The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Influence of Old Norse Literature on
English Literature, by Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature
Author: Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
Release Date: October 18, 2004 [eBook #13786]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFLUENCE OF OLD NORSE
LITERATURE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE***
E-text prepared by David Starner and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
THE INFLUENCE OF OLD NORSE LITERATURE UPON ENGLISH LITERATURE
by
CONRAD HJALMAR NORDBY
1901
Deyr fé
deyja frændr,
deyr siálfr it sama;
en orðstírr
deyr aldrigi
hveim er sér góðan getr.
_Hávamál_, 75.
Cattle die,
kindred die,
we ourselves also die;
but the fair fame
never dies
of him who has earned it.
Thorpe's _Edda_.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The present publication is the only literary work left by its author.
Unfortunately it lacks a few pages which, as his manuscript shows, he
intended to add, and it also failed to receive his final revision. His
friends have nevertheless deemed it expedient to publish the result of
his studies conducted with so much ardor, in order that some memorial of
his life and work should remain for the wider public. To those
acquainted with him, no written words can represent the charm of his
personality or give anything approaching an adequate impression of his
ability and strength of character.
Conrad Hjalmar Nordby was born September 20, 1867, at Christiania,
Norway. At the age of four he was brought to New York, where he was
educated in the public schools. He was graduated from the College of the
City of New York in 1886. From December of that year to June, 1893, he
taught in Grammar School No. 55, and in September, 1893, he was called
to his Alma Mater as Tutor in English. He was promoted to the rank of
Instructor in 1897, a position which he held at the time of his death.
He died in St. Luke's Hospital, October 28, 1900. In October, 1894, he
began his studies in the School of Philosophy of Columbia University,
taking courses in Philosophy and Education under Professor Nicholas
Murray Butler, and in Germanic Literatures and Germanic Philology under
Professors Boyesen, William H. Carpenter and Calvin Thomas. It was under
the guidance of Professor Carpenter that the present work was conceived
and executed.
Such a brief outline of Mr. Nordby's career can, however, give but an
imperfect view of his activities, while it gives none at all of his
influence. He was a teacher who impressed his personality, not only upon
his students, but upon all who knew him. In his character were united
force and refinement, firmness and geniality. In his earnest work with
his pupils, in his lectures to the teachers of the New York Public
Schools and to other audiences, in his personal influence upon all with
whom he came in contact, he spread the taste for beauty, both of poetry
and of life. When his body was carried to the grave, the grief was not
confined to a few intimate friends; all who had known him felt that
something noble and beautiful had vanished from their lives.
In this regard his career was, indeed, rich in achievement, but when we
consider what, with his large equipment, he might have done in the world
of scholarship, the promise, so untimely blighted, seems even richer.
From early youth he had been a true lover of books. To him they were not
dead things; they palpitated with the life blood of master spirits. The
enthusiasm for William Morris displayed in the present essay is typical
of his feeling for all that he considered best in literature. Such an
enthusiasm, communicated to those about him, rendered him a vital force
in every company where works of creative genius could be a theme of
conversation.
A love of nature and of art accompanied and reinforced this love of
literature; and all combined to produce the effect of wholesome purity
and elevation which continually emanated from him. His influence, in
fact, was largely of that pervasive sort which depends, not on any
special word uttered, and above all, not on any preachment, but upon the
entire character and life of the man. It was for this reason that his
modesty never concealed his strength. He shrunk above all things from
pushing himself forward and demanding public notice, and yet few ever
met him without feeling the force of character that lay behind his
gentle and almost retiring demeanor. It was easy to recognize that here
was a man, self-centered and whole.
In a discourse pronounced at a memorial meeting, the Rev. John Coleman
Adams justly said: "If I wished to set before my boy a type of what is
best and most lovable in the American youth, I think I could find no
more admirable character than that of Conrad Hjalmar Nordby. A young man
of the people, with all their unexhausted force, vitality and
enthusiasm; a man of simple aims and honest ways; as chivalrous and
high-minded as any knight of old; as pure in life as a woman; at once
gentle and brave, strong and sweet, just and loving; upright, but no
Pharisee; earnest, but never sanctimonious; who took his work as a
pleasure, and his pleasure as an innocent joy; a friend to be coveted; a
disciple such as the Saviour must have loved; a true son of God, who
dwelt in the Father's house. Of such youth our land may well be proud;
and no man need speak despairingly of a nation whose life and
institutions can ripen such a fruit."
L.F.M.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
May 15, 1901.
INTRODUCTORY.
It should not be hard for the general reader to understand that the
influence which is the theme of this dissertation is real and
explicable. If he will but call the roll of his favorite heroes, he will
find Sigurd there. In his gallery of wondrous women, he certainly
cherishes Brynhild. These poetic creations belong to the
English-speaking race, because they belong to the world. And if one will
but recall the close kinship of the Icelandic and the Anglo-Saxon
languages, he will not find it strange that the spirit of the old Norse
sagas lives again in our English song and story.
The survey that this essay takes begins with Thomas Gray (1716-1771),
and comes down to the present day. It finds the fullest measure of the
old Norse poetic spirit in William Morris (1834-1896), and an increasing
interest and delight in it as we come toward our own time. The
enterprise of learned societies and enlightened book publishers has
spread a knowledge of Icelandic literature among the reading classes of
the present day; but the taste for it is not to be accounted for in the
same way. That is of nobler birth than of erudition or commercial pride.
Is it not another expression of that changed feeling for the things that
pertain to the common people, which distinguishes our century from the
last? The historian no longer limits his study to camp and court; the
poet deigns to leave the drawing-room and library for humbler scenes.
Folk-lore is now dignified into a science. The touch of nature has made
the whole world kin, and our highly civilized century is moved by the
records of the passions of the earlier society.
This change in taste was long in coming, and the emotional phase of it
has preceded the intellectual. It is interesting to note that Gray and
Morris both failed to carry their public with them all the way. Gray,
the most cultured man of his time, produced art forms totally different
from those in vogue, and Walpole[1] said of these forms: "Gray has
added to his poems three ancient odes from Norway and Wales ... they are
not interesting, and do not, like his other poems, touch any passion....
Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys
and glories they could conceive--the supreme felicity of boozing ale out
of the skull of an enemy in Odin's Hall?"
Morris, the most versatile man of his time, found plenty of praise for
his art work, until he preached social reform to Englishmen. Thereafter
the art of William Morris was not so highly esteemed, and the best poet
in England failed to attain the laurel on the death of Tennyson.
Of this change of taste more will be said as this essay is developed.
These introductory words must not be left, however, without an
explanation of the word "Influence," as it is used in the subject-title.
This paper will not undertake to prove that the course of English
literature was diverted into new channels by the introduction of Old
Norse elements, or that its nature was materially changed thereby. We
find an expression and a justification of our present purpose in Richard
Price's Preface to the 1824 edition of Warton's "History of English
Poetry" (p. 15): "It was of importance to notice the successive
acquisitions, in the shape of translation or imitation, from the more
polished productions of Greece and Rome; and to mark the dawn of that
æra, which, by directing the human mind to the study of classical
antiquity, was to give a new impetus to science and literature, and by
the changes it introduced to effect a total revolution in the laws which
had previously governed them." Were Warton writing his history to-day,
he would have to account for later eras as well as for the Elizabethan,
and the method would be the same. How far the Old Norse literature has
helped to form these later eras it is not easy to say, but the
contributions may be counted up, and their literary value noted. These
are the commission of the present essay. When the record is finished, we
shall be in possession of information that may account for certain
considerable writers of our day, and certain tendencies of thought.
CONTENTS.
Prefatory Note
Introductory
I. The Body of Old Norse Literature
II. Through the Medium of Latin
Thomas Gray
The Sources of Gray's Knowledge
Sir William Temple
George Hickes
Thomas Percy
Thomas Warton
Drake and Mathias
Cottle and Herbert
Walter Scott
III. From the Sources Themselves
Richard Cleasby
Thomas Carlyle
Samuel Laing
Longfellow and Lowell
Matthew Arnold
George Webbe Dasent
Charles Kingsley
Edmund Gosse
IV. By the Hand of the Master
William Morris' works
" " " 1
" " " 2
" " " 3
" " " 4
" " " 5
" " " 6
" " " 7
" " " 8
V. In the Latter Days
Echoes of Iceland in Later Poets
Recent Translations
I.
THE BODY OF OLD NORSE LITERATURE.
First, let us understand what the Old Norse literature was that has been
sending out this constantly increasing influence into the world of
poetry.
It was in the last four decades of the ninth century of our era that
Norsemen began to leave their own country and set up new homes in
Iceland. The sixty years ending with 930 A.D. were devoted to taking up
the land, and the hundred years that ensued after that date were devoted
to quarreling about that land. These quarrels were the origin of the
Icelandic family sagas. The year 1000 brought Christianity to the
island, and the period from 1030 to 1120 were years of peace in which
stories of the former time passed from mouth to mouth. The next century
saw these stories take written form, and the period from 1220 to 1260
was the golden age of this literature. In 1264, Iceland passed under the
rule of Norway, and a decline of literature began, extending until 1400,
the end of literary production in Iceland. In the main, the authors of
Iceland are unknown[2].
There are several well-marked periods, therefore, in Icelandic literary
production. The earliest was devoted to poetry, Icelandic being no
different from most other languages in the precedence of that form.
Before the settlement of Iceland, the Norse lands were acquainted with
songs about gods and champions, written in a simple verse form. The
first settlers wrote down some of these, and forgot others. In the
_Codex Regius_, preserved in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, we have a
collection of these songs. This material was published in the
seventeenth century as the _Sæmundar Edda_, and came to be known as the
_Elder_ or _Poetic Edda_. Both titles are misnomers, for Sæmund had
nothing to do with the making of the book, and _Edda_ is a name
belonging to a book of later date and different purpose.
This work--not a product of the soil as folk-songs are--is the fountain
head of Old Norse mythology, and of Old Norse heroic legends. _Völuspá_
and _Hávamál_ are in this collection, and other songs that tell of Odin
and Baldur and Loki. The Helgi poems and the Völsung poems in their
earliest forms are also here.
A second class of poetry in this ancient literature is that called
"Skaldic." Some of this deals with mythical material, and some with
historical material. A few of the skalds are known to us by name,
because their lives were written down in later sagas. Egill
Skallagrímsson, known to all readers of English and Scotch antiquities,
Eyvind Skáldaspillir and Sigvat are of this group.
Poetic material that is very rich is found in Snorri Sturluson's work on
Old Norse poetics, entitled _The Edda_, and often referred to as the
_Younger_ or _Prose Edda_.
More valuable than the poetry is the prose of this literature,
especially the _Sagas_. The saga is a prose epic, characteristic of the
Norse countries. It records the life of a hero, told according to fixed
rules. As we have said, the sagas were based upon careers run in
Iceland's stormy time. They are both mythical and historical. In the
mythical group are, among others, the _Völsunga Saga_, the _Hervarar
Saga_, _Friðthjófs Saga_ and _Ragnar Loðbróks Saga_. In the historical
group, the flowering time of which was 1200-1270, we find, for example,
_Egils Saga_, _Eyrbyggja Saga_, _Laxdæla Saga_, _Grettis Saga_, _Njáls
Saga_. A branch of the historic sagas is the Kings' Sagas, in which we
find _Heimskringla_, the _Saga of Olaf Tryggvason_, the _Flatey Book_,
and others.
This sketch does not pretend to indicate the quantity of Old Norse
literature. An idea of that is obtained by considering the fact that
eleven columns of the ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ are
devoted to recording the works of that body of writings.
II.
THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF LATIN.
THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771).
In the eighteenth century, Old Norse literature was the lore of
antiquarians. That it is not so to-day among English readers is due to a
line of writers, first of whom was Thomas Gray. In the thin volume of
his poetry, two pieces bear the sub-title: "An Ode. From the Norse
Tongue." These are "The Fatal Sisters," and "The Descent of Odin," both
written in 1761, though not published until 1768. These poems are among
the latest that Gray gave to the world, and are interesting aside from
our present purpose because they mark the limit of Gray's progress
toward Romanticism.
We are not accustomed to think of Gray as a Romantic poet, although we
know well that the movement away from the so-called Classicism was begun
long before he died. The Romantic element in his poetry is not obvious;
only the close observer detects it, and then only in a few of the poems.
The Pindaric odes exhibit a treatment that is Romantic, and the Norse
and Welsh adaptations are on subjects that are Romantic. But we must go
to his letters to find proof positive of his sympathy with the breaking
away from Classicism. Here are records of a love of outdoors that
reveled in mountain-climbing and the buffeting of storms. Here are
appreciations of Shakespeare and of Milton, the like of which were not
often proclaimed in his generation. Here is ecstatic admiration of
ballads and of the Ossian imitations, all so unfashionable in the
literary culture of the day. While dates disprove Lowell's statement in
his essay on Gray that "those anti-classical yearnings of Gray began
after he had ceased producing," it is certain that very little of his
poetic work expressed these yearnings. "Elegance, sweetness, pathos, or
even majesty he could achieve, but never that force which vibrates in
every verse of larger moulded men." Change Lowell's word "could" to
"did," and this sentence will serve our purpose here.
Our interest in Gray's Romanticism must confine itself to the two odes
from the Old Norse. It is to be noted that the first transplanting to
English poetry of Old Norse song came about through the scholar's
agency, not the poet's. It was Gray, the scholar, that made "The Descent
of Odin" and "The Fatal Sisters." They were intended to serve as
specimens of a forgotten literature in a history of English poetry. In
the "Advertisement" to "The Fatal Sisters" he tells how he came to give
up the plan: "The Author has long since drop'd his design, especially
after he heard, that it was already in the hands of a Person well
qualified to do it justice, both by his taste, and his researches into
antiquity." Thomas Warton's _History of English Poetry_ was the
execution of this design, but in that book no place was found for these
poems.
In his absurd _Life of Gray_, Dr. Johnson said: "His translations of
Northern and Welsh Poetry deserve praise: the imagery is preserved,
perhaps often improved, but the language is unlike the language of other
poets." There are more correct statements in this sentence, perhaps,
than in any other in the essay, but this is because ignorance sometimes
hits the truth. It is not likely that the poems would have been
understood without the preface and the explanatory notes, and these, in
a measure, made the reader interested in the literature from which they
were drawn. Gray called the pieces "dreadful songs," and so in very
truth they are. Strength is the dominant note, rude, barbaric strength,
and only the art of Gray saved it from condemnation. To-day, with so
many imitations from Old Norse to draw upon, we cannot point to a single
poem which preserves spirit and form as well as those of Gray. Take the
stanza:
Horror covers all the heath,
Clouds of carnage blot the sun,
Sisters, weave the web of death;
Sisters, cease, the work is done.
The strophe is perfect in every detail. Short lines, each ending a
sentence; alliteration; words that echo the sense, and just four strokes
to paint a picture which has an atmosphere that whisks you into its own
world incontinently. It is no wonder that writers of later days who have
tried similar imitations ascribe to Thomas Gray the mastership.
That this poet of the eighteenth century, who "equally despised what
was Greek and what was Gothic," should have entered so fully into the
spirit and letter of Old Norse poetry is little short of marvelous. If
Professor G.L. Kittredge had not gone so minutely into the question of
Gray's knowledge of Old Norse,[3] we might be pardoned for still
believing with Gosse[4] that the poet learned Icelandic in his later
life. Even after reading Professor Kittredge's essay, we cannot
understand how Gray could catch the metrical lilt of the Old Norse with
only a Latin version to transliterate the parallel Icelandic. We suspect
that Gray's knowledge was fuller than Professor Kittredge will allow,
although we must admit that superficial knowledge may coexist with a
fine interpretative spirit. Matthew Arnold's knowledge of Celtic
literature was meagre, yet he wrote memorably and beautifully on that
subject, as Celts themselves will acknowledge.[5]
THE SOURCES OF GRAY'S KNOWLEDGE.
It has already been said that only antiquarians had knowledge of things
Icelandic in Gray's time. Most of this knowledge was in Latin, of
course, in ponderous tomes with wonderful, long titles; and the list of
them is awe-inspiring. In all likelihood Gray did not use them all, but
he met references to them in the books he did consult. Professor
Kittredge mentions them in the paper already quoted, but they are here
arranged in the order of publication, and the list is lengthened to
include some books that were inspired by the interest in Gray's
experiments.
=1636= and =1651=. Wormius. _Seu Danica literatura antiquissima,
vulgo Gothica dicta, luci reddita opera Olai Wormii. Cui accessit de
prisca Danorum Poesi Dissertatio._ Hafniæ. 1636. Edit. II. 1651.
The essay on poetry contains interlinear Latin translations of the
_Epicedium_ of Ragnar Loðbrók, and of the _Drápa_ of Egill
Skallagrímsson. Bound with the second edition of 1651, and bearing the
date 1650, is: _Specimen Lexici runici, obscuriorum quarundam vocum, quæ
in priscis occurrunt historiis et poetis Danicis enodationem exhibens.
Collectum a Magno Olavio pastore Laufasiensi, ... nunc in ordinem
redactum, auctum et locupletatum ab Olao Wormio_. Hafniæ.
This glossary adduces illustrations from the great poems of Icelandic
literature. Thus early the names and forms of the ancient literature
were known.
=1665.= Resenius. _Edda Islandorum an. Chr. MCCXV islandice
conscripta per Snorronem Sturlæ Islandiæ. Nomophylacem nunc primum
islandice, danice et latine ... Petri Johannis Resenii_ ... Havniæ.
1665.
A second part contains a disquisition on the philosophy of the _Völuspá_
and the _Hávamál_.
=1670.= Sheringham. _De Anglorum Gentis Origine Disceptatio. Qua
eorum migrationes, variæ sedes, et ex parte res gestæ, a confusione
Linguarum, et dispersione Gentium, usque ad adventum eorum in Britanniam
investigantur; quædam de veterum Anglorum religione, Deorum cultu,
eorumque opinionibus de statu animæ post hanc vitam, explicantur._
_Authore_ Roberto Sheringhamo. Cantabrigiæ. 1670.
Chapter XII contains an account of Odin extracted from the _Edda_,
Snorri Sturluson and others.
=1679-92.= Temple. Two essays: "Of Heroic Virtue," "Of Poetry,"
contained in The Works of Sir William Temple. London. 1757. Vol. 3, pp.
