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Poetic Edda

sent men to Hagal to seek Helgi, and Helgi could not save himself in any other way, so he put on the clothes of a bond-woman and set to work at the mill. They sought Helgi but found him not.

2.[1] Then Blind spake out,  the evil-minded:"Of Hagal's bond-woman  bright are the eyes;Yon comes not of churls  who stands at the quern;The millstones break,  the boards are shattered.
3.[2] "The hero has  a doom full hard,That barley now  he needs must grind;Better befits  his hand to feelThe hilt of the sword  than the millstone's handle."

Hagal answered and said:

4.[3] "Small is the wonder  if boards are splintered;By a monarch's daughter  the mill is turned;

    Prose.

    Hagal: Helgi's foster-father, who naturally protects him.

  1. ↑ The manuscript indicates line 2 as the beginning of the stanza, the copyist evidently regarding line 1 as prose. This has caused various rearrangements in the different editions. Blind: leader of the band sent to capture Helgi.
  2. ↑ The manuscript marks line 3 as the beginning of a stanza. Barley: the word literally means "foreign grain," and would afford an interesting study to students of early commerce.
  3. ↑ Possibly two stanzas with one line lost, or perhaps the lines in parenthesis are spurious; each editor has his own guess. Sigar and Hogni: it seems unlikely that Hagal refers to the Hogni who was Sigrun's father, for this part of the story has nothing whatever to do with Sigrun. As Hagal is, of course, de-

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