Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/121

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Grimnismol

he was questioned. The king had him tortured to make him speak, and set him between two fires, and he sat there eight nights. King Geirröth had a son ten winters old, and called Agnar after his father's brother. Agnar went to Grimnir, and gave him a full horn to drink from, and said that the king did ill in letting him be tormented without cause. Grimnir drank from the horn; the fire had come so near that the mantle burned on Grimnir's back. He spake:

1. Hot art thou, fire!  too fierce by far; Get ye now gone, ye flames!The mantle is burnt,  though I bear it aloft, And the fire scorches the fur.
2.[1] 'Twixt the fires now  eight nights have I sat, And no man brought meat to me,Save Agnar alone,  and alone shall rule Geirröth's son o'er the Goths.
3.[2] Hail to thee, Agnar!  for hailed thou art By the voice of Veratyr;
  1. ↑ In the original lines 2 and 4 are both too long for the meter, and thus the true form of the stanza is doubtful. For line 4 both manuscripts have "the land of the Goths" instead of simply "the Goths." The word "Goths" apparently was applied indiscriminately to any South-Germanic people, including the Burgundians as well as the actual Goths, and thus here has no specific application; cf. Grippispo, 35 and note.
  2. ↑

[87]

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.