Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/332

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

Poetic Edda

17.[1] Early then  in wolf-wood askedThe mighty king  of the southern maid,If with the hero  home would sheCome that night;  the weapons clashed.
18.[2] Down from her horse  sprang Hogni's daughter,—The shields were still,—  and spake to the hero:"Other tasks  are ours, methinks,Than drinking beer  with the breaker of rings.
19.[3] "My father has pledged  his daughter fairAs bride to Granmar's  son so grim;But, Helgi, I  once Hothbrodd calledAs fine a king  as the son of a cat.

[4]

  1. ↑ Wolf-wood: dark forest; the original word is not altogether clear. Southern: this variety of Valkyrie, like the swan-maidens of the Völundarkvitha, was clearly regarded as of southern (i.e., German) origin. Here again there is a confusion of traditions; the Valkyries of the Voluspo were as essentially Norse as any part of the older mythology. I doubt if a poet much earlier than the author of the first Helgi Hundingsbane lay would have made his Sigrun, daughter of Hogni, a Valkyrie. It is to be noted that the same complication appears in the Sigurth story, where the undoubted Valkyrie, Brynhild-Sigrdrifa (the latter name is really only an epithet) is hopelessly mixed up with the quite human Brynhild, daughter of Buthli.
  2. ↑ Breaker of rings: generous prince, because the breaking of rings was the customary form of distributing gold.
  3. ↑ Granmar: the annotator gives an account of him and his family in the prose following stanza 12 of Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II.
  4. ↑ No gap indicated in the manuscript; some editors combine the stanza with the fragmentary stanza 21, and others fill in with "And home will carry  Hogni's daughter."

[296]

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.