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Fafnismol

  Fafnir spake:3.[1] "If father thou hadst not,  as others have, By what wonder wast thou born?(Though thy name on the day  of my death thou hidest, Thou knowest now thou dost lie.)"
  Sigurth spake:4.[2] "My race, methinks,  is unknown to thee, And so am I myself;Sigurth my name,  and Sigmund's son, Who smote thee thus with the sword."
  Fafnir spake:5.[3] "Who drove thee on?  why wert thou driven My life to make me lose?A father brave  had the bright-eyed youth, For bold in boyhood thou art."
  Sigurth spake:6. "My heart did drive me,  my hand fulfilled, And my shining sword so sharp;Few are keen  when old age comes, Who timid in boyhood be."
  1. ↑ The names of the speakers do not appear in the manuscript, though they seem originally to have been indicated in the margin for stanzas 3-30. The last two lines of stanza 3 are missing in the manuscript, with no gap indicated, but the Volsungasaga prose paraphrase indicates that something was omitted, and the lines here given are conjecturally reconstructed from this paraphrase.
  2. ↑ The manuscript marks line 3 as the beginning of a stanza.
  3. ↑ Line 4, utterly obscured in the manuscript, is guesswork.

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