home to Ash again.

50. A ditty made on the cowardice of Worm at a battle in one of Sigurd Ill-deacon’s forays: He did not quit him well at Portyria, Water- Worm! [c. 1139].

51. A stave of Sigurd Ill-deacon about his merry days when he lived in the waste with the Fins: There was mirth in the wigwam when we were drinking merrily, and the joyous prince [myself] was walking

§1.] HISTORICAL. 364

55 4. Esa sem kol-vid klidfi karl sa-es vegr at iarli. Sverris Saga, ch. 47.

between the benches [from friend to friend]; there was no lack of sport at our drinking bouts; man pledged man, where I was then.

52. Sigurd’s boat was so fast that nothing could catch her, as his ditty runs: Few can follow the Haloga-land boat; she flies under sail, the sinew-sewn craft [c. 1137-1139].

53. A girl falls into a well ona cold autumn day, and comes dripping into the hall where Earl Rognwald is, her teeth chattering so that she can hardly’ speak. But the Earl says that he can interpret her words..... Asa, atatatta! is dripping with water; hotar-totta! when shall I sit close to the fire? I am very cold [c. 1148].

54. While the Earl lay at Acre on his crusade, his poet, Thorbiorn the black, died. His friend and fellow-poet, Oddi the Little, a Shetlander, made these verses on him: The war-ship of the lords bore Thorbiorn the black past Thrasness [Cape St. Angelo]. The plank-bear [ship] trod the field of Ati [sea] under the chief poet as far as Acre. I saw the Earl’s friend sprinkled with sand at the head church there. The stony sunblest earth is now weighing upon him in the South lands [c. 1152].

55. Swerri in one of his speeches quotes this ditty, applying it to the careless'and lukewarm politicians of his day: 1 mean to have the lovely fair-mouthed Ingunn, no matter how things are shared between Magnus and Swerri.—In another speech he quotes: Fighting an earl is other-guess work than chopping fire-wood! [c. 1180].

56. In the civil war between King Hakon and Duke Skuli, Snowbiorn, an Orkney chief and Skuli’s partisan and steward, is taken prisoner, and cries : Never more shall I, though I live for ever, agk for a stewardship on

Ill. Lpigrammatic (nid, kviblingar, danzar).

57. Hefir barn borit biskop nio,

Niala and Libellus Islandorum.

Kristni Saga, ch. 12.

62. | Hverso pykkja ketils per, Kormakr, ormar?— 195

South More, for foemen carried me thence to Bergen by the king’s command [1240].

57. The libellous satire made on the missionary bishop Frederick and bis Jriend Thorwald by the heathen Icelanders: The bishop has borne nine children, Thorwald was the father of them all [c. 980].

58. Hiallti Skeggisson makes this epigram on the heathen gods in full Moot, for which blasphemy he was outlawed: 1 do not refrain from mocking the gods. Freya seems to mea bitch. One of the two will ever be a bitch, Woden or Freya [c. 999].

59. Stephen, in his wrath on the betrayers of King Olaf Tryggvisson, makes this satire on Earl Sigwald, for which he is put to death; 1 will not name him, but I will point clearly at him; a crooked nose the nithing has. He decoyed King Sweyn [Forkbeard] out of his land, and drew Tryggvisson into the toils [c. roor].

60. Thorhild the poetess seeing her husband Thrain looking at another lady at a wedding-feast, calls out to him: ‘Thy gaping is not good, lust is in thine eyes;’ for which aspersion he divorced her |c. 974].

61. Gunnlaug Snake-Tongue on one of King Aithelred the Unready’s henchmen; There is a certain henchman, who is very mean, trust him little, he is ill-looking and dark [c. 1006].

62. The cook pulls out a string of sausages and shows them to Kormak the poet: How do you like the snakes of the kettle, Kormak? The son of Ogmund [i.e. I] is very fond of boiled suet-meat, answered he [c. 960].

