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Poetic Edda

17.[1] ...............Fain to row on the sea  was Veur, he said,If the giant bold  would give him bait.
  Hymir spake:18.[2] "Go to the herd,  if thou hast it in mind,Thou slayer of giants,  thy bait to seek;For there thou soon  mayst find, methinks,Bait from the oxen  easy to get."
19.[3] Swift to the wood  the hero went,Till before him an ox  all black he found;From the beast the slayer  of giants brokeThe fortress high  of his double horns.
  Hymir spake:20.[4] "Thy works, methinks,  are worse by far,
  1. ↑ The manuscripts indicate no lacuna, and many editors unite stanza 17 with lines 1 and 2 of 18. Sijmons and Gering assume a gap after these two lines, but it seems more probable that the missing passage, if any, belonged before them, supplying the connection with the previous stanza.
  2. ↑ The manuscripts have no superscription. Many editors combine lines 3 and 4 with lines 1 and 2 of stanza 19. In Snorri's extended paraphrase of the story, Hymir declines to go fishing with Thor on the ground that the latter is too small a person to be worth bothering about. "You would freeze," he says, "if you stayed out in mid-ocean as long as I generally do." Bait (line 4): the word literally means "chaff," hence any small bits; Hymir means that Thor should collect dung for bait.
  3. ↑ Many editors combine lines 3 and 4 with stanza 20. Fortress, etc.: the ox's head; cf. introductory note concerning the diction of this poem. Several editors assume a lacuna after stanza 19, but this seems unnecessary.
  4. ↑

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