THE STORY OF THE VOLSUNGS, (VOLSUNGA SAGA)

WITH EXCERPTS FROM THE POETIC EDDA

By Anonymous

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.

THE STORY OF THE VOLSUNGS AND NIBLUNGS.

CHAPTER I.   Of Sigi, the Son of
Odin

CHAPTER II.   Of
the Birth of Volsung, the Son of Rerir, who was the Son of Sigi


CHAPTER III.   Of the Sword that
Sigmund, Volsung's son, drew from the Branstock

CHAPTER IV.   How King Siggeir
wedded Signy, and bade King Volsung and his son to Gothland


CHAPTER V.   Of the Slaying of
King Volsung

CHAPTER VI.   Of
how Signy sent the Children of her and Siggeir to Sigmund

CHAPTER VII.   Of the Birth of
Sinfjotli the Son of Sigmund

CHAPTER
VIII.   The Death of King Siggeir and of Signy


CHAPTER IX.   How Helgi, the son
of Sigmund, won King Hodbrod and his Realm, and wedded Sigrun


CHAPTER X.   The ending of
Sinfjotli, Sigmund's Son

CHAPTER XI.
  Of King Sigmund's last Battle, and of how he must yield
up his Sword again

CHAPTER XII.   Of
the Shards of the Sword Gram, and how Hjordis went to King Alf


CHAPTER XIII.   Of the Birth and
Waxing of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane


CHAPTER XIV.   Regin's tale of his Brothers, and of the
Gold called Andvari's Hoard

CHAPTER
XV.   Of the Welding together of the Shards of the Sword
Gram

CHAPTER XVI.   The
prophecy of Grifir

CHAPTER XVII.
  Of Sigurd's Avenging of Sigmund his Father

CHAPTER XVIII.   Of the Slaying of
the Worm Fafnir

CHAPTER XIX.   Of
the Slaying of Regin, Son of Hreidmar


CHAPTER XX.   Of Sigurd's Meeting with Brynhild on the
Mountain

CHAPTER XXI.   More
Wise Words of Brynhild

CHAPTER XXII.
  Of the Semblance and Array of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane


CHAPTER XXIII.   Sigurd comes to
Hlymdale

CHAPTER XXIV.   Sigurd
sees Brynhild at Hlymdale

CHAPTER
XXV.   Of the Dream of Gudrun, Giuki's daughter


CHAPTER XXVI.   Sigurd comes to
the Giukings and is wedded to Gudrun


CHAPTER XXVII.   The Wooing of Brynhild

CHAPTER XXVIII.   How the Queens
held angry converse together at the Bathing

CHAPTER XXIX.   Of Brynhild's great
Grief and Mourning

CHAPTER XXX.   Of
the Slaying of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane


CHAPTER XXXI.   Of the Lamentation of Gudrun over Sigurd
dead, as it is told told in ancient Songs

CHAPTER XXXII.   Of the Ending of
Brynhild

CHAPTER XXXIII.   Gudrun
wedded to Atli

CHAPTER XXXIV.   Atli
bids the Giukings to him

CHAPTER
XXXV.   The Dreams of the Wives of the Giukings


CHAPTER XXXVI.   Of the Journey
of the Giukings to King Atli

CHAPTER
XXXVII.   The Battle in the Burg of King Atli


CHAPTER XXXVIII.     Of
the slaying of the Giukings

CHAPTER
XXXIX.   The End of Atli and his Kin and Folk


CHAPTER XL.   How Gudrun cast
herself into the Sea, but was brought ashore again

CHAPTER XLI.   Of the Wedding and
Slaying of Swanhild

CHAPTER XLII.
  Gudrun sends her Sons to avenge Swanhild

CHAPTER XLIII.   The Latter End of
all the Kin of the Giukings

APPENDIX: EXCERPTS FROM THE POETIC EDDA.

PART OF THE SECOND LAY OF HELGI HUNDINGS-BANE
(1)

PART OF THE LAY OF SIGRDRIFA (1)

THE LAY CALLED THE SHORT LAY OF SIGURD.

THE HELL-RIDE OF BRYNHILD.

FRAGMENTS OF THE LAY OF BRYNHILD

THE SECOND OR ANCIENT LAY OF GUDRUN.

THE SONG OF ATLI.

THE WHETTING OF GUDRUN.

THE LAY OF HAMDIR

THE LAMENT OF ODDRUN.

INTRODUCTION

It would seem fitting for a Northern folk, deriving the greater and better
part of their speech, laws, and customs from a Northern root, that the
North should be to them, if not a holy land, yet at least a place more to
be regarded than any part of the world beside; that howsoever their
knowledge widened of other men, the faith and deeds of their forefathers
would never lack interest for them, but would always be kept in
remembrance. One cause after another has, however, aided in turning
attention to classic men and lands at the cost of our own history. Among
battles, "every schoolboy" knows the story of Marathon or Salamis, while
it would be hard indeed to find one who did more than recognise the name,
if even that, of the great fights of Hafrsfirth or Sticklestead. The
language and history of Greece and Rome, their laws and religions, have
been always held part of the learning needful to an educated man, but no
trouble has been taken to make him familiar with his own people or their
tongue. Even that Englishman who knew Alfred, Bede, Caedmon, as well as he
knew Plato, Caesar, Cicero, or Pericles, would be hard bestead were he
asked about the great peoples from whom we sprang; the warring of Harold
Fairhair or Saint Olaf; the Viking (1) kingdoms in these (the British)
Western Isles; the settlement of Iceland, or even of Normandy. The
knowledge of all these things would now be even smaller than it is among
us were it not that there was one land left where the olden learning found
refuge and was kept in being. In England, Germany, and the rest of Europe,
what is left of the traditions of pagan times has been altered in a
thousand ways by foreign influence, even as the peoples and their speech
have been by the influx of foreign blood; but Iceland held to the old
tongue that was once the universal speech of northern folk, and held also
the great stores of tale and poem that are slowly becoming once more the
common heritage of their descendants. The truth, care, and literary beauty
of its records; the varied and strong life shown alike in tale and
history; and the preservation of the old speech, character, and tradition—a
people placed apart as the Icelanders have been—combine to make
valuable what Iceland holds for us. Not before 1770, when Bishop Percy
translated Mallet's "Northern Antiquities", was anything known here of
Icelandic, or its literature. Only within the latter part of this century
has it been studied, and in the brief book-list at the end of this volume
may be seen the little that has been done as yet. It is, however, becoming
ever clearer, and to an increasing number, how supremely important is
Icelandic as a word-hoard to the English-speaking peoples, and that in its
legend, song, and story there is a very mine of noble and pleasant beauty
and high manhood. That which has been done, one may hope, is but the
beginning of a great new birth, that shall give back to our language and
literature all that heedlessness and ignorance bid fair for awhile to
destroy.

The Scando-Gothic peoples who poured southward and westward over Europe,
to shake empires and found kingdoms, to meet Greek and Roman in conflict,
and levy tribute everywhere, had kept up their constantly-recruited waves
of incursion, until they had raised a barrier of their own blood. It was
their own kin, the sons of earlier invaders, who stayed the landward march
of the Northmen in the time of Charlemagne. To the Southlands their road
by land was henceforth closed. Then begins the day of the Vikings, who,
for two hundred years and more, "held the world at ransom." Under many and
brave leaders they first of all came round the "Western Isles" (2) toward
the end of the eighth century; soon after they invaded Normandy, and
harried the coasts of France; gradually they lengthened their voyages
until there was no shore of the then known world upon which they were
unseen or unfelt. A glance at English history will show the large part of
it they fill, and how they took tribute from the Anglo-Saxons, who, by the
way, were far nearer kin to them than is usually thought. In Ireland,
where the old civilisation was falling to pieces, they founded kingdoms at
Limerick and Dublin among other places; (3) the last named, of which the
first king, Olaf the White, was traditionally descended of Sigurd the
Volsung, (4) endured even to the English invasion, when it was taken by
men of the same Viking blood a little altered. What effect they produced
upon the natives may be seen from the description given by the unknown
historian of the "Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill": "In a word,
although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on one neck, and an
hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-rusting brazen tongues in each head, and
an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could
not recount, or narrate, or enumerate, or tell what all the Gaedhil
suffered in common—both men and women, laity and clergy, old and
young, noble and ignoble—of hardship, and of injury, and of
oppression, in every house, from these valiant, wrathful, purely pagan
people. Even though great were this cruelty, oppression, and tyranny,
though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erinn;
though numerous their kings, and their royal chiefs, and their princes;
though numerous their heroes and champions, and their brave soldiers,
their chiefs of valour and renown and deeds of arms; yet not one of them
was able to give relief, alleviation, or deliverance from that oppression
and tyranny, from the numbers and multitudes, and the cruelty and the
wrath of the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed, implacable hordes by
whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their
polished, ample, treble, heavy, trusty, glittering corslets; and their
hard, strong, valiant swords; and their well-riveted long spears, and
their ready, brilliant arms of valour besides; and because of the
greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery, and
their valour, their strength, and their venom, and their ferocity, and
because of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave,
fruitful, nobly-inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays, pure,
smooth-plained, sweet grassy land of Erinn"—(pp. 52-53). Some part
of this, however, must be abated, because the chronicler is exalting the
terror-striking enemy that he may still further exalt his own people, the
Dal Cais, who did so much under Brian Boroimhe to check the inroads of the
Northmen. When a book does (5) appear, which has been announced these ten
years past, we shall have more material for the reconstruction of the life
of those times than is now anywhere accessible. Viking earldoms also were
the Orkneys, Faroes, and Shetlands. So late as 1171, in the reign of Henry
II., the year after Beckett's murder, Earl Sweyn Asleifsson of Orkney, who
had long been the terror of the western seas, "fared a sea-roving" and
scoured the western coast of England, Man, and the east of Ireland, but
was killed in an attack on his kinsmen of Dublin. He had used to go upon a
regular plan that may be taken as typical of the homely manner of most of
his like in their cruising: "Sweyn had in the spring hard work, and made
them lay down very much seed, and looked much after it himself. But when
that toil was ended, he fared away every spring on a viking-voyage, and
harried about among the southern isles and Ireland, and came home after
midsummer. That he called spring-viking. Then he was at home until the
corn-fields were reaped down, and the grain seen to and stored. Then he
fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did not come home till the
winter was one month off, and that he called his autumn-viking." (6)

Toward the end of the ninth century Harold Fairhair, either spurred by the
example of Charlemagne, or really prompted, as Snorri Sturluson tells us,
resolved to bring all Norway under him. As Snorri has it in
"Heimskringla": "King Harold sent his men to a girl hight Gyda.... The
king wanted her for his leman; for she was wondrous beautiful but of high
mood withal. Now when the messengers came there and gave their message to
her, she made answer that she would not throw herself away even to take a
king for her husband, who swayed no greater kingdom than a few districts;
'And methinks,' said she, 'it is a marvel that no king here in Norway will
put all the land under him, after the fashion that Gorm the Old did in
Denmark, or Eric at Upsala.' The messengers deemed this a dreadfully
proud-spoken answer, and asked her what she thought would come of such an
one, for Harold was so mighty a man that his asking was good enough for
her. But although she had replied to their saying otherwise than they
would, they saw no likelihood, for this while, of bearing her along with
them against her will, so they made ready to fare back again. When they
were ready and the folk followed them out, Gyda said to the messengers—'Now
tell to King Harold these my words:—I will only agree to be his
lawful wife upon the condition that he shall first, for sake of me, put
under him the whole of Norway, so that he may bear sway over that kingdom
as freely and fully as King Eric over the realm of Sweden, or King Gorm
over Denmark; for only then, methinks, can he be called king of a people.'
Now his men came back to King Harold, bringing him the words of the girl,
and saying she was so bold and heedless that she well deserved the king
should send a greater troop of people for her, and put her to some
disgrace. Then answered the king. 'This maid has not spoken or done so
much amiss that she should be punished, but the rather should she be
thanked for her words. She has reminded me,' said he, 'of somewhat that it
seems wonderful I did not think of before. And now,' added he, 'I make the
solemn vow, and take who made me and rules over all things, to witness
that never shall I clip or comb my hair until I have subdued all Norway
with scatt, and duties, and lordships; or, if not, have died in the
seeking.' Guttorm gave great thanks to the king for his oath, saying it
was "royal work fulfilling royal rede." The new and strange government
that Harold tried to enforce—nothing less than the feudal system in
a rough guise —which made those who had hitherto been their own men
save at special times, the king's men at all times, and laid freemen under
tax, was withstood as long as might be by the sturdy Norsemen. It was only
by dint of hard fighting that he slowly won his way, until at Hafrsfirth
he finally crushed all effective opposition. But the discontented, "and
they were a great multitude," fled oversea to the outlands, Iceland, the
Faroes, the Orkneys, and Ireland. The whole coast of Europe, even to
Greece and the shores of the Black Sea, the northern shores of Africa, and
the western part of Asia, felt the effects also. Rolf Pad-th'-hoof, son of
Harold's dear friend Rognvald, made an outlaw for a cattle-raid within the
bounds of the kingdom, betook himself to France, and, with his men,
founded a new people and a dynasty.

Iceland had been known for a good many years, but its only dwellers had
been Irish Culdees, who sought that lonely land to pray in peace. Now,
however, both from Norway and the Western Isles settlers began to come in.
Aud, widow of Olaf the White, King of Dublin, came, bringing with her many
of mixed blood, for the Gaedhil (pronounced "Gael", Irish) and the Gaill
(pronounced "Gaul", strangers) not only fought furiously, but made friends
firmly, and often intermarried. Indeed, the Westmen were among the first
arrivals, and took the best parts of the island—on its western
shore, appropriately enough. After a time the Vikings who had settled in
the Isles so worried Harold and his kingdom, upon which they swooped every
other while, that he drew together a mighty force, and fell upon them
wheresoever he could find them, and followed them up with fire and sword;
and this he did twice, so that in those lands none could abide but folk
who were content to be his men, however lightly they might hold their
allegiance. Hence it was to Iceland that all turned who held to the old
ways, and for over sixty years from the first comer there was a stream of
hardy men pouring in, with their families and their belongings, simple
yeomen, great and warwise chieftains, rich landowners, who had left their
land "for the overbearing of King Harold," as the "Landnamabok" (7) has
it. "There also we shall escape the troubling of kings and scoundrels",
says the "Vatsdaelasaga". So much of the best blood left Norway that the
king tried to stay the leak by fines and punishments, but in vain.

As his ship neared the shore, the new-coming chief would leave it to the
gods as to where he settled. The hallowed pillars of the high seat, which
were carried away from his old abode, were thrown overboard, with certain
rites, and were let drive with wind and wave until they came ashore. The
piece of land which lay next the beach they were flung upon was then
viewed from the nearest hill-summit, and place of the homestead picked
out. Then the land was hallowed by being encircled with fire, parcelled
among the band, and marked out with boundary-signs; the houses were built,
the "town" or home-field walled in, a temple put up, and the settlement
soon assumed shape. In 1100 there were 4500 franklins, making a population
of about 50,000, fully three-fourths of whom had a strong infusion of
Celtic blood in them. The mode of life was, and is, rather pastoral than
aught else. In the 39,200 square miles of the island's area there are now
about 250 acres of cultivated land, and although there has been much more
in times past, the Icelanders have always been forced to reckon upon
flocks and herds as their chief resources, grain of all kinds, even rye,
only growing in a few favoured places, and very rarely there; the hay,
self-sown, being the only certain harvest. On the coast fishing and
fowling were of help, but nine-tenths of the folk lived by their sheep and
cattle. Potatoes, carrots, turnips, and several kinds of cabbage have,
however, been lately grown with success. They produced their own food and
clothing, and could export enough wool, cloth, horn, dried fish, etc., as
enabled them to obtain wood for building, iron for tools, honey, wine,
grain, etc, to the extent of their simple needs. Life and work was lotted
by the seasons and their changes; outdoor work—fishing, herding,
hay-making, and fuel-getting—filling the long days of summer, while
the long, dark winter was used in weaving and a hundred indoor crafts. The
climate is not so bad as might be expected, seeing that the island touches
the polar circle, the mean temperature at Reykjavik being 39 degrees.

The religion which the settlers took with them into Iceland—the
ethnic religion of the Norsefolk, which fought its last great fight at
Sticklestead, where Olaf Haraldsson lost his life and won the name of
Saint—was, like all religions, a compound of myths, those which had
survived from savage days, and those which expressed the various degrees
of a growing knowledge of life and better understanding of nature. Some
historians and commentators are still fond of the unscientific method of
taking a later religion, in this case christianity, and writing down all
apparently coincident parts of belief, as having been borrowed from the
christian teachings by the Norsefolk, while all that remain they lump
under some slighting head. Every folk has from the beginning of time
sought to explain the wonders of nature, and has, after its own fashion,
set forth the mysteries of life. The lowest savage, no less than his more
advanced brother, has a philosophy of the universe by which he solves the
world-problem to his own satisfaction, and seeks to reconcile his conduct
with his conception of the nature of things. Now, it is not to be thought,
save by "a priori" reasoners, that such a folk as the Northmen—a
mighty folk, far advanced in the arts of life, imaginative, literary—should
have had no further creed than the totemistic myths of their primitive
state; a state they have wholly left ere they enter history. Judging from
universal analogy, the religion of which record remains to us was just
what might be looked for at the particular stage of advancement the
Northmen had reached. Of course something may have been gained from
contact with other peoples—from the Greeks during the long years in
which the northern races pressed upon their frontier; from the Irish
during the existence of the western viking-kingdoms; but what I
particularly warn young students against is the constant effort of a
certain order of minds to wrest facts into agreement with their pet
theories of religion or what not. The whole tendency of the more modern
investigation shows that the period of myth-transmission is long over ere
history begins. The same confusion of different stages of myth-making is
to be found in the Greek religion, and indeed in those of all peoples;
similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart from all
borrowing of ideas and manners; in Greece we find snake-dances,
bear-dances, swimming with sacred pigs, leaping about in imitation of
wolves, dog-feasts, and offering of dogs' flesh to the gods—all of
them practices dating from crude savagery, mingled with ideas of exalted
and noble beauty, but none now, save a bigot, would think of accusing the
Greeks of having stolen all their higher beliefs. Even were some part of
the matter of their myths taken from others, yet the Norsemen have given
their gods a noble, upright, great spirit, and placed them upon a high
level that is all their own. (8) From the prose Edda the following all too
brief statement of the salient points of Norse belief is made up:—"The
first and eldest of gods is hight Allfather; he lives from all ages, and
rules over all his realm, and sways all things great and small; he
smithied heaven and earth, and the lift, and all that belongs to them;
what is most, he made man, and gave him a soul that shall live and never
perish; and all men that are right-minded shall live and be with himself
in Vingolf; but wicked men fare to Hell, and thence into Niithell, that is
beneath in the ninth world. Before the earth ''twas the morning of time,
when yet naught was, nor sand nor sea was there, nor cooling streams.
Earth was not found, nor Heaven above; a Yawning-gap there was, but grass
nowhere.' Many ages ere the earth was shapen was Niflheim made, but first
was that land in the southern sphere hight Muspell, that burns and blazes,
and may not be trodden by those who are outlandish and have no heritage
there. Surtr sits on the border to guard the land; at the end of the world
he will fare forth, and harry and overcome all the gods and burn the world
with fire. Ere the races were yet mingled, or the folk of men grew,
Yawning-gap, which looked towards the north parts, was filled with thick
and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were fog and gusts; but the
south side of Yawning-gap lightened by the sparks and gledes that flew out
of Muspell-heim; as cold arose out of Niflheim and all things grim, so was
that part that looked towards Muspell hot and bright; but Yawning-gap was
as light as windless air, and when the blast of heat met the rime, so that
it melted and dropped and quickened; from those life-drops there was
shaped the likeness of a man, and he was named Ymir; he was bad, and all
his kind; and so it is said, when he slept he fell into a sweat; then
waxed under his left hand a man and a woman, and one of his feet got a son
with the other, and thence cometh the Hrimthursar. The next thing when the
rime dropped was that the cow hight Audhumla was made of it; but four
milk-rivers ran out of her teats, and she fed Ymir; she licked rime-stones
that were salt, and the first day there came at even, out of the stones, a
man's hair, the second day a man's head, the third day all the man was
there. He is named Turi; he was fair of face, great and mighty; he gat a
son named Bor, who took to him Besla, daughter of Bolthorn, the giant, and
they had three sons, Odin, Vili, and Ve. Bor's sons slew Ymir the giant,
but when he fell there ran so much blood out of his wounds that all the
kin of the Hrimthursar were drowned, save Hvergelmir and his household,
who got away in a boat. Then Bor's sons took Ymir and bore him into the
midst of Yawning-gap, and made of him the earth; of his blood seas and
waters, of his flesh earth was made; they set the earth fast, and laid the
sea round about it in a ring without; of his bones were made rocks; stones
and pebbles of his teeth and jaws and the bones that were broken; they
took his skull and made the lift thereof, and set it up over the earth
with four sides, and under each corner they set dwarfs, and they took his
brain and cast it aloft, and made clouds. They took the sparks and gledes
that went loose, and had been cast out of Muspellheim, and set them in the
lift to give light; they gave resting-places to all fires, and set some in
the lift; some fared free under it, and they gave them a place and shaped
their goings. A wondrous great smithying, and deftly done. The earth is
fashioned round without, and there beyond, round about it lies the deep
sea; and on that sea-strand the gods gave land for an abode to the giant
kind, but within on the earth made they a burg round the world against
restless giants, and for this burg reared they the brows of Ymir, and
called the burg Midgard. The gods went along the sea-strand and found two
stocks, and shaped out of them men; the first gave soul and life, the
second wit and will to move, the third face, hearing, speech, and
eyesight. They gave them clothing and names; the man Ask and the woman
Embla; thence was mankind begotten, to whom an abode was given under
Midgard. Then next Bor's sons made them a burg in the midst of the world,
that is called Asgard; there abode the gods and their kind, and wrought
thence many tidings and feats, both on earth and in the Sky. Odin, who is
hight Allfather, for that he is the father of all men and sat there in his
high seat, seeing over the whole world and each man's doings, and knew all
things that he saw. His wife was called Frigg, and their offspring is the
Asa-stock, who dwell in Asgard and the realms about it, and all that stock
are known to be gods. The daughter and wife of Odin was Earth, and of her
he got Thor, him followed strength and sturdiness, thereby quells he all
things quick; the strongest of all gods and men, he has also three things
of great price, the hammer Miolnir, the best of strength belts, and when
he girds that about him waxes his god strength one-half, and his iron
gloves that he may not miss for holding his hammer's haft. Balidr is
Odin's second son, and of him it is good to say, he is fair and: bright in
face, and hair, and body, and him all praise; he is wise and fair-spoken
and mild, and that nature is in him none may withstand his doom. Tyr is
daring and best of mood; there is a saw that he is tyrstrong who is before
other men and never yields; he is also so wise that it is said he is
tyrlearned who is wise. Bragi is famous for wisdom, and best in
tongue-wit, and cunning speech, and song-craft. 'And many other are there,
good and great; and one, Loki, fair of face, ill in temper and fickle of
mood, is called the backbiter of the Asa, and speaker of evil redes and
shame of all gods and men; he has above all that craft called sleight, and
cheats all in all things. Among the children of Loki are Fenris-wolf and
Midgards-worm; the second lies about all the world in the deep sea,
holding his tail in his teeth, though some say Thor has slain him; but
Fenris-wolf is bound until the doom of the gods, when gods and men shall
come to an end, and earth and heaven be burnt, when he shall slay Odin.
After this the earth shoots up from the sea, and it is green and fair, and
the fields bear unsown, and gods and men shall be alive again, and sit in
fair halls, and talk of old tales and the tidings that happened aforetime.
The head-seat, or holiest-stead, of the gods is at Yggdrasil's ash, which
is of all trees best and biggest; its boughs are spread over the whole
world and stand above heaven; one root of the ash is in heaven, and under
the root is the right holy spring; there hold the gods doom every day; the
second root is with the Hrimthursar, where before was Yawning-gap; under
that root is Mimir's spring, where knowledge and wit lie hidden; thither
came Allfather and begged a drink, but got it not before he left his eye
in pledge; the third root is over Niflheim, and the worm Nidhogg gnaws the
root beneath. A fair hall stands under the ash by the spring, and out of
it come three maidens, Norns, named Has-been, Being, Will-be, who shape
the lives of men; there are beside other Norns, who come to every man that
is born to shape his life, and some of these are good and some evil. In
the boughs of the ash sits an eagle, wise in much, and between his eyes
sits the hawk Vedrfalnir; the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down along
the ash, bearing words of hate betwixt the eagle and the worm. Those Norns
who abide by the holy spring draw from it every day water, and take the
clay that lies around the well, and sprinkle them up over the ash for that
its boughs should not wither or rot. All those men that have fallen in the
fight, and borne wounds and toil unto death, from the beginning of the
world, are come to Odin in Valhall; a very great throng is there, and many
more shall yet come; the flesh of the boar Soerfmnir is sodden for them
every day, and he is whole again at even; and the mead they drink that
flows from the teats of the she-goat Heidhrun. The meat Odin has on his
board he gives to his two wolves, Geri and Freki, and he needs no meat,
wine is to him both meat and drink; ravens twain sit on his shoulders, and
say into his ear all tidings that they see and hear; they are called
Huginn and Muninn (mind and memory); them sends he at dawn to fly over the
whole world, and they come back at breakfast-tide, thereby becomes he wise
in many tidings, and for this men call him Raven's-god. Every day, when
they have clothed them, the heroes put on their arms and go out into the
yard and fight and fell each other; that is their play, and when it looks
toward mealtime, then ride they home to Valhall and sit down to drink. For
murderers and men forsworn is a great hall, and a bad, and the doors look
northward; it is altogether wrought of adder-backs like a wattled house,
but the worms' heads turn into the house, and blow venom, so that rivers
of venom run along the hall, and in those rivers must such men wade
forever." There was no priest-class; every chief was priest for his own
folk, offered sacrifice, performed ceremonies, and so on.

