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NORSE MYTH IN
ENGLISH POETRY
BY
HERFORD,
H.
C.
M.A., Litt.D.
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER
Reprinted from Vol.
5,
"
The Bulletin
Nos.
and
2,
August,
John Rylands Library igiS-March,
19 19
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
Manchester
LoNLTON,
I
of the
:
1919
NORSE MYTH IN
ENGLISH POETRY
PUBLISHED FOR THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY AT
THE UNIVERSITY 12
PRESS
(H. M.
McKechnie, Secretary)
Lime Grove, Oxford Road, Manchester
LONGMANS, GREEN AND
CO.
London 39 Paternoster Row i^EW York 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street Bombay: 8 Hornby Road Calcutta: 6 Old Court House Street Madras: 167 Mount Road :
:
9
"
NORSE MYTH IN
ENGLISH POETRY
BY
PROFESSOR
01
Reprinted from Vol.
HERFORD,
H.
C.
5,
M.A., Litt.D.
ENGLIS« LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTKK
"
Nos.
The Bulletin of I
and
2,
the
August,
fohn Rylands IJhrarv igi^-March, 191
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONGMANS, GRKRN & COMPANY
Manchester:
London, Nr:w
Y(;kk, Chicago,
iQig
Bomhay, Cai.cui
ia,
Madkas
UNIVERSry OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBAfiA COLLEGE LIBRARY A'
7
/7
NORSE MYTH By
C
ENGLISH POETRY.*
IN
HERFORD,
H.
M.A.. Litt.D., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER. I.
who
and snow and show smile things great and small
Tale
teller,
Had
heart to turn about
With
faint half
That
twixt
fire
in thy fearful land did
Thou and
fall,
thy brethren sure did gain
for which I long in vain. whereby the mist of fear melted, and your ears might hear
That thing
The
spell,
Was
Elarth's Yoices as they are indeed.
W. Morris,
SO
Prefixed to his Translation of the Ryrbyggja Saga.
wrote William Morris,
one of the
may
the preface to his English version of
in
sagas of the " fearful land ".
finest
For no other English poet has
theme.
Norse myth heroism,
its
;
none has done so much
earth-shaking humour, and
pathos, to a place in our memories, I
say to restore
which
we
for
;
sort the recovery of a stories
call
*
so keenly the
to restore its
his
words
and a home be
its
;
and the
in truth
in great part
tale
lecture
power
in
a
gift,
or
thirteen
but in some
The
common
of the Volsungs,
Beowulf}
and
our hearts.
new
a
of
terrible beauty, its
heights of tragic passion
vanished and forgotten possession.
English epic of
Based upon a 1918.
will not
felt
had been sung twelve
told the other day,
before in the old
it
Norse were
the Germanic peoples
13 March.
And
serve as a clue to guide us to the heart of our present
mythic
heritage of
which Morris
hundred years
But between the day
delivered in the John
Rylands Library on
THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
6 whrn c\c
were
ihrst* lalt^s
and
the Conquest,
of
again by
chanted
last
English antiquaries,
which they weie
infancy to meet again,
We
as perfect strangers,
and even
literary
Denmark
northern lands sweeping from in
one dreamed
and a
Europe, had grown up
A
period, find
its
way
into
permanent culture
of
our
beyond the broad
No
towards the end of the effect that
Den-
and import
in the
and with such
literature,
points of dazzling brilliance
But the triumphant
the world.'
story stands absolutely alone
glorious
waif of Scandinavia
came
;
to
and even us with
its
intrusion of the solitary
this
though
Scandinavian char-
not obliterated, by alien romance elements which
if
certainly helped to
the Norse sea-giant
who
of
the lonely fastness of the gi^eat Atlantic
in
Hamlet
acter overlaid,
faces
prose, unsurpassed in their kind in
single northern legend did, indeed,
mark and Elsinore became
Our
and the vast arc
;
every sense beyond our horizon.
spaces of estranging sea, lay
island.
for almost
centuries,
Iceland,
to
The
advanced age.
in
France, to Italy
to
that a poetry
during most of
purposes, beyond our ken.
cultural
were turned the other way,
deciphered
first
are like kindred parted in
whole Scandinavian world passed, during those all
perhaps on the
feasts,
centuries
six
fully
lie
unknown.
utterly
English
at
on which they were
that
commend it Amloth to
to
European
taste.