304-429.
=1689.= Bartholinus. _Thomæ Bartholini Antiquitatum Danicarum de
causis contemptæ a Danis adhuc gentilibus mortis libri III ex vetustis
codicibus et monumentis hactenus ineditis congestæ._ Hafniæ. 1689.
The pages of this book are filled, with extracts from Old Norse sagas
and poetry which are translated into Latin. No student of the book could
fail to get a considerable knowledge of the spirit and the form of the
ancient literature.
=1691.= Verelius. _Index linguæ veteris Scytho-Scandicæ sive Gothicæ
ex vetusti ævi monumentis ... ed Rudbeck._ Upsalæ. 1691.
=1697=. Torfæus. _Orcades, seu rerum Orcadensium historiæ_. Havniæ.
1697.
=1697=. Perinskjöld. _Heimskringla, eller Snorre Sturlusons
Nordländske Konunga Sagor_. Stockholmiæ. 1697.
Contains Latin and Swedish translation.
=1705=. Hickes. _Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium thesaurus
grammatico criticus et archæologicus_. Oxoniæ. 1703-5.
This work is discussed later.
=1716=. Dryden. _Miscellany Poems. Containing Variety of New
Translations of the Ancient Poets_.... Published by Mr. Dryden. London.
1716.
=1720=. Keysler. _Antiquitates selectæ septentrionales et Celticæ
quibus plurima loca conciliorum et capitularium explanantur, dogmata
theologiæ ethnicæ Celtarum gentiumque septentrionalium cum moribus et
institutis maiorum nostrorum circa idola, aras, oracula, templa, lucos,
sacerdotes, regum electiones, comitia et monumenta sepulchralia una cum
reliquiis gentilismi in coetibus christianorum ex monumentis potissimum
hactenus ineditis fuse perquiruntur._ _Autore_ Joh. Georgio Keysler.
Hannoveræ. 1720.
=1755=. Mallet. _Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc où l'on
traite de la Réligion, des Lois, des Moeurs, et des Usages des Anciens
Danois. Par_ M. Mallet. Copenhague. 1755.
Discussed later.
=1756=. Mallet. _Monumens de la Mythologie et la Poësie des Celtes et
particulièrement des anciens Scandinaves ... Par_ M. Mallet. Copenhague.
1756.
=1763=. Percy. _Five Pieces of Runic Poetry translated from the
Islandic Language_. London. 1763.
This book is described on a later page.
=1763=. Blair. _A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, the
Son of Fingal_. [By Hugh Blair.] London. 1763.
=1770=. Percy. _Northern Antiquities: or a description of the
Manners, Customs, Religion and Laws of the ancient_ _Danes, and other
Northern Nations; including these of our own Saxon Ancestors. With a
translation of the Edda or System of Runic Mythology, and other Pieces
from the Ancient Icelandic Tongue. Translated from M. Mallet's
Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc_. London. 1770.
=1774=. Warton. _The History of English Poetry_. By Thomas Warton.
London. 1774-81.
In this book the prefatory essay entitled "On the Origin of Romantic
Fiction in Europe" is significant. It is treated at length later on.
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE (1628-1699).
From the above list it appears that the earliest mention in the English
language of Icelandic literature was Sir William Temple's. The two
essays noted above have many references to Northern customs and songs.
Macaulay's praise of Temple's style is well deserved, and the slighting
remarks about the matter do not apply to the passages in evidence here.
Temple's acknowledgments to Wormius indicate the source of his
information, and it is a commentary upon the exactness of the
antiquarian's knowledge that so many of the statements in Temple's
essays are perfectly good to-day. Of course the terms "Runic" and
"Gothic" were misused, but so were they a century later. Odin is "the
first and great hero of the western Scythians; he led a mighty swarm of
the Getes, under the name of Goths, from the Asiatic Scythia into the
farthest northwest parts of Europe; he seated and spread his kingdom
round the whole Baltic sea, and over all the islands in it, and extended
it westward to the ocean and southward to the Elve."[6] Temple places
Odin's expedition at two thousand years before his own time, but he gets
many other facts right. Take this summing up of the old Norse belief as
an example:
"An opinion was fixed and general among them, that death was but the
entrance into another life; that all men who lived lazy and inactive
lives, and died natural deaths, by sickness, or by age, went into vast
caves under ground, all dark and miry, full of noisom creatures, usual
in such places, and there forever grovelled in endless stench and
misery. On the contrary, all who gave themselves to warlike actions and
enterprises, to the conquests of their neighbors, and slaughters of
enemies, and died in battle, or of violent deaths upon bold adventures
or resolutions, they went immediately to the vast hall or palace of
Odin, their god of war, who eternally kept open house for all such
guests, where they were entertained at infinite tables, in perpetual
feasts and mirth, carousing every man in bowls made of the skulls of
their enemies they had slain, according to which numbers, every one in
these mansions of pleasure was the most honoured and the best
entertained."[7]
Thus before Gray was born, Temple had written intelligently in English
of the salient features of the Old Norse mythology. Later in the same
essay, he recognized that some of the civil and political procedures of
his country were traceable to the Northmen, and, what is more to our
immediate purpose, he recognized the poetic value of Old Norse song. On
p. 358 occurs this paragraph:
"I am deceived, if in this sonnet (two stanzas of 'Regner Lodbrog'), and
a following ode of Scallogrim there be not a vein truly poetical, and in
its kind Pindaric, taking it with the allowance of the different
climates, fashions, opinions, and languages of such distant countries."
Temple certainly had no knowledge of Old Norse, and yet, in 1679, he
could write so of a poem which he had to read through the Latin. Sir
William had a wide knowledge and a fine appreciation of literature, and
an enthusiasm for its dissemination. He takes evident delight in telling
the fact that princes and kings of the olden time did high honor to
bards. He regrets that classic culture was snuffed out by a barbarous
people, but he rejoices that a new kind came to take its place. "Some of
it wanted not the true spirit of poetry in some degree, or that natural
inspiration which has been said to arise from some spark of poetical
fire wherewith particular men are born; and such as it was, it served
the turn, not only to please, but even to charm, the ignorant and
barbarous vulgar, where it was in use."[8]
It is proverbial that music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.
That savage music charms cultivated minds is not proverbial, but it is
nevertheless true. Here is Sir William Temple, scion of a cultured race,
bearing witness to the fact, and here is Gray, a life-long dweller in a
staid English university, endorsing it a half century later. As has been
intimated, this was unusual in the time in which they lived, when, in
Lowell's phrase, the "blight of propriety" was on all poetry. But it was
only the rude and savage in an unfamiliar literature that could give
pause in the age of Pope. The milder aspects of Old Norse song and saga
must await the stronger century to give them favor. "Behold, there was a
swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion."
GEORGE HICKES (1642-1715).
The next book in the list that contains an English contribution to the
knowledge of our subject is the _Thesaurus_ of George Hickes. On p. 193
of Part I, there is a prose translation of "The Awakening of Angantyr,"
from the _Harvarar Saga_. Acknowledgment is given to Verelius for the
text of the poem, but Hickes seems to have chosen this poem as the gem
of the Saga. The translation is another proof of an antiquarian's taste
and judgment, and the reader does not wonder that it soon found a wider
audience through another publication. It was reprinted in the books of
1716 and 1770 in the above list. An extract or two will show that the
vigor of the old poem has not been altogether lost in the translation:
_Hervor_.--Awake Angantyr, Hervor the only daughter of thee and Suafu
doth awaken thee. Give me out of the tombe, the hardned[9] sword, which
the dwarfs made for Suafurlama. Hervardur, Hiorvardur, Hrani, and
Angantyr, with helmet, and coat of mail, and a sharp sword, with sheild
and accoutrements, and bloody spear, I wake you all, under the roots of
trees. Are the sons of Andgrym, who delighted in mischief, now become
dust and ashes, can none of Eyvors sons now speak with me out of the
habitations of the dead! Harvardur, Hiorvardur! so may you all be within
your ribs, as a thing that is hanged up to putrifie among insects,
unlesse you deliver me the sword which the dwarfs made ... and the
glorious belt.
_Angantyr_.--Daughter Hervor, full of spells to raise the dead, why
dost thou call so? wilt thou run on to thy own mischief? thou art mad,
and out of thy senses, who art desperatly resolved to waken dead men. I
was not buried either by father or other freinds. Two which lived after
me got Tirfing, one of whome is now possessor thereof.
_Hervor_.--Thou dost not tell the truth: so let Odin hide thee in the
tombe, as thou hast Tirfing by thee. Art thou unwilling, Angantyr, to
give an inheritance to thy only child?...
_Angantyr_.--Fals woman, thou dost not understand, that thou speakest
foolishly of that, in which thou dost rejoice, for Tirfing shall, if
thou wilt beleive me, maid, destroy all thy offspring.
_Hervor_.--I must go to my seamen, here I have no mind to stay longer.
Little do I care, O Royall friend, what my sons hereafter quarrell
about.
_Angantyr_.--Take and keep Hialmars bane, which thou shalt long have and
enjoy, touch but the edges of it, there is poyson in both of them, it is
a most cruell devourer of men.
_Hervor_.--I shall keep, and take in hand, the sharp sword which thou
hast let me have: I do not fear, O slain father! what my sons hereafter
may quarrell about.... Dwell all of you safe in the tombe, I must be
gon, and hasten hence, for I seem to be, in the midst of a place where
fire burns round about me.
One can well understand, who handles the ponderous _Thesaurus_, why the
first English lovers of Old Norse were antiquarians. "The Awakening of
Angantyr" is literally buried in this work, and only the student of
Anglo-Saxon prosody would come upon it unassisted, since it is an
illustration in a chapter of the _Grammaticæ Anglo-Saxonicæ et
Moeso-Gothicæ_. Students will remember in this connection that it was
a work on poetics that saved for us the original Icelandic _Edda_. The
Icelandic skald had to know his nation's mythology.
THOMAS PERCY (1729-1811).
The title of Chapter XXIII in Hickes' work indicates that even among
learned doctors mistaken notions existed as to the relationship of the
Teutonic languages. It took more than a hundred years to set the error
right, but in the meanwhile the literature of Iceland was becoming
better known to English readers. To the French scholar, Paul Henri
Mallet (1730-1807), Europe owes the first popular presentation of
Northern antiquities and literature. Appointed professor of
belles-lettres in the Copenhagen academy he found himself with more time
than students on his hands, because not many Danes at that time
understood French. His leisure time was applied to the study of the
antiquities of his adopted country, the King's commission for a history
of Denmark making that necessary. As a preface to this work he
published, in 1755, an _Introduction a l'Histoire de Dannemarc où l'on
traite de la Réligion, des Lois, des Moeurs et des Usages des Anciens
Danois_, and, in 1756, the work in the list on a previous page. In this
second book was the first translation into a modern tongue of the
_Edda_, and this volume, in consequence, attracted much attention. The
great English antiquarian, Thomas Percy, afterward Bishop of Dromore,
was early drawn to this work, and with the aid of friends he
accomplished a translation of it, which was published in 1770.
Mallet's work was very bad in its account of the racial affinities of
the nations commonly referred to as the barbarians that overturned the
Roman empire and culture. Percy, who had failed to edit the ballad MSS.
so as to please Ritson, was wise enough to see Mallet's error, and to
insist that Celtic and Gothic antiquities must not be confounded.
Mallet's translation of the _Edda_ was imperfect, too, because he had
followed the Latin version of Resenius, which was notoriously poor.
Percy's _Edda_ was no better, because it was only an English version of
Mallet. But we are not concerned with these critical considerations
here; and so it will be enough to record the fact that with the
publication of Percy's _Northern Antiquities_--the English name of
Mallet's work--in 1770, knowledge of Icelandic literature passed from
the exclusive control of learned antiquarians. More and more, as time
went on, men went to the Icelandic originals, and translations of poems
and sagas came from the press in increasing numbers. In the course of
time came original works that were inspired by Old Norse stories and Old
Norse conceptions.
We have already noted that Gray's poems on Icelandic themes, though
written in 1761, were not published until 1768. Another delayed work on
similar themes was Percy's _Five Pieces of Runic Poetry_, which, the
author tells us, was prepared for the press in 1761, but, through an
accident, was not published until 1763. The preface has this interesting
sentence: "It would be as vain to deny, as it is perhaps impolitic to
mention, that this attempt is owing to the success of the Erse
fragments." The book has an appendix containing the Icelandic originals
of the poems translated, and that portion of the book shows that a
scholar's hand and interest made the volume. So, too, does the close of
the preface: "That the study of ancient northern literature hath its
important uses has been often evinced by able writers: and that it is
not dry or unamusive this little work it is hoped will demonstrate. Its
aim at least is to shew, that if those kind of studies are not always
employed on works of taste or classic elegance, they serve at least to
unlock the treasures of native genius; they present us with frequent
sallies of bold imagination, and constantly afford matter for
philosophical reflection by showing the workings of the human mind in
its almost original state of nature."
That original state was certainly one of original sin, if these poems
are to be believed. Every page in this volume is drenched with blood,
and from this book, as from Gray's poems and the other Old Norse
imitations of the time, a picture of fierceness and fearfulness was the
only one possible. Percy intimates in his preface that Icelandic poetry
has other tales to tell besides the "Incantation of Hervor," the "Dying
Ode of Regner Lodbrog," the "Ransome of Egill the Scald," and the
"Funeral Song of Hacon," which are here set down; he offers the
"Complaint of Harold" as a slight indication that the old poets left
"behind them many pieces on the gentler subjects of love or friendship."
But the time had not come for the presentation of those pieces.
All of these translations were from the Latin versions extant in Percy's
time. This volume copied Hickes's translation of "Hervor's Incantation"
modified in a few particulars, and like that one, the other translations
in this volume were in prose. The work is done as well as possible, and
it remained for later scholars to point out errors in translation. The
negative contractions in Icelandic were as yet unfamiliar, and so, as
Walter Scott pointed out (in _Edin. Rev._, Oct., 1806), Percy made
Regner Lodbrog say, "The pleasure of that day (of battle, p. 34 in this
_Five Pieces_) was like having a fair virgin placed beside one in the
bed," and "The pleasure of that day was like kissing a young widow at
the highest seat of the table," when the poet really made the contrary
statement.
Of course, the value of this book depends upon the view that is taken of
it. Intrinsically, as literature, it is well-nigh valueless. It
indicates to us, however, a constantly growing interest in the
literature it reveals, and it undoubtedly directed the attention of the
poets of the succeeding generation to a field rich in romantic
possibilities. That no great work was then created out of this material
was not due to neglect. As we shall see, many puny poets strove to
breathe life into these bones, but the divine power was not in the
poets. Some who were not poets had yet the insight to feel the value of
this ancient literature, and they made known the facts concerning it. It
seems a mechanical and unpromising way to have great poetry written,
this calling out, "New Lamps for Old." Yet it is on record that great
poems have been written at just such instigation.
THOMAS WARTON (1728-1790).
Historians[10] of Romanticism have marked Warton's _History of English
Poetry_ as one of the forces that made for the new idea in literature.
This record of a past which, though out of favor, was immeasurably
superior to the time of its historian, spread new views concerning the
poetic art among the rising generation, and suggested new subjects as
well as new treatments of old subjects. We have mentioned the fact that
Gray handed over to Warton his notes for a contemplated history of
poetry, and that Warton found no place in his work for Gray's
adaptations from the Old Norse. Warton was not blind to the beauties of
Gray's poems, nor did he fail to appreciate the merits of the literature
which they illustrated. His scheme relegated his remarks concerning that
poetry to the introductory dissertation, "Of the Origin of Romantic
Fiction in Europe." What he had to say was in support of a theory which
is not accepted to-day, and of course his statements concerning the
origin of the Scandinavian people were as wrong as those that we found
in Mallet and Temple. But with all his misinformation, Warton managed to
get at many truths about Icelandic poetry, and his presentation of them
was fresh and stimulating. Already the Old Norse mythology was well
known, even down to Valhalla and the mistletoe. Old Norse poetry was
well enough known to call forth this remark:
"They (the 'Runic' odes) have a certain sublime and figurative cast of
diction, which is indeed one of their predominant characteristics....
When obvious terms and phrases evidently occurred, the Runic poets are
fond of departing from the common and established diction. They appear
to use circumlocution and comparisons not as a matter of necessity, but
of choice and skill: nor are these metaphorical colourings so much the
result of want of words, as of warmth of fancy." The note gives these
examples: "Thus, a rainbow is called, the bridge of the gods. Poetry,
the mead of Odin. The earth, the vessel that floats on ages. A ship, the
horse of the waves. A tongue, the sword of words. Night, the veil of
cares."
A study of the notes to Warton's dissertation reveals the fact that he
had made use of the books already mentioned in the list on a previous
page, and of no others that are significant. But such excellent use was
made of them, that it would seem as if nothing was left in them that
could be made valuable for spreading a knowledge of and an enthusiasm
for Icelandic literature. When it is remembered that Warton's purpose
was to prove the Saracenic origin of romantic fiction in Europe, through
the Moors in Spain, and that Icelandic literature was mentioned only to
account for a certain un-Arabian tinge in that romantic fiction, the
wonder grows that so full and fresh a presentation of Old Norse poetry
should have been made. He puts such passages as these into his
illustrative notes: "Tell my mother Suanhita in Denmark, that she will
not this summer comb the hair of her son. I had promised her to return,
but now my side shall feel the edge of the sword." There is an
appreciation of the poetic here, that makes us feel that Warton was not
an unworthy wearer of the laurel. He insists that the Saxon poetry was
powerfully affected by "the old scaldic fables and heroes," and gives in
the text a translation of the "Battle of Brunenburgh" to prove his
case. He admires "the scaldic dialogue at the tomb of Angantyr," but
wrongly attributes a beautiful translation of it to Gray. He quotes at
length from "a noble ode, called in the northern chronicles the Elogium
of Hacon, by the scald Eyvynd; who, for his superior skill in poetry was
called the Cross of Poets (Eyvindr Skálldaspillir), and fought in the
battle which he celebrated."