In politics the homestead, with its franklin-owner, was the unit; the
"thing", or hundred-moot, the primal organisation, and the "godord", or
chieftainship, its tie. The chief who had led a band of kinsmen and
followers to the new country, taken possession of land, and shared it
among them, became their head-ruler and priest at home, speaker and
president of their Thing, and their representative in any dealings with
neighbouring chiefs and their clients. He was not a feudal lord, for any
franklin could change his "godord" as he liked, and the right of "judgment
by peers" was in full use. At first there was no higher organisation than
the local thing. A central thing, and a speaker to speak a single "law"
for the whole island, was instituted in 929, and afterwards the island was
divided in four quarters, each with a court, under the Al-thing. Society
was divided only into two classes of men, the free and unfree, though
political power was in the hands of the franklins alone; "godi" and thrall
ate the same food, spoke the same tongue, wore much the same clothes, and
were nearly alike in life and habits. Among the free men there was
equality in all but wealth and the social standing that cannot be
separated therefrom. The thrall was a serf rather than a slave, and could
own a house, etc., of his own. In a generation or so the freeman or
landless retainer, if he got a homestead of his own, was the peer of the
highest in the land. During the tenth century Greenland was colonised from
Iceland, and by end of the same century christianity was introduced into
Iceland, but made at first little difference in arrangements of society.
In the thirteenth century disputes over the power and jurisdiction of the
clergy led, with other matters, to civil war, ending in submission to
Norway, and the breaking down of all native great houses. Although life
under the commonwealth had been rough and irregular, it had been free and
varied, breeding heroes and men of mark; but the "law and order" now
brought in left all on a dead level of peasant proprietorship, without
room for hope or opening for ambition. An alien governor ruled the island,
which was divided under him into local counties, administered by sheriffs
appointed by the king of Norway. The Al-thing was replaced by a royal
court, the local work of the local things was taken by a subordinate of
the sheriff, and things, quarter-courts, trial by jury, and all the rest,
were swept away to make room for these "improvements", which have lasted
with few changes into this century. In 1380 the island passed under the
rule of Denmark, and so continues. (9) During the fifteenth century the
English trade was the only link between Iceland and the outer world; the
Danish government weakened that link as much as it could, and sought to
shut in and monopolise everything Icelandic; under the deadening effect of
such rule it is no marvel that everything found a lower level, and many
things went out of existence for lack of use. In the sixteenth century
there is little to record but the Reformation, which did little good, if
any, and the ravages of English, Gascon, and Algerine pirates who made
havoc on the coast; (10) they appear toward the close of the century and
disappear early in the seventeenth. In the eighteenth century small-pox,
sheep disease, famine, and the terrible eruptions of 1765 and 1783, follow
one another swiftly and with terrible effect. At the beginning of the
present century Iceland, however, began to shake off the stupor her
ill-hap had brought upon her, and as European attention had been drawn to
her, she was listened to. Newspapers, periodicals, and a Useful Knowledge
Society were started; then came free trade, and the "home-rule" struggle,
which met with partial success in 1874, and is still being carried on. A
colony, Gimli, in far-off Canada, has been formed of Icelandic emigrants,
and large numbers have left their mother-land; but there are many
co-operative societies organised now, which it is hoped will be able to so
revive the old resources of the island as to make provision for the old
population and ways of life. There is now again a representative central
council, but very many of the old rights and powers have not been yet
restored. The condition of society is peculiar absence of towns, social
equality, no abject poverty or great wealth, rarity of crime, making it
easy for the whole country to be administered as a co-operative
commonwealth without the great and striking changes rendered necessary by
more complicated systems.

Iceland has always borne a high name for learning and literature; on both
sides of their descent people inherited special poetic power. Some of
older Eddaic fragments attest the great reach and deep overpowering
strength of imagination possessed by their Norse ancestors; and they
themselves had been quickened by a new leaven. During the first
generations of the "land-taking" a great school of poetry which had arisen
among the Norsemen of the Western Isles was brought by them to Iceland.
(11) The poems then produced are quite beyond parallel with those of any
Teutonic language for centuries after their date, which lay between the
beginning of the ninth and the end of the tenth centuries. Through the
Greenland colony also came two, or perhaps more, great poems of this
western school. This school grew out of the stress and storm of the viking
life, with its wild adventure and varied commerce, and the close contact
with an artistic and inventive folk, possessed of high culture and great
learning. The infusion of Celtic blood, however slight it may have been,
had also something to do with the swift intense feeling and rapidity of
passion of the earlier Icelandic poets. They are hot-headed and
hot-hearted, warm, impulsive, quick to quarrel or to love, faithful,
brave; ready with sword or song to battle with all comers, or to seek
adventure wheresoever it might be found. They leave Iceland young, and
wander at their will to different courts of northern Europe, where they
are always held in high honour. Gunnlaug Worm-tongue (12) in 1004 came to
England, after being in Norway, as the saga says:—"Now sail Gunnlaug
and his fellows into the English main, and come at autumntide south to
London Bridge, where they hauled ashore their ship. Now, at that time King
Ethelred, the son of Edgar, ruled over England, and was a good lord; the
winter he sat in London. But in those days there was the same tongue in
England as in Norway and Denmark; but the tongues changed when William the
Bastard won England, for thenceforward French went current there, for he
was of French kin. Gunnlaug went presently to the king, and greeted him
well and worthily. The king asked him from what land he came, and Gunnlaug
told him all as it was. 'But,' said he, 'I have come to meet thee, lord,
for that I have made a song on thee, and I would that it might please thee
to hearken to that song.' The king said it should be so, and Gunnlaug gave
forth the song well and proudly, and this is the burden thereof—

     "'As God are all folk fearing
     The fire lord King of England,
     Kin of all kings and all folk,
     To Ethelred the head bow.'

The king thanked him for the song, and gave him as song-reward a scarlet
cloak lined with the costliest of furs, and golden-broidered down to the
hem; and made him his man; and Gunnlaug was with him all the winter, and
was well accounted of.

The poems in this volume are part of the wonderful fragments which are all
that remain of ancient Scandinavian poetry. Every piece which survives has
been garnered by Vigfusson and Powell in the volumes of their "Corpus",
where those who seek may find. A long and illustrious line of poets kept
the old traditions, down even to within a couple centuries, but the
earlier great harvest of song was never again equalled. After christianity
had entered Iceland, and that, with other causes, had quieted men's lives,
although the poetry which stood to the folk in lieu of music did not die
away, it lost the exclusive hold it had upon men's minds. In a time not so
stirring, when emotion was not so fervent or so swift, when there was less
to quicken the blood, the story that had before found no fit expression
but in verse, could stretch its limbs, as it were, and be told in prose.
Something of Irish influence is again felt in this new departure and that
marvellous new growth, the saga, that came from it, but is little more
than an influence. Every people find some one means of expression which
more than all else suits their mood or their powers, and this the
Icelanders found in the saga. This was the life of a hero told in prose,
but in set form, after a regular fashion that unconsciously complied with
all epical requirements but that of verse—simple plot, events in
order of time, set phrases for even the shifting emotion or changeful
fortune of a fight or storm, and careful avoidance of digression, comment,
or putting forward by the narrator of ought but the theme he has in hand;
he himself is never seen. Something in the perfection of the saga is to be
traced to the long winter's evenings, when the whole household, gathered
together at their spinning, weaving, and so on, would listen to one of
their number who told anew some old story of adventure or achievement. In
very truth the saga is a prose epic, and marked by every quality an epic
should possess. Growing up while the deeds of dead heroes were fresh in
memory, most often recited before the sharers in such deeds, the saga, in
its pure form, never goes from what is truth to its teller. Where the
saga, as this one of the Volsungs is founded upon the debris of songs and
poems, even then very old, tales of mythological heroes, of men quite
removed from the personal knowledge of the narrator, yet the story is so
inwound with the tradition of his race, is so much a part of his
thought-life, that every actor in it has for him a real existence. At the
feast or gathering, or by the fireside, as men made nets and women spun,
these tales were told over; in their frequent repetition by men who
believed them, though incident or sequence underwent no change, they would
become closer knit, more coherent, and each an organic whole. Gradually
they would take a regular and accepted form, which would ease the strain
upon the reciter's memory and leave his mind free to adorn the story with
fair devices, that again gave help in the making it easier to remember,
and thus aided in its preservation. After a couple of generations had
rounded and polished the sagas by their telling and retelling, they were
written down for the most part between 1141 and 1220, and so much was
their form impressed upon the mind of the folk, that when learned and
literary works appeared, they were written in the same style; hence we
have histories alike of kingdoms, or families, or miracles, lives of
saints, kings, or bishops in saga-form, as well as subjects that seem at
first sight even less hopeful. All sagas that have yet appeared in English
may be found in the book-list at end of this volume, but they are not a
tithe of those that remain.

Of all the stories kept in being by the saga-tellers and left for our
delight, there is none that so epitomises human experience; has within the
same space so much of nature and of life; so fully the temper and genius
of the Northern folk, as that of the Volsungs and Niblungs, which has in
varied shapes entered into the literature of many lands. In the beginning
there is no doubt that the story belonged to the common ancestral folk of
all the Teutonic of Scando-Gothic peoples in the earliest days of their
wanderings. Whether they came from the Hindu Kush, or originated in
Northern Europe, brought it with them from Asia, or evolved it among the
mountains and rivers it has taken for scenery, none know nor can; but each
branch of their descendants has it in one form or another, and as the
Icelanders were the very crown and flower of the northern folk, so also
the story which is the peculiar heritage of that folk received in their
hands its highest expression and most noble form. The oldest shape in
which we have it is in the Eddaic poems, some of which date from
unnumbered generations before the time to which most of them are usually
ascribed, the time of the viking-kingdoms in the Western Isles. In these
poems the only historical name is that of Attila, the great Hun leader,
who filled so large a part of the imagination of the people whose power he
had broken. There is no doubt that, in the days when the kingdoms of the
Scando-Goths reached from the North Cape to the Caspian, that some earlier
great king performed his part; but, after the striking career of Attila,
he became the recognised type of a powerful foreign potentate. All the
other actors are mythic-heroic. Of the Eddaic songs only fragments now
remain, but ere they perished there arose from them a saga, that now given
to the readers of this. The so-called Anglo-Saxons brought part of the
story to England in "Beowulf"; in which also appear some incidents that
are again given in the Icelandic saga of "Grettir the Strong". Most widely
known is the form taken by the story in the hands of an unknown medieval
German poet, who, from the broken ballads then surviving wrote the
"Nibelungenlied" or more properly "Nibelungen Not" ("The Need of the
Niblungs"). In this the characters are all renamed, some being more or
less historical actors in mid-European history, as Theodoric of the
East-Goths, for instance. The whole of the earlier part of the story has
disappeared, and though Siegfried (Sigurd) has slain a dragon, there is
nothing to connect it with the fate that follows the treasure; Andvari,
the Volsungs, Fafnir, and Regin are all forgotten; the mythological
features have become faint, and the general air of the whole is that of
medieval romance. The swoard Gram is replaced by Balmung, and the Helm of
Awing by the Tarn-cap—the former with no gain, the latter with great
loss. The curse of Andvari, which in the saga is grimly real, working
itself out with slow, sure steps that no power of god or man can turn
aside, in the medieval poem is but a mere scenic effect, a strain of
mystery and magic, that runs through the changes of the story with much
added picturesqueness, but that has no obvious relation to the working-out
of the plot, or fulfilment of their destiny by the different characters.
Brynhild loses a great deal, and is a poor creature when compared with
herself in the saga; Grimhild and her fateful drink have gone; Gudrun
(Chriemhild) is much more complex, but not more tragic; one new character,
Rudiger, appears as the type of chivalry; but Sigurd (Siegfred) the
central figure, though he has lost by the omission of so much of his life,
is, as before, the embodiment of all the virtues that were dear to
northern hearts. Brave, strong, generous, dignified, and utterly truthful,
he moves amid a tangle of tragic events, overmastered by a mighty fate,
and in life or death is still a hero without stain or flaw. It is no
wonder that he survives to this day in the national songs of the Faroe
Islands and in the folk-ballads of Denmark; that his legend should have
been mingled with northern history through Ragnar Lodbrog, or southern
through Attila and Theodoric; that it should have inspired William Morris
in producing the one great English epic of the century; (13) and Richard
Wagner in the mightiest among his music-dramas. Of the story as told in
the saga there is no need here to speak, for to read it, as may be done a
few pages farther on, is that not better than to read about it? But it may
be urged upon those that are pleased and moved by the passion and power,
the strength and deep truth of it, to find out more than they now know of
the folk among whom it grew, and the land in which they dwelt. In so doing
they will come to see how needful are a few lessons from the healthy life
and speech of those days, to be applied in the bettering of our own.

H. HALLIDAY SPARLING.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Viking (Ice. "Vikingr"; "vik", a bay or creek, "ingr",
       belonging to, (or men of) freebooters.
  (2)  "West over the Sea" is the word for the British Isles.
  (3)  See Todd (J. H.). "War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill".
  (4)  He was son of Ingiald, son of Thora, daughter of Sigurd
       Snake-I'-th'-eye, son of Ragnar Lodbrok by Aslaug, daughter
       of Sigurd by Brynhild.  The genealogy is, doubtless, quite
       mythical.
  (5)  A Collection of Sagas and other Historical Documents
       relating to the Settlements and Descents of the Northmen on
       the British Isles. Ed., G. W. Dasent, D.C.L, and Gudbrand
       Vigfusson, M.A. "In the Press. Longmans, London. 8vo.
  (6)  "Orkneyinga Saga".
  (7)  Landtaking-book—"landnam", landtaking, from "at nema
       land", hence also the early settlers were called
       "landnamsmenn".
  (8)  To all interested in the subject of comparative mythology,
       Andrew Lang's two admirable books, "Custom and Myth" (1884,
       8vo) and "Myth, Ritual, and Religion" (2 vols., crown 8vo,
       1887), both published by Longmans, London, may be warmly
       recommended.
  (9)  Iceland was granted full independence from Denmark in 1944.
       —DBK.
  (10) These pirates are always appearing about the same time in
       English State papers as plundering along the coasts of the
       British Isles, especially Ireland.
  (11) For all the old Scandinavian poetry extant in Icelandic, see
       "Corpus Poeticum Borealis" of Vigfusson and Powell.
  (12) Snake-tongue—so called from his biting satire.
  (13) "Sigurd the Volsung", which seems to have become all but
       forgotten in this century.—DBK.

TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.

In offering to the reader this translation of the most complete and
dramatic form of the great Epic of the North, we lay no claim to special
critical insight, nor do we care to deal at all with vexed questions, but
are content to abide by existing authorities, doing our utmost to make our
rendering close and accurate, and, if it might be so, at the same time,
not over prosaic: it is to the lover of poetry and nature, rather than to
the student, that we appeal to enjoy and wonder at this great work, now
for the first time, strange to say, translated into English: this must be
our excuse for speaking here, as briefly as may be, of things that will
seem to the student over well known to be worth mentioning, but which may
give some ease to the general reader who comes across our book.

The prose of the "Volsunga Saga" was composed probably some time in the
twelfth century, from floating traditions no doubt; from songs which, now
lost, were then known, at least in fragments, to the Sagaman; and finally
from songs, which, written down about his time, are still existing: the
greater part of these last the reader will find in this book, some
inserted amongst the prose text by the original story-teller, and some by
the present translators, and the remainder in the latter part of the book,
put together as nearly as may be in the order of the story, and forming a
metrical version of the greater portion of it.

These Songs from the Elder Edda we will now briefly compare with the prose
of the Volsung Story, premising that these are the only metrical sources
existing of those from which the Sagaman told his tale.

Except for the short snatch on p. 24 (1) of our translation, nothing is
now left of these till we come to the episode of Helgi Hundings-bane,
Sigurd's half-brother; there are two songs left relating to this, from
which the prose is put together; to a certain extent they cover the same
ground; but the latter half of the second is, wisely as we think, left
untouched by the Sagaman, as its interest is of itself too great not to
encumber the progress of the main story; for the sake of its wonderful
beauty, however, we could not refrain from rendering it, and it will be
found first among the metrical translations that form the second part of
this book.

Of the next part of the Saga, the deaths of Sinfjotli and Sigmund, and the
journey of Queen Hjordis to the court of King Alf, there is no trace left
of any metrical origin; but we meet the Edda once more where Regin tells
the tale of his kin to Sigurd, and where Sigurd defeats and slays the sons
of Hunding: this lay is known as the "Lay of Regin".

The short chap. xvi. is abbreviated from a long poem called the "Prophecy
of Gripir" (the Grifir of the Saga), where the whole story to come is told
with some detail, and which certainly, if drawn out at length into the
prose, would have forestalled the interest of the tale.

In the slaying of the Dragon the Saga adheres very closely to the "Lay of
Fafnir"; for the insertion of the song of the birds to Sigurd the present
translators are responsible.

Then comes the waking of Brynhild, and her wise redes to Sigurd, taken
from the Lay of Sigrdrifa, the greater part of which, in its metrical
form, is inserted by the Sagaman into his prose; but the stanza relating
Brynhild's awaking we have inserted into the text; the latter part,
omitted in the prose, we have translated for the second part of our book.

Of Sigurd at Hlymdale, of Gudrun's dream, the magic potion of Grimhild,
the wedding of Sigurd consequent on that potion; of the wooing of Brynhild
for Gunnar, her marriage to him, of the quarrel of the Queens, the
brooding grief and wrath of Brynhild, and the interview of Sigurd with her—of
all this, the most dramatic and best-considered parts of the tale, there
is now no more left that retains its metrical form than the few snatches
preserved by the Sagaman, though many of the incidents are alluded to in
other poems.

Chap. xxx. is met by the poem called the "Short Lay of Sigurd", which,
fragmentary apparently at the beginning, gives us something of Brynhild's
awakening wrath and jealousy, the slaying of Sigurd, and the death of
Brynhild herself; this poem we have translated entire.

The Fragments of the "Lay of Brynhild" are what is left of a poem partly
covering the same ground as this last, but giving a different account of
Sigurd's slaying; it is very incomplete, though the Sagaman has drawn some
incidents from it; the reader will find it translated in our second part.

But before the death of the heroine we have inserted entire into the text
as chap. xxxi. the "First Lay of Gudrun", the most lyrical, the most
complete, and the most beautiful of all the Eddaic poems; a poem that any
age or language might count among its most precious possessions.

From this point to the end of the Saga it keeps closely to the Songs of
Edda; in chap. xxxii. the Sagaman has rendered into prose the "Ancient Lay
of Gudrun", except for the beginning, which gives again another account of
the death of Sigurd: this lay also we have translated.

The grand poem, called the "Hell-ride of Brynhild", is not represented
directly by anything in the prose except that the Sagaman has supplied
from it a link or two wanting in the "Lay of Sigrdrifa"; it will be found
translated in our second part.

The betrayal and slaughter of the Giukings or Niblungs, and the fearful
end of Atli and his sons, and court, are recounted in two lays, called the
"Lays of Atli"; the longest of these, the "Greenland Lay of Atli", is
followed closely by the Sagaman; the Shorter one we have translated.

The end of Gudrun, of her daughter by Sigurd and of her sons by her last
husband Jonakr, treated of in the last four chapters of the Saga, are very
grandly and poetically given in the songs called the "Whetting of Gudrun",
and the "Lay of Hamdir", which are also among our translations.

These are all the songs of the Edda which the Sagaman has dealt with; but
one other, the "Lament of Oddrun", we have translated on account of its
intrinsic merit.

As to the literary quality of this work we in say much, but we think we
may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break through whatever
entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at first trouble
him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is filled: we cannot
doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by finding, amidst all
its wildness and remoteness, such a startling realism, such subtilty, such
close sympathy with all the passions that may move himself to-day.

In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to us, that this
Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should never before
been translated into English. For this is the Great Story of the North,
which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks—to
all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the world has made
our race nothing more than a name of what has been—a story too—then
should it be to those that come after us no less than the Tale of Troy has
been to us.

WILLIAM MORRIS and EIRIKR MAGNUSSON.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Chapter viii.—DBK.

THE STORY OF THE VOLSUNGS AND NIBLUNGS.

CHAPTER I. Of Sigi, the Son of Odin.

Here begins the tale, and tells of a man who was named Sigi, and called of
men the son of Odin; another man withal is told of in the tale, hight
Skadi, a great man and mighty of his hands; yet was Sigi the mightier and
the higher of kin, according to the speech of men of that time. Now Skadi
had a thrall with whom the story must deal somewhat, Bredi by name, who
was called after that work which he had to do; in prowess and might of
hand he was equal to men who were held more worthy, yea, and better than
some thereof.

Now it is to be told that, on a time, Sigi fared to the hunting of the
deer, and the thrall with him; and they hunted deer day-long till the
evening; and when they gathered together their prey in the evening, lo,
greater and more by far was that which Bredi had slain than Sigi's prey;
and this thing he much misliked, and he said that great wonder it was that
a very thrall should out-do him in the hunting of deer: so he fell on him
and slew him, and buried the body of him thereafter in a snow-drift.

Then he went home at evening tide and says that Bredi had ridden away from
him into the wild-wood. "Soon was he out of my sight," he says, "and
naught more I wot of him."

Skadi misdoubted the tale of Sigi, and deemed that this was a guile of
his, and that he would have slain Bredi. So he sent men to seek for him,
and to such an end came their seeking, that they found him in a certain
snow-drift; then said Skadi, that men should call that snow-drift Bredi's
Drift from henceforth; and thereafter have folk followed, so that in such
wise they call every drift that is right great.

Thus it is well seen that Sigi has slain the thrall and murdered him; so
he is given forth to be a wolf in holy places, (1) and may no more abide
in the land with his father; therewith Odin bare him fellowship from the
land, so long a way, that right long it was, and made no stay till he
brought him to certain war-ships. So Sigi falls to lying out a-warring
with the strength that his father gave him or ever they parted; and happy
was he in his warring, and ever prevailed, till he brought it about that
he won by his wars land and lordship at the last; and thereupon he took to
him a noble wife, and became a great and mighty king, and ruled over the
land of the Huns, and was the greatest of warriors. He had a son by his
wife, who was called Refir, who grew up in his father's house, and soon
became great of growth, and shapely.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  "Wolf in holy places," a man put out of the pale of society
       for crimes, an outlaw.

CHAPTER II. Of the Birth of Volsung, the Son of Rerir, who was the Son of
Sigi.

Now Sigi grew old, and had many to envy him, so that at last those turned
against him whom he trusted most; yea, even the brothers of his wife; for
these fell on him at his unwariest, when there were few with him to
withstand them, and brought so many against him, that they prevailed
against him, and there fell Sigi and all his folk with him. But Rerir, his
son, was not in this trouble, and he brought together so mighty a strength
of his friends and the great men of the land, that he got to himself both
the lands and kingdom of Sigi his father; and so now, when he deems that
the feet under him stand firm in his rule, then he calls to mind that
which he had against his mother's brothers, who had slain his father. So
the king gathers together a mighty army, and therewith falls on his
kinsmen, deeming that if he made their kinship of small account, yet none
the less they had first wrought evil against him. So he wrought his will
herein, in that he departed not from strife before he had slain all his
father's banesmen, though dreadful the deed seemed in every wise. So now
he gets land, lordship, and fee, and is become a mightier man than his
father before him.

Much wealth won in war gat Rerir to himself, and wedded a wife withal,
such as he deemed meet for him, and long they lived together, but had no
child to take the heritage after them; and ill-content they both were with
that, and prayed the Gods with heart and soul that they might get them a
child. And so it is said that Odin hears their prayer, and Freyia no less
hearkens wherewith they prayed unto her: so she, never lacking for all
good counsel, calls to her her casket-bearing may, (1) the daughter of
Hrimnir the giant, and sets an apple in her hand, and bids her bring it to
the king. She took the apple, and did on her the gear of a crow, and went
flying till she came whereas the king sat on a mound, and there she let
the apple fall into the lap of the king; but he took the apple, and deemed
he knew whereto it would avail; so he goes home from the mound to his own
folk, and came to the queen, and some deal of that apple she ate.

So, as the tale tells, the queen soon knew that she big with child, but a
long time wore or ever she might give birth to the child: so it befell
that the king must needs go to the wars, after the custom of kings, that
he may keep his own land in peace: and in this journey it came to pass
that Rerir fell sick and got his death, being minded to go home to Odin, a
thing much desired of many folk in those days.

Now no otherwise it goes with the queen's sickness than heretofore, nor
may she be the lighter of her child, and six winters wore away with the
sickness still heavy on her; so that at the last she feels that she may
not live long; wherefore now she bade cut the child from out of her; and
it was done even as she bade; a man-child was it, and great of growth from
his birth, as might well be; and they say that the youngling kissed his
mother or ever she died; but to him is a name given, and he is called
Volsung; and he was king over Hunland in the room of his father. From his
early years he was big and strong, and full of daring in all manly deeds
and trials, and he became the greatest of warriors, and of good hap in all
the battles of his warfaring.

Now when he was fully come to man's estate, Hrimnir the giant sends to him
Ljod his daughter; she of whom the tale told, that she brought the apple
to Rerir, Volsung's father. So Volsung weds her withal; and long they
abode together with good hap and great love. They had ten sons and one
daughter, and their eldest son was hight Sigmund, and their daughter
Signy; and these two were twins, and in all wise the foremost and the
fairest of the children of Volsung the king, and mighty, as all his seed
was; even as has been long told from ancient days, and in tales of long
ago, with the greatest fame of all men, how that the Volsungs have been
great men and high-minded and far above the most of men both in cunning
and in prowess and all things high and mighty.

So says the story that king Volsung let build a noble hall in such a wise,
that a big oak-tree stood therein, and that the limbs of the tree
blossomed fair out over the roof of the hall, while below stood the trunk
within it, and the said trunk did men call Branstock.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  May (A.S. "maeg"), a maid.

CHAPTER III. Of the Sword that Sigmund, Volsung's son, drew from the
Branstock.

There was a king called Siggeir, who ruled over Gothland, a mighty king
and of many folk; he went to meet Volsung, the king, and prayed him for
Signy his daughter to wife; and the king took his talk well, and his sons
withal, but she was loth thereto, yet she bade her father rule in this as
in all other things that concerned her; so the king took such rede (1)
that he gave her to him, and she was betrothed to King Siggeir; and for
the fulfilling of the feast and the wedding, was King Siggeir to come to
the house of King Volsung. The king got ready the feast according to his
best might, and when all things were ready, came the king's guests and
King Siggeir withal at the day appointed, and many a man of great account
had Siggeir with him.

The tale tells that great fires were made endlong the hall, and the great
tree aforesaid stood midmost thereof; withal folk say that, whenas men sat
by the fires in the evening, a certain man came into the hall unknown of
aspect to all men; and suchlike array he had, that over him was a spotted
cloak, and he was bare-foot, and had linen-breeches knit tight even unto
the bone, and he had a sword in his hand as he went up to the Branstock,
and a slouched hat upon his head: huge he was, and seeming-ancient, and
one-eyed. (2) So he drew his sword and smote it into the tree-trunk so
that it sank in up to the hilts; and all held back from greeting the man.
Then he took up the word, and said—

"Whoso draweth this sword from this stock, shall have the same as a gift
from me, and shall find in good sooth that never bare he better sword in
hand than is this."

Therewith out went the old man from the hall, and none knew who he was or
whither he went.

Now men stand up, and none would fain be the last to lay hand to the
sword, for they deemed that he would have the best of it who might first
touch it; so all the noblest went thereto first, and then the others, one
after other; but none who came thereto might avail to pull it out, for in
nowise would it come away howsoever they tugged at it; but now up comes
Sigmund, King Volsung's son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it from
the stock, even as if it lay loose before him; so good that weapon seemed
to all, that none thought he had seen such a sword before, and Siggeir
would fain buy it of him at thrice its weight of gold, but Sigmund said—

"Thou mightest have taken the sword no less than I from there whereas it
stood, if it had been thy lot to bear it; but now, since it has first of
all fallen into my hand, never shalt thou have it, though thou biddest
therefor all the gold thou hast."

King Siggeir grew wroth at these words, and deemed Sigmund had answered
him scornfully, but whereas was a wary man and a double-dealing, he made
as if he heeded this matter in nowise, yet that same evening he thought
how he might reward it, as was well seen afterwards.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Rede (A.S. raed), counsel, advice, a tale or prophecy.
  (2)  The man is Odin, who is always so represented, because he
       gave his eye as a pledge for a draught from the fountain of
       Mimir, the source of all wisdom.

CHAPTER IV. How King Siggeir wedded Signy, and bade King Volsung and his
son to Gothland.