It is
a far cry from
the mediaeval emulator of Livy's Brutus
spoke to the Elizabethans through the ambitious Latinity of Saxo,
or the polished French of Belleforest.
But before the beginning cultural estrangement, there
of these centuries of
was
at least
The
intimate.
ture of
Vikings
Northumbria
in
a
who swept away
of
between
disastrously
and devout
the lettered
and
cul-
the ninth century were not persuasive heralds
of the richer
and stronger but
But from the time of Alfred onwards,
settlement of a
was
it
the North. ent
literary
lively intercourse
Some
Northern and the English stems.
the
complete
still
large tract
of
unshaped cosmos
of the
poetry of
vrith the
perman-
England by Scandinavians, more
humane
relations
that the
Norsemen could make a song
The Old
diversify their encounters.
as well as fight,
formidable galleys of theirs were sometimes launched,
English found
and
that those
like
the bark of
the aged Ulysses, for voyages of exploration not of plunder.
We have
made analogous the
discoveries in our
Norwegian enthusiasms
than
at
own
time
;
and
it is
easier to parallel
of the later nineteenth century in the tenth
any intervening date.
Just a thousand years before
Nansen
NORSE MYTH came
Norway's ambassador
as
to the English court, another
and kindled the
explorer, Ohthere, visited Alfred,
White
region of the
7
Norwegian
king's quick imagina-
voyage round the North Cape into the Mur-
tion with the story of his
man
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
And
Sea.'
one
most romantic of
of the
Viking adventurers, Egil Skallagrimsson, equally renowned as warrior
and
became the
as singer,
trusted
henchman and warm
After doing him yeoman's service
stane.
Athel-
friend of
and counsel, and
in field
ceiving royal rewards, Egil improvised a Norse panegyric {drdpa)
Athelstane gave him two gold rings as poet's
praise at the palace board.*
but there
fee,
no
is
Icelander's staves thought of emulating in his
—
that
is
who listened to the own tongue their brief,
any English scop
hint that
A
weighty rhythm and bold imagery. English court
Norse song chanted
to the
the nearest recorded approach to a literary
contact between Scandinavia and England before the Conquest
even contact so casual and seemingly
as
fruitless
after
it.
so profoundly akin despite their deadly encounter,
England, herself
after a centuiy of tragic
bound
web
in the
emulating strains of island colony
once of
its
and impotent
of continental culture,
drew
definitely apart.
awoke
silence,
and rudely or
to find
childishly
While Norway and her
alien song.
great
had been working out undisturbed the splendid promise
of their chaotic at
and
;
becomes more
this,
The new Northmen completed the England from the old. The two Germanic civilizations,
and more inconceivable estrangement of
re-
in his
and unbridled youth, and creating the great monument
their heroic traditions
and
Eddas
of their national art, in the
Iceland has kept even her language almost unchanged
and the Sagas.
to the present day."'
" Undisturbed "
:
that
at
is
would appreciate the energy story
upon the imagination
disturbed, Christ,
above
all,
bottom the clue
And
equality of literary fortune.
of
it
the impact,
of civilized
until the
by the powerful solvent
to
when
very close of the of the Christian
first
faith."'
up by the Viking marauders
affect the truth of this contention.
hypothesis, only enriched the
or lessening
treat of
its
paganism
power in the
millennium after
The
fascinating
of
of
in Christian lands,
Christianity, even
pagan myth world without
of resistance.
