Part 23 (1/2)

onne cwi aet beore se e beah gesyh, eald aescwiga, se e eall geman garcwealm gumena (him bi grim sefa) onginne geomormod geongum cempan urh hrera gehygd higes cunnian, wigbealu weccean, ond aet word acwy: ”Meaht u, min wine, mece gecnawan, one in faeder to gefeohte baer under heregriman, hindeman sie, dyre iren, aer hine Dene slogon, weoldon waelstowe, syan Wiergyld laeg aefter haelea hryre, hwate Scyldingas?

Nu her ara banena byre nathwylces, fraetwum hremig, on flet gae, mordres gylpe ond one maum byre one e u mid rihte raedan sceoldest!”

(The ”old warrior”--no less a hero than Starkad himself, according to Saxo--bears a grudge on account of the slaying of Froda, and cannot endure the reconciliation that has been made. He sees the reconciled enemies still wearing the spoils of war, arm-rings, and even Froda's sword, and addresses Ingeld, Froda's son):--

Over the ale he speaks, seeing the ring, the old warrior, that remembers all, the spear-wrought slaying of men (his thought is grim), with sorrow at heart begins with the young champion, in study of mind to make trial of his valour, to waken the havoc of war, and thus he speaks: ”Knowest thou, my lord? nay, well thou knowest the falchion that thy father bore to the fray, wearing his helmet of war, in that last hour, the blade of price, where the Danes him slew, and kept the field, when Withergyld was brought down after the heroes' fall; yea, the Danish princes slew him!

See now, a son of one or other of the men of blood, glorious in apparel, goes through the hall, boasts of the stealthy slaying, and bears the goodly heirloom that thou of right shouldst have and hold!”

(2) The Northern arrangement, with ”the sense concluded in the couplet,” is quite different from the Western style. There is no need to quote more than a few lines. The following pa.s.sage is from the last scene of _Helgi and Sigrun_ (_C.P.B._, i. p. 143; see p. 72 above--”Yet precious are the draughts,” etc.):--

Vel skolom drekka drar veigar ott misst hafim munar ok landa: skal engi mar angr-lio kvea, ott mer a briosti benjar liti.

Nu ero bruir byrgar i haugi, lofa disir, hja oss linom.

The figure of _Anadiplosis_ (or the ”Redouble,” as it is called in the _Arte of English Poesie_) is characteristic of a certain group of Northern poems. See the note on this, with references, in _C.P.B._, i. p. 557. The poems in which this device appears are the poems of the heroines (Brynhild, Gudrun, Oddrun), the heroic idylls of the North.

In these poems the repet.i.tion of a phrase, as in the Greek pastoral poetry and its descendants, has the effect of giving solemnity to the speech, and slowness of movement to the line.

So in the _Long Lay of Brynhild_ (_C.P.B._, i. p. 296):--

svarar sifjar, svarna eia, eia svarna, unnar trygir;

and (_ibid._)--

hann vas fyr utan eia svarna, eia svarna, unnar trygir;

and in the _Old Lay of Gudrun_ (_C.P.B._, i. p. 319)--

Hverr vildi mer hnossir velja hnossir velja, ok hugat maela.

There are other figures which have the same effect:--

Gott es at raa Rinar malmi, ok unandi aui styra, ok sitjandi saelo niota.

_C.P.B._, i. p. 296.

But apart from these emphatic forms of phrasing, all the sentences are so constructed as to coincide with the divisions of the lines, whereas in the Western poetry, Saxon and Anglo-Saxon, the phrases are made to cut across the lines, the sentences having their own limits, independent of the beginnings and endings of the verses.

NOTE B (p. 205)

_The Meeting of Kjartan and King Olaf Tryggvason_ (_Laxdaela Saga_, c.

40)

Kjartan rode with his father east from Hjardarholt, and they parted in Northwaterdale; Kjartan rode on to the s.h.i.+p, and Bolli, his kinsman, went along with him. There were ten men of Iceland all together that followed Kjartan out of goodwill; and with this company he rides to the harbour. Kalf Asgeirsson welcomes them all. Kjartan and Bolli took a rich freight with them. So they made themselves ready to sail, and when the wind was fair they sailed out and down the Borg firth with a gentle breeze and good, and so out to sea. They had a fair voyage, and made the north of Norway, and so into Throndheim. There they asked for news, and it was told them that the land had changed its masters; Earl Hacon was gone, and King Olaf Tryggvason come, and the whole of Norway had fallen under his sway. King Olaf was proclaiming a change of law; men did not take it all in the same way. Kjartan and his fellows brought their s.h.i.+p into Nidaros.

At that time there were in Norway many Icelanders who were men of reputation. There at the wharves were lying three s.h.i.+ps all belonging to men of Iceland: one to Brand the Generous, son of Vermund Thorgrimsson; another to Hallfred the Troublesome Poet; the third s.h.i.+p was owned by two brothers, Bjarni and Thorhall, sons of Skeggi, east in Fleetlithe,--all these men had been bound for Iceland in the summer, but the king had arrested the s.h.i.+ps because these men would not accept the faith that he was proclaiming. Kjartan was welcomed by them all, and most of all by Brand, because they had been well acquainted earlier. The Icelanders all took counsel together, and this was the upshot, that they bound themselves to refuse the king's new law. Kjartan and his mates brought in their s.h.i.+p to the quay, and fell to work to land their freight.

King Olaf was in the town; he hears of the s.h.i.+p's coming, and that there were men in it of no small account. It fell out on a bright day in harvest-time that Kjartan's company saw a number of men going to swim in the river Nith. Kjartan said they ought to go too, for the sport; and so they did. There was one man of the place who was far the best swimmer. Kjartan says to Bolli:

”Will you try your swimming against this townsman?”

Bolli answers: ”I reckon that is more than my strength.”