Now it is to be told that Siggeir goes to bed by Signy that night, and the
next morning the weather was fair; then says King Siggeir that he will not
bide, lest the wind should wax, or the sea grow impassable; nor is it said
that Volsung or his sons letted him herein, and that the less, because
they saw that he was fain to get him gone from the feast. But now says
Signy to her father—

"I have no will to go away with Seggeir; neither does my heart smile upon
him, and I wot; by my fore-knowledge, and from the fetch (1) of our kin,
that from this counsel will great evil fall on us if this wedding be not
speedily undone."

"Speak in no such wise, daughter!" said he, "for great shame will it be to
him, yea, and to us also, to break troth with him, he being sackless; (2)
and in naught may we trust him, and no friendship shall we have of him, if
these matters are broken off; but he will pay us back in as evil wise as
he may; for that alone is seemly, to hold truly to troth given."

So King Siggeir got ready for home, and before he went from the feast he
bade King Volsung, his father-in-law, come see him in Gothland, and all
his sons with him, whenas three months should be overpast, and to bring
such following with him, as he would have; and as he deemed meet for his
honour; and thereby will Siggeir the king pay back for the shortcomings of
the wedding-feast, in that he would abide thereat but one night only, a
thing not according to the wont of men. So King Volsung gave word to come
on the day named, and the kinsmen-in-law parted, and Siggeir went home
with his wife.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Fetch; wraith, or familiar spirit.
  (2)  Sackless (A.S. "sacu", Icel. "sok".) blameless.

CHAPTER V. Of the Slaying of King Volsung.

Now tells the tale of King Volsung and his sons that they go at the time
appointed to Gothland at the bidding of King Siggeir, and put off from the
land in three ships, all well manned, and have a fair voyage, and made
Gothland late of an evening tide.

But that same night came Signy and called her father and brothers to a
privy talk, and told them what she deemed King Siggeir was minded to do,
and how that he had drawn together an army no man may meet. "And," says
she, "he is minded to do guilefully by you; wherefore I bid you get ye
gone back again to your own land, and gather together the mightiest power
ye may, and then come back hither and avenge you; neither go ye now to
your undoing, for ye shall surely fail not to fall by his wiles if ye turn
not on him even as I bid you."

Then spake Volsung the king, "All people and nations shall tell of the
word I spake, yet being unborn, wherein I vowed a vow that I would flee in
fear from neither fire nor the sword; even so have I done hitherto, and
shall I depart therefrom now I am old? Yea withal never shall the maidens
mock these my sons at the games, and cry out at them that they fear death;
once alone must all men need die, and from that season shall none escape;
so my rede is that we flee nowhither, but do the work of our hands in as
manly wise as we may; a hundred fights have I fought, and whiles I had
more, and whiles I had less, and yet ever had I the victory, nor shall it
ever be heard tell of me that I fled away or prayed for peace."

Then Signy wept right sore, and prayed that she might not go back to King
Siggeir, but King Volsung answered—

"Thou shalt surely go back to thine husband, and abide with him, howsoever
it fares with us."

So Signy went home, and they abode there that night; but in the morning,
as soon as it was day, Volsung bade his men arise and go aland and make
them ready for battle; so they went aland, all of them all-armed, and had
not long to wait before Siggeir fell on them with all his army, and the
fiercest fight there was betwixt them; and Siggeir cried on his men to the
onset all he might; and so the tale tells that King Volsung and his sons
went eight times right through Siggeir's folk that day, smiting and hewing
on either hand, but when they would do so even once again, King Volsung
fell amidst his folk and all his men withal, saving his ten sons, for
mightier was the power against them than they might withstand.

But now are all his sons taken, and laid in bonds and led away; and Signy
was ware withal that her father was slain, and her brothers taken and
doomed to death; that she called King Siggeir apart to talk with her, and
said—

"This will I pray of thee, that thou let not slay my brothers hastily, but
let them be set awhile in the stocks, for home to me comes the saw that
says, "Sweet to eye while seen": but longer life I pray not for them,
because I wot well that my prayer will not avail me."

Then answered Siggeir:

"Surely thou art mad and witless, praying thus for more bale for thy
brothers than their present slaying; yet this will I grant thee, for the
better it likes me the more they must bear, and the longer their pain is
or ever death come to them."

Now he let it be done even as she prayed, and a mighty beam was brought
and set on the feet of those ten brethren in a certain place of the
wild-wood, and there they sit day-long until night; but at midnight, as
they sat in the stocks, there came on them a she-wolf from out the wood;
old she was, and both great and evil of aspect; and the first thing she
did was to bite one of those brethren till he died, and then she ate him
up withal, and went on her way.

But the next morning Signy sent a man to the brethren, even one whom she
most trusted, to wot of the tidings; and when he came back he told her
that one of them was dead, and great and grievous she deemed it, if they
should all fare in like wise, and yet naught might she avail them.

Soon is the tale told thereof: nine nights together came the she-wolf at
midnight, and each night slew and ate up one of the brethren, until all
were dead, save Sigmund only; so now, before the tenth night came, Signy
sent that trusty man to Sigmund, her brother, and gave honey into his
hand, bidding him do it over Sigmund's face, and set a little deal of it
in his mouth; so he went to Sigmund and did as he was bidden, and then
came home again; and so the next night came the she-wolf according to her
wont, and would slay him and eat him even as his brothers; but now she
sniffs the breeze from him, whereas he was anointed with the honey, and
licks his face all over with her tongue, and then thrusts her tongue into
the mouth of him. No fear he had thereof, but caught the she-wolf's tongue
betwixt his teeth, and so hard she started back thereat, and pulled
herself away so mightily, setting her feet against the stocks, that all
was riven asunder; but he ever held so fast that the tongue came away by
the roots, and thereof she had her bane.

But some men say that this same she-wolf was the mother of King Siggeir,
who had turned herself into this likeness by troll's lore and witchcraft.

CHAPTER VI. Of how Signy sent the Children of her and Siggeir to Sigmund.

Now whenas Sigmund is loosed and the stocks are broken, he dwells in the
woods and holds himself there; but Signy sends yet again to wot of the
tidings, whether Sigmund were alive or no; but when those who were sent
came to him, he told them all as it had betid, and how things had gone
betwixt him and the wolf; so they went home and tell Signy the tidings;
but she goes and finds her brother, and they take counsel in such wise as
to make a house underground in the wild-wood; and so things go on a while,
Signy hiding him there, and sending him such things as he needed; but King
Siggeir deemed that all the Volsungs were dead.

Now Siggeir had two sons by his wife, whereof it is told that when the
eldest was ten winters old, Signy sends him to Sigmund, so that he might
give him help, if he would in any wise strive to avenge his father; so the
youngling goes to the wood, and comes late in evening-tide to Sigmund's
earth-house; and Sigmund welcomed him in seemly fashion, and said that he
should make ready their bread; "But I," said he, "will go seek firewood."

Therewith he gives the meal-bag into his hands while he himself went to
fetch firing; but when he came back the youngling had done naught at the
bread-making. Then asks Sigmund if the bread be ready—

Says the youngling, "I durst not set hand to the meal sack, because
somewhat quick lay in the meal."

Now Sigmund deemed he wotted that the lad was of no such heart as that he
would be fain to have him for his fellow; and when he met his sister,
Sigmund said that he had come no nigher to the aid of a man though the
youngling were with him.

Then said Signy, "Take him and kill him then; for why should such an one
live longer?" and even so he did.

So this winter wears, and the next winter Signy sent her next son to
Sigmund; and there is no need to make a long tale thereof, for in like
wise went all things, and he slew the child by the counsel of Signy.

CHAPTER VII. Of the Birth of Sinfjotli the Son of Sigmund.

So on a tide it befell as Signy sat in her bower, that there came to her a
witch-wife exceeding cunning, and Signy talked with her in such wise,
"Fain am I," says she, "that we should change semblances together."

She says, "Even as thou wilt then."

And so by her wiles she brought it about that they changed semblances, and
now the witch-wife sits in Signy's place according to her rede, and goes
to bed by the king that night, and he knows not that he has other than
Signy beside him.

But the tale tells of Signy, that she fared to the earth-house of her
brother, and prayed him give her harbouring for the night; "For I have
gone astray abroad in the woods, and know not whither I am going."

So he said she might abide, and that he would not refuse harbour to one
lone woman, deeming that she would scarce pay back his good cheer by
tale-bearing: so she came into the house, and they sat down to meat, and
his eyes were often on her, and a goodly and fair woman she seemed to him;
but when they are full, then he says to her, that he is right fain that
they should have but one bed that night; she nowise turned away therefrom,
and so for three nights together he laid her in bed by him.

Thereafter she fared home, and found the witch-wife and bade her change
semblances again, and she did so.

Now as time wears, Signy brings forth a man-child, who was named
Sinfjotli, and when he grew up he was both big and strong, and fair of
face, and much like unto the kin of the Volsungs, and he was hardly yet
ten winters old when she sent him to Sigmund's earth-house; but this trial
she had made of her other sons or ever she had sent them to Sigmund, that
she had sewed gloves on to their hands through flesh and skin, and they
had borne it ill and cried out thereat; and this she now did to Sinfjotli,
and he changed countenance in nowise thereat. Then she flayed off the
kirtle so that the skin came off with the sleeves, and said that this
would be torment enough for him; but he said—

"Full little would Volsung have felt such a smart this."

So the lad came to Sigmund, and Sigmund bade him knead their meal up,
while he goes to fetch firing; so he gave him the meal-sack, and then went
after the wood, and by then he came back had Sinfjotli made an end of his
baking. Then asked Sigmund if he had found nothing in the meal.

"I misdoubted me that there was something quick in the meal when I first
fell to kneading of it, but I have kneaded it all up together, both the
meal and that which was therein, whatsoever it was."

Then Sigmund laughed out, he said—

"Naught wilt thou eat of this bread to-night, for the most deadly of worms
(1) hast thou kneaded up therewith."

Now Sigmund was so mighty a man that he might eat venom and have no hurt
therefrom; but Sinfjotli might abide whatso venom came on the outside of
him, but might neither eat nor drink thereof.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Serpents.

CHAPTER VIII. The Death of King Siggeir and of Signy.

The tale tells that Sigmund thought Sinfjotli over young to help him to
his revenge, and will first of all harden him with manly deeds; so in
summer-tide they fare wide through the woods and slay men for their
wealth; Sigmund deems him to take much after the kin of the Volsungs,
though he thinks that he is Siggeir's son, and deems him to have the evil
heart of his father, with the might and daring of the Volsungs; withal he
must needs think him in no wise a kinsome man, for full oft would he bring
Sigmund's wrongs to his memory, and prick him on to slay King Siggeir.

Now on a time as they fare abroad in the wood for the getting of wealth,
they find a certain house, and two men with great gold rings asleep
therein: now these twain were spell-bound skin-changers, (1) and
wolf-skins were hanging up over them in the house; and every tenth day
might they come out of those skins; and they were kings' sons: so Sigmund
and Sinfjofli do the wolf-skins on them, and then might they nowise come
out of them, though forsooth the same nature went with them as heretofore;
they howled as wolves howl, but both knew the meaning of that howling;
they lay out in the wild-wood, and each went his way; and a word they made
betwixt them, that they should risk the onset of seven men, but no more,
and that he who was first to be set on should howl in wolfish wise: "Let
us not depart from this," says Sigmund, "for thou art young and over-bold,
and men will deem the quarry good, when they take thee."

Now each goes his way, and when they were parted, Sigmund meets certain
men, and gives forth a wolf's howl; and when Sinfjotli heard it, he went
straightway thereto, and slew them all, and once more they parted. But ere
Sinfjotli has fared long through the woods, eleven men meet him, and he
wrought in such wise that he slew them all, and was awearied therewith,
and crawls under an oak, and there takes his rest. Then came Sigmund
thither, and said—

"Why didst thou not call on me?"

Sinfjotli said, "I was loth to call for thy help for the slaying of eleven
men."

Then Sigmund rushed at him so hard that he staggered and fell, and Sigmund
bit him in the throat. Now that day they might not come out of their
wolf-skins: but Sigmund lays the other on his back, and bears him home to
the house, and cursed the wolf-gears and gave them to the trolls. Now on a
day he saw where two weasels went, and how that one bit the other in the
throat, and then ran straightway into the thicket, and took up a leaf and
laid it on the wound, and thereon his fellow sprang up quite and clean
whole; so Sigmund went out and saw a raven flying with a blade of that
same herb to him; so he took it and drew it over Sinfjotli's hurt, and he
straightway sprang up as whole as though he had never been hurt.
Thereafter they went home to their earth-house, and abode there till the
time came for them to put off the wolf-shapes; then they burnt them up
with fire, and prayed that no more hurt might come to any one from them;
but in that uncouth guise they wrought many famous deeds in the kingdom
and lordship of King Siggeir.

Now when Sinfjotli was come to man's estate, Sigmund deemed he had tried
him fully, and or ever a long time has gone by he turns his mind to the
avenging of his father, if so it may be brought about; so on a certain day
the twain get them gone from their earth-house, and come to the abode of
King Siggeir late in the evening, and go into the porch before the hall,
wherein were tuns of ale, and there they lie hid: now the queen is ware of
them, where they are, and is fain to meet them; and when they met they
took counsel, and were of one mind that Volsung should be revenged that
same night.

Now Signy and the king had two children of tender age, who played with a
golden toy on the floor, and bowled it along the pavement of the hall,
running along with it; but therewith a golden ring from off it trundles
away into the place where Sigmund and Sinfjotli lay, and off runs the
little one to search for the same, and beholds withal where two men are
sitting, big and grimly to look on, with overhanging helms and bright
white byrnies; (2) so he runs up the hall to his father, and tells him of
the sight he has seen, and thereat the king misdoubts of some guile
abiding him; but Signy heard their speech, and arose and took both the
children, and went out into the porch to them and said—

"Lo ye! These younglings have bewrayed you; come now therefore and slay
them!"

Sigmund says, "Never will I slay thy children for telling of where I lay
hid."

But Sinfjotli made little enow of it, but drew his sword and slew them
both, and cast them into the hall at King Siggeir's feet.

Then up stood the king and cried on his men to take those who had lain
privily in the porch through the night. So they ran thither and would lay
hands on them, but they stood on their defence well and manly, and long he
remembered it who was the nighest to them; but in the end they were borne
down by many men and taken, and bonds were set upon them, and they were
cast into fetters wherein they sit night long.

Then the king ponders what longest and worst of deaths he shall mete out
to them; and when morning came he let make a great barrow of stones and
turf; and when it was done, let set a great flat stone midmost inside
thereof, so that one edge was aloft, the other alow; and so great it was
that it went from wall to wall, so that none might pass it.

Now he bids folk take Sigmund and Sinfjotli and set them in the barrow, on
either side of the stone, for the worse for them he deemed it, that they
might hear each the other's speech, and yet that neither might pass one to
the other. But now, while they were covering in the barrow with the
turf-slips, thither came Signy, bearing straw with her, and cast it down
to Sinfjotli, and bade the thralls hide this thing from the king; they
said yea thereto, and therewithal was the barrow closed in.

But when night fell, Sinfjotli said to Sigmund, "Belike we shall scarce
need meat for a while, for here has the queen cast swine's flesh into the
barrow, and wrapped it round about on the outer side with straw."

Therewith he handles the flesh and finds that therein was thrust Sigmund's
sword; and he knew it by the hilts, as mirk as it might be in the barrow,
and tells Sigmund thereof, and of that were they both fain enow.

Now Sinfjotli drave the point of the sword up into the big stone, and drew
it hard along, and the sword bit on the stone. With that Sigmund caught
the sword by the point, and in this wise they sawed the stone between
them, and let not or all the sawing was done that need be done, even as
the song sings:

     "Sinfjotli sawed
     And Sigmund sawed,
     Atwain with main
     The stone was done."

Now are they both together loose in the barrow, and soon they cut both
through stone and through iron, and bring themselves out thereof. Then
they go home to the hall, whenas all men slept there, and bear wood to the
hall, and lay fire therein; and withal the folk therein are waked by the
smoke, and by the hall burning over their heads.

Then the king cries out, "Who kindled this fire, I burn withal?"

"Here am I," says Sigmund, "with Sinfjotli, my sister's son; and we are
minded that thou shalt wot well that all the Volsungs are not yet dead."

Then he bade his sister come out, and take all good things at his hands,
and great honour, and fair atonement in that wise, for all her griefs.

But she answered, "Take heed now, and consider, if I have kept King
Siggeir in memory, and his slaying of Volsung the king! I let slay both my
children, whom I deemed worthless for the revenging of our father, and I
went into the wood to thee in a witch-wife's shape; and now behold,
Sinfjotli is the son of thee and of me both! and therefore has he this so
great hardihood and fierceness, in that he is the son both of Volsung's
son and Volsung's daughter; and for this, and for naught else, have I so
wrought, that Siggeir might get his bane at last; and all these things
have I done that vengeance might fall on him, and that I too might not
live long; and merrily now will I die with King Siggeir, though I was
naught merry to wed him."

Therewith she kissed Sigmund her brother, and Sinfjotli, and went back
again into the fire, and there she died with King Siggeir and all his good
men.

But the two kinsmen gathered together folk and ships, and Sigmund went
back to his father's land, and drave away thence the king, who had set
himself down there in the room of king Volsung.

So Sigmund became a mighty King and far-famed, wise and high-minded: he
had to wife one named Borghild, and two sons they had between them, one
named Helgi and the other Hamund; and when Helgi was born, Norns came to
him, (3) and spake over him, and said that he should be in time to come
the most renowned of all kings. Even therewith was Sigmund come home from
the wars, and so therewith he gives him the name of Helgi, and these
matters as tokens thereof, Land of Rings, Sun-litten Hill, and
Sharp-shearing Sword, and withal prayed that he might grow of great fame,
and like unto the kin of the Volsungs.

And so it was that he grew up high-minded, and well-beloved, and above all
other men in all prowess; and the story tells that he went to the wars
when he was fifteen winters old. Helgi was lord and ruler over the army,
but Sinfjotli was gotten to be his fellow herein; and so the twain bare
sway thereover.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  "Skin-changers" were universally believed in once, in
       Iceland no less than elsewhere, as see Ari in several places
       of his history, especially the episode of Dufthach and
       Storwolf o' Whale.  Men possessing the power of becoming
       wolves at intervals, in the present case compelled so to
       become, wer-wolves or "loupsgarou", find large place in
       medieval story, but were equally well-known in classic
       times.  Belief in them still lingers in parts of Europe
       where wolves are to be found.  Herodotus tells of the Neuri,
       who assumed once a year the shape of wolves; Pliny says that
       one of the family of Antaeus, chosen by lot annually, became
       a wolf, and so remained for nine years; Giraldus Cambrensis
       will have it that Irishmen may become wolves; and Nennius
       asserts point-blank that "the descendants of wolves are
       still in Ossory;" they retransform themselves into wolves
       when they bite.  Apuleius, Petronius, and Lucian have
       similar stories.  The Emperor Sigismund convoked a council
       of theologians in the fifteenth century who decided that
       wer-wolves did exist.
  (2)  Byrny (A.S. "byrne"), corslet, cuirass.
  (3)  "Norns came to him."  Nornir are the fates of the northern
       mythology.  They are three—"Urd", the past; "Verdandi",
       the present; and "Skuld", the future.  They sit beside the
       fountain of Urd ("Urdarbrunur"), which is below one of the
       roots of "Yggdrasil", the world-tree, which tree their
       office it is to nourish by sprinkling it with the waters of
       the fountain.

CHAPTER IX. How Helgi, the son of Sigmund, won King Hodbrod and his Realm,
and wedded Sigrun.

Now the tale tells that Helgi in his warring met a king hight Hunding, a
mighty king, and lord of many men and many lands; they fell to battle
together, and Helgi went forth mightily, and such was the end of that
fight that Helgi had the victory, but King Hunding fell and many of his
men with him; but Helgi is deemed to have grown greatly in fame because he
had slain so mighty a king.

Then the sons of Hunding draw together a great army to avenge their
father. Hard was the fight betwixt them; but Helgi goes through the folk
of those brothers unto their banner, and there slays these sons of
Hunding, Alf and Eyolf, Herward and Hagbard, and wins there a great
victory.

Now as Helgi fared from the fight, he met a many women right fair and
worthy to look on, who rode in exceeding noble array; but one far excelled
them all; then Helgi asked them the name of that their lady and queen, and
she named herself Sigrun, and said she was daughter of King Hogni.

Then said Helgi, "Fare home with us: good welcome shall ye have!"

Then said the king's daughter, "Other work lies before us than to drink
with thee."

"Yea, and what work, king's daughter?" said Helgi.

She answers, "King Hogni has promised me to Hodbrod, the son of King
Granmar, but I have vowed a vow that I will have him to my husband no more
than if he were a crow's son and not a king's; and yet will the thing come
to pass, but and if thou standest in the way thereof, and goest against
him with an army, and takest me away withal; for verily with no king would
I rather bide on bolster than with thee."

"Be of good cheer, king's daughter," says he, "for certes he and I shall
try the matter, or ever thou be given to him; yea, we shall behold which
may prevail against the other; and hereto I pledge my life."

Thereafter, Helgi sent men with money in their hands to summon his folk to
him, and all his power is called together to Red-Berg: and there Helgi
abode till such time as a great company came to him from Hedinsey; and
therewithal came mighty power from Norvi Sound aboard great and fair
ships. Then King Helgi called to him the captain of his ships, who was
hight Leif, and asked him if he had told over the tale of his army.

"A thing not easy to tell, lord," says he, "on the ships that came out of
Norvi Sound are twelve thousand men, and otherwhere are half as many
again."

Then bade King Helgi turn into the firth, called Varin's firth, and they
did so: but now there fell on them so fierce a storm and so huge a sea,
that the beat of the waves on board and bow was to hearken to like as the
clashing together of high hills broken.

But Helgi bade men fear naught, nor take in any sail, but rather hoist
every rag higher than heretofore; but little did they miss of foundering
or ever they made land; then came Sigrun, daughter of King Hogni, down on
to the beach with a great army, and turned them away thence to a good
haven called Gnipalund; but the landsmen see what has befallen and come
down to the sea-shore. The brother of King Hodbrod, lord of a land called
Swarin's Cairn, cried out to them, and asked them who was captain over
that mighty army. Then up stands Sinfjotli, with a helm on his head,
bright shining as glass, and a byrny as white as snow; a spear in his
hand, and thereon a banner of renown, and a gold-rimmed shield hanging
before him; and well he knew with what words to speak to kings—

"Go thou and say, when thou hast made an end of feeding thy swine and thy
dogs, and when thou beholdest thy wife again, that here are come the
Volsungs, and in this company may King Helgi be found, if Hodbrod be fain
of finding him, for his game and his joy it is to fight and win fame,
while thou art kissing the handmaids by the fire-side."

Then answered Granmar, "In nowise knowest thou how to speak seemly things,
and to tell of matters remembered from of old, whereas thou layest lies on
chiefs and lords; most like it is that thou must have long been nourished
with wolf-meat abroad in the wild-woods, and has slain thy brethren; and a
marvel it is to behold that thou darest to join thyself to the company of
good men and true, thou, who hast sucked the blood of many a cold corpse."

Sinfjotli answered, "Dim belike is grown thy memory now, of how thou wert
a witch-wife on Varinsey, and wouldst fain have a man to thee, and chose
me to that same office of all the world; and how thereafter thou wert a
Valkyria (1) in Asgarth, and it well-nigh came to this, that for thy sweet
sake should all men fight; and nine wolf whelps I begat on thy body in
Lowness, and was the father to them all."

Granmar answers, "Great skill of lying hast thou; yet belike the father of
naught at all mayst thou be, since thou wert gelded by the giant's
daughters of Thrasness; and lo thou art the stepson of King Siggeir, and
were wont to lie abroad in wilds and woods with the kin of wolves; and
unlucky was the hand wherewith thou slewest thy brethren, making for
thyself an exceeding evil name."

Said Sinfjotli, "Mindest thou not then, when thou were stallion Grani's
mare, and how I rode thee an amble on Bravoll, and that afterwards thou
wert giant Golnir's goat-herd?"

Granmar says, "Rather would I feed fowls with the flesh of thee than
wrangle any longer with thee."

Then spake King Helgi, "Better were it for ye, and a more manly deed, to
fight, rather than to speak such things as it is a shame even to hearken
to; Granmar's sons are no friends of me and of mine, yet are they hardy
men none the less."

So Granmar rode away to meet King Hodbrod, at a stead called Sunfells, and
the horses of the twain were named Sveipud and Sveggjud. The brothers met
in the castle-porch, and Granmar told Hodbrod of the war-news. King
Hodbrod was clad in a byrny, and had his helm on his head; he asked—

"What men are anigh, why look ye so wrathful?"

Granmar says, "Here are come the Volsungs, and twelve thousand men of them
are afloat off the coast, and seven thousand are at the island called Sok,
but at the stead called Grindur is the greatest company of all, and now I
deem withal that Helgi and his fellowship have good will to give battle."

Then said the king, "Let us send a message through all our realm, and go
against them, neither let any who is fain of fight sit idle at home; let
us send word to the sons of Ring, and to King Hogni, and to Alf the Old,
for they are mighty warriors."

So the hosts met at Wolfstone, and fierce fight befell there; Helgi rushed
forth through the host of his foes, and many a man fell there; at last
folk saw a great company of shield-maidens, like burning flames to look
on, and there was come Sigrun, the king's daughter. Then King Helgi fell
on King Hodbrod, and smote him, and slew him even under his very banner;
and Sigrun cried out—

"Have thou thanks for thy so manly deed! now shall we share the land
between us, and a day of great good hap this is to me, and for this deed
shalt thou get honour and renown, in that thou hast felled to earth so
mighty a king."

So Helgi took to him that realm and dwelt there long, when he had wedded
Sigrun, and became a king of great honour and renown, though he has naught
more to do with this story.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Valkyrja, "Chooser of the elected."  The women were so
       called whom Odin sent to choose those for death in battle
       who were to join the "Einherjar" in the hall of the elected,
       "Val-holl."

CHAPTER X. The ending of Sinfjotli, Sigmund's Son.

Now the Volsungs fare back home, and have gained great renown by these
deeds. But Sinfjotli betook himself to warfare anew; and therewith he had
sight of an exceeding fair woman, and yearned above all things for her;
but that same woman was wooed also of the brother of Borghild, the king's
wife: and this matter they fought out betwixt them, and Sinfjotli slew
that king; and thereafter he harried far and wide, and had many a battle
and even gained the day; and he became hereby honoured and renowned above
all men; but in autumn tide he came home with many ships and abundant
wealth.

Then he told his tidings to the king his father, and he again to the
queen, and she for her part bids him get him gone from the realm, and made
as if she would in nowise see him. But Sigmund said he would not drive him
away, and offered her atonement of gold and great wealth for her brother's
life, albeit he said he had never erst given weregild (1) to any for the
slaying of a man, but no fame it was to uphold wrong against a woman.

So seeing she might not get her own way herein, she said, "Have thy will
in this matter, O my lord, for it is seemly so to be."

And now she holds the funeral feast for her brother by the aid and counsel
of the king, and makes ready all things therefor or in the best of wise,
and bade thither many great men.

At that feast, Borghild the queen bare the drink to folk, and she came
over against Sinfjofli with a great horn, and said—

"Fall to now and drink, fair stepson!"

Then he took the horn to him, and looked therein, and said—

"Nay, for the drink is charmed drink"

Then said Sigmund, "Give it unto me then;" and therewith he took the horn
and drank it off.

But the queen said to Sinfjotli, "Why must other men needs drink thine ale
for thee?" And she came again the second time with the horn, and said,
"Come now and drink!" and goaded him with many words.