West
Un-
Norse myths are transformations
certain
in-
we
if
came, of Norse
it
Christian legends, caught
it,
startling
and Romanized Europe.
theory of Bugge, that
does not
this
has to be borne in mind
disintegrating
Scandinavia was the
Europe, and behind
on that
its
last
re-
successive
— 8
JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
Till-.
harrirrs of sea
and mountain and sea again, the
and Walhalla held
tide of Christianity.
Tlir further \vc go north and west, the more freely tions arc
unfolded and elaborated
world and
l>eg)nning of the
death
their
of the feats of
heroes and
of feasting in
Odin's
Sweden and Denmark paganism was soonest submerged, and Norway, in its deepset the fewest and the faintest traces.
In
halls.
has
doom,
crowned by an immortality
in battle,
primeval tradi-
its
stones of gods and men, of the
its
its final
Thor and Odin
faith of
ground against the onsurging
its
left
guarded a
fiords,
Norse
of old
island of fire
as of
literature,
and snow
in
its
and
its last
almost completely blotted
it
real capital
was
the great
loneliest outpost.
And
missionaries
won
their difficult
even after the conversion,
myth
sagacity or patriotism saved the
England
republican statecraft,
Norway, the Christian
triumph only after A.D. 1000.
But the
sagas.
wastes of the North Atlantic, which
in the far
might seem destined to be
Here, and
and
rich treasure of lays
their
from the fate which
literature
out elsewhere, and has reduced
us in
our primitive paganism by a few empty names
to attest
Wednesday and Thursday, Wednesbury and Thoresby, and the legend of Wayland the Smith, and the pre-Christian core of Beowulf. The result was, in the first place, the great collection of lays known Older Edda, written partly
as the
then
the thirteenth,
and
first
of
occasions.
thirty-five
In
distinct pieces,
of the gods,
and
edited at the end of the eighteenth.
critically
Secondly, a great mass of songs, historic
its
still
mystic in colouring but arising out
extant form the
falling into
stories of
Loki
(
world
to procure
hild, its
his
of
his
f.)
or
some
—
stories
few cognate lays are pre-
these stories have counted as
These are (1) Odin, treacherously slain by
(2) the story of Odin's descent to the under-
reform i^Baldrs drauniai^
Volsungs,-
Medea
;
consists of
English poetry.
Balder, the beloved son of
Voluspd, 32,
story of the
A
the heroes.
creative or even stimulating forces for
the story of
Edda
two nearly equal groups
Three only
sented in certain sagas.
Norway in the ninth century, They were collected in
in
and eleventh.
Iceland in the tenth
in
;
(3) the great heroic
of Sigurd the Achilles of the
North, and Bryn-
Lady Macbeth, and Gudrun and
her vengeance for
death {Grippisspd,
etc.).
But several others have powerfully
contributed to mould our impressions of the scope and reach of this
northern poetry (
:
notably, in the
Voluspd), a sublime
hymn
first
group, (4) the Sibyl's prophecy
of the beginning
and the end
of the world,
NORSE MYTH of
which the story of Balder
and the
giant Skirnir, a
ENGLISH POETRY
IN is
only an incident
huge piece
(5) the story of
;
of Aristophanic
Thrymskvitha)
9
Thor
humour, man mak-
and (6) the great Waking of Angentyr, where Hervor the warrior maid goes to her father's burial
ing sport of his gods (
mound
burning island to
in the
knows, will be ruin to her race
;
demand from him
{Hervar saga).
two must be mentioned
historical class,
:
the sword which, he
Further, from the partly
(7) the death-song of
Lodbrok, a chieftain of the twelfth century, thrown into a
{Krakumdl\ and
Ragnar
pit of serpents
(8) the song of the Norns after the battle of Clontarf
{Darratkarljoth).
