Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/497

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

Guthrunarkvitha II

33.[1] Weeping Grimhild  heard the wordsThat fate full sore  for her sons foretold,(And mighty woe  for them should work;)"Lands I give thee,  with all that live there,(Vinbjorg is thine,  and Valbjorg too,)Have them forever,  but hear me, daughter."
34.[2] So must I do  as the kings besought,And against my will  for my kinsmen wed;Ne'er with my husband  joy I had,And my sons by my brothers'  fate were saved not.
35.[3] ..............I could not rest  till of life I had robbedThe warrior bold,  the maker of battles.
36.[4] Soon on horseback  each hero was,

    as stanza 35. In lines 3-4 Guthrun foretells what will (and actually does) happen if she is forced to become Atli's wife. If stanza 35 really belongs here, it continues the prophesy to the effect that Guthrun will have no rest till she has avenged her brothers' death.

  1. ↑ Very likely the remains of two stanzas; the manuscript marks line 4 as beginning a new stanza. On the other hand, lines 3 and 5 may be interpolations. Vinbjorg and Valbjorg: apparently imaginary place-names.
  2. ↑ The kings: presumably Gunnar and Hogni. My sons: regarding Guthrun's slaying of her two sons by Atli, Erp and Eitil, cf. Drap Niflunga, note.
  3. ↑ In the manuscript this stanza follows stanza 32. The loss of two lines, to the effect that "Ill was that marriage for my brothers, and ill for Atli himself," and the transposition of the remaining two lines to this point, are indicated in a number of editions. The warrior, etc.: Atli, whom Guthrun kills.
  4. ↑

[461]

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.