$1] EPIGRAMMATIC. 369

sem Sigurdr syr, s4 vas pinn fadir. Konunga S. (Harald Hardrada).

Sturlunga i, ch, 10.

63. Harold the Stern, sitting at meat with his men, tries to get a laugh out of Thori of Steig, and cries to him in verse—Hold thy peace, Thori! thou art a self-willed fellow! I have heard that thy father was called Guest the Pilferer. hori caps him with—Though my father was called Guest the Pilferer, he never put covers on his mares’ rumps as Sigurd Sow did, who was thy father,

64. The satire made on Ingimund at the riotous banquet at Rykholar in
65. See Sturlunga Saga.

65. Mock made of the chief Haflidi when he was wounded at the fray at the Althing in 1120. There are three fingers, would there were more, cut off the chief’s hand. He is a regular ‘cripple’ now.

66. Epigram made on Thormod’s cowardly behaviour. Everybody (I have heard tell) wept Balder out of hell (that was a great marvel) ; but Thormod cried louder still, when he yielded himself. That is true indeed [year 1197].

67. Epigram by Magnus the priest on Bergthor’s ill success in wooing, e.1200, There lives a buxom maid out at CIfff (so runs my song).

Bb

Hrafns Saga, ch. 7. 68. From gildan grepp Ioseppi, ‘Hrafns Saga, ch. 13. 69. Upp skaltu 4 kiaol klffa, kald er seevar drifa; kostadu hug pinn herda, her skaltu lifit verda: Sturlunga vii. ch. 143. 70. Loptr er { Eyjom bitr lunda-bein: 230 Sturlunga vii. ch. 44.

Sturlunga vii. ch. 329- IV. Ditties on Runic Stones in Sweden and Norway (11th century).

44. Her ma standa stain midli bua,-

He [the lover] is sad at heart. They brought home with them a fit parting-gift. ‘There was a dog with the men on their way. »

68. A ditty made in Iceland on the removal of a pauper. Let us carry the pauper to Joseph. Let him bear rule over Southwick.

69. A sailor’s boat has been capsized, they call to him. Thou must climb up on to the keel, cold is the drift of the sea. Keep a bold heart, thou must lose thy life here. Never whimper, o/d baldhead, though a shower fall upon thee; thou hast had maiden’s love in thy time. ‘A man must die sometime.’ Quoted after the fight of Orlygsstead, Aug. 21, 1238, by Thori, who was stepping up to the block to be beheaded.

70. Two chiefs quarrel, and their feud runs so high that they go of where they may be out of each other’s way, whence the ditty is made. Loft is in the Islands [Westmen’s Isles] picking puffin bones, Semund in the Deserts eating nought but berries [year 1221].

71. Quotation made by Thord, Sept. 27,1264, just before he is put to death. My sorrows are heavy as lead.

72. On the grave of Sweyn: ‘ Sigrid let raise this stone over Sweyn her husband.’ He often sailed to Singallia on a dear bark by Dumisness [the south cape of the entrance to the Mere of Riga].

73. Eostan and Iorund and Biorn, three brothers, made a bridge as a memorial to their father Thrum. Here shall lie while the age lives this strong-built bridge in time to come. Good lads made it after their father, no better road-mark can there be.

74. Withox on his father’s memorial-stone, carved by Bali. Here shall ee | REE Oe OS Ferrier, a at

§2.] WICKING SONGS. - 371

radi tekr paz runsi runum pessom. 240 Bautil, 584. 75. Her mun standa stainn ner brautu. Bautil. “6. Vidraldi let auk L.....

“7. Su var mer hannast 4 Hadalandi.

§2. TORF-EINAR METRE.

WICKING SONGS.

stand the stone between the farms. Devil take him that disturbs these runes.