From
introductory
this
fortunes of these piimeval
when
let
the youngest of
us
now
turn
to
watch the
strangers from the North, with
and witching beauty,
their mysterious
England,
summary
and rugged
in enlightened
and prosperous
them was already almost
half a mil-
lenium old. II.
For the
report of
first
which ushered
and the philosophy Sir
W.
a text of
common
sense.
scholars in Holland,
and read
in a northern chronicle
Here was
and heroic among these barbaric peoples
something, he
and he made "on Heroic Virtue," 1690 much as Sidney, had confessed how his heart stirred as with a trumpet
his Essay,
a century before,
with William,
chief agent in the negotiations
death-song of Ragnar Lodbrok.
thought, fine it
of
Temple, the
met Scandinavian in Latin the
them concurs with the famous Revolution
Dutch William and Whig government, John Locke
in
;
;
at the rude lay of Chevy-chase.'^
But erudition
new
curiosities.
too, at
The
Oxford
old
in particular,
had
felt
the sting of the
Germanic world, overlaid and almost ob-
was beginning to be tracked out and pieced together. friend of Milton, was the first thoroughly to master Old
literated,
the
and
his fount of
types,
bequeathed to the Oxford
press,
Junius,
English,
were used
to
by George Hickes. But Hickes was Thesaurus of the Northern Languages, 689, to print and translate a Norse poem in English. And fortunately it was one of the grandest of all— the Waking of AngentyrJ'' Hervor s Incantation, as it is also called, was widely admired, and in 763 was included with Ragnar Lodbrok (No. 7) and three print the
also the
first
first,
\
I
Icelandic grammar,
in his great
—
!
—
;
THE JOHN KYLANDS LIBRARY
10
otheni by Bishop Pcicy. the editor of the A\//
But one better quaHfied than Percy had already
of Runii Poetry.
been touching these things to
made
his
noble paraphrases,
About 760 Thomas Gray The Descent of Odin and The Fatal finer issues.
1
Norse poetic influence which the whole
Sisters, the best result of
Gray knew something
eighteenth century* can show.
pregnant
style,
Norse poetry he found
had
all his
been
who
Sisters,
fulfilled
feeling after,
In the "
note in English poetry.
Tlu Fatal
to the brief,
the sharp " unmuffled " phrasing of the original.
this
life
and
of Icelandic,
verse comes as near as eighteenth century English could
his
we hear
In
an ideal of poetic writing which he
and
it
enabled him to
Spear Song," the
new
strike a
Gray's
original of
the Valkyries, the divine maidens of
Odin
gather up the slain after battle, sing their weird Fate song before
where a Norse
the battle of Clontarf,
The
Irish king.
chief
of
about to
is
human
old image for the making of
which the Norse notion
ing of a woof, is
F/:r Pieces
fight
fate, as
v^th an a
weav-
Fate shares with the Greek,
here applied with an intense abrupt imaginative power which recalls Book of Job. " Weave we, weave we, the web of spears " is !
the
And
the recurring refrain. of
in
one grim powerful stanza the symbolism
where the
the loom of battle,
fates of
upon us with remorseless vividness and This
web we
And
the
are wi'ought,
precision of stroke
human
are weaving of
warp
men
is
thrust
:
entrails.
weighted with heads of men Blood-besprinkled spears be the shafts, Iron-bound the stays, and arrows the shuttles With swords we'll thrust close this web of victory. is
;
Such poetry sharply traversed the conventions century further
Abstract phrase and " glossy
style. off.
But Gray contrived
verse than his fulfilled,
of
a
This
to
or
how he
English eighteenth
diction
convey more of
it
could not be
into his English
antecedents would have seemed to warrant
clearly, the half-unconscious
subhme is
own
of
'*
bent of his
own
mysterious matter conveyed with turns
See
it
:
the grisly texture
('Tis of
human
grow made)
entrails
And
the weights that play below Each a gasping Warrior's head
taste,
Gi'eek
!
It
the ideal precision.
1
NORSE MYTH
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
1
Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore,
^oct
the trembling cords along.