And he took the horn, and said—

"Guile is in the drink."

And thereon, Sigmund cried out—

"Give it then unto me!"

Again, the third time, she came to him, and bade him drink off his drink,
if he had the heart of a Volsung; then he laid hand on the horn, but said—

"Venom is therein."

"Nay, let the lip strain it out then, O son," quoth Sigmund; and by then
was he exceeding drunk with drink, and therefore spake he in that wise.

So Sinfjotli drank, and straightway fell down dead to the ground.

Sigmund rose up, and sorrowed nigh to death over him; then he took the
corpse in his arms and fared away to the wood, and went till he came to a
certain firth; and there he saw a man in a little boat; and that man asked
if he would be wafted by him over the firth, and he said yea thereto; but
so little was the boat, that they might not all go in it at once, so the
corpse was first laid therein, while Sigmund went by the firth-side. But
therewith the boat and the man therein vanished away from before Sigmund's
eyes. (2)

So thereafter Sigmund turned back home, and drave away the queen, and a
little after she died. But Sigmund the king yet ruled his realm, and is
deemed ever the greatest champion and king of the old law.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Weregild, fine for man-slaying ("wer", man, and "gild", a
       payment).
  (2)  The man in the boat is Odin, doubtless.

CHAPTER XI. Of King Sigmund's last Battle, and of how he must yield up his
Sword again.

There was a king called Eylimi, mighty and of great fame, and his daughter
was called Hjordis, the fairest and wisest of womankind; and Sigmund hears
it told of her that she was meet to be his wife, yea if none else were. So
he goes to the house of King Eylimi, who would make a great feast for him,
if so be he comes not thither in the guise of a foe. So messages were sent
from one to the other that this present journey was a peaceful one, and
not for war; so the feast was held in the best of wise and with many a man
thereat; fairs were in every place established for King Sigmund, and all
things else were done to the aid and comfort of his journey: so he came to
the feast, and both kings hold their state in one hall; thither also was
come King Lyngi, son of King Hunding, and he also is a-wooing the daughter
of King Eylimi.

Now the king deemed he knew that the twain had come thither but for one
errand, and thought withal that war and trouble might be looked for from
the hands of him who brought not his end about; so he spake to his
daughter, and said—

"Thou art a wise woman, and I have spoken it, that thou alone shalt choose
a husband for thyself; choose therefore between these two kings, and my
rede shall be even as thine."

"A hard and troublous matter," says she; "yet will I choose him who is of
greatest fame, King Sigmund to wife, albeit he is well stricken in years."

So to him was she betrothed, and King Lyngi gat him gone. Then was Sigmund
wedded to Hjordis, and now each day was the feast better and more glorious
than on the day before it. But thereafter Sigmund went back home to
Hunland, and King Eylimi, his father-in-law, with him, and King Sigmund
betakes himself to the due ruling of his realm.

But King Lyngi and his brethren gather an army together to fall on
Sigmund, for as in all matters they were wont to have the worser lot, so
did this bite the sorest of all; and they would fain prevail over the
might and pride of the Volsungs. So they came to Hunland, and sent King
Sigmund word how that they would not steal upon him, and that they deemed
he would scarce slink away from them. So Sigmund said he would come and
meet them in battle, and drew his power together; but Hjordis was borne
into the wood with a certain bondmaid, and mighty wealth went with them;
and there she abode the while they fought.

Now the vikings rushed from their ships in numbers not to be borne up
against, but Sigmund the King, and Eylimi, set up their banners, and the
horns blew up to battle; but King Sigmund let blow the horn his father
erst had had, and cheered on his men to the fight, but his army was far
the fewest.

Now was that battle fierce and fell, and though Sigmund were old, yet most
hardily he fought, and was ever the foremost of his men; no shield or
byrny might hold against him, and he went ever through the ranks of his
foemen on that day, and no man might see how things would fare between
them; many an arrow and many a spear was aloft in air that day, and so his
spae-wrights wrought for him that he got no wound, and none can tell over
the tale of those who fell before him, and both his arms were red with
blood, even to the shoulders.

But now whenas the battle had dured a while, there came a man into the
fight clad in a blue cloak, and with a slouched hat on his head, one-eyed
he was, (1) and bare a bill in his hand; and he came against Sigmund the
King, and have up his bill against him, and as Sigmund smote fiercely with
the sword it fell upon the bill and burst asunder in the midst:
thenceforth the slaughter and dismay turned to his side, for the good-hap
of King Sigmund had departed from him, and his men fell fast about him;
naught did the king spare himself, but the rather cheered on his men; but
even as the saw says, "No might 'gainst many", so was it now proven; and
in this fight fell Sigmund the King, and King Eylimi, his father-in-law,
in the fore-front of their battle, and therewith the more part of their
folk.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Odin coming to change the ownership of the sword he had
       given Sigmund. See Chapter 3.

CHAPTER XII. Of the Shards of the Sword Gram, and how Hjordis went to King
Alf.

Now King Lyngi made for the king's abode, and was minded to take the
king's daughter there, but failed herein, for there he found neither wife
nor wealth: so he fared through all the realm, and gave his men rule
thereover, and now deemed that he had slain all the kin of the Volsungs,
and that he need dread them no more from henceforth.

Now Hjordis went amidst the slain that night of the battle, and came
whereas lay King Sigmund, and asked if he might be healed; but he answered—

"Many a man lives after hope has grown little; but my good-hap has
departed from me, nor will I suffer myself to be healed, nor wills Odin
that I should ever draw sword again, since this my sword and his is
broken; lo now, I have waged war while it was his will."

"Naught ill would I deem matters," said she, "if thou mightest be healed
and avenge my father."

The king said, "That is fated for another man; behold now, thou art great
with a man-child; nourish him well and with good heed, and the child shall
be the noblest and most famed of all our kin: and keep well withal the
shards of the sword: thereof shall a goodly sword be made, and it shall be
called Gram, and our son shall bear it, and shall work many a great work
therewith, even such as eld shall never minish; for his name shall abide
and flourish as long as the world shall endure: and let this be enow for
thee. But now I grow weary with my wounds, and I will go see our kin that
have gone before me."

So Hjordis sat over him till he died at the day-dawning; and then she
looked, and behold, there came many ships sailing to the land: then she
spake to the handmaid—

"Let us now change raiment, and be thou called by my name, and say that
thou art the king's daughter."

And thus they did; but now the vikings behold the great slaughter of men
there, and see where two women fare away thence into the wood; and they
deem that some great tidings must have befallen, and they leaped ashore
from out their ships. Now the captain of these folks was Alf, son of
Hjalprek, king of Denmark, who was sailing with his power along the land.
So they came into the field among the slain, and saw how many men lay dead
there; then the king bade go seek for the women and bring them thither,
and they did so. He asked them what women they were; and, little as the
thing seems like to be, the bondmaid answered for the twain, telling of
the fall of King Sigmund and King Eylimi, and many another great man, and
who they were withal who had wrought the deed. Then the king asks if they
wotted where the wealth of the king was bestowed; and then says the
bondmaid—

"It may well be deemed that we know full surely thereof."

And therewith she guides them to the place where the treasure lay: and
there they found exceeding great wealth; so that men deem they have never
seen so many things of price heaped up together in one place. All this
they bore to the ships of King Alf, and Hjordis and the bondmaid went with
them. Therewith these sail away to their own realm, and talk how that
surely on that field had fallen the most renowned of kings.

So the king sits by the tiller, but the women abide in the forecastle; but
talk he had with the women and held their counsels of much account.

In such wise the king came home to his realm with great wealth, and he
himself was a man exceeding goodly to look on. But when he had been but a
little while at home, the queen, his mother, asked him why the fairest of
the two women had the fewer rings and the less worthy attire.

"I deem," she said, "that she whom ye have held of least account is the
noblest of the twain."

He answered: "I too have misdoubted me, that she is little like a
bondwoman, and when we first met, in seemly wise she greeted noble men. Lo
now, we will make a trial of the thing."

So on a time as men sat at the drink, the king sat down to talk with the
women, and said:—

"In what wise do ye note the wearing of the hours, whenas night grows old,
if ye may not see the lights of heaven?"

Then says the bondwoman, "This sign have I, that whenas in my youth I was
wont to drink much in the dawn, so now when I no longer use that manner, I
am yet wont to wake up at that very same tide, and by that token do I know
thereof."

Then the king laughed and said, "Ill manners for a king's daughter!" And
therewith he turned to Hjordis, and asked her even the same question; but
she answered—

"My father erst gave me a little gold ring of such nature, that it groweth
cold on my finger in the day-dawning; and that is the sign that I have to
know thereof."

The king answered: "Enow of gold there, where a very bondmaid bore it! But
come now, thou hast been long enow hid from me; yet if thou hadst told me
all from the beginning, I would have done to thee as though we had both
been one king's children: but better than thy deeds will I deal with thee,
for thou shalt be my wife, and due jointure will I pay thee whenas thou
hast borne me a child."

She spake therewith and told out the whole truth about herself: so there
was she held in great honour, and deemed the worthiest of women.

CHAPTER XIII. Of the Birth and Waxing of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane.

The tale tells that Hjordis brought forth a man-child, who was straightly
borne before King Hjalprek, and then was the king glad thereof, when he
saw the keen eyes in the head of him, and he said that few men would be
equal to him or like unto him in any wise. So he was sprinkled with water,
and had to name Sigurd, of whom all men speak with one speech and say that
none was ever his like for growth and goodliness. He was brought up in the
house of King Hjalprek in great love and honour; and so it is, that whenso
all the noblest men and greatest kings are named in the olden tales,
Sigurd is ever put before them all, for might and prowess, for high mind
and stout heart, wherewith he was far more abundantly gifted than any man
of the northern parts of the wide world.

So Sigurd waxed in King Hjalprek's house, and there was no child but loved
him; through him was Hjordis betrothed to King Alf, and jointure meted to
her.

Now Sigurd's foster-father was hight Regin, the son of Hreidmar; he taught
him all manner of arts, the chess play, and the lore of runes, and the
talking of many tongues, even as the wont was with kings' sons in those
days. But on a day when they were together, Regin asked Sigurd, if he knew
how much wealth his father had owned, and who had the ward thereof; Sigurd
answered, and said that the kings kept the ward thereof.

Said Regin, "Dost thou trust them all utterly?"

Sigurd said, "It is seemly that they keep it till I may do somewhat
therewith, for better they wot how to guard it than I do."

Another time came Regin to talk to Sigurd, and said—

"A marvellous thing truly that thou must needs be a horse-boy to the
kings, and go about like a running knave."

"Nay," said Sigurd, "it is not so, for in all things I have my will, and
whatso thing I desire is granted me with good will."

"Well, then," said Regin, "ask for a horse of them."

"Yea," quoth Sigurd, "and that shall I have, whenso I have need thereof."

Thereafter Sigurd went to the king, and the king said—

"What wilt thou have of us?"

Then said Sigurd, "I would even a horse of thee for my disport."

Then said the king, "Choose for thyself a horse, and whatso thing else
thou desirest among my matters."

So the next day went Sigurd to the wood, and met on the way an old man,
long-bearded, that he knew not, who asked him whither away.

Sigurd said, "I am minded to choose me a horse; come thou, and counsel me
thereon."

"Well then," said he, "go we and drive them to the river which is called
Busil-tarn."

They did so, and drave the horses down into the deeps of the river, and
all swam back to land but one horse; and that horse Sigurd chose for
himself; grey he was of hue, and young of years, great of growth, and fair
to look on, nor had any man yet crossed his back.

Then spake the grey-beard, "From Sleipnir's kin is this horse come, and he
must be nourished heedfully, for it will be the best of all horses;" and
therewithal he vanished away.

So Sigurd called the horse Grani, the best of all the horses of the world;
nor was the man he met other than Odin himself.

Now yet again spake Regin to Sigurd, and said—

"Not enough is thy wealth, and I grieve right sore that thou must needs
run here and there like a churl's son; but I can tell thee where there is
much wealth for the winning, and great name and honour to be won in the
getting of it."

Sigurd asked where that might be, and who had watch and ward over it.

Regin answered, "Fafnir is his name, and but a little way hence he lies,
on the waste of Gnita-heath; and when thou comest there thou mayst well
say that thou hast never seen more gold heaped together in one place, and
that none might desire more treasure, though he were the most ancient and
famed of all kings."

"Young am I," says Sigurd, "yet know I the fashion of this worm, and how
that none durst go against him, so huge and evil is he."

Regin said, "Nay it is not so, the fashion and the growth of him is even
as of other lingworms, (1) and an over great tale men make of it; and even
so would thy forefathers have deemed; but thou, though thou be of the kin
of the Volsungs, shalt scarce have the heart and mind of those, who are
told of as the first in all deeds of fame."

Sigurd said, "Yea, belike I have little of their hardihood and prowess,
but thou hast naught to do, to lay a coward's name upon me, when I am
scarce out of my childish years. Why dost thou egg me on hereto so
busily?"

Regin said, "Therein lies a tale which I must needs tell thee."

"Let me hear the same," said Sigurd.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Lingworm—longworm, dragon.

CHAPTER XIV. Regin's tale of his Brothers, and of the Gold called
Andvari's Hoard.

"The tale begins," said Regin. "Hreidmar was my father's name, a mighty
man and a wealthy: and his first son was named Fafnir, his second Otter,
and I was the third, and the least of them all both for prowess and good
conditions, but I was cunning to work in iron, and silver, and gold,
whereof I could make matters that availed somewhat. Other skill my brother
Otter followed, and had another nature withal, for he was a great fisher,
and above other men herein; in that he had the likeness of an otter by
day, and dwelt ever in the river, and bare fish to bank in his mouth, and
his prey would he ever bring to our father, and that availed him much: for
the most part he kept him in his otter-gear, and then he would come home,
and eat alone, and slumbering, for on the dry land he might see naught.
But Fafnir was by far the greatest and grimmest, and would have all things
about called his.

"Now," says Regin, "there was a dwarf called Andvari, who ever abode in
that force, (1) which was called Andvari's force, in the likeness of a
pike, and got meat for himself, for many fish there were in the force; now
Otter, my brother, was ever wont to enter into the force, and bring fish
aland, and lay them one by one on the bank. And so it befell that Odin,
Loki, and Hoenir, as they went their ways, came to Andvari's force, and
Otter had taken a salmon, and ate it slumbering upon the river bank; then
Loki took a stone and cast it at Otter, so that he gat his death thereby;
the gods were well content with their prey, and fell to flaying off the
otter's skin; and in the evening they came to Hreidmar's house, and showed
him what they had taken: thereon he laid hands on them, and doomed them to
such ransom, as that they should fill the otter skin with gold, and cover
it over without with red gold; so they sent Loki to gather gold together
for them; he came to Ran, (2) and got her net, and went therewith to
Andvari's force, and cast the net before the pike, and the pike ran into
the net and was taken. Then said Loki—

       "'What fish of all fishes,
       Swims strong in the flood,
     But hath learnt little wit to beware?
       Thine head must thou buy,
       From abiding in hell,
     And find me the wan waters flame.'

He answered—

       "'Andvari folk call me,
       Call Oinn my father,
     Over many a force have I fared;
       For a Norn of ill-luck,
       This life on me lay
     Through wet ways ever to wade.'

"So Loki beheld the gold of Andvari, and when he had given up the gold, he
had but one ring left, and that also Loki took from him; then the dwarf
went into a hollow of the rocks, and cried out, that that gold-ring, yea
and all the gold withal, should be the bane of every man who should own it
thereafter.

"Now the gods rode with the treasure to Hreidmar, and fulfilled the
otter-skin, and set it on its feet, and they must cover it over utterly
with gold: but when this was done then Hreidmar came forth, and beheld yet
one of the muzzle hairs, and bade them cover that withal; then Odin drew
the ring, Andvari's loom, from his hand, and covered up the hair
therewith; then sang Loki—

       "'Gold enow, gold enow,
       A great weregild, thou hast,
     That my head in good hap I may hold;
       But thou and thy son
       Are naught fated to thrive,
     The bane shall it be of you both.'

"Thereafter," says Regin, "Fafnir slew his father and murdered him, nor
got I aught of the treasure, and so evil he grew, that he fell to lying
abroad, and begrudged any share in the wealth to any man, and so became
the worst of all worms, and ever now lies brooding upon that treasure: but
for me, I went to the king and became his master-smith; and thus is the
tale told of how I lost the heritage of my father, and the weregild for my
brother."

So spake Regin; but since that time gold is called Ottergild, and for no
other cause than this.

But Sigurd answered, "Much hast thou lost, and exceeding evil have thy
kinsmen been! But now, make a sword by thy craft, such a sword as that
none can be made like unto it; so that I may do great deeds therewith, if
my heart avail thereto, and thou wouldst have me slay this mighty dragon."

Regin says, "Trust me well herein; and with that same sword shalt thou
slay Fafnir."

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Waterfall (Ice. "foss", "fors").
  (2)  Ran is the goddess of the sea, wife of Aegir.  The otter was
       held sacred by Norsefolk and figures in the myth and legend
       of most races besides; to this day its killing is held a
       great crime by the Parsees (Haug. "Religion of the Parsees",
       page 212).  Compare penalty above with that for killing the
       Welsh king's cat ("Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales".
       Ed., Aneurin Owen. Longman, London, 1841, 2 vols. 8vo).

CHAPTER XV. Of the Welding together of the Shards of the Sword Gram.

So Regin makes a sword, and gives it into Sigurd's hands. He took the
sword, and said—

"Behold thy smithying, Regin!" and therewith smote it into the anvil, and
the sword brake; so he cast down the brand, and bade him forge a better.

Then Regin forged another sword, and brought it to Sigurd, who looked
thereon.

Then said Regin, "Belike thou art well content therewith, hard master
though thou be in smithying."

So Sigurd proved the sword, and brake it even as the first; then he said
to Regin—

"Ah, art thou, mayhappen, a traitor and a liar like to those former kin of
thine?"

Therewith he went to his mother, and she welcomed him in seemly wise, and
they talked and drank together.

Then spake Sigurd, "Have I heard aright, that King Sigmund gave thee the
good sword Gram in two pieces?"

"True enough," she said.

So Sigurd said, "Deliver them into my hands, for I would have them."

She said he looked like to win great fame, and gave him the sword.
Therewith went Sigurd to Regin, and bade him make a good sword thereof as
he best might; Regin grew wroth thereat, but went into the smithy with the
pieces of the sword, thinking well meanwhile that Sigurd pushed his head
far enow into the matter of smithying. So he made a sword, and as he bore
it forth from the forge, it seemed to the smiths as though fire burned
along the edges thereof. Now he bade Sigurd take the sword, and said he
knew not how to make a sword if this one failed. Then Sigurd smote it into
the anvil, and cleft it down to the stock thereof, and neither burst the
sword nor brake it. Then he praised the sword much, and thereafter went to
the river with a lock of wool, and threw it up against the stream, and it
fell asunder when it met the sword. Then was Sigurd glad, and went home.

But Regin said, "Now whereas I have made the sword for thee, belike thou
wilt hold to thy troth given, and wilt go meet Fafnir?"

"Surely will I hold thereto," said Sigurd, "yet first must I avenge my
father."

Now Sigurd the older he grew, the more he grew in the love of all men, so
that every child loved him well.

CHAPTER XVI. The prophecy of Grifir.

There was a man hight Grifir,(1) who was Sigurd's mother's brother, and a
little after the forging of the sword Sigurd went to Grifir, because he
was a man who knew things to come, and what was fated to men: of him
Sigurd asked diligently how his life should go; but Grifir was long or he
spake, yet at the last, by reason of Sigurd's exceeding great prayers, he
told him all his life and the fate thereof, even as afterwards came to
pass. So when Grifir had told him all even as he would, he went back home;
and a little after he and Regin met.

Then said Regin, "Go thou and slay Fafnir, even as thou hast given thy
word."

Sigurd said, "That work shall be wrought; but another is first to be done,
the avenging of Sigmund the king and the other of my kinsmen who fell in
that their last fight."

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Called "Gripir" in the Edda.

CHAPTER XVII. Of Sigurd's Avenging of Sigmund his Father.

Now Sigurd went to the kings, and spake thus—

"Here have I abode a space with you, and I owe you thanks and reward, for
great love and many gifts and all due honour; but now will I away from the
land and go meet the sons of Hunding, and do them to wit that the Volsungs
are not all dead; and your might would I have to strengthen me therein."

So the kings said that they would give him all things soever that he
desired, and therewith was a great army got ready, and all things wrought
in the most heedful wise, ships and all war-gear, so that his journey
might be of the stateliest: but Sigurd himself steered the dragon-keel
which was the greatest and noblest; richly wrought were their sails, and
glorious to look on.

So they sail and have wind at will; but when a few days were overpast,
there arose a great storm on the sea, and the waves were to behold even as
the foam of men's blood; but Sigurd bade take in no sail, howsoever they
might be riven, but rather to lay on higher than heretofore. But as they
sailed past the rocks of a ness, a certain man hailed the ships, and asked
who was captain over that navy; then was it told him that the chief and
lord was Sigurd, the son of Sigmund, the most famed of all the young men
who now are.

Then said the man, "Naught but one thing, certes, do all say of him, that
none among the sons of kings may be likened unto him; now fain were I that
ye would shorten sail on some of the ships, and take me aboard."

Then they asked him of his name, and he sang—

     "Hnikar I hight,
     When I gladdened Huginn,
     And went to battle,
     Bright son of Volsung;
     Now may ye call
     The carl on the cliff top,
     Feng or Fjolnir:
     Fain would I with you."

They made for land therewith, and took that man aboard.

Then quoth Sigurd,(1) as the song says—

       "Tell me this, O Hnikar,
       Since full well thou knowest
     Fate of Gods, good and ill of mankind,
       What best our hap foresheweth,
       When amid the battle
     About us sweeps the sword edge."

Quoth Hnikar—

       "Good are many tokens
       If thereof men wotted
     When the swords are sweeping:
       Fair fellow deem I
       The dark-winged raven,
     In war, to weapon-wielder.

       "The second good thing:
       When abroad thou goest
     For the long road well arrayed,
       Good if thou seest
       Two men standing,
     Fain of fame within the forecourt.

       "A third thing:
       Good hearing,
       The wolf a howling
     Abroad under ash boughs;
       Good hap shalt thou have
       Dealing with helm-staves,
     If thou seest these fare before thee.

       "No man in fight
       His face shall turn
       Against the moon's sister
       Low, late-shining,
       For he winneth battle
       Who best beholdeth
       Through the midmost sword-play,
       And the sloping ranks best shapeth.

       "Great is the trouble
       Of foot ill-tripping,
     When arrayed for fight thou farest,
       For on both sides about
       Are the D?sir (2) by thee,
     Guileful, wishful of thy wounding.

       "Fair-combed, well washen
       Let each warrior be,
     Nor lack meat in the morning,
       For who can rule
       The eve's returning,
     And base to fall before fate grovelling."

Then the storm abated, and on they fared till they came aland in the realm
of Hunding's sons, and then Fjolnir vanished away.

Then they let loose fire and sword, and slew men and burnt their abodes,
and did waste all before them: a great company of folk fled before the
face of them to Lyngi the King, and tell him that men of war are in the
land, and are faring with such rage and fury that the like has never been
heard of; and that the sons of King Hunding had no great forecast in that
they said they would never fear the Volsungs more, for here was come
Sigurd, the son of Sigmund, as captain over this army.

So King Lyngi let send the war-message all throughout his realm, and has
no will to flee, but summons to him all such as would give him aid. So he
came against Sigurd with a great army, he and his brothers with him, and
an exceeding fierce fight befell; many a spear and many an arrow might men
see there raised aloft, axes hard driven, shields cleft and byrnies torn,
helmets were shivered, skulls split atwain, and many a man felled to the
cold earth.

And now when the fight has long dured in such wise, Sigurd goes forth
before the banners, and has the good sword Gram in his hand, and smites
down both men and horses, and goes through the thickest of the throng with
both arms red with blood to the shoulder; and folk shrank aback before him
wheresoever he went, nor would either helm or byrny hold before him, and
no man deemed he had ever seen his like. So a long while the battle
lasted, and many a man was slain, and furious was the onset; till at last
it befell, even as seldom comes to hand, when a land army falls on, that,
do whatso they might, naught was brought about; but so many men fell of
the sons of Hunding that the tale of them may not be told; and now whenas
Sigurd was among the foremost, came the sons of Hunding against him, and
Sigurd smote therewith at Lyngi the king, and clave him down, both helm
and head, and mail-clad body, and thereafter he smote Hjorward his brother
atwain, and then slew all the other sons of Hunding who were yet alive,
and the more part of their folk withal.

Now home goes Sigurd with fair victory won, and plenteous wealth and great
honour, which he had gotten to him in this journey, and feasts were made
for him against he came back to the realm.

But when Sigurd had been at home but a little, came Regin to talk with
him, and said—

"Belike thou wilt now have good will to bow down Fafnir's crest according
to thy word plighted, since thou hast thus revenged thy father and the
others of thy kin."

Sigurd answered, "That will we hold to, even as we have promised, nor did
it ever fall from our memory."

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  This and verses following were inserted from the "Reginsmal"
       by the translators.
  (2)  "D?sir", sing. "D?s".  These are the guardian beings who
       follow a man from his birth to his death.  The word
       originally means sister, and is used throughout the Eddaic
       poems as a dignified synonym for woman, lady.

CHAPTER XVIII. Of the Slaying of the Worm Fafnir.

Now Sigurd and Regin ride up the heath along that same way wherein Fafnir
was wont to creep when he fared to the water; and folk say that thirty
fathoms was the height of that cliff along which he lay when he drank of
the water below. Then Sigurd spake:

"How sayedst thou, Regin, that this drake (1) was no greater than other
lingworms; methinks the track of him is marvellous great?"

Then said Regin, "Make thee a hole, and sit down therein, and whenas the
worm comes to the water, smite him into the heart, and so do him to death,
and win thee great fame thereby."

But Sigurd said, "What will betide me if I be before the blood of the
worm?"

Says Regin, "Of what avail to counsel thee if thou art still afeard of
everything? Little art thou like thy kin in stoutness of heart."

Then Sigurd rides right over the heath; but Regin gets him gone, sore
afeard.

But Sigurd fell to digging him a pit, and whiles he was at that work,
there came to him an old man with a long beard, and asked what he wrought
there, and he told him.

Then answered the old man and said, "Thou doest after sorry counsel:
rather dig thee many pits, and let the blood run therein; but sit thee
down in one thereof, and so thrust the worm's heart through."

And therewithal he vanished away; but Sigurd made the pits even as it was
shown to him.

Now crept the worm down to his place of watering, and the earth shook all
about him, and he snorted forth venom on all the way before him as he
went; but Sigurd neither trembled nor was adrad at the roaring of him. So
whenas the worm crept over the pits, Sigurd thrust his sword under his
left shoulder, so that it sank in up to the hilts; then up leapt Sigurd
from the pit and drew the sword back again unto him, and therewith was his
arm all bloody, up to the very shoulder.

Now when that mighty worm was ware that he had his death-wound, then he
lashed out head and tail, so that all things soever that were before him
were broken to pieces.

So whenas Fafnir had his death-wound, he asked "Who art thou? And who is
thy father? And what thy kin, that thou wert so hardy as to bear weapons
against me?"

Sigurd answered, "Unknown to men is my kin. I am called a noble beast: (2)
neither father have I nor mother, and all alone have I fared hither."