75. Ona stone at... Here shall the stone stand near the road...

76. Ona stone at... W.and L. let move a huge stone out of its place. _ 977.On a stone in Norway at... She was the cleverest maiden in Hade-land. ©

78. A stonein... It shall be in men’s minds as long as men live.

79. Astonein... Right good sons raised a monument after a goodly man, their father Stirkar.

80. A stonein... A mighty monument to a good man.

81. Saxi on his mate Asborn, son of Toki: He fled not in the battle at Upsala, but fought whilst he had weapons.—4 great battle at Upsala [one such was fought c. 980, between Styrbiorn and King Eric].

1. Earl Turf-Einar’s Song of Triumph over the death of Halfdan High-leg, son of K. Harold Fairbair, which he brought about in revenge for his own father, Reginwald Earl of More. A tradition, which we take to be derived from a misunderstanding of the words of this poem, makes Einar to have cut the ‘blood-eagle’ on his foe, but this is incredible. Harold would never have made peace with one who had committed such an outrage. 1 cannot see the dart speeding from Rodwolf or Rodlaug’s hand among the foemen’s

2. dela. Fagrsk, * Bba2

ranks. It is our duty to avenge our father, but while we are pressing on the fray this evening Earl Thori the Silent is sitting over the cupstream in More.

Many a broad-bearded Franklin is guilty of sheep-slaughter, but I am guilty of killing the mighty king’s young son out here in the Islands. Men tell me my life is in jeopardy from the proud-hearted ruler. I have made a gap in Harold’s shield. Never fear for that!

I shall never be sad again since the spears of the war-greedy warriors bit the prince’s young son. It is good for a man to have wrought a deed of fame. I confess that the charmer of war-hawks will be wroth. The grey bird of carrion was swooping down to the wounds over the island.

I have wreaked Reginwald’s death for my fourth share. The Fates have ruled it so, the pillar of the people is fallen. Cast the stones over High-leg, my brave lads, for we have gotten the victory. It is with hard money I pay him his taxes.

I know of a truth that many men of no mean kindred, from divers quarters, are seeking after my life: but they can never know until they have felled me, whether it is to be I or they that shall one day bow beneath the foot-thorns [talons] of the Eagles.

2. Rolf the Walker’s mother Hild, daughter of Rolf Neb, tries to induce the king to spare her son, and revoke the sentence of outlawry + ; and when be refuses, warns him of what may happen. Thou refusest the namesake of Neb, and art driving him as a wolf out of the country, the noble kinsman of gentlemen. Why dost thou make so bold? It is ill to play

4. pessi, Fsk. 5. sekr of saudi, Hkr. I. grar] ar, Fsk. ae holundvala geelis, Fsk. 17. deildir, Hkr.

§ 2.] WICKING SONGS. 373

v4

the wolf with a wolf, yea, such a shield-wolf as he is. He will not deal gently with the king’s flocks if he takes to the woods.

3. The young wicking’s cradle-song, ascribed in the Saga to Egil, but hardly bis. My mother said they should buy me a boat and fair oars, and that I should go abroad with the wickings, should stand forward in the bows and steer a dear bark, and so wend to the haven, and cut down man after man there.

4. 4 man carves runes in a charm wrongly, so that instead of a lovecharm it turns out a sickness-spell. A man should not carve runes unless he knows their power, for it happens to many a man to miswrite the mysterious letter. I saw ten secret letters carved on the smooth whalebone. They have cost the lady a pining sickness. Ascribed to _ Egil.

a A wicking stave ascribed to Egil. Let us up with our swords, let the dyer of the wolf’s teeth [blade] gleam in the joy of the fishes of the valley [warm sunlight of summer], we have a deed to do. Let every man go up to Lund [in Sweden] as quick as he can; before the sun sets let us make a grim sorcery with spears.

6. The earl’s daughter scorns the boy who is her partner at table, and says ; What dost thou, boy, in my seat? I will keep it for myself alone. Thou hast never given a warm meal to the wolf. Thou hast never seen the raven in the autumn scream over the carrion-draught. Thou hast never been where the shell-thin edges crossed. The young wicking replies: 1 have walked with bloody brand and with whistling spear, with the wound-bird following me. The wickings made a fierce attack; we raised a furious storm, the flamg ran over the dwellings

374 TORF-EINAR METRE. [px. vi. § 2.]

Skidldunga Saga (Reader, p. 198).