He knows how Iceland touched England, as this passage will show: "That
the Icelandic bards were common in England during the Danish invasions,
there are numerous proofs. Egill, a celebrated Icelandic poet, having
murthered the son and many of the friends of Eric Blodaxe, king of
Denmark or Norway, then residing in Northumberland, and which he had
just conquered, procured a pardon by singing before the king, at the
command of his queen Gunhilde, an extemporaneous ode. Egill compliments
the king, who probably was his patron, with the appellation of the
English chief. 'I offer my freight to the king. I owe a poem for my
ransom. I present to the ENGLISH CHIEF the mead of Odin.' Afterwards he
calls this Danish conqueror the commander of the Scottish fleet. 'The
commander of the Scottish fleet fattened the ravenous birds. The sister
of Nera (Death) trampled on the foe: she trampled on the evening food of
the eagle.'"
So wide a knowledge and so keen an appreciation of Old Norse in a
Warton, whose interest was chiefly elsewhere, argues for a spreading
popularity of the ancient literature. Thus far, only Gray has made
living English literature out of these old stories, and he only two
short poems. There were other attempts to achieve poetic success with
this foreign material, but a hundred exacting years have covered them
with oblivion.
DRAKE (1766-1836). MATHIAS (1754-1835).
In the second decade of the nineteenth century, Nathan Drake, M.D., made
a strong effort to popularize Norse mythology and literature. The fourth
edition of his work entitled _Literary Hours_ (London, 1820)
contains[11] an appreciative article on the subject, the fullness of
which is indicated in these words from p. 309:
"The most striking and characteristic parts of the Scandinavian
mythology, together with no inconsiderable portion of the manners and
customs of our northern ancestors, have now passed before the reader;
their theology, warfare, and poetry, their gallantry, religious rites,
and superstitions, have been separately, and, I trust, distinctly
reviewed."
The essay is written in an easy style that doubtless gained for it many
readers. All the available knowledge of the subject was used, and a
clearer view of it was presented than had been obtainable in Percy's
"Mallet." The author was a thoughtful man, able to detect errors in
Warton and Percy, but his zeal in his enterprise led him to praise
versifiers inordinately that had used the "Gothic fables." He quotes
liberally from writers whose books are not to be had in this country,
and certainly the uninspired verses merit the neglect that this fact
indicates. He calls Sayers' pen "masterly" that wrote these lines:
Coucher of the ponderous spear,
Thou shout'st amid the battle's stound--
The armed Sisters hear,
Viewless hurrying o'er the ground
They strike the destin'd chiefs and call them to the skies.
(P. 168.)
From Penrose he quotes such lines as these:
The feast begins, the skull goes round,
Laughter shouts--the shouts resound.
The gust of war subsides--E'en now
The grim chief curls his cheek, and smooths his rugged brow.
(P. 171.)
From Sterling comes this imitation of Gray:
Now the rage of combat burns,
Haughty chiefs on chiefs lie slain;
The battle glows and sinks by turns,
Death and carnage load the plain.
(P 172.)
From these extracts, it appears that the poets who imitated Gray
considered that only "dreadful songs," like his, were to be found in
Scandinavian poetry.
Downman, Herbert and Mathias are also adduced by Dr. Drake as examples
of poets who have gained much by Old Norse borrowings, but these
borrowings are invariably scenes from a chamber of horrors. It occurs
to me that perhaps Dr. Drake had begun to tire of the spiritless echoes
of the classical schools, and that he fondly hoped that such shrieks and
groans as those he admired in this essay would satisfy his cravings for
better things in poetry. But the critic had no adequate knowledge of the
way in which genius works. His one desire in these studies of
Scandinavian mythology was "to recommend it to the votaries of the Muse,
as a machinery admirably constructed for their purpose" (p. 158). He
hopes for "a more extensive adoption of the Scandinavian mythology,
especially in our _epic_ and _lyric_ compositions" (p. 311). We smile at
the notion, to-day, but that very conception of poetry as "machinery" is
characteristic of a whole century of our English literature.
The Mathias mentioned by Drake is Thomas James Mathias, whose book,
_Odes Chiefly from the Norse Tongue_ (London, 1781), received the
distinction of an American reprint (New York, 1806). Bartholinus
furnishes the material and Gray the spirit for these pieces.
AMOS S. COTTLE(1768-1800). WILLIAM HERBERT (1778-1847).
In this period belong two works of translation that mark the approach of
the time when Old Norse prose and poetry were to be read in the
original. As literature they are of little value, and they had but
slight influence on succeeding writers.
At Bristol, in 1797, was published _Icelandic Poetry, or, The Edda of
Saemund translated into English Verse_, by A.S. Cottle of Magdalen
College, Cambridge. This work has an Introduction containing nothing
worth discussing here, and an "Epistle" to A.S. Cottle from Robert
Southey. The laureate, in good blank verse, discourses on the Old Norse
heroes whom he happens to know about. They are the old favorites, Regner
Lodbrog and his sons; in Southey's poem the foeman's skull is, as usual,
the drinking cup. It was certainly time for new actors and new
properties to appear in English versions of Scandinavian stories.
The translations are twelve in number, and evince an intelligent and
facile versifier. When all is said, these old songs could contribute to
the pleasure of very few. Only a student of history, or a poet, or an
antiquarian, would dwell with loving interest on the lays of
Vafthrudnis, Grimner, Skirner and Hymer (as Cottle spells them).
Besides, they are difficult to read, and must be abundantly annotated to
make them comprehensible. In such works as this of Cottle, a Scott might
find wherewith to lend color to a story or a poem, but the common man
would borrow Walpole's words, used in characterizing Gray's "Odes":
"They are not interesting, and do not ... touch any passion; our human
feelings ... are not here affected. Who can care through what horrors a
Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories they could
conceive--the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an
enemy in Odin's hall?"[12]
In 1804 a book was published bearing this title-page: _Select Icelandic
Poetry, translated from the originals: with notes_. The preface was
signed by the author, William Herbert. The pieces are from Sæmund,
Bartholinus, Verelius, and Perinskjöld's edition of _Heimskringla_, and
were all translated with the assistance of the Latin versions. The notes
are explanatory of the allusions and the hiatuses in the poems.
Reference is made to MSS. of the Norse pieces existing in museums and
libraries, which the author had consulted. Thus we see scholarship
beginning to extend investigations. As for the verses themselves not
much need be said. They are not so good as Cottle's, although they
received a notice from Scott in the _Edinburgh Review_. The thing to
notice about the work is that it pretends to come direct from Old Norse,
not, as most of the work dealt with so far, _via_ Latin.
Icelandic poetry is more difficult to read than Icelandic prose, and so
it seems strange that the former should have been attacked first by
English scholars. Yet so it was, and until 1844 our English literature
had no other inspiration in old Norse writings than the rude and rugged
songs that first lent their lilt to Gray. The _human_ North is in the
sagas, and when they were revealed to our people, Icelandic literature
began to mean something more than Valhalla and the mead-bouts there. The
scene was changed to earth, and the gods gave place to nobler actors,
men and women. The action was lifted to the eminence of a world-drama.
But before the change came Sir Walter Scott, and it is fitting that the
first period of Norse influence in English literature should close, as
it began, with a great master.
SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832).
In 1792, Walter Scott was twenty-one years old, and one of his
note-books of that year contains this entry: "Vegtam's Kvitha or The
Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English
poetical version of Mr. Gray; with some account of the Death of Balder,
both as related in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern
historians--_Auctore Gualtero Scott_." According to Lockhart,[13] the
Icelandic, Latin and English versions were here transcribed, and the
historical account that followed--seven closely written quarto
pages--was read before a debating society.
It was to be expected that one so enthusiastic about antiquities as
Scott would early discover the treasury of Norse history and song. At
twenty-one, as we see, he is transcribing a song in a language he knew
nothing about, as well as in translations. Fourteen years later, he has
learned enough about the subject to write a review of Herbert's _Poems
and Translations_.[14]
In 1813, he writes an account of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_ for _Illustrations
of Northern Antiquities_ (edited by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh, 1814).
There are two of Scott's contributions to literature that possess more
than a mere tinge of Old Norse knowledge, namely, the long poem "Harold,
the Dauntless" (published in 1817), and the long story "The Pirate"
(published in 1821). The poem is weak, but it illustrates Scott's theory
of the usefulness of poetical antiquities to the modern poet. In another
connection Scott said: "In the rude song of the Scald, we regard less
the strained imagery and extravagance of epithet, than the wild
impressions which it conveys of the dauntless resolution, savage
superstition, rude festivity and ceaseless depredations of the ancient
Scandinavians."[15] The poet did his work in accordance with this
theory, and so in "Harold, the Dauntless," we note no flavor of the
older poetry in phrase or in method. Harold is fierce enough and grim
enough to measure up to the old ideal of a Norse hero.
"I was rocked in a buckler and fed from a blade," is his boast before
his newly christened father, and in his apostrophe to his grandsire
Eric, the popular notion of early Norse antiquarianism is again
exhibited:
In wild Valhalla hast thou quaffed
From foeman's skull metheglin draught?
Scott's scholarship in Old Norse was largely derived from the Latin
tomes, and such conceptions as those quoted are therefore common in his
poem. That the poet realized the inadequacy of such knowledge, the
review of Herbert's poetry, published in the _Edinburgh Review_ for
October, 1806, shows. In this article he has a vision of what shall be
when men shall be able "to trace the Runic rhyme" itself.
"The Pirate," exhibited the Wizard's skill in weaving the old and the
new together, the old being the traditions of the Shetlands, full of the
ancestral beliefs in Old Norse things, the new being the life in those
islands in a recent century. This is a stirring story, that comes into
our consideration because of its Scandinavian antiquities. Again we find
the Latin treasuries of Bartholinus, Torfæus, Perinskjöld and Olaus
Magnus in evidence, though here, too, mention is made of "Haco," and
Tryggvason and "Harfager." With a background of island scenery, with
which Scott became familiar during a light-house inspector's voyage made
in 1814, this story is a picture full of vivid colors and characters. In
Norna of the Fitful Head, he has created a mysterious personage in whose
mouth "Runic rhymes" are the only proper speech. She stills the tempest
with them, and "The Song of the Tempest" is a strong apostrophe, though
it is neither Runic nor rhymed. She preludes her life-story with verses
that are rhymed but not Runic, and she sings incantations in the same
wise. This _Reimkennar_ is an echo of the _Völuspá_, and is the only
kind of Norse woman that the time of Scott could imagine. Claud Halcro,
the poet, is fond of rhyming the only kind of Norseman known to his
time, and in his "Song of Harold Harfager" we hear the echoes of Gray's
odes. Scott's reading was wide in all ancient lore, and he never missed
a chance to introduce an odd custom if it would make an interesting
scene in his story. So here we have the "Sword Dance" (celebrated by
Olaus Magnus, though I have never read of it in Old Norse), the
"Questioning of the Sibyl" (like that in Gray's "Descent of Odin"), the
"Capture and Sharing of the Whale," and the "Promise of Odin." In most
of the natives there are turns of speech that recall the Norse ancestry
of the Shetlanders.
In Scott, then, we see the lengthening out of the influence of the
antiquarians who wrote of a dead past in a dead language. The time was
at hand when that past was to live again, painted in the living words of
living men.
III.
FROM THE SOURCES THEMSELVES.
In the preceding section we noted the achievements of English
scholarship and genius working under great disadvantages. Gray and Scott
may have had a smattering of Icelandic, but Latin translations were
necessary to reveal the meaning of what few Old Norse texts were
available to them. This paucity of material, more than the ignorance of
the language, was responsible for the slow progress in popularizing the
remarkable literature of the North. Scaldic and Eddie poems comprised
all that was known to English readers of that literature, and in them
the superhuman rather than the human elements were predominant.
We have come now to a time when the field of our view broadens to
include not only more and different material, but more and different
men. The sagas were annexed to the old songs, and the body of literature
to attract attention was thus increased a thousand fold. The
antiquarians were supplanted by scholars who, although passionately
devoted to the study of the past, were still vitally interested in the
affairs of the time in which they lived. The second and greatest stage
of the development of Old Norse influence in England has a mark of
distinction that belongs to few literary epochs. The men who made it
lived lives that were as heroic in devotion to duty and principle as
many of those written down in the sagas themselves. I have sometimes
wondered whether it is merely accidental that English saga scholars were
so often men of high soul and strong action. Certain it is that Richard
Cleasby, and Samuel Laing, and George Webbe Dasent, and Robert Lowe are
types of men that the Icelanders would have celebrated, as having "left
a tale to tell" in their full and active lives. And no less certain is
it that Thomas Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold, and William Morris, and
Charles Kingsley, and Gerald Massey labored for a better manhood that
should rise to the stature and reflect the virtues of the heroes of the
Northland.
RICHARD CLEASBY (1797-1847).
In the forties of the nineteenth century several minds began to work,
independently of one another, in this wider field of Icelandic
literature. Richard Cleasby (1797-1847), an English merchant's son with
scholarly instincts, began the study of the sagas, but made slight
progress because of what he called an "unaccountable and most scandalous
blank," the want of a dictionary. This was in 1840, and for the next
seven years he labored to fill up that blank. The record[16] of those
years is a wonderful witness to the heroism and spirit of the scholar,
and justifies Sir George Dasent's characterization of Cleasby as "one of
the most indefatigable students that ever lived." The work thus begun
was not completed until many years afterward (it is dated 1874), and, by
untoward circumstances, very little of it is Richard Cleasby's. But
generous scholarship acknowledged its debt to the man who gave his
strength and his wealth to the work, by placing his name on the
title-page. No less shall we fail to honor his memory by mentioning his
labors here. Although the dictionary was not completed in the decade of
its inception, the study that it was designed to promote took hold on a
number of men and the results were remarkable for both literature and
scholarship.
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881).
First in order of time was the work of Thomas Carlyle. It will not seem
strange to the student of English literature to find that this writer
came under the influence of the old skalds and sagaman and spoke
appreciative words concerning them. His German studies had to take
cognizance of the Old Norse treasuries of poetry, and he became a
diligent reader of Icelandic literature in what translations he could
get at, German and English. The strongest utterance on the subject that
he left behind him is in "Lecture I" of the series "On Heroes,
Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History," dated May, 1840. This is a
treatment of Scandinavian mythology, rugged and thorough, like all of
this man's work. Carlyle evinces a scholar's instinct in more than one
place, as, for instance, when he doubts the _grandmother_ etymology of
_Edda_, an etymology repeated until a much later day by scholars of a
less sure sense.[17] But this lecture "On Heroes" is also a
glorification of the literature with which we are dealing, and in this
regard it is worthy of special note here.
In the first place, Carlyle with true critical instinct caught the
essence of it; to him it seemed to have "a rude childlike way of
recognizing the divineness of Nature, the divineness of Man." For him
Scandinavian mythology was superior in sincerity to the Grecian, though
it lacked the grace of the latter. "Sincerity, I think, is better than
grace. I feel that these old Northmen were looking into Nature with open
eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a
great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving,
admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men." This is
a truer appreciation than Gray and Walpole had, eighty years before. In
the second place, Carlyle was not misled into thinking that valor in war
was the only characteristic of the rude Norseman, and skill in drinking
his only household virtue. "Beautiful traits of pity, too, and honest
pity." Then he tells of Baldur and Nanna, in his rugged prose account
anticipating Matthew Arnold. Other qualities of the literature appeal to
him. "I like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of
conception. Thor 'draws down his brows' in a veritable Norse rage;
'grasps his hammer till the _knuckles grow white_." Again; "A great
broad Brobdignag grin of true humor is this Skrymir; mirth resting on
earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on the black tempest: only a
right valiant heart is capable of that." Still again: "This law of
mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, has been
deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style."
Thomas Carlyle, seeking to explain the worship of a pagan divinity,
chose Odin as the noblest example of such a hero. The picture of Odin he
drew from the prose Edda, mainly, and his purpose required that he
paint the picture in the most attractive colors. So it happened that our
English literature got its first _complete_ view of Old Norse ethics and
art. The memory of Gray's "dreadful songs" had ruled for almost a
century, and ordinary readers might be pardoned for thinking that Old
Norse literature, like Old Norse history, was written in blood. We have
seen that Gray's imitators perpetuated the old idea, and that even Scott
sanctioned it, and now we see England's emancipation from it. The grouty
old Scotchman of Craigenputtoch knew no more Icelandic than most of his
fellow countrymen (be it noted that he said: "From the Humber upwards,
all over Scotland, the speech of the common people is still in a
singular degree Icelandic, its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse
tinge"); but he saw far more deeply into the heart of Icelandic
literature than anybody before him. His emphasis of its many sidedness,
of its sincerity, its humanity, its simplicity, its directness, its
humor and its wisdom, was the signal for a change in the popular
estimation of its worth to our modern art. Since his day we have had
Morris and Arnold and a host of minor singers, and the nineteenth
century revival of interest in Old Norse literature.
The other work by Carlyle dealing directly with Old Norse material is
_The Early Kings of Norway_. Here he digests _Heimskringla_, which was
obtainable through Laing's translation, in a way to stir the blood. The
story, as he tells it, is breathlessly interesting, and it is a pity
that readers of Carlyle so often stop short of this work. As in the
_Hero-Worship_, he shows this Teutonic bias, and the religious training
that minified Greek literature.
Snorri's work elicits from him repeated applause. Here, for instance, in
Chap. X: "It has, all of it, the description (and we see clearly the
fact itself had), a kind of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, and rude
nobleness; something Epic or Homeric, without the metre or the singing
of Homer, but with all the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much
more of piety, devoutness, reverence for what is ever high in this
universe, than meets us in those old Greek Ballad-mongers."
SAMUEL LAING (1780-1868).
It was the work of Samuel Laing that gave Carlyle the material for this
last-mentioned book.[18] Laing's translation of _Heimskringla_ bears the
date 1844, and although Mr. Dasent's quaint version of the _Prose Edda_
preceded it by two years, _The Sagas of the Norse Kings_ was the
"epoch-making" book. It is true that a later version has superseded it
in literary and scholarly finish, but Laing's work was a pioneer of
sterling intrinsic value, and many there be that do it homage still.
Laing had the laudable ambition--so seldom found in these days--"to give
a plain, faithful translation into English of the _Heimskringla_,
unencumbered with antiquarian research, and suited to the plain English
reader."[19] With this work, then, Icelandic lore passes out of the
hands of the antiquarian into the hands of common readers. It matters
little that the audience is even still fit and few; from this time on he
that runs may read.