Sword that once a Monarch Keep the tissue close and
**
still
new
ring,
ing poetry of the North.
know
did not his
own
were
built
like
" Shafts
caught hrom the short emphatic
alliterat-
though Gray
In such phrases, too,
Old
upon the same
verse
and phrasing
plan.^
Descent of Odin, takes us Norse mythology. It has more of the
other piece rendered by Gray, the
poignancy of Hei"vor than of the battle
Odin, the
the northern gods,
of
gi'eatest
among them, has heard
doomed
He resolves
be
to
slain.
to go
the spear song,
spirit of
and the most moving and
fascinating personality
that his son, Balder,
down to
Here, as
should follow.
makes the
child that
Hervor,
in
situation dramatic
veyed, with the reticence of great swift thrust
is
and what
the father's anxiety for his
and
though
intense,
it is
con-
solely through the action,
art,
the
parry between the urgent god and the reluctant pro-
and
All kinds of
without a hint of exclamation or sentiment.
As
obstacles beset him.
he rides down towards Niflheim, the hound
Hell, the Cerberus of the North,
of
it
is
the nether world and
force the buried Sibyl to disclose the secret of his son's fate
phetess,
possibly
of the oldest poetry or
Old Norse
English and
yet further into the heart of tragic
But a phrase
he was recovering the manner
it,
country, for
The
" Shoot the trembling cords
in the vein of this rhetoric.
" has a for shuttles
strong.
the poetic rhetoric of his day.
Gray could not indeed wholly escape Sword that once a Monarch bore," or
along," are
bore,
come
out,
blood, and bays at the greatest of the gods.
jaws dabbled
its
But Odin
in
rides on, the
earth trembling at his tread, to the eastern gate of Hell's mansion,
where the dead
Sibyl's
mound
dead, until reluctant she it
of mortals to
me
Snow
?
long been dead.
now thee
I
will
till
I
and her dead body speaks
mead
is
speak no more."
know
dew was
He tells her that he is He sees the preparations
she answers, " the
all
:
the spells that :
wake "
the
Who
is
that has laid this grievous conslramt on
"
"are these golden
asks,
He utters
lay on me, rain beat on me,
(like Ulysses).
he
rises,
me unknown,
lay.
seats
ready.
I
one Way-wise,
"Here
Unwillingly have on,
O
would know
Sibyl :
!
Who
me ia
I
:
had
wanderer
" For v>'hom,"
for a feast.
prepared?"
"Speak
this further
shed on
for
Balder,"
spoken
I
1
:
and
will question
will
become the
—
!
JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
rili:
12
BalJei, and
slayer of
take the
Answers. " will hold the
he shot I
at
spoken
:
no\s will
question thee
till
Odin's son
of
all
O
further
his
;
now
1
hands he
wash
will
speak no more.
will
'
maidens
art not
I
for
no man agam
from
his
sire.
.
.
1
trowed,
will
"
" ?
old will his hair,
have told him Sibyl
on,
know
I
I
all,
will
1
!
Who are the
:
'
snoods to heaven
?
she burst out, "but thou art
Ride home, Odin, and gloiy
.
me
hold discourse with
shall
to
"Speak
:
Way-wise, as
Odin, the ancient
Who
Unwillingly have
She seems
till know all this further would who weep for him, casting up their
question thee
:
comb
not, nor
Balder.
but the most wonderful touch remains.
"Thou
would know
who when one day
yet to be born
is
he bear to the pyre the slayer of :
1
!
Balder, and lay his slayer on the funeral pyre
of
replies that " a child
spoken
branch which
Odin's son. Unwillingly have " Speak on, Sibyl I will
of
lile
this
:
" Hoder," she
"
?
of fate (the mistletoe
speak no more."
i
know
I
avenge Odin's son till
Iwugh
tall
Balder) and take the
avenge the death
She
life
till
in
thyself
;
Loki breaks loose
bonds, what time the Destroyers come, at the
End
of
the
World." Gray's version of
this,
literal
lines in
which the
of
English poetic
have done, he has
version must
bounds
poetry, enlarged the
ihe intruder
the Spear-song,
as of
Without surrendering anything
of
yet, in
is
a noble poem.
instinct, as
new
contact with this
English poetic expression.