Said Fafnir, "Whereas thou hast neither father nor mother, of what wonder
wert thou born then? But now, though thou tellest me not thy name on this
my death-day, yet thou knowest verily that thou liest unto me."

He answered, "Sigurd am I called, and my father was Sigmund."

Says Fafnir, "Who egged thee on to this deed, and why wouldst thou be
driven to it? Hadst thou never heard how that all folk were adrad of me,
and of the awe of my countenance? But an eager father thou hadst, O bright
eyed swain!"

Sigurd answered, "A hardy heart urged me on hereto; and a strong hand and
this sharp sword, which well thou knowest now, stood me in stead in the
doing of the deed; 'Seldom hath hardy eld a faint-heart youth.'"

Fafnir said, "Well, I wot that hadst thou waxed amid thy kin, thou
mightest have good skill to slay folk in thine anger; but more of a marvel
is it, that thou, a bondsman taken in war, shouldst have the heart to set
on me, 'for few among bondsmen have heart for the fight.'"

Said Sigurd, "Wilt thou then cast it in my teeth that I am far away from
my kin? Albeit I was a bondsman, yet was I never shackled. God wot thou
hast found me free enow."

Fafnir answered, "In angry wise dost thou take my speech; but hearken, for
that same gold which I have owned shall be thy bane too."

Quoth Sigurd, "Fain would we keep all our wealth til that day of days; yet
shall each man die once for all."

Said Fafnir, "Few things wilt thou do after my counsel; but take heed that
thou shalt be drowned if thou farest unwarily over the sea; so bide thou
rather on the dry land, for the coming of the calm tide."

Then said Sigurd, "Speak, Fafnir, and say, if thou art so exceeding wise,
who are the Norns who rule the lot of all mothers' sons."

Fafnir answers, "Many there be and wide apart; for some are of the kin of
the Aesir, and some are of Elfin kin, and some there are who are daughters
of Dvalin."

Said Sigurd, "How namest thou the holm whereon Surt (3) and the Aesir mix
and mingle the water of the sword?"

"Unshapen is that holm hight," said Fafnir.

And yet again he said, "Regin, my brother, has brought about my end, and
it gladdens my heart that thine too he bringeth about; for thus will
things be according to his will."

And once again he spake, "A countenance of terror I bore up before all
folk, after that I brooded over the heritage of my brother, and on every
side did I spout out poison, so that none durst come anigh me, and of no
weapon was I adrad, nor ever had I so many men before me, as that I deemed
myself not stronger than all; for all men were sore afeard of me."

Sigurd answered and said, "Few may have victory by means of that same
countenance of terror, for whoso comes amongst many shall one day find
that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all."

Then says Fafnir, "Such counsel I give thee, that thou take thy horse and
ride away at thy speediest, for ofttimes it falls out so, that he who gets
a death-wound avenges himself none the less."

Sigurd answered, "Such as thy redes are I will nowise do after them; nay,
I will ride now to thy lair and take to me that great treasure of thy
kin."

"Ride there then," said Fafnir, "and thou shalt find gold enow to suffice
thee for all thy life-days; yet shall that gold be thy bane, and the bane
of every one soever who owns it."

Then up stood Sigurd, and said, "Home would I ride and lose all that
wealth, if I deemed that by the losing thereof I should never die; but
every brave and true man will fain have his hand on wealth till that last
day; but thou, Fafnir, wallow in the death-pain till Death and Hell have
thee."

And therewithal Fafnir died.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Lat. "draco", a dragon.
  (2)  "Unknown to men is my kin."  Sigurd refusing to tell his
       name is to be referred to the superstition that a dying man
       could throw a curse on his enemy.
  (3)  Surt; a fire-giant, who will destroy the world at the
       Ragnarok, or destruction of all things.  Aesir; the gods.

CHAPTER XIX. Of the Slaying of Regin, Son of Hreidmar.

Thereafter came Regin to Sigurd, and said, "Hail, lord and master, a noble
victory hast thou won in the slaying of Fafnir, whereas none durst
heretofore abide in the path of him; and now shall this deed of fame be of
renown while the world stands fast."

Then stood Regin staring on the earth a long while, and presently
thereafter spake from heavy mood: "Mine own brother hast thou slain, and
scarce may I be called sackless of the deed."

Then Sigurd took his sword Gram and dried it on the earth, and spake to
Regin—

"Afar thou faredst when I wrought this deed and tried this sharp sword
with the hand and the might of me; with all the might and main of a dragon
must I strive, while thou wert laid alow in the heather-bush, wotting not
if it were earth or heaven."

Said Regin, "Long might this worm have lain in his lair, if the sharp
sword I forged with my hand had not been good at need to thee; had that
not been, neither thou nor any man would have prevailed against him as at
this time."

Sigurd answers, "Whenas men meet foes in fight, better is stout heart than
sharp sword."

Then said Regin, exceeding heavily, "Thou hast slain my brother, and
scarce may I be sackless of the deed."

Therewith Sigurd cut out the heart of the worm with the sword called
Ridil; but Regin drank of Fafnir's blood, and spake, "Grant me a boon, and
do a thing little for thee to do. Bear the heart to the fire, and roast
it, and give me thereof to eat."

Then Sigurd went his ways and roasted it on a rod; and when the blood
bubbled out he laid his finger thereon to essay it, if it were fully done;
and then he set his finger in his mouth, and lo, when the heart-blood of
the worm touched his tongue, straightway he knew the voice of all fowls,
and heard withal how the wood-peckers chattered in the brake beside him—

"There sittest thou, Sigurd, roasting Fafnir's heart for another, that
thou shouldest eat thine ownself, and then thou shouldest become the
wisest of all men."

And another spake: "There lies Regin, minded to beguile the man who trusts
in him."

But yet again said the third, "Let him smite the head from off him then,
and be only lord of all that gold."

And once more the fourth spake and said, "Ah, the wiser were he if he
followed after that good counsel, and rode thereafter to Fafnir's lair,
and took to him that mighty treasure that lieth there, and then rode over
Hindfell, whereas sleeps Brynhild; for there would he get great wisdom.
Ah, wise he were, if he did after your redes, and bethought him of his own
weal; 'for where wolf's ears are, wolf's teeth are near.'"

Then cried the fifth: "Yea, yea, not so wise is he as I deem him, if he
spareth him, whose brother he hath slain already."

At last spake the sixth: "Handy and good rede to slay him, and be lord of
the treasure!"

Then said Sigurd, "The time is unborn wherein Regin shall be my bane; nay,
rather one road shall both these brothers fare."

And therewith he drew his sword Gram and struck off Regin's head.

Then heard Sigurd the wood-peckers a-singing, even as the song says. (1)

For the first sang:

     "Bind thou, Sigurd,
     The bright red rings!
     Not meet it is
     Many things to fear.
     A fair may know I,
     Fair of all the fairest
     Girt about with gold,
     Good for thy getting."

And the second:

     "Green go the ways
     Toward the hall of Giuki
     That the fates show forth
     To those who fare thither;
     There the rich king
     Reareth a daughter;
     Thou shalt deal, Sigurd,
     With gold for thy sweetling."

And the third:

     "A high hall is there
     Reared upon Hindfell,
     Without all around it
     Sweeps the red flame aloft.
     Wise men wrought
     That wonder of halls
     With the unhidden gleam
     Of the glory of gold."

Then the fourth sang:

     "Soft on the fell
     A shield-may sleepeth
     The lime-trees' red plague
     Playing about her:
     The sleep-thorn set Odin
     Into that maiden
     For her choosing in war
     The one he willed not.

     "Go, son, behold
     That may under helm
     Whom from battle
     Vinskornir bore,
     From her may not turn
     The torment of sleep.
     Dear offspring of kings
     In the dread Norns' despite."

Then Sigurd ate some deal of Fafnir's heart, and the remnant he kept. Then
he leapt on his horse and rode along the trail of the worm Fafnir, and so
right unto his abiding-place; and he found it open, and beheld all the
doors and the gear of them that they were wrought of iron: yea, and all
the beams of the house; and it was dug down deep into the earth: there
found Sigurd gold exceeding plenteous, and the sword Rotti; and thence he
took the Helm of Awe, and the Gold Byrny, and many things fair and good.
So much gold he found there, that he thought verily that scarce might two
horses, or three belike, bear it thence. So he took all the gold and laid
it in two great chests, and set them on the horse Grani, and took the
reins of him, but nowise will he stir, neither will he abide smiting. Then
Sigurd knows the mind of the horse, and leaps on the back of him, and
smites and spurs into him, and off the horse goes even as if he were
unladen.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  The Songs of the Birds were inserted from "Reginsmal" by the
       translators.

CHAPTER XX. Of Sigurd's Meeting with Brynhild on the Mountain.

By long roads rides Sigurd, till he comes at the last up on to Hindfell,
and wends his way south to the land of the Franks; and he sees before him
on the fell a great light, as of fire burning, and flaming up even unto
the heavens; and when he came thereto, lo, a shield-hung castle before
him, and a banner on the topmost thereof: into the castle went Sigurd, and
saw one lying there asleep, and all-armed. Therewith he takes the helm
from off the head of him, and sees that it is no man, but a woman; and she
was clad in a byrny as closely set on her as though it had grown to her
flesh; so he rent it from the collar downwards; and then the sleeves
thereof, and ever the sword bit on it as if it were cloth. Then said
Sigurd that over-long had she lain asleep; but she asked—

"What thing of great might is it that has prevailed to rend my byrny, and
draw me from my sleep?"

Even as sings the song: (1)

     "What bit on the byrny,
     Why breaks my sleep away,
     Who has turned from me
     My wan tormenting?"

"Ah, is it so, that here is come Sigurd Sigmundson, bearing Fafnir's helm
on his head and Fafnir's bane in his hand?"

Then answered Sigurd—

     "Sigmund's son
     With Sigurd's sword
     E'en now rent down
     The raven's wall."

"Of the Volsung's kin is he who has done the deed; but now I have heard
that thou art daughter of a mighty king, and folk have told us that thou
wert lovely and full of lore, and now I will try the same."

Then Brynhild sang—

     "Long have I slept
     And slumbered long,
     Many and long are the woes of mankind,
     By the might of Odin
     Must I bide helpless
     To shake from off me the spells of slumber.

     "Hail to the day come back!
     Hail, sons of the daylight!
     Hail to thee, dark night, and thy daughter!
     Look with kind eyes a-down,
     On us sitting here lonely,
     And give unto us the gain that we long for.

     "Hail to the Aesir,
     And the sweet Asyniur! (2)
     Hail to the fair earth fulfilled of plenty!
     Fair words, wise hearts,
     Would we win from you,
     And healing hands while life we hold."

Then Brynhild speaks again and says, "Two kings fought, one hight Helm
Gunnar, an old man, and the greatest of warriors, and Odin had promised
the victory unto him; but his foe was Agnar, or Audi's brother: and so I
smote down Helm Gunnar in the fight; and Odin, in vengeance for that deed,
stuck the sleep-thorn into me, and said that I should never again have the
victory, but should be given away in marriage; but thereagainst I vowed a
vow, that never would I wed one who knew the name of fear."

Then said Sigurd, "Teach us the lore of mighty matters!"

She said, "Belike thou cannest more skill in all than I; yet will I teach
thee; yea, and with thanks, if there be aught of my cunning that will in
anywise pleasure thee, either of runes or of other matters that are the
root of things; but now let us drink together, and may the Gods give to us
twain a good day, that thou mayst win good help and fame from my wisdom,
and that thou mayst hereafter mind thee of that which we twain speak
together."

Then Brynhild filled a beaker and bore it to Sigurd, and gave him the
drink of love, and spake—

       "Beer bring I to thee,
       Fair fruit of the byrnies' clash,
       Mixed is it mightily,
       Mingled with fame,
       Brimming with bright lays
       And pitiful runes,
       Wise words, sweet words,
       Speech of great game.

       "Runes of war know thou,
       If great thou wilt be!
     Cut them on hilt of hardened sword,
       Some on the brand's back,
       Some on its shining side,
     Twice name Tyr therein.

       "Sea-runes good at need,
       Learnt for ship's saving,
     For the good health of the swimming horse;
       On the stern cut them,
       Cut them on the rudder-blade
     And set flame to shaven oar:
       Howso big be the sea-hills,
       Howso blue beneath,
     Hail from the main then comest thou home.

       "Word-runes learn well
       If thou wilt that no man
     Pay back grief for the grief thou gavest;
       Wind thou these,
       Weave thou these,
     Cast thou these all about thee,
       At the Thing,
       Where folk throng,
     Unto the full doom faring.

       "Of ale-runes know the wisdom
       If thou wilt that another's wife
     Should not bewray thine heart that trusteth:
       Cut them on the mead-horn,
       On the back of each hand,
     And nick an N upon thy nail.

       "Ale have thou heed
       To sign from all harm
     Leek lay thou in the liquor,
       Then I know for sure
       Never cometh to thee,
     Mead with hurtful matters mingled.

       "Help-runes shalt thou gather
       If skill thou wouldst gain
     To loosen child from low-laid mother;
       Cut be they in hands hollow,
       Wrapped the joints round about;
     Call for the Good-folks' gainsome helping.

       "Learn the bough-runes wisdom
       If leech-lore thou lovest;
     And wilt wot about wounds' searching
       On the bark be they scored;
       On the buds of trees
     Whose boughs look eastward ever.

       "Thought-runes shalt thou deal with
       If thou wilt be of all men
     Fairest-souled wight, and wisest,
       These areded
       These first cut
     These first took to heart high Hropt.

     "On the shield were they scored
     That stands before the shining God,
     On Early-waking's ear,
     On All-knowing's hoof,
     On the wheel which runneth
     Under Rognir's chariot;
     On Sleipnir's jaw-teeth,
     On the sleigh's traces.

     "On the rough bear's paws,
     And on Bragi's tongue,
     On the wolf's claws,
     And on eagle's bill,
     On bloody wings,
     And bridge's end;
     On loosing palms,
     And pity's path:

     "On glass, and on gold,
     And on goodly silver,
     In wine and in wort,
     And the seat of the witch-wife;
     On Gungnir's point,
     And Grani's bosom;
     On the Norn's nail,
     And the neb of the night-owl.

       "All these so cut,
       Were shaven and sheared,
     And mingled in with holy mead,
     And sent upon wide ways enow;
       Some abide with the Elves,
       Some abide with the Aesir,
     Or with the wise Vanir,
     Some still hold the sons of mankind.

       "These be the book-runes,
       And the runes of good help,
     And all the ale-runes,
     And the runes of much might;
       To whomso they may avail,
       Unbewildered unspoilt;
     They are wholesome to have:
     Thrive thou with these then.
     When thou hast learnt their lore,
     Till the Gods end thy life-days.

       "Now shalt thou choose thee
       E'en as choice is bidden,
     Sharp steel's root and stem,
       Choose song or silence;
       See to each in thy heart,
     All hurt has been heeded."

Then answered Sigurd—

     "Ne'er shall I flee,
     Though thou wottest me fey;
     Never was I born for blenching,
     Thy loved rede will I
       Hold aright in my heart
     Even as long as I may live."

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  The stanzas on the two following pages were inserted here
       from "Sigrdrifasmal" by the translators.
  (2)  Goddesses.

CHAPTER XXI. More Wise Words of Brynhild.

Sigurd spake now, "Sure no wiser woman than thou art one may be found in
the wide world; yea, yea, teach me more yet of thy wisdom!"

She answers, "Seemly is it that I do according to thy will, and show thee
forth more redes of great avail, for thy prayer's sake and thy wisdom;"
and she spake withal—

"Be kindly to friend and kin, and reward not their trespasses against
thee; bear and forbear, and win for thee thereby long enduring praise of
men.

"Take good heed of evil things: a may's love, and a man's wife; full oft
thereof doth ill befall!

"Let not thy mind be overmuch crossed by unwise men at thronged meetings
of folk; for oft these speak worse than they wot of; lest thou be called a
dastard, and art minded to think that thou art even as is said; slay such
an one on another day, and so reward his ugly talk.

"If thou farest by the way whereas bide evil things, be well ware of
thyself; take not harbour near the highway, though thou be benighted, for
oft abide there ill wights for men's bewilderment.

"Let not fair women beguile thee, such as thou mayst meet at the feast, so
that the thought thereof stand thee in stead of sleep, and a quiet mind;
yea, draw them not to thee with kisses or other sweet things of love.

"If thou hearest the fool's word of a drunken man, strive not with him
being drunk with drink and witless; many a grief, yea, and the very death,
groweth from out such things.

"Fight thy foes in the field, nor be burnt in thine house.

'Never swear thou wrongsome oath; great and grim is the reward for the
breaking of plighted troth.

"Give kind heed to dead men,—sick-dead, Sea-dead; deal heedfully
with their dead corpses.

"Trow never in him for whom thou hast slain father, brother, or whatso
near kin, yea, though young he be; 'for oft waxes wolf in youngling'.

"Look thou with good heed to the wiles of thy friends; but little skill is
given to me, that I should foresee the ways of thy life; yet good it were
that hate fell not on thee from those of thy wife's house."

Sigurd spake, "None among the sons of men can be found wiser than thou;
and thereby swear I, that thee will I have as my own, for near to my heart
thou liest."

She answers, "Thee would I fainest choose, though I had all men's sons to
choose from."

And thereto they plighted troth both of them.

CHAPTER XXII. Of the Semblance and Array of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane. (1)

Now Sigurd rides away; many-folded is his shield, and blazing with red
gold, and the image of a dragon is drawn thereon; and this same was dark
brown above, and bright red below; and with even such-like image was
adorned helm, and saddle, and coat-armour; and he was clad in the golden
byrny, and all his weapons were gold wrought.

Now for this cause was the drake drawn on all his weapons, that when he
was seen of men, all folk might know who went there; yea, all those who
had heard of his slaying of that great dragon, that the Voerings call
Fafnir; and for that cause are his weapons gold-wrought, and brown of hue,
and that he was by far above other men in courtesy and goodly manners, and
well-nigh in all things else; and whenas folk tell of all the mightiest
champions, and the noblest chiefs, then ever is he named the foremost, and
his name goes wide about on all tongues north of the sea of the
Greek-lands, and even so shall it be while the world endures.

Now the hair of this Sigurd was golden-red of hue, fair of fashion, and
falling down in great locks; thick and short was his beard, and of no
other colour, high-nosed he was, broad and high-boned of face; so keen
were his eyes, that few durst gaze up under the brows of him; his
shoulders were as broad to look on as the shoulders of two; most duly was
his body fashioned betwixt height and breadth, and in such wise as was
seemliest; and this is the sign told of his height, that when he was girt
with his sword Gram, which same was seven spans long, as he went through
the full-grown rye-fields, the dew-shoe of the said sword smote the ears
of the standing corn; and, for all that, greater was his strength than his
growth: well could he wield sword, and cast forth spear, shoot shaft, and
hold shield, bend bow, back horse, and do all the goodly deeds that he
learned in his youth's days.

Wise he was to know things yet undone; and the voice of all fowls he knew,
wherefore few things fell on him unawares.

Of many words he was, and so fair of speech withal, that whensoever he
made it his business to speak, he never left speaking before that to all
men it seemed full sure, that no otherwise must the matter be than as he
said.

His sport and pleasure it was to give aid to his own folk, and to prove
himself in mighty matters, to take wealth from his unfriends, and give the
same to his friends.

Never did he lose heart, and of naught was he adrad.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  This chapter is nearly literally the same as chapter 166 of
       the "Wilkinasaga"; Ed.: Perinskiold, Stockholm, 1715.

CHAPTER XXIII. Sigurd comes to Hlymdale.

Forth Sigurd rides till he comes to a great and goodly dwelling, the lord
whereof was a mighty chief called Heimir; he had to wife a sister of
Brynhild, who was hight Bekkhild, because she had bidden at home, and
learned handicraft, whereas Brynhild fared with helm and byrny unto the
wars, wherefore was she called Brynhild.

Heimir and Bekkhild had a son called Alswid, the most courteous of men.

Now at this stead were men disporting them abroad, but when they see the
man riding thereto, they leave their play to wonder at him, for none such
had they ever seen erst; so they went to meet him, and gave him good
welcome; Alswid bade him abide and have such things at his hands as he
would; and he takes his bidding blithesomely; due service withal was
established for him; four men bore the treasure of gold from off the
horse, and the fifth took it to him to guard the same; therein were many
things to behold, things of great price, and seldom seen; and great game
and joy men had to look on byrnies and helms, and mighty rings, and
wondrous great golden stoups, and all kinds of war weapons.

So there dwelt Sigurd long in great honour holden; and tidings of that
deed of fame spread wide through all lands, of how he had slain that
hideous and fearful dragon. So good joyance had they there together, and
each was leal to other; and their sport was in the arraying of their
weapons, and the shafting of their arrows, and the flying of their
falcons.

CHAPTER XXIV. Sigurd sees Brynhild at Hlymdale.

In those days came home to Heimir, Brynhild, his foster-daughter, and she
sat in her bower with her maidens, and could more skill in handycraft than
other women; she sat, overlaying cloth with gold, and sewing therein the
great deeds which Sigurd had wrought, the slaying of the Worm, and the
taking of the wealth of him, and the death of Regin withal.

Now tells the tale, that on a day Sigurd rode into the wood with hawk, and
hound, and men thronging; and whenas he came home his hawk flew up to a
high tower, and sat him down on a certain window. Then fared Sigurd after
his hawk, and he saw where sat a fair woman, and knew that it was
Brynhild, and he deems all things he sees there to be worthy together,
both her fairness, and the fair things she wrought: and therewith he goes
into the hall, but has no more joyance in the games of the men folk.

Then spake Alswid, "Why art thou so bare of bliss? this manner of thine
grieveth us thy friends; why then wilt thou not hold to thy gleesome ways?
Lo, thy hawks pine now, and thy horse Grani droops; and long will it be
ere we are booted thereof?"

Sigurd answered, "Good friend, hearken to what lies on my mind; for my
hawk flew up into a certain tower; and when I came thereto and took him,
lo there I saw a fair woman, and she sat by a needlework of gold, and did
thereon my deeds that are passed, and my deeds that are to come."

Then said Alswid, "Thou has seen Brynhild, Budli's daughter, the greatest
of great women."

"Yea, verily," said Sigurd; "but how came she hither?"

Aswid answered, "Short space there was betwixt the coming hither of the
twain of you."

Says Sigurd, "Yea, but a few days agone I knew her for the best of the
world's women."

Alswid said, "Give not all thine heed to one woman, being such a man as
thou art; ill life to sit lamenting for what we may not have."

"I shall go meet her," says Sigurd, "and get from her love like my love,
and give her a gold ring in token thereof."

Alswid answered, "None has ever yet been known whom she would let sit
beside her, or to whom she would give drink; for ever will she hold to
warfare and to the winning of all kinds of fame."

Sigurd said, "We know not for sure whether she will give us answer or not,
or grant us a seat beside her."

So the next day after, Sigurd went to the bower, but Alswid stood outside
the bower door, fitting shafts to his arrows.

Now Sigurd spake, "Abide, fair and hale lady,—how farest thou?"

She answered, "Well it fares; my kin and my friends live yet: but who
shall say what goodhap folk may bear to their life's end?"

He sat him down by her, and there came in four damsels with great golden
beakers, and the best of wine therein; and these stood before the twain.

Then said Brynhild, "This seat is for few, but and if my father come."

He answered, "Yet is it granted to one that likes me well."

Now that chamber was hung with the best and fairest of hangings, and the
floor thereof was all covered with cloth.

Sigurd spake, "Now has it come to pass even as thou didst promise."

"O be thou welcome here!" said she, and arose therewith, and the four
damsels with her, and bore the golden beaker to him, and bade him drink;
he stretched out his hand to the beaker, and took it, and her hand withal,
and drew her down beside him; and cast his arms round about her neck and
kissed her, and said—

"Thou art the fairest that was ever born!"

But Brynhild said, "Ah, wiser is it not to cast faith and troth into a
woman's power, for ever shall they break that they have promised."

He said, "That day would dawn the best of days over our heads whereon each
of each should be made happy."

Brynhild answered, "It is not fated that we should abide together; I am a
shield-may, and wear helm on head even as the kings of war, and them full
oft I help, neither is the battle become loathsome to me."

Sigurd answered, "What fruit shall be of our life, if we live not
together: harder to bear this pain that lies hereunder, than the stroke of
sharp sword."

Brynhild answers, "I shall gaze on the hosts of the war-kings, but thou
shalt wed Gudrun, the daughter of Giuki."

Sigurd answered, "What king's daughter lives to beguile me? neither am I
double-hearted herein; and now I swear by the Gods that thee shall I have
for mine own, or no woman else."

And even suchlike wise spake she.

Sigurd thanked her for her speech, and gave her a gold ring, and now they
swore oath anew, and so he went his ways to his men, and is with them
awhile in great bliss.

CHAPTER XXV. Of the Dream of Gudrun, Giuki's daughter.

There was a king hight Giuki, who ruled a realm south of the Rhine; three
sons he had, thus named: Gunnar, Hogni, and Guttorm, and Gudrun was the
name of his daughter, the fairest of maidens; and all these children were
far before all other king's children in all prowess, and in goodliness and
growth withal; ever were his sons at the wars and wrought many a deed of
fame. But Giuki had wedded Grimhild the Wise-wife.

Now Budli was the name of a king mightier than Giuki, mighty though they
both were: and Atli was the brother of Brynhild: Atli was a fierce man and
a grim, great and black to look on, yet noble of mien withal, and the
greatest of warriors. Grimhild was a fierce-hearted woman.

Now the days of the Giukings bloomed fair, and chiefly because of those
children, so far before the sons of men.

On a day Gudrun says to her mays that she may have no joy of heart; then a
certain woman asked her wherefore her joy was departed.

She answered, "Grief came to me in my dreams, therefore is there sorrow in
my heart, since thou must needs ask thereof."

"Tell it me, then, thy dream," said the woman, "for dreams oft forecast
but the weather."

Gudrun answers, "Nay, nay, no weather is this; I dreamed that I had a fair
hawk on my wrist, feathered with feathers of gold."

Says the woman, "Many have heard tell of thy beauty, thy wisdom, and thy
courtesy; some king's son abides thee, then."

Gudrun answers, "I dreamed that naught was so dear to me as this hawk, and
all my wealth had I cast aside rather than him."

The woman said, "Well, then, the man thou shalt have will be of the
goodliest, and well shalt thou love him."

Gudrun answered, "It grieves me that I know not who he shall be; let us go
seek Brynhild, for she belike will wot thereof."

So they arrayed them in gold and many a fair thing, and she went with her
damsels till they came to the hall of Brynhild, and that hall was dight
with gold, and stood on a high hill; and whenas their goings were seen, it
was told Brynhild, that a company of women drove toward the burg in gilded
waggons.

"That shall be Gudrun, Giuki's daughter," says she: "I dreamed of her last
night; let us go meet her! No fairer woman may come to our house."

So they went abroad to meet them, and gave them good greeting, and they
went into the goodly hall together; fairly painted it was within, and well
adorned with silver vessel; cloths were spread under the feet of them, and
all folk served them, and in many wise they sported.

But Gudrun was somewhat silent.

Then said Brynhild, "Ill to abash folk of their mirth; prithee do not so;
let us talk together for our disport of mighty kings and their great
deeds."

"Good talk," says Gudrun, "let us do even so; what kings deemest thou to
have been the first of all men?"