For our purpose it will not be necessary to characterize the
translation. Laing commanded an excellent style, and he was enthusiastic
over his work. Indeed, the commonest criticism passed on the
"Preliminary Dissertation" was that the author's zeal had run away with
his good sense. Be that as it may, Laing called the attention of his
readers to the neglect of a literature and a history which should be
England's pride, as Anglo-Saxon literature and history even then were.
The reviews of the time made it appear as if another Battle of the Books
were impending--Anglo-Saxon versus Icelandic; a writer in the _English
Review_ (Vol. 82, p. 316), pro-Saxon in his zeal, admitting at last that
"of none of the children of the Norse, whether Goth or Frank, Saxon or
Scandinavian, have the others any reason to be ashamed. All have earned
the gratitude and admiration of the world, and their combined or
successive efforts have made England and Europe what they are."
It is refreshing to come upon new views of Old Norse character, that
recognize "amidst anarchy and bloodshed, redeeming features of
kindliness and better feeling which tell of the mingled principles that
war within our nature for the mastery." Laing's translation accomplished
this for English readers, and with the years came a deeper knowledge
that showed those touches of tenderness and traits of beauty which, even
in 1844, were not perceptible to those readers.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882).
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891).
_The Story of the Norse Kings_, thus translated by an Englishman,
suggested to our American poet, Longfellow, a series of lyrics on King
Olaf. The young college professor that wrote about _Frithjof's Saga_ in
the _North American Review_ for 1837, was bound, sooner or later, to
come back to the field when he found that the American reading public
would listen to whatever songs he sang to them. Before 1850, Longfellow
had written "The Challenge of Thor," a poem which imitated the form of
Icelandic verse and catches much of its spirit. In 1859, the thought
came to him "that a very good poem might be written on the Saga of King
Olaf, who converted the North to Christianity." Two years later he
completed the lyrics that compose "The Musician's Tale" in _The Tales of
a Wayside Inn_, published in 1863, and in this work "The Challenge of
Thor" serves as a prelude. The pieces after this prelude are not
imitations of the Icelandic verse, but are like Tegner's _Frithjof's
Saga_, in that each new portion has a meter of its own. There is not,
either, a consistent effort to put the flavor of the North into the
poetry, so that, properly speaking, we have here only the retelling of
an old tale. The ballad fervor and movement are often perceptible,
though nowhere does the poet strike the ringing note of "The Skeleton in
Armor," published in the volume of 1841.
Truth to tell, Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf" is not a remarkable
work. One who reads the few chapters in Carlyle's _Early Kings of
Norway_ that deal with Olaf Tryggvason gets more of the fire and spirit
of the old saga at every turning. The poet chooses scenes and incidents
very skilfully, but for their proper presentation a terseness is
necessary that is not reconcilable with frequent rhymes. Compare the
saga account with the poem's: "What is this that has broken?" asked King
Olaf. "Norway from thy hand, King," answered Tamberskelver.
"What was that?" said Olaf, standing
On the quarter deck.
"Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck."
Einar then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered, "That was Norway breaking
From thy hand, O King!"
Nevertheless, Longfellow is to be thanked for acquainting a wide circle
of readers with the sterling saga literature.
One other American poet was busy with the ancient Northern literature at
this time. James Russell Lowell wrote one notable poem that is Old Norse
in subject and spirit, "The Voyage to Vinland." The third part of the
poem, "Gudrida's Prophecy," hints at Icelandic versification, and the
short lines are hammer-strokes that warm the reader to enthusiasm. Far
more of the spirit of the old literature is in this short poem than is
to be found in the whole of Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf." The
character of Biörn is well drawn, recalling Bodli, of Morris' poem, in
its principal features. Certainly there is a reflection here of that Old
Norse conception of life which gave to men's deeds their due reward, and
which exalted the power of will. This poem was begun in 1850, but was
not published till 1868.
In Lowell's poems are to be found many figures and allusions pointing to
his familiarity with Icelandic song and story. At the end of the third
strophe of the "Commemoration Ode," for instance, Truth is pictured as
Brynhild,
plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled.
In these borrowings of themes and allusions, Lowell is at one with most
of the poets of the present day. It used to be the fashion, and is
still, for tables of contents in volumes of verse to show titles like
these: "Prometheus"; "Iliad VIII, 542-561"; "Alectryon." Present-day
volumes are becoming more and more besprinkled with titles like these:
"Balder the Beautiful"; "The Death of Arnkel," etc. In this fact alone
is seen the turn of the tide. Heroes and heroines in dramas and novels
are beginning to bear Old Norse names, even where the setting is not
northern; witness Sidney Dobell's _Balder_, where not even a single
allusion is made to Icelandic matters.
MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888).
Matthew Arnold's strong sympathy with noble and virile literature of
whatever age or nation led him in time to Old Norse, and his poem
"Balder Dead" is of distinct importance among the works of the
nineteenth century in English literature. It is an addition of permanent
value to our poetry, because of its marked originality and its high
ethical tone. "Mallet, and his version of the Edda, is all the poem is
based upon," says Arnold.[20] It is the poet's divinely implanted
instinct that gathers from the few chapters of an old book a knowledge
wonderfully full and deep of the cosmogony and eschatology of the
northern nations of Europe. "Balder Dead" tells the familiar story of
the whitest of the gods, but it also contains the essence of Old
Icelandic religion; indeed there is no single short work in our language
which gives a tithe of the information about the North, its spirit, and
its philosophy, which this poem of Matthew Arnold's sets forth. In
future days a text-book of original English poems will be in the hands
of our boys and girls which will enable them to get, through the medium
of their own language, the message and the spirit of foreign literature.
Old Norse song will need no other representative than Matthew Arnold's
"Balder Dead."
This is an original poem. It does not imitate the verse nor the word of
the older song, but the flavor of it is here. Gray and his imitators
drew from the Icelandic fountain "dreadful songs" and many poets since
have heard no milder note. Matthew Arnold's instincts were for peace and
the arts of peace, and he found in Balder a type for the ennobling of
our own century. Balder says to his brother who has come to lament that
Lok's machinations will keep the best beloved of the gods in Niflheim:
For I am long since weary of your storm
Of carnage, and find, Hermod, in your life
Something too much of war and broils, which make
Life one perpetual fight, a bath of blood.
Mine eyes are dizzy with the arrowy hail;
Mine ears are stunn'd with blows, and sick for calm.
Arnold has exalted the Revelator of the Northern mythology, and in
magnificent poetry sets forth his apocalyptic vision:
Unarm'd, inglorious; I attend the course
Of ages, and my late return to light,
In times less alien to a spirit mild,
In new-recover'd seats, the happier day.
. . . . . . . . .
Far to the south, beyond the blue, there spreads
Another Heaven, the boundless--no one yet
Hath reach'd it; there hereafter shall arise
The second Asgard, with another name.
. . . . . . . . .
There re-assembling we shall see emerge
From the bright Ocean at our feet an earth
More fresh, more verdant than the last, with fruits
Self-springing, and a seed of man preserved,
Who then shall live in peace, as now in war.
Here is the grandest message that the Old Norse religion had to give,
and Matthew Arnold concerned himself with that alone. It is a far cry
from Regner Lodbrog to this. There is a fine touch in the introduction
of Regner into the lamentation of Balder. Arnold makes the old warrior
say of the ruder skalds:
But they harp ever on one string, and wake
Remembrance in our souls of war alone,
Such as on earth we valiantly have waged,
And blood, and ringing blows, and violent death.
But when thou sangest, Balder, thou didst strike
Another note, and, like a bird in spring,
Thy voice of joyance minded us, and youth,
And wife, and children, and our ancient home.
Here is a human Norseman, a figure not often presented in the versions
of the old stories that English poets and romancers have given us.
Arnold did a good service to Icelandic literature when he put into
Regner's mouth mild sentiments and a love for home and family. The note
is not lacking in the ancient literature, but it took Englishmen three
centuries to find it. It was the scholar, Matthew Arnold, who first
repeated the gentler strain in the rude music of the North, as it was
the scholar, Thomas Gray, who first echoed the "dreadful songs" of that
old psalmody. Gray has all the culture of his age, when it was still
possible to compass all knowledge in one lifetime; Arnold had all the
literary culture of his fuller century when multiplied sciences force a
scholar to be content with one segment of human knowledge. The former
had music and architecture and other sciences among his accomplishments;
the latter spread out in literature, as "Sohrab and Rustum," "Empedocles
on Etna," "Tristram and Iseult," as well as "Balder Dead" attest. The
quatrain prefixed to the volume containing the narrative and elegiac
poems be-tokens what joy Arnold had in his literary work, and indicates
why these poems cannot fail to live:
What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world in its turn will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.
Balder is the creation of Old Norse poetry that is most popular with
contemporary English writers, and Matthew Arnold first made him so. As
Bugge points out, no deed of his is "celebrated in song or story. His
personality only is described; of his activity in life almost no
external trait is recorded. All the stress is laid upon his death; and,
like Christ, Baldr dies in his youth."[21]
SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT (1820-1896).
Among the scholars who have labored to give England the benefit of a
fuller and truer knowledge of Norse matters, none will be remembered
more gratefully than Sir George Webbe Dasent. Known to the reading
public most widely by his translations of the folk-tales of Asbjörnsen
and Moe, he has still a claim upon the attention of the students of
Icelandic. As we have seen, he gave out a translation of the _Younger
Edda_ in 1842, and during the half century and more that followed he
wrote other works of history and literature connected with our subject.
Two saga translations were published in 1861 and 1866, _The Story of
Burnt Njal_, and _The Story of Gisli the Outlaw_, which will always rank
high in this class of literature. _Njala_ especially is an excellent
piece of work, a classic among translations. The "Prolegomena" is rich
in information, and very little of it has been superseded by later
scholarship. In 1887 and 1894 he translated for the Master of the Rolls,
_The Orkney Saga_ and _The Saga of Hakon_, the texts of which Vigfusson
had printed in the same series some years before. The interest of the
government in Icelandic annals connected with English history is
indicated in these last publications, and England is fortunate to have
had such enthusiastic scholars as Vigfusson and Dasent to do the work.
These men had been collaborators on the Cleasby Dictionary, and in this
work as in all others Dasent displayed an eagerness to have his
countrymen know how significant England's relationship to Iceland was.
He was as certain as Laing had been before him of the preeminence of
this literature among the mediæval writings. Like Laing, too, he would
have the general reader turn to this body of work "which for its beauty
and richness is worthy of being known to the greatest possible number of
readers."[22]
To mark the progress away from the old conception of unmitigated
brutality these words of Dasent stand here:[23] "The faults of these
Norsemen were the faults of their time; their virtues they possessed in
larger measure than the rest of their age, and thus when Christianity
had tamed their fury, they became the torch-bearers of civilization; and
though the plowshare of Destiny, when it planted them in Europe,
uprooted along its furrow many a pretty flower of feeling in the lands
which felt the fury of these Northern conquerers, their energy and
endurance gave a lasting temper to the West, and more especially to
England, which will wear so long as the world wears, and at the same
time implanted principles of freedom which shall never be rooted out.
Such results are a compensation for many bygone sorrows."
CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875).
In 1874, Charles Kingsley visited America and delivered some lectures.
Among these was one entitled "The First Discovery of America." This
interests us here because it displays an appreciation, if not a deep
knowledge, of Icelandic literature. In it the lecturer commended to
Longfellow's attention a ballad sung in the Faroes, begging him to
translate it some day, "as none but he can translate it." "It is so sad,
that no tenderness less exquisite than his can prevent its being
painful; and at least in its _denouement_, so naive, that no purity less
exquisite than his can prevent its being dreadful."[24] Later in the
lecture he commends to his hearers the _Heimskringla_ of Snorri
Sturluson, the "Homer of the North."[25]
Speaking of the elements that mingled to produce the British character,
Kingsley says: "In manners as well as in religion, the Norse were
humanized and civilized by their contact with the Celts, both in
Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valor, intellect, imagination:
but the Celt had that which the burly, angular Norse character, however
deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature,
tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining
with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of
character which have produced, in Ireland and in Scotland, two schools
of lyric poetry second to none in the world."[26] Over the page,
Kingsley has this to say: "For they were a sad people, those old Norse
forefathers of ours."[27] Humorous and sad are not inconsistent words in
these sentences; the Norseman had a sense of the ludicrous, and could
jest grimly in the face of death. Of the sadness of his life, no one
needs to be told who has read a saga or two. Kingsley says: "There is,
in the old sagas, none of that enjoyment of life which shines out
everywhere in Greek poetry, even through its deepest tragedies. Not in
complacency with Nature's beauty, but in the fierce struggle with her
wrath, does the Norseman feel pleasure."[28]
This lecture shows a deeper acquaintance with Old Norse literature than
Kingsley was willing to acknowledge. Not only are the stories well
chosen which he uses throughout, but the intuitions are sound, and the
inferences based upon them. He anticipated the work of this
investigation in the last words of the address. He has been telling the
fine story of Thormod at Sticklestead:
"I shall not insult your intelligence by any comment or even epithet of
my own. I shall but ask you, Was not this man your kinsman? Does not the
story sound, allowing for all change of manners as well as of time and
place, like a scene out of your own Bret Harte or Colonel John Hay's
writings; a scene of the dry humor, the rough heroism of your own far
West? Yes, as long as you have your _Jem Bludsos_ and _Tom Flynns of
Virginia City_, the old Norse blood is surely not extinct, the old Norse
spirit is not dead."[29]
EDMUND GOSSE (1849-).
Among contemporary English poets who have taught the world of readers
that things Norse are worthy of attention, is Edmund Gosse. He has been
more intimately connected with the popularization of modern Norwegian
literature, notably of Ibsen, but he has also found in Old Norse story
themes for poetic treatment. We mention "The Death of Arnkel," found in
the volume _Firdausi in Exile_, more because it shows that our poets are
turning to _the gesta islandicorum_ for themes, than because it is a
remarkable poem. More pretentious is _King Erik, a Tragedy_, London,
1876. Here is a noble drama which displays an intimate acquaintance with
the literature that gave it its themes and inspiration. The author
dedicates it to Robert Browning, calling it:
... this lyric symbol of my labour,
This antique light that led my dreams so long,
This battered hull of a barbaric tabor,
Beaten to runic song.
I have often thought that fate was very unkind to keep Browning so
persistently in the south of Europe, when, in Iceland and Norway, were
mines that he could have worked in to such supreme advantage. To be sure
his method clashes with the simplicity of the Old Norse manner, but from
him we should have had men and women superb in stature and virility, and
perhaps the Arctic influence would have killed the troublesome
tropicality of his language.
This drama by Gosse is not strictly Icelandic in motive. Jealousy was
not the passion to loosen the tongue of the sagaman, and in so far as
that is the theme of "King Erik," the play is not Old Norse in origin.
Christian material, too, has been introduced that gives a modern tinge
to the drama, but there is enough of the genuine saga spirit to warrant
attention to it here. Something more than the names is Icelandic. Here
is a woman, Botilda, with strength of character enough to recall a
Brynhild or a Bergthora. Gisli is the foster-brother that takes up the
blood-feud for Grimur. Adalbjörg and Svanhilda are the whisperers of
slander and the workers of ill. Marcus is the skald who is making a poem
about the king. Here are customs and beliefs distinctly Norse:
I loved him from the first,
And so the second midnight to the cliff
We went. I mind me how the round moon rose,
And how a great whale in the offing plunged,
Dark on the golden circle. There we cut
A space of turf, and lifted it, and ran
Our knife-points sharp into our arms, and drew
Blood that dripped into the warm mould and mixed.
So there under the turf our plighted faith
Starts in the dew of grasses.
(Act. IV, Sc. II.)
But all day long I hear amid the crowds,
. . . . . . . . .
A voice that murmurs in a monotone,
Strange, warning words that scarcely miss the ear,
Yet miss it altogether.
_Botilda_.
Oh! God grant,
You be not fey, nor truly near your end!
(Act. IV, Sc. III.)
Although this work is dramatic in form, it is not so in spirit. The true
dramatist would have put such an incident as the swearing of brotherhood
into a scene, instead of into a speech. This effort is, however, the
nearest approach to a drama in English founded on saga material. It is
curious that our poets have inclined to every form but the drama in
reproducing Old Norse literature. It is not that saga-stuff is not
dramatic in possibilities. Ewald and Oehlenschläger have used this
material to excellent effect in Danish dramas. Had the sagas been
accessible to Englishmen in Shakespeare's time, we should certainly have
had dramas of Icelandic life.
IV.
BY THE HAND OF THE MASTER.
Time has brought us to the man whose work in this field needs no
apology. The writer whom we consider next contributed almost as much
material to the English treasury of Northern gold as did all the writers
we have so far considered. Were it not for William Morris, the
examination that we are making would not not be worth while. The name
_literature_, in its narrow sense, belongs to only a few of the writings
that we have examined up to this point, but what we are now to inspect
deserves that title without the shadow of a doubt. For that reason we
set in a separate chapter the examination of Morris' Old Norse
adaptations and creations.
WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896).
The biographer of William Morris fixes 1868 as the beginning of the
poet's Icelandic stories.[30] Eirikr Magnusson, an Icelander, was his
guide, and the pupil made rapid progress. Dasent's work had drawn
Morris' attention to the sagas, and within a few months most of the
sagas had been read in the original. Although _The Saga of Gunnlang
Worm-tongue_ was published in the _Fortnightly Review_, for January,
1869, the _Grettis Saga_, of April, was the first published book on an
Old Norse subject. The next year gave the _Völsunga Saga_. In 1871,
Morris made a journey through Iceland, the fruits of which were
afterwards seen in many a noble work. In 1875, _Three Northern Love
Stories_ was published, and, in 1877, _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung
and the Fall of the Niblungs_. More than ten years passed before he
turned again to Icelandic work, the Romances of the years of 1889 to
1896 showing signs of it, and the translations in the _Saga Library_,
"Howard the Halt," "The Banded Men," _Eyrbyggja_ and _Heimskringla_ of
1891-95. These contributions to the subject of our examination are no
less valuable than voluminous, and we make no excuses for an extended
consideration of them. They deserve a wider public than they have yet
attained.
1.