Sturlunga S., i. ch, 20.

of men, we laid the bleeding corses to rest in the gates of the city. Ascribed to Egil.

7. This story is told of Harold the Stern and his thrall Wolf, but it is probably a traditional tale. The king reclaims his slave, who has been allowed to live freely and make money. The king holds out the white kirtle of a thrall to the wretched fellow, who had thought that the bitterness of slavery was past, and says, mockingly: Knowest thou this kirtle? A cow thou owest me as my due. Both a swine and a fat goose thou must pay me as my due. And a full-grown ox thou owest me as my due. Thy children and all that thou earnest, thou owest me as my due. Many are the wiles of men. Thy ‘wench,’ too, thou owest me as my due.

8. At the death of K. Sweyn Estrith’s son of Denmark, there was a struggle for the throne between Harold Hone on the one side, and his eleven brethren on the other, as the ditty runs. Now my ditty begins, trouble is brewing in Denmark. Sweyn’s sons are not of one mind since their father’s death; Harold must guard his land in fight with might and main against his eleven brethren.

9. The three chiefs of Iceland, Haftidi, Hall, and Thord Thorwaldson, are meeting im council in 1120. This ditty was made on them. ‘ Amb’- head from the North, and Ork-head from the South, Hart-head from the West, had a plot under fheir coats. There was talk enough when these wise men met, and yet there was deadly hate in ‘Amb’-head’s —

breast.

46 and 47 interchanged.

APPENDIX TO THE FIRST VOLUME.

A.

DUPLICATE OR DOUBLE TEXTS MENTIONED IN THE INTRODUC- TIONS TO THE RESPECTIVE POEMS.

To Page 52.

Text A.

Text B.

376 APPENDIX.

To Page 61, Book II.

(a) Text from Grimnismal.

(6) Text from Vafprudnismal.

To Page 129.

Text A.

Text B.

armi lipin er evi opt nair hreifi gran nocqvi nornir valda fello i morgon at

1 hridfelldo, Edda (better).

ee

_ —- wreger cearene. —————— Seneca —

DUPLICATE TEXTS.

ollom ellri sva at ec mvna sizt pic geldo fyr gnipa lyndi pvrsa meyiar a pors nesi. Stivpr vartv siggeirs latt vnd stavbom heima varg liopom vanr a vibom vti komo per ogogn oll at hendi pa er bropr pinom briost ravfadir. Gorbir pic fregian af firin vercom. Sinfiotliq. ‘pv vart brvpr grana a bravelli gvllbitlvp mart sceip ripit svangri vnd savpli simvl forbergis, Gvpm. q. Sveinn pottir pv trvg hypia villpv tavlo lengri. Sinf. q. Fyrr vilda ec at freca steini hrafna sepia solli epa gefa gavltom deili gravm vip pic. Veriycr. Sinfiotli,.q. Semra myclo brotar heiptir deili. ‘picciat mer godir granmars synir po dvgir siclingom satt at mela peir hafa marcat a moins heimo at hvg hafa hioriom at bregda, peir af rici renna leto [and so on, Il. 190-230]. iofvr pann er olli egiss davda. Oc per byplvngr samir bepi vel ravpir bavgar oc in rikia mer. heill scalpv bvdlungr bepi niota havgna dottor oc hring staba sigrs oc landa pa er socn locit [here ends Text A}.

_vnd sic prvngit.

To Page 181.

(a) Volospa (Cd. R).

Nam sciota | baldrs brodir var of borin kembpi abr | a bal vm bar baldrs andvalhallar v. e. e, e, h.

(6) Doom of Balder (Cd. AM. 748).

To Page 192 at the bottom. (a) Text R, (6) Text H.