Brynhild says, "The sons of Haki, and Hagbard withal; they brought to pass
many a deed of fame in the warfare."

Gudrun answers, "Great men certes, and of noble fame! Yet Sigar took their
one sister, and burned the other, house and all; and they may be called
slow to revenge the deed; why didst thou not name my brethren, who are
held to be the first of men as at this time?"

Brynhild says, "Men of good hope are they surely, though but little proven
hitherto; but one I know far before them, Sigurd, the son of Sigmund the
king; a youngling was he in the days when he slew the sons of Hunding, and
revenged his father, and Eylimi, his mother's father."

Said Gudrun, "By what token tellest thou that?"

Brynhild answered, "His mother went amid the dead, and found Sigmund the
king sore wounded, and would bind up his hurts; but he said he grew over
old for war, and bade her lay this comfort to her heart, that she should
bear the most famed of sons; and wise was the wise man's word therein: for
after the death of King Sigmund, she went to King Alf, and there was
Sigurd nourished in great honour, and day by day he wrought some deed of
fame, and is the man most renowned of all the wide world."

Gudrun says, "From love hast thou gained these tidings of him; but for
this cause came I here, to tell thee dreams of mine which have brought me
great grief."

Says Brynhild, "Let not such matters sadden thee; abide with thy friends
who wish thee blithesome, all of them!"

"This I dreamed," said Gudrun, "that we went, a many of us in company,
from the bower, and we saw an exceeding great hart, that far excelled all
other deer ever seen, and the hair of him was golden; and this deer we
were all fain to take, but I alone got him; and he seemed to me better
than all things else; but sithence thou, Byrnhild, didst shoot and slay my
deer even at my very knees, and such grief was that to me that scarce
might I bear it; and then afterwards thou gavest me a wolf-cub, which
besprinkled me with the blood of my brethren."

Brynhild answers, "I will arede thy dream, even as things shall come to
pass hereafter; for Sigurd shall come to thee, even he whom I have chosen
for my well-beloved; and Grimhild shall give him mead mingled with hurtful
things, which shall cast us all into mighty strife. Him shalt thou have,
and him shalt thou quickly miss; and Atli the king shalt thou wed; and thy
brethren shalt thou lose, and slay Atli withal in the end."

Gudrun answers, "Grief and woe to know that such things shall be!"

And therewith she and hers get them gone home to King Giuki.

CHAPTER XXVI. Sigurd comes to the Giukings and is wedded to Gudrun.

Now Sigurd goes his ways with all that great treasure, and in friendly
wise he departs from them; and on Grani he rides with all his war-gear and
the burden withal; and thus he rides until he comes to the hall of King
Giuki; there he rides into the burg, and that sees one of the king's men,
and he spake withal—

"Sure it may be deemed that here is come one of the Gods, for his array is
all done with gold, and his horse is far mightier than other horses, and
the manner of his weapons is most exceeding goodly, and most of all the
man himself far excels all other men ever seen."

So the king goes out with his court and greets the man, and asks—

"Who art thou who thus ridest into my burg, as none has durst hitherto
without the leave of my sons?"

He answered, "I am called Sigurd, son of King Sigmund."

Then said King Giuki, "Be thou welcome here then, and take at our hands
whatso thou willest."

So he went into the king's hall, and all men seemed little beside him, and
all men served him, and there he abode in great joyance.

Now oft they all ride abroad together, Sigurd and Gunnar and Hogni, and
ever is Sigurd far the foremost of them, mighty men of their hands though
they were.

But Grimhild finds how heartily Sigurd loved Brynhild, and how oft he
talks of her; and she falls to thinking how well it were, if he might
abide there and wed the daughter of King Giuki, for she saw that none
might come anigh to his goodliness, and what faith and goodhelp there was
in him, and how that he had more wealth withal than folk might tell of any
man; and the king did to him even as unto his own sons, and they for their
parts held him of more worth than themselves.

So on a night as they sat at the drink, the queen arose, and went before
Sigurd, and said—

"Great joy we have in thine abiding here, and all good things will we put
before thee to take of us; lo now, take this horn and drink thereof."

So he took it and drank, and therewithal she said, "Thy father shall be
Giuki the king, and I shall be thy mother, and Gunnar and Hogni shall be
thy brethren, and all this shall be sworn with oaths each to each; and
then surely shall the like of you never be found on earth."

Sigurd took her speech well, for with the drinking of that drink all
memory of Brynhild departed from him. So there he abode awhile.

And on a day went Grimhild to Giuki the king, and cast her arms about his
neck, and spake—

"Behold, there has now come to us the greatest of great hearts that the
world holds; and needs must he be trusty and of great avail; give him thy
daughter then, with plenteous wealth, and as much of rule as he will;
perchance thereby he will be well content to abide here ever."

The king answered, "Seldom does it befall that kings offer their daughters
to any; yet in higher wise will it be done to offer her to this man, than
to take lowly prayers for her from others."

On a night Gudrun pours out the drink, and Sigurd beholds her how fair she
is and how full of all courtesy.

Five seasons Sigurd abode there, and ever they passed their days together
in good honour and friendship.

And so it befell that the kings held talk together, and Giuki said —

"Great good thou givest us, Sigurd, and with exceeding strength thou
strengthenest our realm."

Then Gunnar said, "All things that may be will we do for thee, so thou
abidest here long; both dominion shalt thou have, and our sister freely
and unprayed for, whom another man would not get for all his prayers."

Sigurd says, "Thanks have ye for this wherewith ye honour me, and gladly
will I take the same."

Therewith they swore brotherhood together, and to be even as if they were
children of one father and one mother; and a noble feast was holden, and
endured many days, and Sigurd drank at the wedding of him and Gudrun; and
there might men behold all manner of game and glee, and each day the feast
better and better.

Now fare these folk wide over the world, and do many great deeds, and slay
many kings' sons, and no man has ever done such works of prowess as did
they; then home they come again with much wealth won in war.

Sigurd gave of the serpent's heart to Gudrun, and she ate thereof, and
became greater-hearted, and wiser than ere before: and the son of these
twain was called Sigmund.

Now on a time went Grimhild to Gunnar her son, and spake—

"Fair blooms the life and fortune of thee, but for one thing only, and
namely whereas thou art unwedded; go woo Brynhild; good rede is this, and
Sigurd will ride with thee."

Gunnar answered, "Fair is she certes, and I am fain enow to win her;" and
therewith he tells his father, and his brethren, and Sigurd, and they all
prick him on to that wooing.

CHAPTER XXVII. The Wooing of Brynhild.

Now they array them joyously for their journey, and ride over hill and
dale to the house of King Budli, and woo his daughter of him; in a good
wise he took their speech, if so be that she herself would not deny them;
but he said withal that so high-minded was she, that that man only might
wed her whom she would.

Then they ride to Hlymdale, and there Heimir gave them good welcome; so
Gunnar tells his errand; Heimir says, that she must needs wed but him whom
she herself chose freely; and tells them how her abode was but a little
way thence, and that he deemed that him only would she have who should
ride through the flaming fire that was drawn round about her hall; so they
depart and come to the hall and the fire, and see there a castle with a
golden roof-ridge, and all round about a fire roaring up.

Now Gunnar rode on Goti, but Hogni on Holkvi, and Gunnar smote his horse
to face the fire, but he shrank aback.

Then said Sigurd, "Why givest thou back, Gunnar?"

He answered, "The horse will not tread this fire; but lend me thy horse
Grani."

"Yea, with all my good will," says Sigurd.

Then Gunnar rides him at the fire, and yet nowise will Gram stir, nor may
Gunnar any the more ride through that fire. So now they change semblance,
Gunnar and Sigurd, even as Grimhild had taught them; then Sigurd in the
likeness of Gunnar mounts and rides, Gram in his hand, and golden spurs on
his heels; then leapt Grani into the fire when he felt the spurs; and a
mighty roar arose as the fire burned ever madder, and the earth trembled,
and the flames went up even unto the heavens, nor had any dared to ride as
he rode, even as it were through the deep mirk.

But now the fire sank withal, and he leapt from his horse and went into
the hall, even as the song says—

     "The flame flared at its maddest,
     Earth's fields fell a-quaking
     As the red flame aloft
     Licked the lowest of heaven.
     Few had been fain,
     Of the rulers of folk,
     To ride through that flame,
     Or athwart it to tread.

     "Then Sigurd smote
     Grani with sword,
     And the flame was slaked
     Before the king;
     Low lay the flames
     Before the fain of fame;
     Bright gleamed the array
     That Regin erst owned.

Now when Sigurd had passed through the fire, he came into a certain fair
dwelling, and therein sat Brynhild.

She asked, "What man is it?"

Then he named himself Gunnar, son of Giuki, and said—"Thou art
awarded to me as my wife, by the good will and word of thy father and thy
foster-father, and I have ridden through the flames of thy fire, according
to thy word that thou hast set forth."

"I wot not clearly," said she, "how I shall answer thee."

Now Sigurd stood upright on the hall floor, and leaned on the hilt of his
sword, and he spake to Brynhild—

"In reward thereof, shall I pay thee a great dower in gold and goodly
things?"

She answered in heavy mood from her seat, whereas she sat like unto swan
on billow, having a sword in her hand, and a helm on her head, and being
clad in a byrny, "O Gunnar," she says, "speak not to me of such things,
unless thou be the first and best of all men; for then shalt thou slay
those my wooers, if thou hast heart thereto; I have been in battles with
the king of the Greeks, and our weapons were stained with red blood, and
for such things still I yearn."

He answered, "Yea, certes many great deeds hast thou done; but yet call
thou to mind thine oath, concerning the riding through of this fire,
wherein thou didst swear that thou wouldst go with the man who should do
this deed."

So she found that he spoke but the sooth, and she paid heed to his words,
and arose, and greeted him meetly, and he abode there three nights, and
they lay in one bed together; but he took the sword Gram and laid it
betwixt them: then she asked him why he laid it there; and he answered,
that in that wise must he needs wed his wife or else get his bane.

Then she took from off her the ring Andvari's-loom, which he had given her
aforetime, and gave it to him, but he gave her another ring out of
Fafnir's hoard.

Thereafter he rode away through the same fire unto his fellows, and he and
Gunnar changed semblances again, and rode unto Hlymdale, and told how it
had gone with them.

That same day went Brynhild home to her foster-father, and tells him as
one whom she trusted, how that there had come a king to her; "And he rode
through my flaming fire, and said he was come to woo me, and named himself
Gunnar; but I said that such a deed might Sigurd alone have done, with
whom I plighted troth on the mountain; and he is my first troth-plight,
and my well-beloved."

Heimir said that things must needs abide even as now they had now come to
pass.

Brynhild said, "Aslaug the daughter of me and Sigurd shall be nourished
here with thee."

Now the kings fare home, but Brynhild goes to her father; Grimhild
welcomes the kings meetly, and thanks Sigurd for his fellowship; and
withal is a great feast made, and many were the guests thereat; and
thither came Budli the King with his daughter Brynhild, and his son Atli,
and for many days did the feast endure: and at that feast was Gunnar
wedded to Brynhild: but when it was brought to an end, once more has
Sigurd memory of all the oaths that he sware unto Brynhild, yet withal he
let all things abide in rest and peace.

Brynhild and Gunnar sat together in great game and glee, and drank goodly
wine.

CHAPTER XXVIII. How the Queens held angry converse together at the
Bathing.

On a day as the Queens went to the river to bathe them, Brynhild waded the
farthest out into the river; then asked Gudrun what that deed might
signify.

Brynhild said, "Yea, and why then should I be equal to thee in this matter
more than in others? I am minded to think that my father is mightier than
thine, and my true love has wrought many wondrous works of fame, and hath
ridden the flaming fire withal, while thy husband was but the thrall of
King Hjalprek."

Gudrun answered full of wrath, "Thou wouldst be wise if thou shouldst hold
thy peace rather than revile my husband: lo now, the talk of all men it
is, that none has ever abode in this world like unto him in all matters
soever; and little it beseems thee of all folk to mock him who was thy
first beloved: and Fafnir he slew, yea, and he rode thy flaming fire,
whereas thou didst deem that he was Gunnar the King, and by thy side he
lay, and took from thine hand the ring Andvari's-loom;—here mayst
thou well behold it!"

Then Brynhild saw the ring and knew it, and waxed as wan as a dead woman,
and she went home and spake no word the evening long.

So when Sigurd came to bed to Gudrun she asked him why Brynhild's joy was
so departed.

He answered, "I know not, but sore I misdoubt me that soon we shall know
thereof overwell."

Gudrun said, "Why may she not love her life, having wealth and bliss, and
the praise of all men, and the man withal that she would have?"

"Ah, yea!" said Sigurd, "and where in all the world was she then, when she
said that she deemed she had the noblest of all men, and the dearest to
her heart of all?"

Gudrun answers, "Tomorn will I ask her concerning this, who is the liefest
to her of all men for a husband."

Sigurd said, "Needs must I forbid thee this, and full surely wilt thou rue
the deed if thou doest it."

Now the next morning they sat in the bower, and Brynhild was silent; then
spake Gudrun—

"Be merry, Brynhild! Grievest thou because of that speech of ours
together, or what other thing slayeth thy bliss?"

Brynhild answers, "With naught but evil intent thou sayest this, for a
cruel heart thou hast."

"Say not so," said Gudrun; "but rather tell me all the tale."

Brynhild answers, "Ask such things only as are good for thee to know—matters
meet for mighty dames. Good to love good things when all goes according to
thy heart's desire!"

Gudrun says, "Early days for me to glory in that; but this word of thine
looketh toward some foreseeing. What ill dost thou thrust at us? I did
naught to grieve thee."

Brynhild answers, "For this shalt thou pay, in that thou hast got Sigurd
to thee,—nowise can I see thee living in the bliss thereof, whereas
thou hast him, and the wealth and the might of him."

But Gudrun answered, "Naught knew I of your words and vows together; and
well might my father look to the mating of me without dealing with thee
first."

"No secret speech had we," quoth Brynhild, "though we swore oath together;
and full well didst thou know that thou wentest about to beguile me;
verily thou shalt have thy reward!"

Says Gudrun, "Thou art mated better than thou are worthy of; but thy pride
and rage shall be hard to slake belike, and therefor shall many a man
pay."

"Ah, I should be well content," said Brynhild, "if thou hadst not the
nobler man!"

Gudrun answers, "So noble a husband hast thou, that who knows of a greater
king or a lord of more wealth and might?"

Says Brynhild, "Sigurd slew Fafnir, and that only deed is of more worth
than all the might of King Gunnar."

(Even as the song says):

     "The worm Sigurd slew,
     Nor e'er shall that deed
     Be worsened by age
     While the world is alive:
     But thy brother the King
     Never durst, never bore
     The flame to ride down
     Through the fire to fare."

Gudrun answers, "Grani would not abide the fire under Gunnar the King, but
Sigurd durst the deed, and thy heart may well abide without mocking him."

Brynhild answers, "Nowise will I hide from thee that I deem no good of
Grimhild."

Says Gudrun, "Nay, lay no ill words on her, for in all things she is to
thee as to her own daughter."

"Ah," says Brynhild, "she is the beginning of all this hale that biteth
so; an evil drink she bare to Sigurd, so that he had no more memory of my
very name."

"All wrong thou talkest; a lie without measure is this," quoth Gudrun.

Brynhild answered, "Have thou joy of Sigurd according to the measure of
the wiles wherewith ye have beguiled me! Unworthily have ye conspired
against me; may all things go with you as my heart hopes!"

Gudrun says, "More joy shall I have of him than thy wish would give unto
me: but to no man's mind it came, that he had aforetime his pleasure of
me; nay not once."

"Evil speech thou speakest," says Brynhild; "when thy wrath runs off thou
wilt rue it; but come now, let us no more cast angry words one at the
other!"

Says Gudrun, "Thou wert the first to cast such words at me, and now thou
makest as if thou wouldst amend it, but a cruel and hard heart abides
behind."

"Let us lay aside vain babble," says Brynhild. "Long did I hold my peace
concerning my sorrow of heart, and, lo now, thy brother alone do I love;
let us fall to other talk."

Gudrun said, "Far beyond all this doth thine heart look."

And so ugly ill befell from that going to the river, and that knowing of
the ring, wherefrom did all their talk arise.

CHAPTER XXIX. Of Brynhild's great Grief and Mourning.

After this talk Brynhild lay a-bed, and tidings were brought to King
Gunnar that Brynhild was sick; he goes to see her thereon, and asks what
ails her; but she answered him naught, but lay there as one dead: and when
he was hard on her for an answer, she said—

"What didst thou with that ring that I gave thee, even the one which King
Budli gave me at our last parting, when thou and King Giuki came to him
and threatened fire and the sword, unless ye had me to wife? Yea, at that
time he led me apart, and asked me which I had chosen of those who were
come; but I prayed him that I might abide to ward the land and be chief
over the third part of his men; then were there two choices for me to deal
betwixt, either that I should be wedded to him whom he would, or lose all
my weal and friendship at his hands; and he said withal that his
friendship would be better to me than his wrath: then I bethought me
whether I should yield to his will, or slay many a man; and therewithal I
deemed that it would avail little to strive with him, and so it fell out,
that I promised to wed whomsoever should ride the horse Grani with
Fafnir's Hoard, and ride through my flaming fire, and slay those men whom
I called on him to slay, and now so it was, that none durst ride, save
Sigurd only, because he lacked no heart thereto; yea, and the Worm he
slew, and Regin, and five kings beside; but thou, Gunnar, durst do naught;
as pale as a dead man didst thou wax, and no king thou art, and no
champion; so whereas I made a vow unto my father, that him alone would I
love who was the noblest man alive, and that this is none save Sigurd, lo,
now have I broken my oath and brought it to naught, since he is none of
mine, and for this cause shall I compass thy death; and a great reward of
evil things have I wherewith to reward Grimhild;—never, I wot, has
woman lived eviler or of lesser heart than she."

Gunnar answered in such wise that few might hear him, "Many a vile word
hast thou spoken, and an evil-hearted woman art thou, whereas thou
revilest a woman far better than thou; never would she curse her life as
thou dost; nay, nor has she tormented dead folk, or murdered any; but
lives her life well praised of all."

Brynhild answered, "Never have I dwelt with evil things privily, or done
loathsome deeds;—yet most fain I am to slay thee."

And therewith would she slay King Gunnar, but Hogni laid her in fetters;
but then Gunnar spake withal—

"Nay, I will not that she abide in fetters."

Then said she, "Heed it not! For never again seest thou me glad in thine
hall, never drinking, never at the chess-play, never speaking the words of
kindness, never over-laying the fair cloths with gold, never giving thee
good counsel;—ah, my sorrow of heart that I might not get Sigurd to
me!"

Then she sat up and smote her needlework, and rent it asunder, and bade
set open her bower doors, that far away might the wailings of her sorrow
be heard; then great mourning and lamentation there was, so that folk
heard it far and wide through that abode.

Now Gudrun asked her bower-maidens why they sat so joyless and downcast.
"What has come to you, that ye fare ye as witless women, or what
unheard-of wonders have befallen you?"

Then answered a waiting lady, hight Swaflod, "An untimely, an evil day it
is, and our hall is fulfilled of lamentation."

Then spake Gudrun to one of her handmaids, "Arise, for we have slept long;
go, wake Brynhild, and let us fall to our needlework and be merry."

"Nay, nay," she says, "nowise may I wake her, or talk with her; for many
days has she drunk neither mead nor wine; surely the wrath of the Gods has
fallen upon her."

Then spake Gudrun to Gunnar, "Go and see her," she says, "and bid her know
that I am grieved with her grief."

"Nay," says Gunnar, "I am forbid to go see her or to share her weal."

Nevertheless he went unto her, and strives in many wise to have speech of
her, but gets no answer whatsoever; therefore he gets him gone and finds
Hogni, and bids him go see her: he said he was loth thereto, but went, and
gat no more of her.

Then they go and find Sigurd, and pray him to visit her; he answered
naught thereto, and so matters abode for that night.

But the next day, when he came home from hunting, Sigurd went to Gudrun,
and spake—

"In such wise do matters show to me, as though great and evil things will
betide from this trouble and upheaving; and that Brynhild will surely
die."

Gudrun answers, "O my lord, by great wonders is she encompassed, seven
days and seven nights has she slept, and none has dared wake her."

"Nay, she sleeps not," said Sigurd, "her heart is dealing rather with
dreadful intent against me."

Then said Gudrun, weeping, "Woe worth the while for thy death! Go and see
her; and wot if her fury may not be abated; give her gold, and smother up
her grief and anger therewith!"

Then Sigurd went out, and found the door of Brynhild's chamber open; he
deemed she slept, and drew the clothes from off her, and said—

"Awake, Brynhild! The sun shineth now over all the house, and thou hast
slept enough; cast off grief from thee, and take up gladness!"

She said, "And how then hast thou dared to come to me? in this treason
none was worse to me than thou."

Said Sigurd, "Why wilt thou not speak to folk? for what cause sorrowest
thou?"

Brynhild answers, "Ah, to thee will I tell of my wrath!"

Sigurd said, "As one under a spell art thou, if thou deemest that there is
aught cruel in my heart against thee; but thou hast him for husband whom
thou didst choose."

"Ah, nay," she said, "never did Gunnar ride through the fire to me, nor
did he give me to dower the host of the slain: I wondered at the man who
came into my hall; for I deemed indeed that I knew thine eyes; but I might
not see clearly, or divide the good from the evil, because of the veil
that lay heavy on my fortune."

Says Sigurd, "No nobler men are there than the sons of Giuki, they slew
the king of the Danes, and that great chief, the brother of King Budli."

Brynhild answered, "Surely for many an ill-deed must I reward them; mind
me not of my griefs against them! But thou, Sigurd, slewest the Worm, and
rodest the fire through; yea, and for my sake, and not one of the sons of
King Giuki."

Sigurd answers, "I am not thy husband, and thou art not my wife; yet did a
farfamed king pay dower to thee."

Says Brynhild, "Never looked I at Gunnar in such a wise that my heart
smiled on him; and hard and fell am I to him, though I hide it from
others."

"A marvellous thing," says Sigurd, "not to love such a king; what angers
thee most? for surely his love should be better to thee than gold."

"This is the sorest sorrow to me," she said, "that the bitter sword is not
reddened in thy blood."

"Have no fear thereof!" says he, "no long while to wait or the bitter
sword stand deep in my heart; and no worse needest thou to pray for
thyself, for thou wilt not live when I am dead; the days of our two lives
shall be few enough from henceforth."

Brynhild answers, "Enough and to spare of bale is in thy speech, since
thou bewrayedst me, and didst twin (1) me and all bliss;—naught do I
heed my life or death."

Sigurd answers, "Ah, live, and love King Gunnar and me withal! and all my
wealth will I give thee if thou die not."

Brynhild answers, "Thou knowest me not, nor the heart that is in me; for
thou art the first and best of all men, and I am become the most loathsome
of all women to thee."

"This is truer," says Sigurd, "that I loved thee better than myself,
though I fell into the wiles from whence our lives may not escape; for
whenso my own heart and mind availed me, then I sorrowed sore that thou
wert not my wife; but as I might I put my trouble from me, for in a king's
dwelling was I; and withal and in spite of all I was well content that we
were all together. Well may it be, that that shall come to pass which is
foretold; neither shall I fear the fulfilment thereof."

Brynhild answered, and said, "Too late thou tellest me that my grief
grieved thee: little pity shall I find now."

Sigurd said, "This my heart would, that thou and I should go into one bed
together; even so wouldst thou be my wife."

Said Brynhild, "Such words may nowise be spoken, nor will I have two kings
in one hall; I will lay my life down rather than beguile Gunnar the King."

And therewith she call to mind how they met, they two, on the mountain,
and swore oath each to each.

"But now is all changed, and I will not live."

"I might not call to mind thy name," said Sigurd, "or know thee again,
before the time of thy wedding; the greatest of all griefs is that."

Then said Brynhild, "I swore an oath to wed the man who should ride my
flaming fire, and that oath will I hold to, or die."

"Rather than thou die, I will wed thee, and put away Gudrun," said Sigurd.

But therewithal so swelled the heart betwixt the sides of him, that the
rings of his byrny burst asunder.

"I will not have thee," says Brynhild, "nay, nor any other!"

Then Sigurd got him gone.

So saith the song of Sigurd—

     "Out then went Sigurd,
     The great kings' well-loved,
     From the speech and the sorrow,
     Sore drooping, so grieving,
     That the shirt round about him
     Of iron rings woven,
     From the sides brake asunder
     Of the brave in the battle."

So when Sigurd came into the hall, Gunnar asked if he had come to a
knowledge of what great grief lay heavy on her, or if she had power of
speech: and Sigurd said that she lacked it not. So now Gunnar goes to her
again, and asked her, what wrought her woe, or if there were anything that
might amend it.

"I will not live," says Brynhild, "for Sigurd has bewrayed me, yea, and
thee no less, whereas thou didst suffer him to come into my bed: lo thou,
two men in one dwelling I will not have; and this shall be Sigurd's death,
or thy death, or my death;—for now has he told Gudrun all, and she
is mocking me even now!"

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Sunder.

CHAPTER XXX. Of the Slaying of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane.

Thereafter Brynhild went out, and sat under her bower-wall, and had many
words of wailing to say, and still she cried that all things were
loathsome to her, both land and lordship alike, so she might not have
Sigurd.

But therewith came Gunnar to her yet again, and Brynhild spake, "Thou
shalt lose both realm and wealth, and thy life and me, for I shall fare
home to my kin, and abide there in sorrow, unless thou slayest Sigurd and
his son; never nourish thou a wolfcub."

Gunnar grew sick at heart thereat, and might nowise see what fearful thing
lay beneath it all; he was bound to Sigurd by oath, and this way and that
way swung the heart within him; but at the last he bethought him of the
measureless shame if his wife went from him, and he said within himself,
"Brynhild is better to me than all things else, and the fairest woman of
all women, and I will lay down my life rather than lose the love of her."
And herewith he called to him his brother and spake,—

"Trouble is heavy on me," and he tells him that he must needs slay Sigurd,
for that he has failed him where in he trusted him; "so let us be lords of
the gold and the realm withal."

Hogni answers, "Ill it behoves us to break our oaths with wrack and wrong,
and withal great aid we have in him; no kings shall be as great as we, if
so be the King of the Hun-folk may live; such another brother-in-law never
may we get again; bethink thee how good it is to have such a
brother-in-law, and such sons to our sister! But well I see how things
stand, for this has Brynhild stirred thee up to, and surely shall her
counsel drag us into huge shame and scathe."

Gunnar says, "Yet shall it be brought about: and, lo, a rede thereto;—let
us egg on our brother Guttorm to the deed; he is young, and of little
knowledge, and is clean out of all the oaths moreover."

"Ah, set about in ill wise," says Hogni, "and though indeed it may well be
compassed, a due reward shall we gain for the bewrayal of such a man as is
Sigurd."

Gunnar says, "Sigurd shall die, or I shall die."

And therewith he bids Brynhild arise and be glad at heart: so she arose,
and still ever she said that Gunnar should come no more into her bed till
the deed was done.

So the brothers fall to talk, and Gunnar says that it is a deed well
worthy of death, that taking of Brynhild's maidenhead; "So come now, let
us prick on Guttorm to do the deed."