_The Story of Grettir the Strong_ is the title of Morris and Magnusson's
version of the _Grettis Saga_. The version impresses the reader as one
made with loving care by artistic hands. Certainly English readers will
read no other translation of this work, for this one is satisfactory as
a version and as an art-work. English readers will here get all the
flavor of the original that it is possible to get in a translation, and
those who can read Icelandic if put to it, will prefer to get _Grettla_
through Morris and Magnusson. All the essentials are here, if not all
the nuances.
The reader unfamiliar with sagas will need a little patience with the
genealogies that crop out in every chapter. The sagaman has a
squirrel-like agility in climbing family trees, and he is well
acquainted with their interlocking branches. There are chapters in the
_Grettis Saga_ where this vanity runs riot, and makes us suspect that
Iceland differed little from a country town of to-day in its love for
gossip about the family of neighbors whose names happen to come into the
conversation. If the reader will persevere through the early chapters,
until Grettir commands exclusive attention, he will come to a drama
which has not many peers in literature. The outlaw kills a man in every
other chapter, but this record is no vulgar list of brutal fights. Not
inhuman nature, but human nature is here shown, human nature struggling
with unrelenting fate, making a grand fight, and coming to its end
because it must, but without ignominy. How fine a touch it is that
refuses to the outlaw's murderer the price set upon Grettir's head,
because the getting of it was through a "nithings-deed," the murder of a
dying man! William Morris was most felicitous in envoys and dedicating
poems, and in the sonnet prefixed to this translation he was
particularly happy. The first eight lines describe the hero of the
saga--the last six lines the significance of this literary creation:
A life scarce worth the living, a poor fame
Scarce worth the winning, in a wretched land,
Where fear and pain go upon either hand,
As toward the end men fare without an aim
Unto the dull grey dark from whence they came:
Let them alone, the unshadowed sheer rocks stand
Over the twilight graves of that poor band,
Who count so little in the great world's game!
Nay, with the dead I deal not; this man lives,
And that which carried him through good and ill,
Stern against fate while his voice echoed still
From rock to rock, now he lies silent, strives
With wasting time, and through its long lapse gives
Another friend to me, life's void to fill.
2.
In the three volumes of _The Earthly Paradise_, published by William
Morris in 1868-1870, there are three poems which hail from Old Norse
originals. They are "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon," and
"The Lovers of Gudrun," in Vol. II, and "The Fostering of Aslaug," in
Vol. III. Of these "The Lovers of Gudrun" forms a class by itself; it is
a poem to be reckoned with when the dozen greatest poems of the century
are listed. The late Laureate may have equalled it in the best of the
_Idylls of the King_, but he never excelled it. Let us look at it in
detail.
First, be it said that "The Lovers of Gudrun" overtops all the other
poems in _The Earthly Paradise_. It would be possible to prove that
Morris was at his best when he worked with Old Norse material, but that
task shall not detain us now. It is enough to note that the "Prologue"
to _The Earthly Paradise_, called "The Wanderers," makes the leader of
these wanderers, who turn story-tellers when they reach the city by "the
borders of the Grecian sea," a Norseman. Born in Byzantium of a Greek
mother, he claimed Norway as his home, and on his father's death
returned to his kin. His speech to the Elder of the City reveals a
touching loyalty to his father's home and traditions:
But when I reached one dying autumn-tide
My uncle's dwelling near the forest-side,
And saw the land so scanty and so bare,
And all the hard things men contend with there,
A little and unworthy land it seemed,
And yet the more of Asagard I dreamed,
And worthier seemed the ancient faith of praise.
Here is the man, William Morris, in perfect miniature. Modern life and
training had given him a speech and aspect quite suave and cultured, but
the blood that flowed in his veins was red, and the tincture of iron was
in it. In religion, in art, in poetry, in economics, he loved the past
better than the present, though he was never unconscious of "our
glorious gains." In all departments of thought the scanty, the bare, the
hard, the unworthy, drew first his attention and then his love and
enthusiastic praise. And so perhaps it is explained that of all the
poems in _The Earthly Paradise_, the one indited first in the scarred
and dreadful land where neither wheat nor wine is at home, shall be the
finest in this latter-day retelling.
The first seventy years of the thirteenth century were the blossoming
time of the historic saga in Iceland, and those writings that record the
doings of the families of the land form, with the old songs and the best
of the kingly sagas, the flower of Northern literature. These family
records never extend over more than one generation, and sometimes they
deal with but a few years. They are half-way between romance and
history, with the balance oftenest in favor of truth. In this group are
found _Egils Saga_, known at second hand to Warton, the _Eyrbyggja
Saga_, translated by Walter Scott, and the _Laxdæla Saga_. It is the
_Laxdæla Saga_ that gives the story told by Morris in "The Lovers of
Gudrun." Among sagas it is famous for its fine portrayal of character.
The saga and the poem tell the story of two neighboring farms, Herdholt
and Bathsted, whose sons and daughters work out a dire tragedy. Kiartan
and Bodli are the son and foster-son of the first house, and Gudrun is
the daughter of the second. These are the principal personages in the
drama, though the list of the other _dramatis personæ_ is a long one.
Not only in the name of its heroine does the story suggest the
_Nibelungenlied_. The machinery of the Norse stories resembles the
German story's in many of its parts. In this version of Morris, the main
features of the saga are kept, and distracting details are properly
subordinated to the principal interest. Through the nineteen divisions
of this story the interest moves rapidly, and wonder as to the issue is
never lost. As a story-teller, Morris is distinctly powerful in this
poem, and all the qualities that endear the story-teller to us are here
found joined to many that make the poet a favorite with us. There are no
lyrics in the poem--the original saga was without the song-snatches that
are often found in sagas--but there are dramatic scenes that recall the
power of the Master-poet. Least of all the poems in the _Earthly
Paradise_ does "The Lovers of Gudrun" show the Chaucerian influence, and
the reader must be captious indeed who complains of the length of this
story.
To the unenlightened reader this poem reveals no traits that are
un-English. What there is of Old Norse flavor here is purely spiritual.
The original story being in prose, no attempt could be made to keep
original characteristics in verse-form. So "The Lovers of Gudrun" can
stand on its own merits as an English poem; no excuses need be made for
it on the plea that it is a translation.
Local color is not laid on the canvas after the figures have been
painted, but all the tints in the persons and the things are grandly
Norse. This story is a true romance, in that the scene is far removed
from the present day, and the atmosphere is very different from our own.
This story is a true picture of life, in that it sets forth the doings
of men and women in the power of the master passion. And so for the
purposes of literature this poem is not Norse, or rather, it is more
than Norse, it is universal. Now and then, to be sure, the displaced
Norse ideals are set forth in the poem, but in such wise that we almost
regret that the old order has passed away. The Wanderer who tells the
tale assures his listeners of the truth of it in these last words of the
interlude between "The Story of Rhodope" and "The Lovers of Gudrun":
Know withal that we
Have ever deemed this tale as true to be,
As though those very Dwellers in Laxdale,
Risen from the dead had told us their own tale;
Who for the rest while yet they dwelt on earth
Wearied no God with prayers for more of mirth
Than dying men have; nor were ill-content
Because no God beside their sorrow went
Turning to flowery sward the rock-strewn way,
Weakness to strength, or darkness into day.
Therefore, no marvels hath my tale to tell,
But deals with such things as men know too well;
All that I have herein your hearts to move,
Is but the seed and fruit of bitter love.
It is aside from our purpose to tell this story here. The more we study
this marvelous work, the more it is impressed upon us that in the reign
of love all men and all literatures are one. To the Englishman this
description of an Iceland maiden is no stranger than it was to the men
who sat about the spluttering fire in the Icelander's hall. It is the
form of Gudrun that is here described:
That spring was she just come to her full height,
Low-bosomed yet she was, and slim and light,
Yet scarce might she grow fairer from that day;
Gold were the locks wherewith the wind did play,
Finer than silk, waved softly like the sea
After a three days' calm, and to her knee
Wellnigh they reached; fair were the white hands laid
Upon the door posts where the dragons played;
Her brow was smooth now, and a smile began
To cross her delicate mouth, the snare of man.
(_Earthly Paradise_, Vol. II, p. 247.)
Not less accustomed are we to such heroes as Kiartan:
And now in every mouth was Kiartan's name,
And daily now must Gudrun's dull ears bear
Tales of the prowess of his youth to hear,
While in his cairn forgotten lay her love.
For this man, said they, all men's hearts did move,
Nor yet might envy cling to such an one,
So far beyond all dwellers 'neath the sun;
Great was he, yet so fair of face and limb
That all folk wondered much, beholding him,
How such a man could be; no fear he knew,
And all in manly deeds he could outdo;
Fleet-foot, a swimmer strong, an archer good,
Keen-eyed to know the dark waves' changing mood;
Sure on the crag, and with the sword so skilled,
That when he played therewith the air seemed filled
With light of gleaming blades; therewith was he
Of noble speech, though says not certainly
My tale, that aught of his he left behind
With rhyme and measure deftly intertwined.
(P. 266.)
The Old Norse touch here is in the last three lines which intimate that
the warrior was often a bard; but be it remembered that the Elizabethan
warrior could turn a sonnet, too.
We have said that the _Laxdæla Saga_ is famous for its portrayal of
character. This English version falls not at all below the original in
this quality. The lines already quoted show Gudrun and Kiartan as to
exterior. But this is a drama of flesh and blood creations, and they are
men and women that move through it, not puppets. Souls are laid bare
here, in quivering, pulsating agony. The tremendous figure of this story
is not Kiartan, nor Gudrun, nor Refna, but Bodli, and certainly English
narrative poetry has no second creation like to him. The mind reverts to
Shakespeare to find fit companionship for Bodli in poetry, and to George
Eliot and Thomas Hardy in prose. The suggestion of Shakespearean
qualities in George Eliot has been made by several great critics, among
them Edmond Scherer;[31] in Hardy and Morris, here, we find the same
soul-searching powers. These writers have created sufferers of titanic
greatness, and in the presence of their tragedies we are dumb.
An English artist has made Napoleon's voyage on H.M.S. _Bellerophon_ to
his prison-isle a picture that the memory refuses to forget. The picture
of Bodli as he sails back to Iceland, which, though his home, is to be
his prison and his death, is no less impressive:
Fair goes the ship that beareth out Christ's truth
Mingled of hope, of sorrow, and of ruth,
And on the prow Bodli the Christian stands,
Sunk deep in thought of all the many lands
The world holds, and the folk that dwell therein,
And wondering why that grief and rage and sin
Was ever wrought; but wondering most of all
Why such wild passion on his heart should fall.
(P. 294.)
Here we have the poet's conception--and the sagaman's--of Bodli--a man
in the grip of terrible Fate, who can no more swerve from the paths she
marks out for him than he can add a cubit to his stature. The Greek
tragedy embodies this idea, and Old Norse literature is full of it.
Thomas Hardy gives it later in his contemporary novels. We sympathize
with Bodli's fate because his agony is so terrible, and we call him the
most striking figure in this story. But the others suffer, too, Gudrun,
Kiartan, Refna; they make a stand against their woe, and utter brave
words in the face of it. Only Bodli floats downward with the tide,
unresisting. Guest prophesies bitter things for Gudrun, but adds:
Be merry yet! these things shall not be all
That unto thee in this thy life shall fall.
(P. 254.)
And Gudrun takes heart. When Thurid tells her brother Kiartan that
Gudrun has married another, his joy is shivered into atoms before him.
But he can say, even then:
Now is this world clean changed for me
In this last minute, yet indeed I see
That still it will go on for all my pain;
Come then, my sister, let us back again;
I must meet folk, and face the life beyond,
And, as I may, walk 'neath the dreadful bond
Of ugly pain--such men our fathers were,
Not lightly bowed by any weight of care.
(P. 311.)
And Kiartan does his work in the world. Poor Refna, when she has married
Kiartan hears women talking of the love that still is between Gudrun and
Kiartan. She goes to Kiartan with the story, beginning with words whose
pathos must conquer the most stoical of readers:
Indeed of all thy grief I knew,
But deemed if still thou saw'st me kind and true,
Not asking too much, yet not failing aught
To show that not far off need love be sought,
If thou shouldst need love--if thou sawest all this,
Thou wouldst not grudge to show me what a bliss
Thy whole love was, by giving unto me
As unto one who loved thee silently,
Now and again the broken crumbs thereof:
Alas! I, having then no part in love,
Knew not how naught, naught can allay the soul
Of that sad thirst, but love untouched and whole!
Kinder than e'er I durst have hoped thou art,
Forgive me then, that yet my craving heart
Is so unsatisfied; I know that thou
Art fain to dream that I am happy now,
And for that seeming ever do I strive;
Thy half-love, dearest, keeps me still alive
To love thee; and I bless it--but at whiles,--
(P. 343)
And thus she gains strength to live her life.
Here, then, in Bodli, is another of the great tragic figures in
literature--a sick man. There are many of them, even in the highest rank
of literary creations, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth! Wrong-headed,
defective as they are, we would not have them otherwise. The pearl of
greatest price is the result of an abnormal or morbid process.
Bodli comes to us from Icelandic literature, and in that fact we note
the solidarity of poetic geniuses. Not only is the great figure of Bodli
proof of this solidarity, but many other features of this poem prove it.
"Lively feeling for a situation and power to express it constitute the
poet," said Goethe. There are dramatic situations in "The Lovers of
Gudrun" which hold the reader in a breathless state till the last word
is said, and then leave him marveling at the imagination that could
conceive the scene, and the power that could express it. There are
gentler scenes, too, in the poem, where beauty and grace are conceived
as fair as ever poet dreamed, and the workmanship is thoroughly
adequate. As an example of the first, take the scene of Bodli's mourning
over Kiartan's dead body. It is here that we get that knowledge of
Bodli's woe that robs us of a cause against him. What agony is that
which can speak thus over the body of the dead rival!
... Didst thou quite
Know all the value of that dear delight
As I did? Kiartan, she is changed to thee;
Yea, and since hope is dead changed too to me,
What shall we do, if, each of each forgiven,
We three shall meet at last in that fair heaven
The new faith tells of? Thee and God I pray
Impute it not for sin to me to-day,
If no thought I can shape thereof but this:
O friend, O friend, when thee I meet in bliss,
Wilt thou not give my love Gudrun to me,
Since now indeed thine eyes made clear can see
That I of all the world must love her most?
(P. 368.)
Examples of the gentler scenes are scattered lavishly throughout the
poem and it is not necessary to enumerate.
One other sign that the Icelandic sagaman's art was kin to the English
poet's. The last line of this poem is given thus by Morris:
I did the worst to him I loved the most.
These are the very words of Gudrun in the saga, and summing up as they
do her opinion of Kiartan, they stand as a model of that compression
which is so admired in our poetry. Many such _multum in parvo_ lines are
found in Morris' poem, and at times they have a beauty that is
marvelous. Joined with this quality is the special merit of
Morris--picturesqueness, and so the reader often feels, when he has
finished a book by Morris, like the Cook tourist after he has "done" a
country of Europe--it must be done again and again to give it its due.
Of the other two Old Norse poems in _The Earthly Paradise_ not much need
be said. "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" is a fairy
tale, in the strain of Morris' prose romances. It was suggested by
Thorpe's _Yule-tide Stories_, the tale coming from the _Völundar Saga_.
There is a witchery about it that makes it pleasant reading in a dreamy
hour, but except the names and a few scenes about the farmstead, there
is nothing Icelandic about it. The virile element of the best Icelandic
literature is wanting here, and the hero's excuse for leaving weapons at
home when he goes to his watch is not at all natural:
Withal I shall not see
Men-folk belike, but faërie,
And all the arms within the seas
Should help me naught to deal with these;
Rather of such love were I fain
As fell to Sigurd Fafnir's-bane
When of the dragon's heart he ate.
(Vol. II, p. 33.)
This passage is nominally in the same meter as the opening lines of the
poem:
In this your land there once did dwell
A certain carle who lived full well,
And lacked few things to make him glad;
And three fair sons this goodman had.
According to old time English prosody, it is the same, too, as the meter
of Scott's Marmion!
In the passages quoted from "The Lovers of Gudrun" we see a measure
called the same as that of Pope's _Essay on Man_! Not seldom in "The
Lovers" do we forget that the lines are rhymed in twos; indeed, often we
do not note the rhyme at all. We are sometimes tempted to think that in
this piece, if not in "The Land East of the Sun," rhyme might have been
dispensed with altogether, since it often forces archaic words and
expressions into use. But it is to be said generally of Morris's
management of the meter in the Old Norse pieces, that it was adequate to
gain his end always, whether that end was to tell an Old Norse story in
English, or to carry over an Old Norse spirit into English. Of this
second achievement we shall speak further in considering _Sigurd the
Volsung_.
There is one more tale in _The Earthly Paradise_ which originated in
Norse legend. "The Fostering of Aslaug" is drawn from Thorpe's _Northern
Mythology_, which epitomizes older sources. Aslaug is the daughter of
Iceland's great hero, Sigurd, and Iceland's great heroine, Brynhild, and
her life is set down in this poem most beautifully. Again we note that
the added touches of later poets fail to leave the sense of the
strenuous in the picture. Aslaug is like a favorite representation of
Brynhild that we have seen, a lily-maid in aspect, or a Marguerite. Her
mother's masculinity is gone, and with it the Old Norse flavor. It is
the privilege of our age to enjoy both the virility of the Old Norse and
the delicacy of the mediæval conceptions, and William Morris has caught
both.
3.
In the opening lines of "The Fostering of Aslaug," our poet wrote his
doubts about his ability to sing the life of Sigurd in be-fitting
manner. At that time he said:
But now have I no heart to raise
That mighty sorrow laid asleep,
That love so sweet, so strong and deep,
That as ye hear the wonder told
In those few strenuous words of old,
The whole world seems to rend apart
When heart is torn away from heart.
(Vol. III, p. 28.)
It is a common complaint against the poetry of William Morris that it is
too long-winded. Each to his taste in this matter, but we beg to call
attention to one line in the above passage:
In those few strenuous words of old.
Whatever may have been Morris' tendency when he wrote his own poetry, he
knew when concision was a virtue in the poetry of others. There is no
better description of the _Völsunga Saga_ than the above line, and
William Morris gave the English people a literal version of the saga, if
mayhap that strenuous paucity might translate the old spirit. But, as if
he knew that many readers would fail to make much of this version, he
tried again on a larger scale, and the great volume _Sigurd the
Volsung_, epic in character and proportions, was the result. Of these
two we shall now speak.