TT

NA ME ctl tacit pene genet, oh hee pent ———

ALL AS ho ky a ee ae nie nad = er rg VA) ibaa Nad

APPENDIX.

pa gengv regin ~ ;

Beh :

fone, 4 ete TS oa aan

DUPLICATE TEXTS.

To Page 235.

(a) Rigs-pula in Cd. W.

(b) Thulor (Cd. r and AM, 748).

To Page 267. Hofudlausn Text C (Cd. Wolfenbiitt.)

Flugu hialldrs vanir of hres lanir orv blods vanar ben maas granar sveit saars freka svalg vnd dreka gnudi hrafni a hofut stafni,

Kom gridar Je af gialpar ske baud ulfum hre Eirikr of sz.

40 -

APPENDIX.

To Page 271. The Lay of Arinbiorn in AM. 132.

Ist COL.

Emc hradq’dr hilme at hilme gguiga opispiallr i iofurs da pe gnegr skrauk b’aiidii emce vilq’dr ga siot m’ grii laust g’ps i odi Haf p* e’ allualld’ id ygr...alme liod f4madad’

at I’de sat styr’. .. v’ stird& hug iior uik urgih. r.. Vara p’tigl skin trvkt . ‘ ‘ ‘

, . e .

e’ priota mii flesta m bott fe eigi q’d skept almaa spior. Gek m* engi at arinbiarn’ or leg uers logii knerri hade leidd’ ne heipt k’da mz atgeirs audar tuptir. Hifi e’ feg’ mr er i ia... nautr... nar hwinna h’ngum

¢ ara f'de spiolli. ‘

eet ee VahOde n'y Uae ts eee . hv hars vedri . . fl’ e’ + 2 eae knegv b @. extn mekiss egg fer re

The Editor s exact copy of ee could be read in the blank of the first column is lost, but the results of his reading are embodied in the text of Arinbiorn’s Lay.

SONGS FROM SAXO. 381

To Pages 316 and 326, ll. 66-71, Book V, § 3. a. Text. b. Text. var minn sigurpr hia sonom givka sem veri gronn lavcr or grasi vaxinn eba veri geir lavkr or grasi vaxinn epa veri _hiortr habeinn vm hvossom dyrom eba biartr steinn a band dreginn iarkna gvll glodravtt af gra silfri. steinn yfir avdlingom.

B. EXTRACTS OF SONGS FROM SAXO GRAMMATICUS.

To Page 125, Saxo, Book I,

Haddingus Quid moror in latebris opacis Collibus implicitus scruposis, Nec mare more sequor priori ? Eripit ex oculis quietem Agminis increpitans lupini Stridor, et usque polum levatus Questus inutilium ferarum Impatiensque rigor leonum. Tristia sunt juga vastitasque Pectoribus truciora fisis. 10 Officiunt scopuli rigentes Difficilisque situs locorum Mentibus equor amare svetis, Nam freta remigiis probare Officii potioris esset, Mercibus ac spoliis ovare, ZEra aliena sequi locello, /Equoreis inhiare lucris, Quam salebras nemorumque flexus . . . Et steriles habitare saltus. 20

; Uxor Me canorus angit ales immorantem littori Et soporis indigentem garriendo concitat. Hine sonorus estuosez motionis impetus Ex ocello dormientis mite demit otium, Nec sinit pausare noctu mergus alte garrulus Auribus fastidiosa delicatis inserens,

: Nec volentem decubare recreari sustinet | Tristiore flexione dire vocis obstrepens.

: Tutius sylvis fruendum dulciusque censeo. |

Quis minor quietis usus luce, nocte carpitur, 30 Quam marinis immorari fluctuando motibus ?

‘

; To Page 188, Saxo, Book II.

: Aut meritis probat, aut sola pietate fatetur. Discutiant somnum proceres, stupor improbus absit ; Incaleant animi vigiles ; sua dextera quemque

Aut fame dabit aut probro perfundet inerti; Noxque hee aut finis erit aut vindicta malorum. Non ego virgineos jubeo cognoscere ludos,

Nec teneras tractare genas, aut dulcia nuptis