Sibyl, roused unwillingly
a quite
Take
the
from her death-sleep, meets
:
What call unknown, what charms presume To break the quiet of the tomb ? Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite. And drags me from the realms of night ? Long on
The The
these
mould'nng bones have beat
winter's snow, the
summer
me
Let me,
let
Who
he, with voice unblest,
That
is
calls
sleep again.
me from
the
bed
of rest?
But Gray's Norse studies told also upon his
heat,
drenching dews, the driving rain
two famous Odes,
his original poetry.
Both
The Progress of Poesy and The BaJ'd,
written about 1755, betray the growing
dominance
in his
mind
of the
poetry of the primeval peoples,
which was now from many sources
emerging above the horizon of
his
generation.
That
illustrates
the
— NORSE MYTH
—
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
13
complexity of the literary forces which went to emancipate our poetry
from the pseudo-classicism
and
the Augustans,
of
to
poetic renascence of the early nineteenth century.
Odes were
form the
in
and
ginative speech
Gray was, discoverer
new and
and
new
to the old, so that it is
severely
blamed
was
it
seemed
to
grow out
of
His contempor-
it.
these were criticisms natural to a
what the language
of poetry
had begun
aware
to be
is.
But
thus trying to bring the boldness of
Greek
art into
the treasures of poetry lurking
of
other ancient peoples, less familiar to us, but nearer both geo-
graphically, in the
to attach the
and other departures from prose order.
his inversions,
easily recognize that
moment when Gray was
English, he
exquisitely deli-
how
and splendour, together with the ordered symmetry,
among
Ode.
not merely because his
;
because he understood perfectly
generation which had forgotten at the very
lyric
complained that the Odes were obscure, and Johnson
true,
Yet we can
rank
of the highest
rare sources of poetic effect
cate
aries,
Greek
a certain constitutional timidity and reticence, a
and a pioneer
sure, but
For these very
to recover the bold ima-
effort
closely ordered structure of the
in spite of
instinct for
an
result of
shape the great
first
and
Ode,
in race
the
:
Welsh and
his allusion to the
power
Hence,
the Scandinavian. of poetry
beyond the solar road shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam.
In climes
Where But
in
the second
Ode, The Bard^
there
is
far
more unequivocal It
has worked
which a
story, tragic
witness to the stimulus given by his Norse studies. creatively.
The
and
is
intense,
great
Norse manner
of song, in
not told, but conveyed through the talk of the persons
engaged, has helped to fashion
this
Ode,
in
which almost
the impassioned prophetic lips of the Bard.
very motive of a prophecy delivered has
both in
Hervor and
Fatal Sisters invoked
in the
in
It is
analogues, as
The Descent of Odin, while
we
told
have seen,
the idea of
(the Valkyries) weaving the fates of battle,
the warp, and
here the slain Bards
who
and the Bard
weave
by
that, the
is
The
expressly
grim refrain which runs through the Bard's prophecy
Weave
their country,
its
all is
But more than
:
the woof.
are to rise from the dead and avenge
sees
them
arise
:
IHl::
14
JOHN KVLANDS LIBRARY
No more weep, On yonder cliffs, I
see them
I
sit,
lliey do not sleep.
band
a grisly
hnger
lliey
yet.