The _Völsunga Saga_ was published in 1870, only two years after Morris
had begun to study Icelandic with Eirikr Magnusson. The latter's name is
on the title page as the first of the two co-translators. The _Saga_ was
supplemented by certain songs from the _Elder Edda_ which were
introduced by the translators at points where they would come naturally
in the story. The work, both in prose and verse, is well done, and the
attempt was successful to make, as the preface proposes, the "rendering
close and accurate, and, if it might be so, at the same time, not over
prosaic." The last two paragraphs of this preface are particularly
interesting to one who is tracing the influence of Old Norse literature
on English literature, because they are words with power, that have
stirred men and will stir men to learn more about a wonderful land and
its lore. We copy them entire:
"As to the literary quality of this work we might say much, but we think
we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break through whatever
entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at first trouble
him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is filled: we
cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by finding,
amidst all its wildness and remoteness, such startling realism, such
subtilty, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move
himself to-day.
"In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to us, that this
Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should never before
have been translated into English. For this is the Great Story of the
North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the
Greeks--to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the
world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has been--a
story too--then should it be to those that come after us no less than
the Tale of Troy has been to us."
Morris wrote a prologue in verse for this volume, and it is an exquisite
poem, such as only he seemed able to indite. So often does the reader of
Morris come upon gems like this, that one is tempted to rail against the
common ignorance about him:
O hearken, ye who speak the English Tongue,
How in a waste land ages long ago,
The very heart of the North bloomed into song
After long brooding o'er this tale of woe!
. . . . . . . . .
Yea, in the first gray dawning of our race,
This ruth-crowned tangle to sad hearts was dear.
. . . . . . . . .
So draw ye round and hearken, English Folk,
Unto the best tale pity ever wrought!
Of how from dark to dark bright Sigurd broke,
Of Brynhild's glorious soul with love distraught,
Of Gudrun's weary wandering unto naught,
Of utter love defeated utterly,
Of Grief too strong to give Love time to die!
4.
Six years later, in 1877 (English edition), Morris published the long
poem, _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and The Fall of the Niblungs_,
and in it gave the peerless crown of all English poems springing from
Old Norse sources. The poet considered this his most important work, and
he was prouder of it than of any other literary work that he did. One
who studies it can understand this pride, but he cannot understand the
neglect by the reading public of this remarkable poem. The history of
book-selling in the last decade shows strange revivals of interest in
authors long dead; it will be safe to prophesy such a revival for
William Morris, because valuable treasures will not always remain
hidden. In his case, however, it will not be a revival, because there
has not been an awakening yet. That awakening must come, and thousands
will see that William Morris was a great poet who have not yet heard of
his name. Let us look at his greatest work with some degree of
minuteness.
The opening lines are a good model of the meter, and we find it
different from any that we have considered so far. There are certain
peculiarities about it that make it seem a perfect medium for
translating the Old Norse spirit. Most of these peculiarities are in the
opening lines, and so we may transfer them to this page:[32]
There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its
floors,
And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle adown the bickering blast.
Everybody knows that alliteration was a principle of Icelandic verse. It
strikes the ear that hears Icelandic poetry for the first time--or the
eye that sees it, since most of us read it silently--as unpleasantly
insistent, but on fuller acquaintance, we lose this sense of
obtrusiveness. Morris, in this poem, uses alliteration, but so skilfully
that only the reader that seeks it discovers it. A less superb artist
would have made it stick out in every line, so that the device would be
a hindrance to the story-telling. As it is, nowhere in the more than
nine thousand lines of _Sigurd the Volsung_ is this alliteration an
excrescence, but everywhere it is woven into the grand design of a
fabric which is the richer for its foreign workmanship.
Notice that _duke_ and _battle_ and _master_ are the only words not
thoroughly Teutonic. This overwhelming predominance of the Anglo-Saxon
element over the French is in keeping with the original of the story. Of
course it is an accident that so small a proportion of Latin derivatives
is found in these six lines, but the fact remains that Morris set
himself to tell a Teutonic story in Teutonic idiom. That idiom is not
very strange to present-day readers, indeed we may say it has but a
fillip of strangeness. Archaisms are characteristic of poetic diction,
and those found in this poem that are not common to other poetry are
used to gain an Old Norse flavor. The following words taken from Book I
of the poem are the only unfamiliar ones: _benight_, meaning "at night";
"so _win_ the long years over"; _eel-grig_; _sackless_; _bursten_, a
participle. The compounds _door-ward_ and _song-craft_ are
representative of others that are sprinkled in fair number through the
poem. They are the best that our language can do to reproduce the fine
combinations that the Icelandic language formed so readily. English
lends itself well to this device, as the many compounds show that Morris
took from common usage. Such words as _roof-tree_, _song-craft_,
_empty-handed_, _grave-mound_, _store-house_, taken at random from the
pages of this poem, show that the genius of our language permits such
formations. When Morris carries the practice a little further, and makes
for his poem such words as _door-ward_, _chance-hap_, _slumber-tide_,
_troth-word_, _God-home_, and a thousand others, he is not taking
liberties with the language, and he is using a powerful aid in
translating the Old Norse spirit.
One more peculiar characteristic of Icelandic is admirably exhibited in
this poem. We have seen that Warton recognized in the "Runic poets" a
warmth of fancy which expressed itself in "circumlocution and
comparisons, not as a matter of necessity, but of choice and skill."
Certainly Morris in using these circumlocutions in _Sigurd the Volsung_,
has exercised remarkable skill in weaving them into his story. Like the
alliterations, they are part of an harmonious design. Examples abound,
like:
Adown unto the swan-bath the Volsung Children ride;
and this other for the same thing, the sea:
While sleepeth the fields of the fishes amidst the summer-tide.
Still others for the water are _swan-mead_, and "bed-gear of the swan."
"The serpent of death" and _war-flame_, for sword; _earth-bone_, for
rock; _fight-sheaves_, for armed hosts; _seaburg_, for boats, are other
striking examples.
So much for the mechanical details of this poem. Its literary features
are so exceptional that we must examine them at length.
Book I is entitled "Sigmund" and the description is set at the head of
it. "In this book is told of the earlier days of the Volsungs, and of
Sigmund the father of Sigurd, and of his deeds, and of how he died while
Sigurd was yet unborn in his mother's womb."
There are many departures from the _Völsunga Saga_ in this poetic
version, and all seem to be accounted for by a desire to impress
present-day readers with this story. The poem begins with Volsung,
omitting, therefore, the marvelous birth of that king and the oath of
the unborn child to "flee in fear from neither fire nor the sword." The
saga makes the wolf kill one of Volsung's sons every night; the poem
changes the number to two. A magnificent scene is invented by Morris in
the midnight visit of Signy to the wood where her brothers had been
slain. She speaks to the brother that is left, desiring to know what he
is doing:
O yea, I am living indeed, and this labor of mine hand
Is to bury the bones of the Volsungs; and lo, it is well nigh done.
So draw near, Volsung's daughter, and pile we many a stone
Where lie the gray wolf s gleanings of what was once so good.
(P. 23.)
The dialogue of brother and sister is a mighty conception, and surely
the old Icelanders would have called Morris a rare singer. Sigmund tells
the story of the deaths of his brothers, adding:
But now was I wroth with the Gods, that had made the Volsungs for
nought;
And I said: in the Day of their Doom a man's help shall they miss.
(P. 24.)
But Signy is reconciled to the workings of Fate:
I am nothing so wroth as thou art with the ways of death and hell,
For thereof had I a deeming when all things were seeming well.
The day to come shall set their woes right:
There as thou drawest thy sword, thou shall think of the days that were
And the foul shall still seem foul, and the fair shall still seem fair;
But thy wit shall then be awakened, and thou shalt know indeed
Why the brave man's spear is broken, and his war shield fails at need;
Why the loving is unbeloved; why the just man falls from his state;
Why the liar gains in a day what the soothfast strives for late.
Yea, and thy deeds shalt thou know, and great shall thy gladness be;
As a picture all of gold thy life-days shalt thou see,
And know that thou wert a God to abide through the hurry and haste;
A God in the golden hall, a God in the rain-swept waste,
A God in the battle triumphant, a God on the heap of the slain:
And thine hope shall arise and blossom, and thy love shall be quickened
again:
And then shalt thou see before thee the face of all earthly ill;
Thou shalt drink of the cup of awakening that thine hand hath holpen to
fill;
By the side of the sons of Odin shalt thou fashion a tale to be told
In the hall of the happy Baldur.
(P. 25.)
In this wise one Christian might hearten another to accept the dealings
of Providence to-day. While we do not think that a worshipper of Odin
would have spoken all these words, they are not an undue exaggeration of
the noblest traits of the old Icelandic religion.
The poem does not record the death of Siggeir's and Signy's son, though
the saga does. Morris adds a touch when he makes the imprisoned men
exult over the sword that Signy drops into their grave, and he also puts
into the mouth of Siggeir in the burning hall words that the saga does
not contain. The poem says that the women of the Gothfolk were permitted
to retire from the burning hall, but the saga has no such statement. The
war of foul words between Granmar and Sinfjötli is left in the saga, and
the cause of Gudrod's death is changed from rivalry over a woman to
anger over a division of war booty. In Sigmund's lament over his
childlessness we have another of the poet's additions, and certainly we
find no fault with the liberty:
The tree was stalwart, but its boughs are old and worn.
Where now are the children departed, that amidst my life were born?
I know not the men about me, and they know not of my ways:
I am nought but a picture of battle, and a song for the people to
praise.
I must strive with the deeds of my kingship, and yet when mine hour is
come
It shall meet me as glad as the goodman when he bringeth the last load
home.
(P. 56.)
When the great hero dies, Morris puts into his mouth another of the
magnificent speeches that are the glory of this poem. Four lines from it
must suffice:
When the gods for one deed asked me I ever gave them twain;
Spendthrift of glory I was, and great was my life-day's gain.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Our wisdom and valour have kissed, and thine eyes shall see the fruit,
And the joy for his days that shall be hath pierced my heart to the
root.
(P. 62.)
It appears from this study of Book I that _Sigurd the Volsung_ has
adapted the saga story to our civilization and our art, holding to the
best of the old and supplementing it by new that is ever in keeping with
the old. Other instances of this eclectic habit may be seen in the other
three books, but we shall quote from these for other purposes.
Book II is entitled "Regin." "Now this is the first book of the life and
death of Sigurd the Volsung, and therein is told of the birth of him,
and of his dealings with Regin the Master of Masters, and of his deeds
in the waste places of the earth."
Morris was deeply read in Old Norse literature, and out of his stores of
knowledge he brought vivifying details for this poem. Such, for
instance, is the description of Sigurd's eyes, not found just here in
the saga:
In the bed there lieth a man-child, and his eyes look straight on
the sun.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yet they shrank in their rejoicing before the eyes of the child.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
In the naming of the child by an ancient name, the meaning of that name
is indicated:
O _Sigurd_, Son of the Volsungs, O Victory yet to be!
The festivities over the birth of the child are wonderfully described
in the brief lines, and they are a picture out of another book than the
saga:
Earls think of marvellous stories, and along the golden strings
Flit words of banded brethren and names of war-fain Kings.
Over and over again in this poem Morris records the Icelanders' desire
"to leave a tale to tell," and here are Sigurd's words to Regin who has
been egging him on to deeds:
Yet I know that the world is wide, and filled with deeds unwrought;
And for e'en such work was I fashioned, lest the songcraft come to
nought,
When the harps of God-home tinkle, and the Gods are at stretch to
hearken:
Lest the hosts of the Gods be scanty when their day hath begun to
darken.
(P. 82.)
In Book II we have other great speeches that the poet has put into the
mouth of his characters with little or no justification in the original
saga. Chap. XIV of the saga contains Regin's tale of his brothers, and
of the gold called "Andvari's Hoard," and that tale is severely brief
and plain. The account in the poem is expanded greatly, and the
conception of Regin materially altered. In the saga he was not the
discontented youngest son of his father, prone to talk of his woes and
to lament his lot. In the poem he does this in so eloquent a fashion
that almost we are persuaded to sympathize with him. Certainly his lines
were hard, to have outlived his great deeds, and to hear his many
inventions ascribed to the gods. The speech of the released Odin to
Reidmar is modeled on Job's conception of omnipotence, and it is one of
the memorable parts of this book. Gripir's prophecy, too, is a majestic
work, and its original was three sentences in the saga and the poem
_Grípisspá_ in the heroic songs of the _Edda_. Here Morris rises to the
heights of Sigurd's greatness:
Sigurd, Sigurd! O great, O early born!
O hope of the Kings first fashioned! O blossom of the morn!
Short day and long remembrance, fair summer of the North!
One day shall the worn world wonder how first thou wentest forth!
(P. 111.)
Those who have read William Morris know that he is a master of nature
description. The "Glittering Heath" offered a fine opportunity for this
sort of work, and in this piece we have another departure from the saga,
Morris made hundreds of pictures in this poem, but the pages describing
the journey to the "Glittering Heath" are packed with them to an
extraordinary degree. Here is Iceland in very fact, all dust and ashes
to the eye:
More changeless than mid-ocean, as fruitless as its floor.
We confess that there is something in the scene that holds us, all shorn
of beauty though it is. We do not want to go the length of Thomas Hardy,
however, who, in that wonderful first chapter of _The Return of the
Native_ has a similar heath to describe. "The new vale of Tempe," says
he, "may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may find themselves in
closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness
distasteful to our race when it was young.... The time seems near, if it
has not actually arrived, when the mournful sublimity of a moor, a sea,
or a mountain, will be all of nature that is absolutely consonant with
the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the
commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and
myrtlegardens of South Europe are to him now." Is it not a suggestive
thought that England and the nineteenth century evolved a pessimism
which poor Iceland on its ash-heap never could conceive? William Morris
was an Icelander, not an Englishman, in his philosophy.
In this same scene, a notable deviation from the saga is the
conversation between Regin and Sigurd concerning the relations that
shall be between them after the slaying of Fafnir. Here Morris impresses
the lesson of Regin's greed, taking the un-Icelandic device of preaching
to serve his purpose:
Let it lead thee up to heaven, let it lead thee down to hell,
The deed shall be done tomorrow: thou shalt have that measureless Gold,
And devour the garnered wisdom that blessed thy realm of old,
That hath lain unspent and begrudged in the, very heart of hate:
With the blood and the might of thy brother thine hunger shalt thou
sate:
And this deed shall be mine and thine; but take heed for what followeth
then!
(P. 119.)
In still another place has Morris departed far from the saga story.
According to the poem, Sigurd meets each warning of Fafnir that the gold
will be the curse of its possessor with the assurance that he will cast
the gold abroad, and let none of it cling to his fingers. The saga,
however, has this very frank confession: "Home would I ride and lose all
that wealth, if I deemed that by the losing thereof I should never die;
but every brave and true man will fain have his hand on wealth till that
last day." Here, again, we see an adaptation of the story of the poem to
modern conceptions of nobility. It remains to be said that the ernes
move Sigurd to take the gold for the gladdening of the world, and they
assure him that a son of the Volsung had nought to fear from the Curse.
The seven-times-repeated "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd," is an admirable
poem, but it does not contain information concerning Brynhild, as do the
strophes of _Reginsmál_ which are the model for this lay.
Let us look at the art of Morris as it is shown in telling "How Sigurd
awoke Brynhild upon Hindfell." As in the saga, so in the English poem,
this incident has a setting most favorable to the display of its
remarkable beauties. It is a picture as pure and sweet as it has ever
entered into the mind of man to conceive. The conception belongs to the
poetic lore of many nations, and children are early introduced to the
story of "Sleeping Beauty." There are some features of the Old Norse
version that are especially charming, and first among them is the
address of the awakened Brynhild to the sun and the earth. We are told
that this maiden loved the radiant hero that here awoke her from her
age-long sleep, but not for him is her first greeting. A finer thrill
moves her than love for a man, and in Morris's poem, this feeling finds
singularly beautiful expression:
All hail O Day and thy Sons, and thy kin of the coloured things!
Hail, following Night, and thy Daughter that leadeth thy wavering
wings!
Look down with unangry eyes on us today alive,
And give us the hearts victorious, and the gain for which we strive!
All hail, ye Lords of God-home, and ye Queens of the House of Gold!
Hail thou dear Earth that bearest, and thou Wealth of field and fold!
Give us, your noble children, the glory of wisdom and speech,
And the hearts and the hands of healing, and the mouths and hands that
teach!
(P. 140.)
In order to see just what the art of Morris has done for this poem, let
us compare this address with the rendering of the _Sigrdrifumál_, which
tell the same story and which Morris and Magnusson have incorporated
into their translation of the _Völsunga Saga_. The verses are not in the
original saga:
Hail to the day come back!
Hail, sons of the daylight!
Hail to thee, dark night, and thy daughter!
Look with kind eyes a-down,
On us sitting here lonely,
And give unto us the gain that we long for.
Hail to the Æsir,
And the sweet Asyniur!
Hail to the fair earth fulfilled of plenty!
Fair words, wise hearts,
Would we win from you,
And healing hands while life we hold.
To get the full benefit of the comparison of the old and the new, let us
set in conjunction with these versions a severely literal translation of
the _Edda_ strophes themselves:
Hail, O Day,
Hail, O Sons of the Day,
Hail Night and kinswoman!
With unwroth eyes
look on us here
and give to us sitting ones victory.
Hail, O Gods,
Hail, O Goddesses,
Hail, O bounteous Earth!
Speech and wisdom
give to us, the excellent twain,
and healing hands during life.
These stages in the progress of the gold from mine to mint furnish their
own commentary. The finished product will pass current with the most
exacting of assayers, as well as gladden the hearts of the poor one
whose hand seldom touches gold.
If the skill of the poet in this case have merited resemblance to that
of the refiner of gold, what name less than alchemy can characterize his
achievement in the rest of this scene? From the first words of
Brynhild's life-story:
I am she that loveth; I was born of the earthly folk;
to the tender words that tell of the coming of another day:
And fresh and all abundant abode the deeds of Day,
there is a succession of beautiful scenes and glorious speeches such as
only a master of magic could have gotten out of the original story. The
Eddaic account of the Valkyr's disobedience to All-Father, pictures a
saucy and self-willed maiden. Sentence has been pronounced upon her, and
thus the story continues: "But I said I would vow a vow against it, and
marry no man that knew fear." The _Völsunga Saga_ gives exactly the same
account, but the poetic version of Morris saves the maiden for our
respect and admiration. It is not effrontery, but repentance that speaks
in the voice of Brynhild here:
The thoughts of my heart overcame me, and the pride of my wisdom and
speech,
And I scorned the earth-folk's Framer, and the Lord of the world I must
teach.
