Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/146

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

Poetic Edda

To a destined day  has mine age been doomed, And my life's span thereto laid."
  Gerth spake:14. "What noise is that  which now so loud I hear within our house?The ground shakes,  and the home of Gymir Around me trembles too."
  The Serving-Maid spake:15.[1] "One stands without  who has leapt from his steed, And lets his horse loose to graze;"................................
  Gerth spake:16.[2] "Bid the man come in,  and drink good mead Here within our hall;Though this I fear,  that there without My brother's slayer stands.

    the Hovamol, and may well have been a separate proverb. After this stanza the scene shifts to the interior of the house.

  1. ↑ No gap indicated in either manuscript. Bugge and Niedner have attempted emendations, while Hildebrand suggests that the last two lines of stanza 14 are spurious, 14, 1-2, and 15 thus forming a single stanza, which seems doubtful.
  2. ↑ Brother's slayer: perhaps the brother is Beli, slain by Freyr; the only other references are in Voluspo, 53, and in Snorri's paraphrase of the Skirnismol, which merely says that Freyr's gift of his sword to Skirnir "was the reason why he was weaponless when he met Beli, and he killed him bare-handed." Skirnir himself seems never to have killed anybody.

[112]

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.