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Hovamol

146.[1] Better no prayer  than too big an offering, By thy getting measure thy gift;Better is none  than too big a sacrifice,..............So Thund of old wrote  ere man's race began,Where he rose on high  when home he came.
***
147.[2] The songs I know  that king's wives know not, Nor men that are sons of men;The first is called help,  and help it can bring thee In sorrow and pain and sickness.
148.[3] A second I know,  that men shall need Who leechcraft long to use;...........................
  1. ↑ This stanza as translated here follows the manuscript reading, except in assuming a gap between lines 3 and 5. In Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale the first three lines have somehow been expanded into eight. The last two lines are almost certainly misplaced; Bugge suggests that they belong at the end of stanza 144. Thund: another name for Othin. When home he came: presumably after obtaining the runes as described in stanzas 139 and 140.
  2. ↑ With this stanza begins the Ljothatal, or list of charms. The magic songs themselves are not given, but in each case the peculiar application of the charm is explained. The passage, which is certainly approximately complete as far as it goes, runs to the end of the poem. In the manuscript and in most editions line 4 falls into two half-lines, running:
    "In sickness and pain  and every sorrow."
  3. ↑

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