In the Icelandic version, Odin makes no speech at the dooming, but
Morris puts into his mouth this magnificent address:
And he cried: "Thou hast thought in thy folly that the Gods have
friends and foes,
That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and
the world slips back,
That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and
fashion the wrack:
Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall aback on thine head;
Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed!
For the Gods are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom seen,
And the wrong that they will and must be is soon as it hath not been."
(P. 141.)
Morris has here again exercised the poet's privilege of adding to the
story that was the pride of an entire age, in order to serve his own the
better. If he was wise in these additions, he was no less wise in
subtractions and in preservations. The saga has a long address by
Brynhild, opening with mystical advice concerning the power of runes,
and closing grandly with wise words that sound like a page from the Old
Testament. The former find no place in _Sigurd the Volsung_, but the
latter are turned into mighty phrases that wonderfully preserve the
spirit of the original.
One passage more from Book II:
So they climb the burg of Hindfell, and hand in hand they fare,
Till all about and above them is nought but the sunlit air,
And there close they cling together rejoicing in their mirth;
For far away beneath them lie the kingdoms of the earth,
And the garths of men-folk's dwellings and the streams that water them,
And the rich and plenteous acres, and the silver ocean's hem,
And the woodland wastes and the mountains, and all that holdeth all;
The house and the ship and the island, the loom and the mine and the
stall,
The beds of bane and healing, the crafts that slay and save,
The temple of God and the Doom-ring, the cradle and the grave.
(P. 145.)
These ten lines serve to illustrate very well one of the most remarkable
powers of Morris. Just consider for a moment the number of details that
are crowded into this picture, and then notice how few are the strokes
required to put them there. For this rapid painting of a crowded canvas
Morris is second to none among English poets. This power to put a whole
landscape or a complex personality into a few lines is the direct
outcome of his study of Old Norse literature. Icelandic poetry is
characterized by this quality. One has but to compare the account of the
end of the world as it is found in the last strophes of _Völuspá_, or in
the _Prose Edda_, with the similar account in _Revelations_ to see how
much two languages may differ in this respect. It would seem as if the
short verses characteristic of Icelandic poetry forbade lengthy
descriptions. The effect must be produced by a number of quick strokes:
there is never time to go over a line once made. A simile is never
elaborated, a new one is made when the poet wishes to insist on the
figure. Take the second strophe of the "Ancient Lay of Gudrun" as an
example, in the translation by Morris and Magnusson:
Such was my Sigurd
Among the Sons of Giuki
As is the green leek
O'er the low grass waxen,
Or a hart high-limbed
Over hurrying deer,
Or gleed-red gold
Over grey silver.
That is the Icelandic fashion; William Morris has caught it in the
_Story of Sigurd_. Matthew Arnold has not seen fit to use it in his
"Balder Dead," as these lines show:
Him the blind Hoder met, as he came up
From the sea cityward, and knew his step;
Nor yet could Hermod see his brother's face,
For it grew dark; but Hermod touched his arm.
And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers
Brushes across a tired traveller's face
Who shuffles thro the deep-moistened dust,
On a May-evening, in the darkened lanes,
And starts him that he thinks a ghost went by--
So Hoder brushed by Hermod's side.
These are noble lines, but altogether foreign to Icelandic.
Book III opens with the dream of Gudrun and Brynhild's interpretation of
it. This matter is managed in accordance with our own standards of art,
and thus differs materially from the saga story. In the latter a most
naïve procedure is adopted, for Brynhild prophesies that Sigurd shall
leave her for Gudrun, through Grimhild's guile, that strife shall come
between them, and that Sigurd shall die and Gudrun wed Atli. The whole
later story is thus revealed. This is not a story-teller's art, but it
sets clear the Old Norse acceptance of fate's dealings. Of course
Morris' poetic action explains the dream perfectly, but the details are
not so frankly given.
"Thou shalt live and love and lose, and mingle in murder and war," is
the gist of Brynhild's message, and the whole future history is there.
This poem has often been called an epic, and certainly there are many
epical characteristics in it. One of them is the recurrence of certain
formulas, and in Books III and IV these are rather more abundant than in
the first two books. Thus the sword of Sigurd is praised in the same
words, again and again:
It hath not its like in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told.
Then, there is the "cloudy hall-roof" of the Niblungs. Gudrun is "the
white-armed"; Grimhild is "the wisest of women"; Hogni is the
"wise-heart"; the Niblungs are "the Cloudy People"; their beds are
"blue-covered"; "the Godson the hangings" is an expression that recurs
very often, and it recalls the fact that Morris was an artisan as well
as an artist.
In the preceding books we have noted that Morris lengthened the saga
story in his poem by the introduction of speeches that find no place in
the original. In this book we see another lengthening process, which,
with that already noted, goes far to account for the difference in bulk
between the saga and the poem. Chap. XXVI of the saga, tells in less
than a thousands words how Sigurd comes to the Giukings and is wedded to
Gudrun. His reception is told in one hundred words; his abode with the
Giukings is set forth in even fewer words; Grimhild's plotting and
administering of the drugged drink are told in two hundred words; his
acceptance of Gudrun's hand and her brother's allegiance are as tersely
pictured; kingdoms are conquered, a son is born to Sigurd, and Grimhild
plots to have Sigurd get Brynhild for her son Gunnar, yet the record of
it all is compressed within one hundred and fifty words. Of course, the
modern poet can hem himself within no such narrow bounds as this. The
artistic value of these various incidents is priceless, and Morris has
lingered upon them lovingly and long. He spreads the story over forty
pages, or a thousand lines, and I avow, after a third reading of these
three sections of the poem, that I would spare no line of them. How we
love this Sigurd of the poet's painting! And what a noble gospel he
proclaims to the Giukings:
For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth,
Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth;
But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;
And the edge of the sword to the traitor, and the flame to the
slanderous breath:
And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary
should sleep,
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should
reap.
(P. 174.)
Here, by the way, is the burden of Morris's preaching in the cause of a
better society. It recurs a few pages further on in the poem, where the
Niblungs bestow praise on this new hero:
And they say, when the sun of summer shall come aback to the land,
It shall shine on the fields of the tiller that fears no heavy hand;
That the sleep shall be for the plougher, and the loaf for him that
sowed,
Through every furrowed acre where the Son of Sigmund rode.
(P. 178.)
It need hardly be remarked that this Sigurd is not the sagaman's ideal.
The Icelanders never evolved such high conceptions of man's obligations
to man, but in their ignorance they were no worse off than their
continental brethren, for these forgot their greatest Teacher's
teaching, and modern social science must point them back to it.
This Sigurd that we love becomes the Sigurd that we pity in the drinking
of a draught. Sorrow takes the place of joy in his life, and "the soul
is changed in him," so that men may say that on this day they saw him
die the first time, who was to die a second time by Guttorm's sword.
Gloom spreads over all the earth with the quenching of Sigurd's joy:
In the deedless dark he rideth, and all things he remembers save one,
And nought else hath he care to remember of all the deeds he hath done.
Here is illustrated the essential difference between the sagaman's art
and the modern story-teller's. The Icelander must tell his story in
haste; the deeds of men are his care, not their divagations nor their
psychologizings. The modern writer must linger on every step in the
story until the motive and the meaning are laid bare. In the present-day
version Sigurd's mental sufferings are described at length, and our
hearts are wrung at his unmerited woes. The saga knows no such woes, and
to all appearance Sigurd's life is not unhappy to its very end. Indeed,
it appears in more than one place in Morris's poem that Sigurd has
become godlike through the hard experiences of his life. Take this
passage as an illustration:
So is Sigurd yet with the Niblungs, and he loveth Gudrun his wife,
And wendeth afield with the brethren to the days of the dooming of
life;
And nought his glory waneth, nor falleth the flood of praise:
To every man he hearkeneth, nor gainsayeth any grace,
And, glad is the poor in the Doom-ring when he seeth his face mid
the Kings,
For the tangle straighteneth before him, and the maze of crooked
things.
But the smile is departed from him, and the laugh of Sigurd the
young,
And of few words now is he waxen, and his songs are seldom sung.
Howbeit of all the sad-faced was Sigurd loved the best;
And men say: Is the king's heart mighty beyond all hope of rest?
Lo, how he beareth the people! how heavy their woes are grown!
So oft were a God mid the Goth-folk, if he dwelt in the world alone.
(P. 205.)
Set this by the side of the saga: "This is truer," says Sigurd, "that I
loved thee better than myself, though I fell into the wiles from whence
our lives may not escape; for whenso my own heart and mind availed me,
then I sorrowed sore that thou wert not my wife; but as I might I put my
trouble from me, for in a king's dwelling was I; and withal and in spite
of all I was well content that we were all together. Well may it be,
that that shall come to pass which is foretold; neither shall I fear the
fulfilment thereof." (_Völunga Saga_, Chap. XXIX.) These words are
spoken to Brynhild after she has discovered what she regards as Sigurd's
treachery. His words are dictated by a noble resignation to fate, but
his very next remark shows a moral meanness not at all in keeping with
Morris's conception. Sigurd said: "This my heart would, that thou and I
should go into one bed together; even so wouldst thou be my wife."
There have been many griefs depicted in this poem, but surely here are
set forth the most pitiless of them all. The guile-won Brynhild travels
in state to the Cloudy Hall of the Niblungs, and the whole people come
out to meet her. They are astonished at her beauty, and give her cordial
greeting and welcome to her husband's house. Proud and majestic, the
marvelous woman steps from her golden wain, and gives friendly but
passionless greeting to Gunnar as she places her hand in his. For each
of Gunnar's brothers she has a kindly word, as she has for Grimhild,
too. She asks to see the foster-brother of whom such wondrous tales are
told, and whose name she heard from Gunnar's lips with never a
tremor--"Sigurd, the Volsung, the best man ever born." Grimhild stands
between them for a time, but the meeting has to come. Then Brynhild
remembers, and Sigurd sees the unveiled past:
Her heart ran back through the years, and yet her lips did move
With the words she spake on Hindfell, when they plighted troth of love.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
His face is exceeding glorious and awful to behold;
For of all his sorrow he knoweth and his hope smit dead and cold:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For the will of the Norns is accomplished, and outworn is Grimhild's
spell
And nought now shall blind or help him, and the tale shall be to tell.
(P. 226.)
There's the note of the whole history--the will of the Norns and the
note of a whole Northern literature, as it is of a whole Southern
literature. Man, the puppet, in the hands of Fate; however man may think
and reason and assure himself that the dispensation of Fate is just, the
supreme moment of realization will always be a tragedy:
He hath seen the face of Brynhild, and he knows why she hath come,
And that his is the hand that hath drawn her to the Cloudy People's
home:
He knows of the net of the days, and the deeds that the Gods have bid,
And no whit of the sorrow that shall be from his wakened soul is hid.
(P. 226.)
In such an hour, what are conquests of a glorious past, what are honors,
crowns, loves, hates? The mind can think of little matters only:
His heart speeds back to Hindfell, and the dawn of the wakening day;
And the hours betwixt are as nothing, and their deeds are fallen away.
(P. 226.)
Is aught to be said to one in such a crisis, the words are weak and
commonplace. There is Brynhild's greeting to Sigurd:
If aught thy soul shall desire while yet thou livest on earth,
I pray that thou mayst win it, nor forget its might and worth.
The shattered mind of Sigurd tries to grasp the meaning of the harmless
words, and like common sounds that are so fearful in the night, the
phrases assume a terrible import:
All grief, sharp scorn, sore longing, stark death in her voice he knew.
Then again conies the dominant note of this story:
Gone forth is the doom of the Norns, and what shall be answer thereto,
While the death that amendeth lingers?
Here is a hint of the end of all--"the death that amendeth," and from
this point to the end of the story there is no gleam of happiness for
anyone.
Book IV brings to a majestic close this mighty history. We have dwelt so
long on the wonderful poetry of the other books that we must refrain
from further comment in this strain. As we read these eloquent
imaginings, we regret that the English reading public have left this
work through fear of its great length or the ignorance of its existence,
in the dust of half-forgotten shelves. Gold disused is true gold none
the less, and the ages to come may be more appreciative than the
present.
For the sake of rounding out this story, be it noted concerning this
Book IV, that the poet has taken liberties with the saga story here, as
elsewhere. Motives more easily understood in our day are assigned for
the deeds of dread that throng these closing scenes. Gudrun weds King
Atli at her mother's bidding, and under the influence of a wicked
potion, but neither mother nor magic drives the memory of Sigurd from
her mind. She lives to bring destruction upon her husband's murderers,
and those murderers are her own flesh and blood. Through her appeals to
Atli's greed, and through Knefrud's lies in the Niblung court, the visit
of her proud brothers to her pliant husband is brought about. The saga
makes Atli the arch-plotter, and the motive his desire to possess the
gold. This sentence exculpates Gudrun from any wrong intention towards
her brothers: "Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and misdoubts her
that this would mean some beguiling of her brethren." (Chap. XXXIV.) In
Chap. XXXVIII, we are told that Gudrun fights on the side of her
brothers. We see at once the superiority of the poet's motive for a
modern tragedy.
It is impressed upon the reader of an epic that the plan of its maker
does not call for fine analysis of character. The epic poet is concerned
necessarily with large considerations, and his personages do not split
hairs from the south to the southeast side. One sign of this is seen in
the epic formulæ employed to characterize the personages of the story.
Such formulas are in _Sigurd the Volsung_ in abundance, as we have noted
on another page. But there are also many departures from the epic model
in this poem. Some of these we have referred to in the remarks on Book
III, where we noted Sigurd's mental sufferings. In Book IV we have a
discrimination of character that is not epic, but dramatic in its
minuteness. In the speech and the deeds of the Niblungs their pride and
selfishness is clearly set forth, but the individual members of that
race are distinguished by traits very minutely drawn. Thus Hogni is the
wary Niblung, and is averse to accepting Atli's invitation:
"I know not, I know not," said Hogni, "but an unsure bridge is the sea,
And such would I oft were builded betwixt my foeman and me.
I know a sorrow that sleepeth, and a wakened grief I know,
And the torment of the mighty is a strong and fearful foe."
(P. 281.)
Gunnar is here distinguished as a hypocrite by word and deed; Gudrun
remembers Sigurd in her exile and schemes and plots to make her husband
Atli work her vengeance on the Niblungs; Atli is greedy for gold and
Gudrun's task is not hard; Knefrud is a liar whose words are winning,
and overcome the scruples of the Niblungs. In these careful
discriminations of character we see a non-epical trait, and of necessity
therefore, a non-Icelandic trait. The sagaman was epic in his tone.
As a last appreciation of the art of William Morris as it is displayed
in this poem, we would call attention to the tremendous battle-piece
entitled "Of the Battle in Atli's Hall." It is the climax of this
marvelous poem, and in no detail is it inadequate to its place in the
work. The poet's constructive power is here demonstrated to be of the
highest order, and in the majestic sweep of events that is here
depicted, we see the poet in his original role of _maker_. The sagaman's
skill had not the power to conceive this titanic drama, and the memory
of his battle-piece is quite effaced by the modern invention. In blood
and fire the story comes to an end with Gudrun,
The white and silent woman above the slaughter set.
As we turn from the scene and the book, that figure fades not away. And
it is fitting that the last memory of this poem should be a picture of
love and hate, inextricably bound together, for that is the irony of
Fate, and Fate was mistress of the Old Norseman's world.
5.
Between the great works dealt with in the last two sections, which
belong together and were therefore so considered, came the book of 1875,
bearing the title _Three Northern Love Stories and Other Tales_. It is
as good a representation as Iceland can make in the love-story class.
These tales are charmingly told in the translation of Morris and
Magnusson, the second one, "Frithiof the Bold," being a master-piece in
its kind. Men will dare much for the love of a woman, and that is why
the sagaman records love episodes at all. Frithiof's voyage to the
Orkneys in Chap. VI is a stormpiece that vies with anything of its kind
in modern literature. It is Norse to the core, and we love the peerless
young hero who forgets not his manhood in his chagrin of defeat at love.
Surely there is fitness in these outbursts of song in moments of extreme
exultation or despair! "And he sang withal:
"Helgi it is that helpeth
The white-head billows' waxing;
Cold time unlike the kissing
In the close of Baldur's Meadow!
So is the hate of Helgi
To that heart's love she giveth.
O would that here I held her,
Gift high above all giving!"
Modern literature has lost this conventionality of the older writings,
found in Hebrew as well as in Icelandic, and we think it has lost
something valuable. Morris thought so, too, for he restored the
interpolated song-snatches in his Romances. We are tempted to dwell on
these three love-stories, they are so fine; but we must leave them with
the remark that they show the poet's appreciation of the worth of a
foreign literature, and his great desire to have his countrymen share in
his admiration for them. "The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and
Raven the Skald," and "The Story of Viglund the Fair," are the other two
stories that give the title to the volume, representing the thirteenth
and fifteenth centuries, as "Frithiof" represented the fourteenth.
6.
With _Sigurd the Volsung_ ended the first great Icelandic period of
Morris's work. More than a dozen years passed before he returned to the
field, and from 1889 until his death, in 1896, everything he wrote bore
proofs of his abiding interest in and affection for the ancient
literature. The remarkable series of romances, _The House of the
Wolfings_ (1889), _The Roots of the Mountains_ (1890), _The Story of the
Glittering Plain_ (1891), _The Wood Beyond the World_ (1895), _The Well
at the World's End_ (1896) and _The Sundering Flood_ (posthumous), are
none of them distinctively Old Norse in geography or in story, but they
all have the flavor of the saga-translations, and are all the better for
it. They are as original and as beautiful as the poet's tapestries and
furniture, and if they did not provoke imitation as did the tapestries
and furniture, it was not because they were not worth imitating: more
than likely there were no imitators equal to the task. In these romances
we have men and women with the characteristics of an olden time that are
most worthy of conservation in the present time. The ideals of womanfolk
and manfolk in _The House of the Wolfings_ and _The Roots of the
Mountains_, for instance, are such as an Englishman might well be proud
to have in his remote ancestry. Hall-Sun, Wood-Sun, Sunbeam, and Bowmay
are wholesome women to meet in a story, and Thiodolf, Gold-mane,
Iron-face and Hallward are every inch men for book-use or to commune
with every day. Weaklings, too, abide in these stories, and Penny-thumb
and Rusty and Fiddle and Wood-grey lend humanity to the company.