Avengers of tlieir native land With me in dreadful harmony they join, And weave with bloody hands the tissue :
Norse notion
the grim
just
bv the tenible battle-maids, the daughters
Grays "
runic
Norse vogue. growing
1770
"
poems appeared
Solid help
and
'
1
woven
slaughter
of
Odin.
of
768, and
nearly at the
same
by the
imitators,
time, to the
translation in
Mr.
has shown that a flood of forgotten translations
and adaptations poured from the press during the next
fifty
years.
rang the changes on, especially, the lay of Hervor and Lodbrok
W.
was
feasts in
Valhalla once
skulls of enemies,
of
letters,
it
is
Landor
marmoreal to
verse.
the heathen
so thrilling,
felt
found
true,
Norse
sublimity of
where drink was quaffed
in the
Several distinguished
jest.^^
men
good, incidentally, in Norse myth.
their
Harald Harfager
cast
The
toppling over into the ridiculous, and those
of
became a standing
Scott puts a song of
Pirate.
A
Twilight of the Gods.
fashion ran to seed.
danger
in
It
less
;
ELdda was translated, with solid merit, by the Hon.
The
Herbert.'"
heroics
The
Balder, and
Odin, Thor,
often on
great part of the
the
fairly started
History of Deiwmrk.
lyitroductioL to the
Harvard,
Farley, of
in
was provided,
host of dilettante admirers
of Mallet's
woof "
the " red
of
of thy line,
in the
mouth
Halcro
of
an episode from the Gunnlangs
Saga
in
The
into his
\V. L. Bowles, a Tory clergyman, indicted a hymn Southey hoped to write a " Runic song "
Wodan
;
;
and George Borrow, doughtiest
of
translators,
rendered passably the
kindred Danish ballads (1826).
III.
But
to
create
new and
noble poetry out of the Norse stories
was
reserved for the second half of the nineteenth century, and for three
men,
utterly unlike in genius, temper,
and
line of
approach
Arnold, Robert Buchanan, and William Morris. little
the
but their material to Norse myth.
Grande Chartreuse
is
" thinking of
" beside the northern strand," and his
poem,
is
noble
in
first
like
his
Arnold, his
— Matthew
The
two owed Greek,
in
ov/n gods" as he stands
Balder Dead, though
the Homeric, not the Eddie way.
And
if
a noble
Arnold
NORSE MYTH is
Buchanan
antique,
(1877)
is
who
a fervid Scot suffering
is
and
and
story
sacrificed Christ,
and
and
we know,
William Morris, on the other
a devoted, even a fanatical, lover of northern
And
own
his
made him more
simplicity of nature
home
ostentatiously disclaimed indebted-
Edda.
the northern land.
of
wine, the heady vintage of
turned the story of Odin's son into an epic of the
ness to the vulgar myths of the
hand, was, as
new
with
filled
15
His Balder the Beautiful
modern.
defiantly
an old wine-skin
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
elemental grandeur
and
instinctively
easily at
there than either the fastidious Hellenist or the neo-theologian
could ever have become.
Moreover, Morris devoted
which was
field to the story
the most rich and various in its
tragic intensity, of
And
world.
at
most sustained poetic labour
his
once the most neglected among
and
scope and movement, the grandest
its
in
the stories of the North, perhaps even of the
all
Sigtird the Volsung
his
in this
us,
when
is,
reserves have been
all
made, a great and splendid poem, the one adequate presentment to-day which Wagner has
in English of the story
so magnificently clothed for
On
the world in the universal language of music.
by
it is
most
far the
Norse myths, and remainder of
The
it
will
be not
all
unfitting that
it
should occupy us for the
this discourse.
and Brynhild
story of Sigurd
is,
strictly,
only the kernel or
Edda and
nucleus of the story of the Volsungs, as told in the
prose Volsung saga based upon
two
It is
it.
story groups of distinct character
we may
call
the antecedent story
—
Heroism
is
the ground tone of
them and
figures,
who, a son child,
less
fearful
another ;
one
youth and early
the other
—
— which
feats
the sequel story
and
—
the
less of
man.
story
dragon ;
at
will.