Therewith they call him to them, and offer him gold and great dominion, as
they well have might to do. Yea, and they took a certain worm and somewhat
of wolf's flesh and let seethe them together, and gave him to eat of the
same, even as the singer sings—

     "Fish of the wild-wood,
     Worm smooth crawling,
     With wolf-meat mingled,
     They minced for Guttorm;
     Then in the beaker,
     In the wine his mouth knew,
     They set it, still doing
     More deeds of wizards.

Wherefore with the eating of this meat he grew so wild and eager, and with
all things about him, and with the heavy words of Grimhild, that he gave
his word to do the deed; and mighty honour they promised him in reward
thereof.

But of these evil wiles naught at all knew Sigurd, for he might not deal
with his shapen fate, nor the measure of his life-days, neither deemed he
that he was worthy of such things at their hands.

So Guttorm went in to Sigurd the next morning as he lay upon his bed, yet
durst he not do aught against him, but shrank back out again; yea, and
even so he fared a second time, for so bright and eager were the eyes of
Sigurd that few durst look upon him. But the third time he went in, and
there lay Sigurd asleep; then Guttorm drew his sword and thrust Sigurd
through in such wise that the sword point smote into the bed beneath him;
then Sigurd awoke with that wound, and Guttorm gat him unto the door; but
therewith Sigurd caught up the sword Gram, and cast it after him, and it
smote him on the back, and struck him asunder in the midst, so that the
feet of him fell one way, and the head and hands back into the chamber.

Now Gudrun lay asleep on Sigurd's bosom, but she woke up unto woe that may
not be told of, all swimming in the blood of him, and in such wise did she
bewail her with weeping and words of sorrow, that Sigurd rose up on the
bolster, and spake.

"Weep not," said he, "for thy brothers live for thy delight; but a young
son have I, too young to be ware of his foes; and an ill turn have these
played against their own fortune; for never will they get a mightier
brother-in-law to ride abroad with them; nay, nor a better son to their
sister, than this one, if he may grow to man's estate. Lo, now is that
come to pass which was foretold me long ago, but from mine eyes has it
been hidden, for none may fight against his fate and prevail. Behold this
has Brynhild brought to pass, even she who loves me before all men; but
this may I swear, that never have I wrought ill to Gunnar, but rather have
ever held fast to my oath with him, nor was I ever too much a friend to
his wife. And now if I had been forewarned, and had been afoot with my
weapons, then should many a man have lost his life or ever I had fallen,
and all those brethren should have been slain, and a harder work would the
slaying of me have been than the slaying of the mightiest bull or the
mightiest boar of the wild-wood."

And even therewithal life left the King; but Gudrun moaned and drew a
weary breath, and Brynhild heard it, and laughed when she heard her
moaning.

Then said Gunnar, "Thou laughest not because thy heart-roots are
gladdened, or else why doth thy visage wax so wan? Sure an evil creature
thou art; most like thou art nigh to thy death! Lo now, how meet would it
be for thee to behold thy brother Atli slain before thine eyes, and that
thou shouldst stand over him dead; whereas we must needs now stand over
our brother-in-law in such a case, our brother-in-law and our brother's
bane."

She answered, "None need mock at the measure of slaughter being
unfulfilled; yet heedeth not Atli your wrath or your threats; yea, he
shall live longer than ye, and be a mightier man."

Hogni spake and said, "Now hath come to pass the soothsaying of Brynhild;
an ill work not to be atoned for."

And Gudrun said, "My kinsmen have slain my husband; but ye, when ye next
ride to the war and are come into the battle, then shall ye look about and
see that Sigurd is neither on the right hand nor the left, and ye shall
know that he was your good-hap and your strength; and if he had lived and
had sons, then should ye have been strengthened by his offspring and his
kin."

CHAPTER XXXI. Of the Lamentation of Gudrun over Sigurd dead, as it is told
told in ancient Songs. (1)

     Gudrun of old days
     Drew near to dying
     As she sat in sorrow
     Over Sigurd;
     Yet she sighed not
     Nor smote hand on hand,
     Nor wailed she aught
     As other women.

     Then went earls to her.
     Full of all wisdom,
     Fain help to deal
     To her dreadful heart:
     Hushed was Gudrun
     Of wail, or greeting,
     But with a heavy woe
     Was her heart a-breaking.

     Bright and fair
     Sat the great earls' brides,
     Gold arrayed
     Before Gudrun;
     Each told the tale
     Of her great trouble,
     The bitterest bale
     She erst abode.

     Then spake Giaflaug,
     Giuki's sister:
     "Lo upon earth
     I live most loveless
     Who of five mates
     Must see the ending,
     Of daughters twain
     And three sisters,
     Of brethren eight,
     And abide behind lonely."

     Naught gat Gudrun
     Of wail and greeting,
     So heavy was she
     For her dead husband,
     So dreadful-hearted
     For the King laid dead there.

     Then spake Herborg
     Queen of Hunland—
     "Crueller tale
     Have I to tell of,
     Of my seven sons
     Down in the Southlands,
     And the eighth man, my mate,
     Felled in the death-mead.

     "Father and mother,
     And four brothers,
     On the wide sea
     The winds and death played with;
     The billows beat
     On the bulwark boards.

     "Alone must I sing o'er them,
     Alone must I array them,
     Alone must my hands deal with
     Their departing;
     And all this was
     In one season's wearing,
     And none was left
     For love or solace.

     "Then was I bound
     A prey of the battle,
     When that same season
     Wore to its ending;
     As a tiring may
     Must I bind the shoon
     Of the duke's high dame,
     Every day at dawning.

     "From her jealous hate
     Gat I heavy mocking,
     Cruel lashes
     She laid upon me,
     Never met I
     Better master
     Or mistress worser
     In all the wide world."

     Naught gat Gudrun
     Of wail or greeting,
     So heavy was she
     For her dead husband,
     So dreadful-hearted
     For the King laid dead there.

     Then spake Gullrond,
     Giuki's daughter—
     "O foster-mother,
     Wise as thou mayst be,
     Naught canst thou better
     The young wife's bale."
     And she bade uncover
     The dead King's corpse.

     She swept the sheet
     Away from Sigurd,
     And turned his cheek
     Towards his wife's knees—
     "Look on thy loved one
     Lay lips to his lips,
     E'en as thou wert clinging
     To thy king alive yet!"

     Once looked Gudrun—
     One look only,
     And saw her lord's locks
     Lying all bloody,
     The great man's eyes
     Glazed and deadly,
     And his heart's bulwark
     Broken by sword-edge.

     Back then sank Gudrun,
     Back on the bolster,
     Loosed was her head array,
     Red did her cheeks grow,
     And the rain-drops ran
     Down over her knees.

     Then wept Gudrun,
     Giuki's daughter,
     So that the tears flowed
     Through the pillow;
     As the geese withal
     That were in the homefield,
     The fair fowls the may owned,
     Fell a-screaming.

     Then spake Gullrond,
     Giuki's daughter—
     "Surely knew I
     No love like your love
     Among all men,
     On the mould abiding;
     Naught wouldst thou joy in
     Without or within doors,
     O my sister,
     Save beside Sigurd."

     Then spake Gudrun,
     Giuki's daughter—
     "Such was my Sigurd
     Among the sons of Giuki,
     As is the king leek
     O'er the low grass waxing,
     Or a bright stone
     Strung on band,
     Or a pearl of price
     On a prince's brow.

     "Once was I counted
     By the king's warriors
     Higher than any
     Of Herjan's mays;
     Now am I as little
     As the leaf may be,
     Amid wind-swept wood
     Now when dead he lieth.

     I miss from my seat,
     I miss from my bed,
     My darling of sweet speech.
     Wrought the sons of Giuki,
     Wrought the sons of Giuki,
     This sore sorrow,
     Yea, for their sister,
     Most sore sorrow.

     "So may your lands
     Lie waste on all sides,
     As ye have broken
     Your bounden oaths!
     Ne'er shalt thou, Gunnar,
     The gold have joy of;
     The dear-bought rings
     Shall drag thee to death,
     Whereon thou swarest
     Oath unto Sigurd.

     Ah, in the days by-gone
     Great mirth in the homefield
     When my Sigurd
     Set saddle on Grani,
     And they went their ways
     For the wooing of Brynhild!
     An ill day, an ill woman,
     And most ill hap!"

     Then spake Brynhild,
     Budli's daughter—
     "May the woman lack
     Both love and children,
     Who gained greeting
     For thee, O Gudrun!
     Who gave thee this morning
     Many words!"

     Then spake Gullrond,
     Giuki's daughter—
     "Hold peace of such words
     Thou hated of all folk!
     The bane of brave men
     Hast thou been ever,
     All waves of ill
     Wash over thy mind,
     To seven great kings
     Hast thou been a sore sorrow,
     And the death of good will
     To wives and women."

     Then spake Brynhild,
     Budli's daughter—
     "None but Atli
     Brought bale upon us,
     My very brother
     Born of Budli.

     When we saw in the hall
     Of the Hunnish people
     The gold a-gleaming
     On the kingly Giukings;
     I have paid for that faring
     Oft and full,
     And for the sight
     That then I saw."

     By a pillar she stood
     And strained its wood to her;
     From the eyes of Brynhild,
     Budli's daughter,
     Flashed out fire,
     And she snorted forth venom,
     As the sore wounds she gazed on
     Of the dead-slain Sigurd.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  This chapter is the Eddaic poem, called the first Lay of
       Gudrun, inserted here by the translators.

CHAPTER XXXII. Of the Ending of Brynhild.

And now none might know for what cause Brynhild must bewail with weeping
for what she had prayed for with laughter: but she spake—

"Such a dream I had, Gunnar, as that my bed was acold, and that thou didst
ride into the hands of thy foes: lo now, ill shall it go with thee and all
thy kin, O ye breakers of oaths; for on the day thou slayedst him, dimly
didst thou remember how thou didst blend thy blood with the blood of
Sigurd, and with an ill reward hast thou rewarded him for all that he did
well to thee; whereas he gave unto thee to be the mightiest of men; and
well was it proven how fast he held to his oath sworn, when he came to me
and laid betwixt us the sharp-edged sword that in venom had been made
hard. All too soon did ye fall to working wrong against him and against
me, whenas I abode at home with my father, and had all that I would, and
had no will that any one of you should be any of mine, as ye rode into our
garth, ye three kings together; but then Atli led me apart privily, and
asked me if I would not have him who rode Grani; yea, a man nowise like
unto you; but in those days I plighted myself to the son of King Sigmund
and no other; and lo, now, no better shall ye fare for the death of me."

Then rose up Gunnar, and laid his arms about her neck, and besought her to
live and have wealth from him; and all others in likewise letted her from
dying; but she thrust them all from her, and said that it was not the part
of any to let her in that which was her will.

Then Gunnar called to Hogni, and prayed him for counsel, and bade him go
to her, and see if he might perchance soften her dreadful heart, saying
withal, that now they had need enough on their hands in the slaking of her
grief, till time might get over.

But Hogni answered, "Nay, let no man hinder her from dying; for no gain
will she be to us, nor has she been gainsome since she came hither!

Now she bade bring forth much gold, and bade all those come thither who
would have wealth: then she caught up a sword, and thrust it under her
armpit, and sank aside upon the pillows, and said, "Come, take gold whoso
will!"

But all held their peace, and she said, "Take the gold, and be glad
thereof!"

And therewith she spake unto Gunnar, "Now for a little while will I tell
of that which shall come to pass hereafter; for speedily shall ye be at
one again with Gudrun by the rede of Grimhild the Wise-wife; and the
daughter of Gudrun and Sigurd shall be called Swanhild, the fairest of all
women born. Gudrun shall be given to Atli, yet not with her good will.
Thou shalt be fain to get Oddrun, but that shall Atli forbid thee; but
privily shall ye meet, and much shall she love thee. Atli shall bewray
thee, and cast thee into a worm-close, and thereafter shall Atli and his
sons be slain, and Gudrun shall be their slayer; and afterwards shall the
great waves bear her to the burg of King Jonakr, to whom she shall bear
sons of great fame: Swanhild shall be sent from the land and given to King
Jormunrek; and her shall bite the rede of Bikki, and therewithal is the
kin of you clean gone; and more sorrows therewith for Gudrun.

"And now I pray thee, Gunnar, one last boon.—Let make a great bale
on the plain meads for all of us; for me, and for Sigurd, and for those
who were slain with him, and let that be covered over with cloth dyed red
by the folk of the Gauls, (1) and burn me thereon on one side of the King
of the Huns, and on the other those men of mine, two at the head and two
at the feet, and two hawks withal; and even so is all shared equally; and
lay there betwixt us a drawn sword, as in the other days when we twain
stepped into one bed together; and then may we have the name of man and
wife, nor shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go behind him.
Nor shall that be a niggard company if there follow him those five
bond-women and eight bondmen, whom my father gave me, and those burn there
withal who were slain with Sigurd.

"Now more yet would I say, but for my wounds, but my life-breath flits;
the wounds open,—yet have I said sooth."

Now is the dead corpse of Sigurd arrayed in olden wise, and a mighty bale
is raised, and when it was somewhat kindled, there was laid thereon the
dead corpse of Sigurd Fafnir's-bane, and his son of three winters whom
Brynhild had let slay, and Guttorm withal; and when the bale was all
ablaze, thereunto was Brynhild borne out, when she had spoken with her
bower-maidens, and bid them take the gold that she would give; and then
died Brynhild, and was burned there by the side of Sigurd, and thus their
life-days ended.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  The original has "raudu manna blodi", red-dyed in the blood
       of men; the Sagaman's original error in dealing with the
       word "Valaript" in the corresponding passage of the short
       lay of Sigurd.—Tr.

CHAPTER XXXIII. Gudrun wedded to Atli.

Now so it is, that whoso heareth these tidings sayeth, that no such an one
as was Sigurd was left behind him in the world, nor ever was such a man
brought forth because of all the worth of him, nor may his name ever
minish by eld in the Dutch Tongue nor in all the Northern Lands, while the
world standeth fast.

The story tells that, on a day, as Gudrun sat in her bower, she fell to
saying, "Better was life in those days when I had Sigurd; he who was far
above other men as gold is above iron, or the leek over other grass of the
field, or the hart over other wild things; until my brethren begrudged me
such a man, the first and best of all men; and so they might not sleep or
they had slain him. Huge clamour made Grani when he saw his master and
lord sore wounded, and then I spoke to him even as with a man, but he fell
drooping down to the earth, for he knew that Sigurd was slain."

Thereafter Gudrun gat her gone into the wild woods, and heard on all ways
round about her the howling of wolves, and deemed death a merrier thing
than life. Then she went till she came to the hall of King Alf, and sat
there in Denmark with Thora, the daughter of Hakon, for seven seasons, and
abode with good welcome. And she set forth her needlework before her, and
did thereinto many deeds and great, and fair plays after the fashion of
those days, swords and byrnies, and all the gear of kings, and the ship of
King Sigmund sailing along the land; yea, and they wrought there, how they
fought, Sigar and Siggeir, south in Fion. Such was their disport; and now
Gudrun was somewhat solaced of her grief.

So Grimhild comes to hear where Gudrun has take up her abode, and she
calls her sons to talk with her, and asks whether they will make atonement
to Gudrun for her son and her husband, and said that it was but meet and
right to do so.

Then Gunnar spake, and said that he would atone for her sorrows with gold.

So they send for their friends, and array their horses, their helms, and
their shields, and their byrnies, and all their war-gear; and their
journey was furnished forth in the noblest wise, and no champion who was
of the great men might abide at home; and their horses were clad in
mail-coats, and every knight of them had his helm done over with gold or
with silver.

Grimhild was of their company, for she said that their errand would never
be brought fairly to pass if she sat at home.

There were well five hundred men, and noble men rode with them. There was
Waldemar of Denmark, and Eymod and Jarisleif withal. So they went into the
hall of King Alf, and there abode them the Longbeards and Franks, and
Saxons: they fared with all their war-gear, and had over them red
fur-coats. Even as the song says—

     "Byrnies short cut,
     Strong helms hammered,
     Girt with good swords,
     Red hair gleaming."

They were fain to choose good gifts for their sister, and spake softly to
her, but in none of them would she trow. Then Gunnar brought unto her a
drink mingled with hurtful things, and this she must needs drink, and with
the drinking thereof she had no more memory of their guilt against her.

But in that drink was blended the might of the earth and the sea with the
blood of her son; and in that horn were all letters cut and reddened with
blood, as is said hereunder—

     "On the horn's face were there
     All the kin of letters
     Cut aright and reddened,
     How should I rede them rightly?
     The ling-fish long
     Of the land of Hadding,
     Wheat-ears unshorn,
     And wild things' inwards.

     In that beer were mingled
     Many ills together,
     Blood of all the wood
     And brown-burnt acorns,
     The black dew of the hearth,
     The God-doomed dead beast's inwards,
     And the swine's liver sodden
     Because all wrongs that deadens.

And so now, when their hearts are brought anigh to each other, great cheer
they made: then came Grimhild to Gudrun, and spake:

"All hail to thee, daughter! I give thee gold and all kinds of good things
to take to thee after thy father, dear-bought rings and bed-gear of the
maids of the Huns, the most courteous and well dight of all women; and
thus is thy husband atoned for: and thereafter shalt thou be given to
Atli, the mighty king, and be mistress of all his might. Cast not all thy
friends aside for one man's sake, but do according to our bidding."

Gudrun answers, "Never will I wed Atli the King: unseemly it is for us to
get offspring betwixt us."

Grimhild says, "Nourish not thy wrath; it shall be to thee as if Sigurd
and Sigmund were alive when thou hast borne sons."

Gudrun says, "I cannot take my heart from thoughts of him, for he was the
first of all men."

Grimhild says, "So it is shapen that thou must have this king and none
else."

Says Gudrun, "Give not this man to me, for an evil thing shall come upon
thy kin from him, and to his own sons shall he deal evil, and be rewarded
with a grim revenge thereafter."

Then waxed Grimhild fell at those words, and spake, "Do even as we bid
thee, and take therefore great honour, and our friendship, and the steads
withal called Vinbjorg and Valbjorg."

And such might was in the words of her, that even so must it come to pass.

Then Gudrun spake, "Thus then must it needs befall, howsoever against the
will of me, and for little joy shall it be and for great grief."

Then men leaped on their horses, and their women were set in wains. So
they fared four days a-riding and other four a-shipboard, and yet four
more again by land and road, till at the last they came to a certain
high-built hall; then came to meet Gudrun many folk thronging; and an
exceedingly goodly feast was there made, even as the word had gone between
either kin, and it passed forth in most proud and stately wise. And at
that feast drinks Atli his bridal with Gudrun; but never did her heart
laugh on him, and little sweet and kind was their life together.

CHAPTER XXXIV. Atli bids the Giukings to him.

Now tells the tale that on a night King Atli woke from sleep and spake to
Gudrun—

"Medreamed," said he, "that thou didst thrust me through with a sword."

Then Gudrun areded the dream, and said that it betokened fire, whenas folk
dreamed of iron. "It befalls of thy pride belike, in that thou deemest
thyself the first of men."

Atli said, "Moreover I dreamed that here waxed two sorb-tree (1) saplings,
and fain I was that they should have no scathe of me; then these were
riven up by the roots and reddened with blood, and borne to the bench, and
I was bidden eat thereof.

"Yea, yet again I dreamed that two hawks flew from my hand hungry and
unfed, and fared to hell, and meseemed their hearts were mingled with
honey, and that I ate thereof.

"And then again I dreamed that two fair whelps lay before me yelling
aloud, and that the flesh of them I ate, though my will went not with the
eating."

Gudrun says, "Nowise good are these dreams, yet shall they come to pass;
surely thy sons are nigh to death, and many heavy things shall fall upon
us."

"Yet again I dreamed," said he, "and methought I lay in a bath, and folk
took counsel to slay me."

Now these things wear away with time, but in nowise was their life
together fond.

Now falls Atli to thinking of where may be gotten that plenteous gold
which Sigurd had owned, but King Gunnar and his brethren were lords
thereof now.

Atli was a great king and mighty, wise, and a lord of many men; and now he
falls to counsel with his folk as to the ways of them. He wotted well that
Gunnar and his brethren had more wealth than any others might have, and so
he falls to the rede of sending men to them, and bidding them to a great
feast, and honouring them in diverse wise, and the chief of those
messengers was hight Vingi.

Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and misdoubts her that this would
mean some beguiling of her brethren: so she cut runes, and took a gold
ring, and knit therein a wolf's hair, and gave it into the hands of the
king's messengers.

Thereafter they go their ways according to the king's bidding; and or ever
they came aland Vingi beheld the runes, and turned them about in such wise
as if Gudrun prayed her brethren in her runes to go meet King Atli.

Thereafter they came to the hall of King Gunnar, and had good welcome at
his hands, and great fires were made for them, and in great joyance they
drank of the best of drink.

Then spake Vingi, "King Atli sends me hither, and is fain that ye go to
his house and home in all glory, and take of him exceeding honours, helms
and shields, swords and byrnies, gold and goodly raiment, horses, hosts of
war, and great and wide lands, for, saith he, he is fainest of all things
to bestow his realm and lordship upon you."

Then Gunnar turned his head aside, and spoke to Hogni—

"In what wise shall we take this bidding? might and wealth he bids us
take; but no kings know I who have so much gold as we have, whereas we
have all the hoard which lay once on Gnitaheath; and great are our
chambers, and full of gold, and weapons for smiting, and all kinds of
raiment of war, and well I wot that amidst all men my horse is the best,
and my sword the sharpest, and my gold the most glorious."

Hogni answers, "A marvel is it to me of his bidding, for seldom hath he
done in such a wise, and ill-counselled will it be to wend to him; lo now,
when I saw those dear-bought things the king sends us I wondered to behold
a wolf's hair knit to a certain gold ring; belike Gudrun deems him to be
minded as a wolf towards us, and will have naught of our faring."

But withal Vingi shows him the runes which he said Gudrun had sent.

Now the most of folk go to bed, but these drank on still with certain
others; and Kostbera, the wife of Hogni, the fairest of women, came to
them, and looked on the runes.

But the wife of Gunnar was Glaumvor, a great-hearted wife.

So these twain poured out, and the kings drank, and were exceeding
drunken, and Vingi notes it, and says—

"Naught may I hide that King Atli is heavy of foot and over-old for the
warding of his realm; but his sons are young and of no account: now will
he give you rule over his realms while they are yet thus young, and most
fain will he be that ye have the joy thereof before all others."

Now so it befell both that Gunnar was drunk, and that great dominion was
held out to him, nor might he work against the fate shapen for him; so he
gave his word to go, and tells Hogni his brother thereof.

But he answered, "Thy word given must even stand now, nor will I fail to
follow thee, but most loth am I to this journey."

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Service-tree; "pyrus sorbus domestica", or "p. s.
       tormentalis.

CHAPTER XXXV. The Dreams of the Wives of the Giukings.

So when men had drunk their fill, they fared to sleep; then falls Kostbera
to beholding the runes, and spelling over the letters, and sees that
beneath were other things cut, and that the runes are guileful; yet
because of her wisdom she had skill to read them aright. So then she goes
to bed by her husband; but when they awoke, she spake unto Hogni—

"Thou art minded to wend away from home—ill-counselled is that;
abide till another time! Scarce a keen reader of runes art thou, if thou
deemest thou hast beheld in them the bidding of thy sister to this
journey: lo, I read the runes, and had marvel of so wise a woman as Gudrun
is, that she should have miscut them; but that which lieth underneath
beareth your bane with it,—yea, either she lacked a letter, or
others have dealt guilefully with the runes.

"And now hearken to my dream; for therein methought there fell in upon us
here a river exceeding strong, and brake up the timbers of the hall."

He answered, "Full oft are ye evil of mind, ye women, but for me, I was
not made in such wise as to meet men with evil who deserve no evil; belike
he will give us good welcome."

She answered, "Well, the thing must ye yourselves prove, but no friendship
follows this bidding:—but yet again I dreamed that another river
fell in here with a great and grimly rush, and tore up the dais of the
hall, and brake the legs of both you brethren; surely that betokeneth
somewhat."

He answers, "Meadows along our way, whereas thou didst dream of the river;
for when we go through the meadows, plentifully doth the seeds of the hay
hang about our legs."

"Again I dreamed," she says, "that thy cloak was afire, and that the flame
blazed up above the hall."

Says he, "Well, I wot what that shall betoken; here lieth my fair-dyed
raiment, and it shall burn and blaze, whereas thou dreamedst of the
cloak."

"Methought a bear came in," she says, "and brake up the king's high-seat,
and shook his paws in such a wise that we were all adrad thereat, and he
gat us all together into the mouth of him, so that we might avail us
naught, and thereof fell great horror on us."

He answered, "Some great storm will befall, whereas thou hadst a white
bear in thy mind."

"An erne methought came in," she says, "and swept adown the hall, and
drenched me and all of us with blood, and ill shall that betoken, for
methought it was the double of King Atli."

He answered, "Full oft do we slaughter beasts freely, and smite down great
neat for our cheer, and the dream of the erne has but to do with oxen;
yea, Atli is heart-whole toward us."

And therewithal they cease this talk.

CHAPTER XXXVI. Of the Journey of the Giukings to King Atli.

Now tells the tale of Gunnar, that in the same wise it fared with him; for
when they awoke, Glaumvor his wife told him many dreams which seemed to
her like to betoken guile coming; but Gunnar areded them all in other
wise.

"This was one of them," said she; "methought a bloody sword was borne into
the hall here, wherewith thou wert thrust through, and at either end of
that sword wolves howled."

The king answered, "Cur dogs shall bite me belike; blood-stained weapons
oft betoken dogs' snappings."

She said, "Yet again I dreamed—that women came in, heavy and
drooping, and chose thee for their mate; may-happen these would be thy
fateful women."

He answered, "Hard to arede is this, and none may set aside the fated
measure of his days, nor is it unlike that my time is short." (1)

So in the morning they arose, and were minded for the journey, but some
letted them herein.

Then cried Gunnar to the man who is called Fjornir—

"Arise, and give us to drink goodly wine from great tuns, because
mayhappen this shall be very last of all our feasts; for belike if we die
the old wolf shall come by the gold, and that bear shall nowise spare the
bite of his war-tusks."

Then all the folk of his household brought them on their way weeping.

The son of Hogni said—

"Fare ye well with merry tide."

The more part of their folk were left behind; Solar and Snaevar, the sons
of Hogni, fared with them, and a certain great champion, named Orkning,
who was the brother of Kostbera.

So folk followed them down to the ships, and all letted them of their
journey, but attained to naught therein.

Then spake Glaumvor, and said—

"O Vingi, most like that great ill hap will come of thy coming, and mighty
and evil things shall betide in thy travelling."

He answered, "Hearken to my answer; that I lie not aught: and may the high
gallows and all things of grame have me, if I lie one word!"

Then cried Kostbera, "Fare ye well with merry days."

And Hogni answered, "Be glad of heart, howsoever it may fare with us!"

And therewith they parted, each to their own fate. Then away they rowed,
so hard and fast, that well-nigh the half of the keel slipped away from
the ship, and so hard they laid on to the oars that thole and gunwale
brake.

But when they came aland they made their ship fast, and then they rode
awhile on their noble steeds through the murk wild-wood.

And now they behold the king's army, and huge uproar, and the clatter of
weapons they hear from thence; and they see there a mighty host of men,
and the manifold array of them, even as they wrought there: and all the
gates of the burg were full of men.

So they rode up to the burg, and the gates thereof were shut; then Hogni
brake open the gates, and therewith they ride into the burg.