The two romances last mentioned are so steeped in the atmosphere of the
sagas, that what with folk-motes and shut-beds, and byres, and
man-quellers, and handsels and speech-friends, we seem to lose ourselves
in yet another version of a northern tale. Morris retains the old idiom
that he invented for his translations, and keeps the tyro thumbing his
dictionary, but the charm is increased by the archaisms. As one seeks
the words in the dictionary, one learns that Chaucer, Spenser and the
Ballads were the wells from which he drew these rare words, and that his
employment of them is only another phase of his love for the old far-off
things. It is true that the language of Morris is not of any one
stadium of English, but it is a poet's privilege to draw upon all
history for his words as well as for his allusions, and the revivals in
question are of worthy words pushed aside by the press of newer, but not
necessarily better forms.
These works are the kind that show the influence of Old Norse literature
as spiritual rather than substantial. The stories are not drawn from the
older literature, nor are the settings patterned after it; but the
impulses that swayed men and women in the sagaman's tale, and the
motives that uplifted them, are found here. We cannot think that the
English people will always be unmindful of the great debt that they owe
to the Muse of the North.
7.
In 1891, Morris engaged in a literary enterprise that set the fashion
for similar enterprises in succeeding years. With Eirikr Magnusson he
undertook the making of _The Saga Library_, "addressed to the whole
reading public, and not only to students of Scandinavian history,
folk-lore and language."[33] With Bernard Quaritch's imprint on the
title pages, these volumes to the number of five were issued in
exceptional type and form. The munificence of the publisher was equalled
by the skill of the translators, and in their versions of "Howard, the
Halt," "The Banded Men," and "Hen Thorir" (in Vol. I, dated 1891), "The
Ere-Dwellers" (in Vol. II, dated 1892) and _Heimskringla_ (in Vols. III,
IV and V, dated 1893-4-5), the definitive translations of sterling sagas
were given. As was the case with their _Grettis Saga_, the works rise to
the dignity of masterpieces, and had we no other legacy from Morris'
wealth of Icelandic scholarship, these translations were precious enough
to keep us grateful through many generations.
8.
One more contribution to English literature hailing from the North, and
we have done with William Morris's splendid gifts. The volume of 1891,
entitled _Poems by the Way_, contains several pieces that must be
reckoned with. The vividest recollections of Icelandic materials here
made use of are the poems "Iceland First Seen," and "To the Muses of the
North." No reader of the poet's biography can forget the remarkable
journey that Morris made through Iceland, nor how he prepared for that
journey with all the care and love of a pilgrim bound for a shrine of
his deepest devotion. Every foot of ground was visited that had been
hallowed by the noble souls and inspiring deeds of the past, and that
pilgrimage warmed him to loving literary creation through the remainder
of his life. The last two stanzas of the first of the poems just
mentioned show what a strong hold the forsaken island had upon his
affections, and go far to explain the success of his Icelandic work:
O Queen of the grief without knowledge,
of the courage that may not avail,
Of the longing that may not attain,
of the love that shall never forget,
More joy than the gladness of laughter
thy voice hath amidst of its wail:
More hope than of pleasure fulfilled
amidst of thy blindness is set;
More glorious than gaining of all
thine unfaltering hand that shall fail:
For what is the mark on thy brow
but the brand that thy Brynhild doth bear?
Lone once, and loved and undone
by a love that no ages outwear.
Ah! when thy Balder conies back,
and bears from the heart of the Sun
Peace and the healing of pain,
and the wisdom that waiteth no more;
And the lilies are laid on thy brow
'mid the crown of the deeds thou hast done;
And the roses spring up by thy feet
that the rocks of the wilderness wore.
Ah! when thy Balder comes back
and we gather the gains he hath won,
Shall we not linger a little
to talk of thy sweetness of old,
Yea, turn back awhile to thy travail
whence the Gods stood aloof to behold?
In several other poems in this volume he recurs to the practice of his
romances, Scandinavianizes where the tendency of other poets would be
to mediævalize. "Of the Wooing of Hallbiorn the Strong," and "The Raven
and the King's Daughter" are examples. Here we have ballads like those
that Coleridge and Keats conceived on occasion, full of the beauty that
lends itself so kindly to painted-glass decoration; clustered
spear-shafts, crested helms and curling banners, and everywhere lily
hands combing yellow hair or broidering silken standards. But the names
strike a strange note in these songs of Morris, and the accompaniments
are very different from the mediæval kind:
Come ye carles of the south country,
Now shall we go our kin to see!
For the lambs are bleating in the south,
And the salmon swims towards Olfus mouth.
Girth and graithe and gather your gear!
And ho for the other Whitewater![34]
The introduction of the homely arts of bread-winning distinguishes the
romance of Scandinavia from the romance of Southern Europe, and here
Morris struck into a new field for poetry. Wherever we turn to note the
effects of Icelandic tradition, we find this presence of daily toil,
always associated with dignity, never apologized for. The connection
between Morris' art and Morris' socialism is not hard to explain.
No commentary can equal Morris' own poem, "To the Muse of the North," in
setting forth the charm that drew him to the literature of Iceland:
O Muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong,
Thy left hand holding pity; and thy breast
Heaving with hope of that so certain rest:
Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid,
The soft lips trembling not, though they have said
The doom of the World and those that dwell therein.
The lips that smile not though thy children win
The fated Love that draws the fated Death.
O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath,
Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,
That, if it may be, I may have a part
In that great sorrow of thy children dead
That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head,
Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream,
And death the murmur of a restful stream,
But left no stain upon those souls of thine
Whose greatness through the tangled world doth shine.
O Mother, and Love and Sister all in one,
Come thou; for sure I am enough alone
That thou thine arms about my heart shouldst throw,
And wrap me in the grief of long ago.
V.
IN THE LATTER DAYS.
ECHOES OF ICELAND IN LATER POETS.
After William Morris the northern strain that we have been listening for
in the English poets seems feeble and not worth noting. Nevertheless, it
must be remarked that in the harp of a thousand strings that wakes to
music under the bard's hands, there is a sweep which thrills to the
ancient traditions of the Northland. Now and then the poet reaches for
these strings, and gladdens us with some reminiscence of
old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago.
As had already been intimated, the table of contents in a present-day
volume of poetry is very apt to show an Old Norse title. Thus Robert
Lord Lytton's _Poems Historical and Characteristic_ (London, 1877)
reveals among the poems on European, Oriental, classic and mediaeval
subjects, "The Death of Earl Hacon," a strong piece inspired by an
incident in _Heimskringla_. In Robert Buchanan's multifarious versifying
occurs this title: "Balder the Beautiful, A Song of Divine Death," but
only the title is Old Norse; nothing in the poem suggests that origin
except a notion or two of the end of all things. "Hakon" is the title of
a short virile piece more nearly of the Norse spirit. Sidney Dobell's
drama _Balder_ has only the title to suggest the Icelandic, but Gerald
Massey has the true ring in a number of lyrics, with themes drawn from
the records of Norway's relations with England. In "The Norseman" there
is a trumpet strain that recalls the best of the border-ballads; there
is also a truthfulness of portraiture that argues a poet's, intuition in
Gerald Massey, if not an acquaintance with the sagas:
The Norseman's King must stand up tall,
If he would be head over all;
Mainmast of Battle! when the plain
Is miry-red with bloody rain!
And grip his weapon for the fight,
Until his knuckles grin tooth-white,
The banner-staff he bears is best
If double handful for the rest:
When "follow me" cries the Norseman.
He knows the gentler side of Old Norse character, too, a side which, as
we have seen, was not suspected till Carlyle came:
He hides at heart of his rough life,
A world of sweetness for the Wife;
From his rude breast a Babe may press
Soft milk of human tenderness,--
Make his eyes water, his heart dance,
And sunrise in his countenance:
In merriest mood his ale he quaffs
By firelight, and with jolly heart laughs
The blithe, great-hearted Norseman.
The poem "Old King Hake," is as strikingly true in characterization as
the preceding. In half a dozen strophes Massey has told a whole saga,
and has found time, too, to describe "an iron hero of Norse mould." How
miserable a personage is the Italian that flits through Browning's pages
when contrasted with this hero:
When angry, out the blood would start
With old King Hake;
Not sneak in dark caves of the heart,
Where curls the snake,
And secret Murder's hiss is heard
Ere the deed be done:
He wove no web of wile and word;
He bore with none.
When sharp within its sheath asleep
Lay his good sword,
He held it royal work to keep
His kingly word.
A man of valour, bloody and wild,
In Viking need;
And yet of firelight feeling mild
As honey-mead.
Another poem, "The Banner-Bearer of King Olaf," pictures the strong
fighter in a death he rejoiced to die. It is a good poem of the class
that nerves men to die for the flag, and it has the Old Norse spirit.
These poems are all from Massey's volume _My Lyrical Life_ (London.
1889).
A glance at the other poems in Gerald Massey's volumes shows that like
Morris, and like Kingsley, and like Carlyle, the poet was a workman
eager to do for the workman. Is it not suggestive that these men found
themselves drawn to Old Norse character and life? The Icelandic republic
cherished character as the highest quality of citizenship, and put few
or no social obstacles in the way of its achievement. The literature
inspired by that life reveals a fellowship among the members of that
republic that is the envy of social reformers of the present day. Morris
makes one of the personages in _The Story of the Glittering Plain_
(Chap. I) say these words: "And as for Lord, I knew not this word, for
here dwell we the Sons of the Raven in good fellowship, with our wives
that we have wedded, and our mothers who have borne us, and our sisters
who serve us." Almost may this description serve for Iceland in its
golden age, and so it is no wonder that the socialist, the priest, and
the philosopher of our own disjointed times go back to the sagas for
ideals to serve their countrymen.
We have no other poets to mention by name in connection with this Old
Norse influence, although doubtless a search through the countless
volumes that the presses drop into a cold and uncaring world would
reveal other poems with Scandinavian themes. We close this section of
our investigation with the remark already made, that, in the tables of
titles in volumes of contemporary verse, acknowledgment to Old Norse
poetry and prose are not the rarity they once were, and in poems of any
kind allusions to the same sources are very common.
RECENT TRANSLATIONS.
We have already noted the beginning of serial publications of saga
translations, namely, Morris and Magnusson's _Saga Library_ which was
stopped by the death of Morris when the fifth volume had been completed.
By the last decade of the nineteenth century Icelandic had become one of
the languages that an ordinary scholar might boast, and in consequence
the list of translations began to lengthen very fast. Several English
publishers with scholarly instincts were attracted to this field, and
so the reading public may get at the sagas that were so long the
exclusive possession of learned professors. _The Northern Library_,
published by David Nutt, of London, already contains four volumes and
more are promised: _The Saga of King Olaf Tryggwason,_ by J. Sephton,
appeared in 1895; _The Tale of Thrond of Gate_ (_Færeyinga Saga_), by F.
York Powell, in 1896; _Hamlet in Iceland_ (_Ambales Saga_), by Israel
Gollancz, in 1898; _The Saga of King Sverri of Norway_ (_Sverris Saga_),
by J. Sephton, in 1899. If we cannot give to these the praise of being
great literature though translations, we can at least foresee that this
process of turning all the readable sagas into English will quicken
adaptations and increase the stock of allusions in modern writings.
An example of the publishers' feeling that the reading public will find
an interest in the saga itself, is the translation of _Laxdæla Saga_ by
Muriel A.C. Press (London, 1899, J.M. Dent & Co.). William Morris made
this saga known to readers of English poetry by his magnificent "Lovers
of Gudrun." Mrs. Press lets us see the story in its original form.
Perhaps this translation will appeal as widely as any to those who read,
and we may note the differences between this form of writing and that to
which the modern times are accustomed.
This saga is a story, but it is not like the work of fiction, nor like
the sketch of history which appeals to our interest to-day. It has not
the unity of purpose which marks the novel, nor the broad outlook over
events which characterizes the history. Plotting is abundant, but plot
in the technical sense there is none. Events are recorded in
chronological order, but there is no march of those events to a
_denouement_. While it would be wrong to say that there is no one hero
in a saga, it would be more correct to say that that hero's name is
legion. From generation to generation a saga-history wends its way, each
period dominated by a great hero. The annals of a family edited for
purposes of oral recitation, or the life of the principal member of that
family with an introduction dealing with the great deeds of as many of
his ancestors as he would be proud to own--this seems to be what a saga
was--_Laxdæla_, _Grettla_, _Njala_.
This form permits many sterling literary qualities. Movement is the
most marked characteristic. This was essential to a spoken story, and
the sharpest impression left in the mind of an English reader is that of
relentless activity. Thus he finds it necessary to keep the bearings of
the story by consulting the list of _dramatis personæ_ and the map, both
indispensable accompaniments of a saga-translation. The chapter headings
make this list, and a glance at them for _Laxdæla_ reveals a procession
of notable personages--Ketill, Unn, Hoskuld, Olaf the Peacock, Kiartan,
Gudrun, Bolli, Thorgills, Thorkell, Thorleik, Bolli Bollison and Snorri.
Each of these is, in turn, the center of action, and only Gudrun keeps
prominent for any length of time.
Character-portraiture, ever a remarkable achievement in literature, is
excellently done in the sagas. There was a necessity for this; so many
personages crowded the stage that, if they were not to be mere puppets,
they would have to be carefully discriminated. That they were so a
perusal of any saga will prove.
In a novel love is almost indispensable; in a saga other forces are the
impelling motives. Love-making gets the novelist's tenderest interest
and solicitude, but it receives little attention from the sagaman.
Wooing under the Arctic Circle was a methodical bargaining, and there
was little room for sentiment. When Thorvald asked for Osvif's daughter
Gudrun, the father "said that against the match it would tell that he
and Gudrun were not of equal standing. Thorvald spoke gently and said he
was wooing a wife, not money. After that Gudrun was betrothed to
Thorvald.... He should also bring her jewels, so that no woman of equal
wealth should have better to show.... Gudrun was not asked about it and
took it much to heart, yet things went on quietly." (Chap. XXXIV of
_Laxdæla_.) In Iceland, as elsewhere, love was a source of discord, and
for that reason love is always present in the saga. It is not the tender
passion there, silvered with moonlight and attended by song. The saga is
a man's tale.
The translation just referred to is in _The Temple Classics_, published
by J.M. Dent & Co., London, 1899, and edited by Israel Gollancz. The
editor promises (p. 273) other sagas in this form, if Mrs. Press's work
prove successful. He speaks of _Njala_ and _Volsunga_ as imminent. It is
to be hoped that the intention is to give the Dasent and the Morris
versions, for they cannot be excelled.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Quoted in Gray, by E.W. Gosse, English Men of Letters, p.
163.]
[Footnote 2: B. Hoff. Hovedpunkter af den Oldislandske
litteratur-historie. København. 1873.]
[Footnote 3: Pp. xli-l in Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas
Gray, edited by W.L. Phelps. Ginn & Co., Boston. 1894.]
[Footnote 4: Life of Gray, pp. 160 ff.]
[Footnote 5: Wm. Sharp in Lyra Celtica, p. xx. Patrick Geddes and
Colleagues. Edinburgh. 1896.]
[Footnote 6: Of Heroic Virtue, p. 355, Vol. III of Sir William Temple's
Works. London. 1770.]
[Footnote 7: Of Heroic Virtue, p. 356.]
[Footnote 8: Of Poetry, p. 416.]
[Footnote 9: Spelling and punctuation are as in the original.]
[Footnote 10: Stopford Brooke, English Literature. D. Appleton & Co.,
New York. 1884. p. 150.]
[Footnote 11: Vol. 3, pp. 146-311.]
[Footnote 12: Quoted in Introduction, p. vii.]
[Footnote 13: Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Vol. I, p.
231. Boston, Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1879.]
[Footnote 14: Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1806.]
[Footnote 15: Quoted in Lockhart's Life, Vol. III, p. 241.]
[Footnote 16: In G.W. Dasent's Life of Cleasby, prefixed to the
Icelandic-English Dictionary. Based on the MS. collection of the late
Richard Cleasby, enlarged and completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson. Oxford.
1874.]
[Footnote 17: In another work by Carlyle, _The Early Kings of Norway_
(1875) he takes special delight in revealing to Englishmen name
etymologies that hark back to Norse times. Of this sort are Osborn from
Osbjorn; Tooley St. (London) from St. Olave, St. Oley, Stooley, Tooley,
(Chap. X).]
[Footnote 18: _The Early Kings of Norway_ bears a later date--1875--than
the works we are considering just now, and it is dealt with here only
because Carlyle's _Heroes and Hero-Worship_ belongs in the decade we are
considering.]
[Footnote 19: Chap. V of Preliminary Dissertation.]
[Footnote 20: Letters, Vol. I, p. 55, dated Dec. 12, 1855.]
[Footnote 21: Home of the Eddic Poems, p. xxxix. London, 1899. David
Nutt.]
[Footnote 22: Introduction to the Cleasby Dictionary.]
[Footnote 23: Oxford Essays, 1858, p. 214.]
[Footnote 24: Lectures delivered in America in 1874, by Charles
Kingsley. London. 1875. p. 71.]
[Footnote 25: P. 78.]
[Footnote 26: P. 89.]
[Footnote 27: P. 90.]
[Footnote 28: P. 91.]
[Footnote 29: P. 96.]
[Footnote 30: The Life of William Morris, by J.W. Mackail. London, New
York, Bombay. Vol. I, p. 200.]
[Footnote 31: Edmond Scherer. Essays on English Literature, p. 309.]
[Footnote 32: Citations are from the 3d edition. Boston. 1881.]
[Footnote 33: Preface to Vol. I, p. v.]
[Footnote 34: The Wooing of Hallbiorn.]
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFLUENCE OF OLD NORSE
LITERATURE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE***
******* This file should be named 13786-8.txt or 13786-8.zip *******
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/7/8/13786
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit:
https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