Then spake Vingi, "Well might ye have left this deed undone; go to now,
bide ye here while I go seek your gallows-tree! Softly and sweetly I bade
you hither, but an evil thing abode thereunder; short while to bide ere ye
are tied up to that same tree!"

Hogni answered, "None the more shall we waver for that cause; for little
methinks have we shrunk aback whenas men fell to fight; and naught shall
it avail thee to make us afeard,—and for an ill fate hast thou
wrought."

And therewith they cast him down to earth, and smote him with their
axe-hammers till he died.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Parallel beliefs to those in the preceding chapters, and
       elsewhere in this book, as to spells, dreams, drinks, etc.,
       among the English people may be found in "Leechdoms,
       Wortcunning, and Starcraft of the Anglo-Saxons; being a
       collection of Documents illustrating the History of Science
       in this Country before the Norman Conquest".  Ed: Rev. T. O.
       Cockayne, M.A. (3 vols.)  Longmans, London, 1864, 8vo.

CHAPTER XXXVII. The Battle in the Burg of King Atli.

Then they rode unto the king's hall, and King Atli arrayed his host for
battle, and the ranks were so set forth that a certain wall there was
betwixt them and the brethren.

"Welcome hither," said he. "Deliver unto me that plenteous gold which is
mine of right; even the wealth which Sigurd once owned, and which is now
Gudrun's of right."

Gunnar answered, "Never gettest thou that wealth; and men of might must
thou meet here, or ever we lay by life if thou wilt deal with us in
battle; ah, belike thou settest forth this feast like a great man, and
wouldst not hold thine hand from erne and wolf!"

"Long ago I had it in my mind," said Atli, "to take the lives of you, and
be lord of the gold, and reward you for that deed of shame, wherein ye
beguiled the best of all your affinity; but now shall I revenge him."

Hogni answered, "Little will it avail to lie long brooding over that rede,
leaving the work undone."

And therewith they fell to hard fighting, at the first brunt with shot.

But therewithal came the tidings to Gudrun, and when she heard thereof she
grew exceeding wroth, and cast her mantle from her, and ran out and
greeted those new-comers, and kissed her brethren, and showed them all
love,—and the last of all greetings was that betwixt them.

Then said she, "I thought I had set forth counsels whereby ye should not
come hither, but none may deal with his shapen fate." And withal she said,
"Will it avail aught to seek for peace?"

But stoutly and grimly they said nay thereto. So she sees that the game
goeth sorely against her brethren, and she gathers to her great stoutness
of heart, and does on her a mail-coat and takes to her a sword, and fights
by her brethren, and goes as far forward as the bravest of man-folk: and
all spoke in one wise that never saw any fairer defence than in her.

Now the men fell thick, and far before all others was the fighting of
those brethren, and the battle endured a long while unto midday; Gunnar
and Hogni went right through the folk of Atli, and so tells the tale that
all the mead ran red with blood; the sons of Hogni withal set on stoutly.

Then spake Atli the king, "A fair host and a great have we, and mighty
champions withal, and yet have many of us fallen, and but evil am I apaid
in that nineteen of my champions are slain, and but left six alive."

And therewithal was there a lull in the battle.

Then spake Atli the king, "Four brethren were we, and now am I left alone;
great affinity I gat to me, and deemed my fortune well sped thereby; a
wife I had, fair and wise, high of mind, and great of heart; but no
joyance may I have of her wisdom, for little peace is betwixt us,—but
ye—ye have slain many of my kin, and beguiled me of realm and
riches, and for the greatest of all woes have slain my sister withal."

Quoth Hogni, "Why babblest thou thus? thou wert the first to break the
peace. Thou didst take my kinswoman and pine her to death by hunger, and
didst murder her, and take her wealth; an ugly deed for a king!—meet
for mocking and laughter I deem it, that thou must needs make long tale of
thy woes; rather will I give thanks to the Gods that thou fallest into
ill."

CHAPTER XXXVIII. Of the slaying of the Giukings.

Now King Atli eggs on his folk to set on fiercely, and eagerly they fight;
but the Giukings fell on so hard that King Atli gave back into the hall,
and within doors was the fight, and fierce beyond all fights.

That battle was the death of many a man, but such was the ending thereof,
that there fell all the folk of those brethren, and they twain alone stood
up on their feet, and yet many more must fare to hell first before their
weapons.

And now they fell on Gunnar the king, and because of the host of men that
set on him was hand laid on him, and he was cast into fetters; afterwards
fought Hogni, with the stoutest heart and the greatest manlihood; and he
felled to earth twenty of the stoutest of the champions of King Atli, and
many he thrust into the fire that burnt amidst the hall, and all were of
one accord that such a man might scarce be seen; yet in the end was he
borne down by many and taken.

Then said King Atli, "A marvellous thing how many men have gone their ways
before him! Cut the heart from out of him, and let that be his bane!"

Hogni said, "Do according to thy will; merrily will I abide whatso thou
wrlt do against me; and thou shalt see that my heart is not adrad, for
hard matters have I made trial of ere now, and all things that may try a
man was I fain to bear, whiles yet I was unhurt; but now sorely am I hurt,
and thou alone henceforth will bear mastery in our dealings together."

Then spake a counsellor of King Atli, "Better rede I see thereto; take we
the thrall Hjalli, and give respite to Hogni; for this thrall is made to
die, since the longer he lives the less worth shall he be."

The thrall hearkened, and cried out aloft, and fled away anywhither where
he might hope for shelter, crying out that a hard portion was his because
of their strife and wild doings, and an ill day for him whereon he must be
dragged to death from his sweet life and his swine-keeping. But they
caught him, and turned a knife against him, and he yelled and screamed or
ever he felt the point thereof.

Then in such wise spake Hogni as a man seldom speaketh who is fallen into
hard need, for he prayed for the thrall's life, and said that these
shrieks he could not away with, and that it were a lesser matter to him to
play out the play to the end; and therewithal the thrall gat his life as
for that time: but Gunnar and Hogni are both laid in fetters.

Then spake King Atli with Gunnar the king, and bade him tell out
concerning the gold, and where it was, if he would have his life.

But he answered, "Nay, first will I behold the bloody heart of Hogni, my
brother."

So now they caught hold of the thrall again, and cut the heart from out of
him, and bore it unto King Gunnar, but he said—

"The faint heart of Hjalli may ye here behold, little like the proud heart
of Hogni, for as much as it trembleth now, more by the half it trembled
whenas it lay in the breast of him."

So now they fell on Hogni even as Atli urged them, and cut the heart from
out of him, but such was the might of his manhood, that he laughed while
he abode that torment, and all wondered at his worth, and in perpetual
memory is it held sithence. (1)

Then they showed it to Gunnar, and he said—

"The mighty heart of Hogni, little like the faint heart of Hjalli, for
little as it trembleth now, less it trembled whenas in his breast it lay!
But now, O Atli, even as we die so shalt thou die; and lo, I alone wot
where the gold is, nor shall Hogni be to tell thereof now; to and fro
played the matter in my mind whiles we both lived, but now have I myself
determined for myself, and the Rhine river shall rule over the gold,
rather than that the Huns shall bear it on the hands of them."

Then said King Atli, "Have away the bondsman;" and so they did.

But Gudrun called to her men, and came to Atli, and said—

"May it fare ill with thee now and from henceforth, even as thou hast ill
held to thy word with me!"

So Gunnar was cast into a worm-close, and many worms abode him there, and
his hands were fast bound; but Gudrun sent him a harp, and in such wise
did he set forth his craft, that wisely he smote the harp, smiting it with
his toes, and so excellently well he played, that few deemed they had
heard such playing, even when the hand had done it. And with such might
and power he played, that all worms fell asleep in the end, save one adder
only, great and evil of aspect, that crept unto him and thrust its sting
into him until it smote his heart; and in such wise with great hardihood
he ended his life days.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Since ("sidh", after, and "dham", that.).

CHAPTER XXXIX. The End of Atli and his Kin and Folk.

Now thought Atli the King that he had gained a mighty victory, and spake
to Gudrun even as mocking her greatly, or as making himself great before
her. "Gudrun," saith he, "thus hast thou lost thy brethren, and thy very
self hast brought it about."

She answers, "In good liking livest thou, whereas thou thrustest these
slayings before me, but mayhappen thou wilt rue it, when thou hast tried
what is to come hereafter; and of all I have, the longest-lived matter
shall be the memory of thy cruel heart, nor shall it go well with thee
whiles I live."

He answered and said, "Let there be peace betwixt us; I will atone for thy
brethren with gold and dear-bought things, even as thy heart may wish."

She answers, "Hard for a long while have I been in our dealings together,
and now I say, that while Hogni was yet alive thou mightest have brought
it to pass; but now mayest thou never atone for my brethren in my heart;
yet oft must we women be overborne by the might of you men; and now are
all my kindred dead and gone, and thou alone art left to rule over me:
wherefore now this is my counsel that we make a great feast, wherein I
will hold the funeral of my brother and of thy kindred withal."

In such wise did she make herself soft and kind in words, though far other
things forsooth lay thereunder, but he hearkened to her gladly, and
trusted in her words, whereas she made herself sweet of speech.

So Gudrun held the funeral feast for her brethren, and King Atli for his
men, and exceeding proud and great was this feast.

But Gudrun forgat not her woe, but brooded over it, how she might work
some mighty shame against the king; and at nightfall she took to her the
sons of King Atli and her as they played about the floor; the younglings
waxed heavy of cheer, and asked what she would with them.

"Ask me not," she said; "ye shall die, the twain of you!"

Then they answered, "Thou mayest do with thy children even as thou wilt,
nor shall any hinder thee, but shame there is to thee in the doing of this
deed."

Yet for all that she cut the throats of them.

Then the king asked where his sons were, and Gudrun answered, "I will tell
thee, and gladden thine heart by the telling; lo now, thou didst make a
great woe spring up for me in the slaying of my brethren; now hearken and
hear my rede and my deed; thou hast lost thy sons, and their heads are
become beakers on the board here, and thou thyself hast drunken the blood
of them blended with wine; and their hearts I took and roasted them on a
spit, and thou hast eaten thereof."

King Atli answered, "Grim art thou in that thou hast murdered thy sons,
and given me their flesh to eat, and little space passes betwixt ill deed
of thine and ill deed."

Gudrun said, "My heart is set on the doing to thee of as great shame as
may be; never shall the measure of ill be full to such a king as thou
art."

The king said, "Worser deeds hast thou done than men have to tell of, and
great unwisdom is there in such fearful redes; most meet art thou to be
burned on bale when thou hast first been smitten to death with stones, for
in such wise wouldst thou have what thou hast gone a weary way to seek."

She answered, "Thine own death thou foretellest, but another death is
fated for me."

And many other words they spake in their wrath.

Now Hogni had a son left alive, hight Niblung, and great wrath of heart he
bare against King Atli; and he did Gudrun to wit that he would avenge his
father. And she took his words well, and they fell to counsel together
thereover, and she said it would be great goodhap if it might be brought
about.

So on a night, when the king had drunken, he gat him to bed, and when he
was laid asleep, thither to him came Gudrun and the son of Hogni.

Gudrun took a sword and thrust it through the breast of King Atli, and
they both of them set their hands to the deed, both she and the son of
Hogni.

Then Atli the king awoke with the wound, and cried out; "no need of
binding or salving here!—who art thou who hast done the deed?"

Gudrun says, "Somewhat have I, Gudrun, wrought therein, and somewhat
withal the son of Hogni."

Atli said, "Ill it beseemed to thee to do this, though somewhat of wrong
was between us; for thou wert wedded to me by the rede of thy kin, and
dower paid I for thee; yea, thirty goodly knights, and seemly maidens, and
many men besides; and yet wert thou not content, but if thou should rule
over the lands King Budli owned: and thy mother-in-law full oft thou
lettest sit a-weeping."

Gudrun said, "Many false words hast thou spoken, and of naught I account
them; oft, indeed, was I fell of mood, but much didst thou add thereto.
Full oft in this thy house did frays befall, and kin fought kin, and
friend fought friend, and made themselves big one against the other;
better days had I whenas I abode with Sigurd, when we slew kings, and took
their wealth to us, but gave peace to whomso would, and the great men laid
themselves under our hands, and might we gave to him of them who would
have it; then I lost him, and a little thing was it that I should bear a
widow's name, but the greatest of griefs that I should come to thee—I
who had aforetime the noblest of all kings, while for thee, thou never
barest out of the battle aught but the worser lot."

King Atli answered, "Naught true are thy words, nor will this our speech
better the lot of either of us, for all is fallen now to naught; but now
do to me in seemly wise, and array my dead corpse in noble fashion."

"Yea, that will I," she says, "and let make for thee a goodly grave, and
build for thee a worthy abiding place of stone, and wrap thee in fair
linen, and care for all that needful is."

So therewithal he died, and she did according to her word: and then they
cast fire into the hall.

And when the folk and men of estate awoke amid that dread and trouble,
naught would they abide the fire, but smote each the other down, and died
in such wise; so there Atli the king, and all his folk, ended their
life-days. But Gudrun had no will to live longer after this deed so
wrought, but nevertheless her ending day was not yet come upon her.

Now the Volsungs and the Giukings, as folk tell in tale, have been the
greatest-hearted and the mightiest of all men, as ye may well behold
written in the songs of old time.

But now with the tidings just told were these troubles stayed.

CHAPTER XL. How Gudrun cast herself into the Sea, but was brought ashore
again.

Gudrun had a daughter by Sigurd hight Swanhild; she was the fairest of all
women, eager-eyed as her father, so that few durst look under the brows of
her; and as far did she excel other woman-kind as the sun excels the other
lights of heaven.

But on a day went Gudrun down to the sea, and caught up stones in her
arms, and went out into the sea, for she had will to end her life. But
mighty billows drave her forth along the sea, and by means of their
upholding was she borne along till she came at the last to the burg of
King Jonakr, a mighty king, and lord of many folk. And he took Gudrun to
wife, and their children were Hamdir, and Sorli, and Erp; and there was
Swanhild nourished withal.

CHAPTER XLI. Of the Wedding and Slaying of Swanhild.

Jormunrek was the name of a mighty king of those days, and his son was
called Randver. Now this king called his son to talk with him, and said,
"Thou shalt fare on an errand of mine to King Jonakr, with my counsellor
Bikki, for with King Jonakr is nourished Swanhild, the daughter of Sigurd
Fafnir's-bane; and I know for sure that she is the fairest may dwelling
under the sun of this world; her above all others would I have to my wife,
and thou shalt go woo her for me."

Randver answered, "Meet and right, fair lord, that I should go on thine
errands."

So the king set forth this journey in seemly wise, and they fare till they
come to King Jonakr's abode, and behold Swanhild, and have many thoughts
concerning the treasure of her goodliness.

But on a day Randver called the king to talk with him, and said,
"Jormunrek the King would fain be thy brother-in-law, for he has heard
tell of Swanhild, and his desire it is to have her to wife, nor may it be
shown that she may be given to any mightier man than he is one."

The King says, "This is an alliance of great honour, for a man of fame he
is."

Gudrun says, "A wavering trust, the trust in luck that it change not!"

Yet because of the king's furthering, and all the matters that went
herewith, is the wooing accomplished; and Swanhild went to the ship with a
goodly company, and sat in the stern beside the king's son.

Then spake Bikki to Randver, "How good and right it were if thou thyself
had to wife so lovely a woman rather than the old man there."

Good seemed that word to the heart of the king's son, and he spake to her
with sweet words, and she to him in like wise.

So they came aland and go unto the king, and Bikki said unto him, "Meet
and right it is, lord, that thou shouldst know what is befallen, though
hard it be to tell of, for the tale must be concerning thy beguiling,
whereas thy son has gotten to him the full love of Swanhild, nor is she
other than his harlot; but thou, let not the deed be unavenged."

Now many an ill rede had he given the king or this, but of all his ill
redes did this sting home the most; and still would the king hearken to
all his evil redes; wherefore he, who might nowise still the wrath within
him, cried out that Randver should be taken and tied up to the
gallows-tree.

And as he was led to the gallows he took his hawk and plucked the feathers
from off it, and bade show it to his father; and when the king saw it,
then he said, "Now may folk behold that he deemeth my honour to be gone
away from me, even as the feathers of this hawk;" and therewith he bade
deliver him from the gallows.

But in that while had Bikki wrought his will, and Randver was dead-slain.

And, moreover, Bikki spake, "Against none hast thou more wrongs to avenge
thee of than against Swanhild; let her die a shameful death."

"Yea," said the king, "we will do after thy counsel."

So she was bound in the gate of the burg, and horses were driven at her to
tread her down; but when she opened her eyes wide, then the horses durst
not trample her; so when Bikki beheld that, he bade draw a bag over the
head of her; and they did so, and therewith she lost her life. (1)

  ENDNOTES
  (1)  In the prose Edda the slaying of Swanhild is a spontaneous
       and sudden act on the part of the king.  As he came back
       from hunting one day, there sat Swanhild washing her linen,
       and it came into the king's mind how that she was the cause
       of all his woe, so he and his men rode over her and slew
       her.—Tr.

CHAPTER XLII. Gudrun sends her Sons to avenge Swanhild.

Now Gudrun heard of the slaying of Swanhild, and spake to her sons, "Why
sit ye here in peace amid merry words, whereas Jormunrek hath slain your
sister, and trodden her under foot of horses in shameful wise? No heart ye
have in you like to Gunnar or Hogni; verily they would have avenged their
kinswoman!"

Hamdir answered, "Little didst thou praise Gunnar and Hogni, whereas they
slew Sigurd, and thou wert reddened in the blood of him, and ill were thy
brethren avenged by the slaying of thine own sons: yet not so ill a deed
were it for us to slay King Jormunrek, and so hard thou pushest us on to
this that we may naught abide thy hard words."

Gudrun went about laughing now, and gave them to drink from mighty
beakers, and thereafter she got for them great byrnies and good, and all
other weed (1) of war.

Then spake Hamdir, "Lo now, this is our last parting, for thou shalt hear
tidings of us, and drink one grave-ale (2) over us and over Swanhild."

So therewith they went their ways.

But Gudrun went unto her bower, with heart swollen with sorrow, and spake—

"To three men was I wedded, and first to Sigurd Fafnir's-bane, and he was
bewrayed and slain, and of all griefs was that the greatest grief. Then
was I given to King Atli, and so fell was my heart toward him that I slew
in the fury of my grief his children and mine. Then gave I myself to the
sea, but the billows thereof cast me out aland, and to this king then was
I given; then gave I Swanhild away out of the land with mighty wealth; and
lo, my next greatest sorrow after Sigurd, for under horses' feet was she
trodden and slain; but the grimmest and ugliest of woes was the casting of
Gunnar into the Worm-close, and the hardest was the cutting of Hogni's
heart from him.

"Ah, better would it be if Sigurd came to meet me, and I went my ways with
him, for here bideth now behind with me neither son nor daughter to
comfort me. Oh, mindest thou not, Sigurd, the words we spoke when we went
into one bed together, that thou wouldst come and look on me; yea, even
from thine abiding place among the dead?"

And thus had the words of her sorrow an end.

  ENDNOTE:
  (1)  Weed (A.S. "weodo"), clothing.
  (2)  Grave-ale, burial-feast.

CHAPTER XLIII. The Latter End of all the Kin of the Giukings.

Now telleth the tale concerning the sons of Gudrun, that she had arrayed
their war-raiment in such wise, that no steel would bite thereon; and she
bade them play not with stones or other heavy matters, for that it would
be to their scathe if they did so.

And now, as they went on their way, they met Erp, their brother, and asked
him in what wise he would help them.

He answered, "Even as hand helps hand, or foot helps foot."

But that they deemed naught at all, and slew him there and then. Then they
went their ways, nor was it long or ever Hamdir stumbled, and thrust down
his hand to steady himself, and spake therewith—

"Naught but a true thing spake Erp, for now should I have fallen, had not
hand been to steady me."

A little after Sorli stumbled, but turned about on his feet, and so stood,
and spake—

"Yea now had I fallen, but that I steadied myself with both feet."

And they said they had done evilly with Erp their brother.

But on they fare till they come to the abode of King Jormunrek, and they
went up to him and set on him forthwith, and Hamdir cut both hands from
him and Sorli both feet. Then spake Hamdir—

"Off were the head if Erp were alive; our brother, whom we slew on the
way, and found out our deed too late." Even as the Song says,—

     "Off were the head
     If Erp were alive yet,
     Our brother the bold,
     Whom we slew by the way,
     The well-famed in warfare."

Now in this must they turn away from the words of their mother, whereas
they had to deal with stones. For now men fell on them, and they defended
themselves in good and manly wise, and were the scathe of many a man, nor
would iron bite on them.

But there came thereto a certain man, old of aspect and one-eyed, (1) and
he spake—

"No wise men are ye, whereas ye cannot bring these men to their end."

Then the king said, "Give us rede thereto, if thou canst."

He said, "Smite them to the death with stones."

In such wise was it done, for the stones flew thick and fast from every
side, and that was the end of their life-days.

And now has come to an end the whole root and stem of the Giukings. (2)

     NOW MAY ALL EARLS
     BE BETTERED IN MIND,
     MAY THE GRIEF OF ALL MAIDENS
     EVER BE MINISHED,
     FOR THIS TALE OF TROUBLE
     SO TOLD TO ITS ENDING.

  ENDNOTES:
  (1)  Odin; he ends the tale as he began it.
  (2)  "And now," etc., inserted by translators from the Poetic
       Edda, the stanza at the end from the Whetting of Gudrun.

APPENDIX: EXCERPTS FROM THE POETIC EDDA.

PART OF THE SECOND LAY OF HELGI HUNDINGS-BANE (1)

Helgi wedded Sigrun, and they begate sons together, but Helgi lived not to
be old; for Dag, (2) the son of Hogni, sacrificed to Odin, praying that he
might avenge his father. So Odin lent Dag his spear, and Dag met Helgi,
his brother-in-law, at a place called Fetter-grove, and thrust him through
with that spear, and there fell Helgi dead; but Dag rode to Sevafell, and
told Sigrun of the news.

     DAG:
     Loth am I, sister
     Of sorrow to tell thee,
     For by hard need driven
     Have I drawn on the greeting;
     This morning fell
     In Fetter-grove
     The king well deemed
     The best in the wide world,
     Yea, he who stood
     On the necks of the strong."

     SIGRUN:
     All oaths once sworn
     Shall bite thee sore,
     The oaths that to Helgi
     Once thou swarest
     At the bright white
     Water of Lightening, (3)
     And at the cold rock
     That the sea runneth over.

     May the ship sweep not on
     That should sweep at its swiftest,
     Though the wind desired
     Behind thee driveth!
     May the horse never run
     That should run at his most might
     When from thy foe's face
     Thou hast most need to flee!

     May the sword never bite
     That thou drawest from scabbard
     But and if round thine head
     In wrath it singeth!

     Then should meet price be paid
     For Helgi's slaying
     When a wolf thou wert
     Out in the wild-wood,
     Empty of good things
     Empty of gladness,
     With no meat for thy mouth
     But dead men's corpses!

     DAG:
     With mad words thou ravest,
     Thy wits are gone from thee,
     When thou for thy brother
     Such ill fate biddest;
     Odin alone
     Let all this bale loose,
     Casting the strife-runes
     'Twixt friends and kindred.

     Rings of red gold
     Will thy brother give thee,
     And the stead of Vandil
     And the lands of Vigdale;
     Have half of the land
     For thy sorrow's healing,
     O ring-arrayed sweetling
     For thee and thy sons!

     SIGRUN:
     No more sit I happy
     At Sevafell;
     At day-dawn, at night
     Naught love I my life
     Till broad o'er the people
     My lord's light breaketh;
     Till his war-horse runneth
     Beneath him hither,
     Well wont to the gold bit—
     Till my king I welcome.

     In such wise did Helgi
     Deal fear around
     To all his foes
     And all their friends
     As when the goat runneth
     Before the wolf's rage
     Filled with mad fear
     Down from the fell.

     As high above all lords
     Did Helgi beat him
     As the ash-tree's glory
     From the thorn ariseth,
     Or as the fawn
     With the dew-fell sprinkled
     Is far above
     All other wild things,
     As his horns go gleaming
     'Gainst the very heavens.

A barrow was raised above Helgi, but when he came in Valhall, then Odin
bade him be lord of all things there, even as he; so Helgi sang—

     HELGI:
     Now shalt thou, Hunding
     For the help of each man
     Get ready the foot-bath,
     And kindle the fire;
     The hounds shalt thou bind
     And give heed to the horses,
     Give wash to the swine
     Ere to sleep thou goest.

A bondmaid of Sigrun went in the evening-tide by Helgi's mound, and there
saw how Helgi rode toward it with a great company; then she sang—

     BONDMAID:
     It is vain things' beguilling
     That methinks I behold,
     Or the ending of all things,
     As ye ride, O ye dead men,
     Smiting with spurs
     Your horses' sides?
     Or may dead warriors
     Wend their ways homeward?

     THE DEAD:
     No vain things' beguiling
     Is that thou beholdest,
     Nor the ruin of all things;
     Though thou lookest upon us,
     Though we smite with spurs
     Our horses' sides;
     Rather dead warriors
     May wend their ways homeward.

Then went the bondmaid home, and told Sigrun, and sang—

     BONDMAID:
     Go out, Sigrun
     From Sevafell,
     If thou listest to look on
     The lord of thy people!
     For the mound is uncovered
     Thither is Helgi come,
     And his wounds are bleeding,
     But the king thee biddeth
     To come and stay
     That stream of sorrow.

So Sigrun went into the mound to Helgi, and sang—

     SIGRUN:
     Now am I as fain
     Of this fair meeting,
     As are the hungry
     Hawks of Odin,
     When they wot of the slaying
     Of the yet warm quarry,
     Or bright with dew
     See the day a-dawning.

     Ah, I will kiss
     My king laid lifeless,
     Ere thou castest by
     Thy blood-stained byrny.
     O Helgi, thy hair
     Is thick with death's rime,
     With the dew of the dead
     Is my love all dripping;
     Dead-cold are the hands
     Of the son of Hogni;
     How for thee, O my king,
     May I win healing?

     HELGI:
     Thou alone, Sigrun
     Of Sevafell,
     Hast so done that Helgi
     With grief's dew drippeth;
     O clad in gold
     Cruel tears thou weepest,
     Bright May of the Southlands,
     Or ever thou sleepest;
     Each tear in blood falleth
     On the breast of thy lord,
     Cold wet and bitter-sharp
     Swollen with sorrow.

     Ah, we shall drink
     Dear draughts and lovely,
     Though, we have lost
     Both life and lands;
     Neither shall any
     Sing song of sorrow,
     Though in my breast
     Be wounds wide to behold:
     For now are brides
     In the mound abiding;
     Kings' daughters sit
     By us departed.

Bow Sigrun arrayed a bed in the mound, and sang—

     SIGRUN:
     Here, Helgi, for thee
     A bed have I dight,
     Kind without woe,
     O kin of the Ylfings!
     To thy bosom, O king,
     Will I come and sleep soft,
     As I was wont
     When my lord was living.

     HELGI:
     Now will I call
     Naught not to be hoped for
     Early or late
     At Sevafell,
     When thou in the arms
     Of a dead man art laid,
     White maiden of Hogni,
     Here in the mound:
     And thou yet quick,
     O King's daughter!

     Now needs must I ride
     On the reddening ways;
     My pale horse must tread
     The highway aloft;
     West must I go
     To Windhelm's bridge
     Ere the war-winning crowd
     Hall-crower (4) waketh.