daemonic too
giants,
Sigmund is
his
and you
more
is
sister
Signy,
the Volsung race should die out, takes the shape of
lest
seeks out her brother, and, unrecognized, bears
daemonic, no
who
But the antecedent
There are dwarfs and
human, than Sigurd
woman,
all three.
with more of elemental and subhuman
can change into a beast, or a daemonic,
lesser value, the
for his death.
moves among primeval forces in
and
in the
preceded and followed by
telling his
the career of his father Sigmund,
vengeance
these grounds
our poetry of the influence of
result in
significant
at ten
sung stock on both
less,
this
does fabulous sides.
son,
him
Sinfjotli,— a marvellous, uncanny
feats, as
becomes one who
is
of
Vol-
1
THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
16
In the stHjucI storv',
we
on
tlio
Gudrun
vsife's brothers,
tury
When
all
his
cen-
fifth
their retinue
which Gudrun takes her own
great battle in his hall, after
a
p^eiish in
Hun
by
slain
king of the
and they and
to his court,
and
recedes,
Sigurd has been
marries Attila, the
them
Attila invites
;
myth
other hand, primeval
are on the Ixirders of history.
life.
The
kernel story
ism but tragedy
is
of finer stuff than these.
It
has not only hero-
not only colossal daring or ruthless revenge, but love
;
and
and hate
in
situations
and moments.
conflict
league.
in
There
It
will suffice to recall the crucial
(1) Sigurd's discovery of the Val-
is
kyne Brunhild, on the wild mountain top, Hyndfell, where she has been
laid asleep
by Odin, within a wall
They
would win her must break through. and
part.
obliterates the
Gudrun.
memory
of
exchange
rings,
given him by their crafty mother which
visit
Gunnar, the eldest
Gunnar's horse
likeness, enters her
of
The
(4)
to Biynhild,
oblivious of the
the kings, to win her for his wife.
face the flames,
will not
still
sister
Sigurd assumes his
bower, and receives from her, as Gunnar, the
own, which she may not refuse
wall.
plight troth,
Brynhild, and his marriage with their
(3) Sigurd's second
past, to help
his
who
which the man
(2) Sigurd's reception at the court of the Niblung kings on
the Rhine, the magic potion
When
of flames
man who
to the
penetrates her
marriage of Gunnar and Brynhild, and their
of sinister presage, side
by
side with Sigurd
ring,
and Gudrun,
in
fire-
life,
full
Gunnar's
The
quarrel of the two queens by the river side when Gudrun with being the wife of Gunnar's serving-man, and Gudrun retorts that it was this semng-man, not Gunnar, who had palace.
(5)
;
Brynhild taunts
crossed the flame-wall,
and won her hand,
ceived her ring, and she shows her the ring. for her betrayal
by her
her, Sigurd tries all
b heard,
life.
He
In
possible solutions
nor her hate appeased.^" take his
lover.
first
is
Then
slain in
one :
Gunnar's name, and re-
(6) last
Brynhild's vengeance
consummate scene with
her love
vvill
not be tempted
she compels the unwilling
Gunnar
to
Gudrun's arms, and when Gudrun's shriek
a wild laugh rings out in the court,
has triumphed but whose heart her breast, and her
in
body and
is
broken
;
— the laugh
of a
woman who
she plunges the dagger into
Sigurd's, united at
last,
are burnt on the
same pyre. Such,
man
m
bald summary,
legend blended, by steps
was
we
the complex Volsung story
can only
in part decipher,
:
a Ger-
with Norse
— NORSE MYTH And
myth.
was German,
as the kernel
from the Eddie
lays, its
Germany
so to
most splendid embodiments
century Nibelunge^died, the
Ring der Nibelunge
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
Nibelungen
belong, apart
in art
trilogy of
17
the twelfth
:
Hebbel, and the
Wagner. Of these I must say no more here the Nibelungenlied softens and humanizes the of
than that the poet of
mythic and savage elements
ignores in particular the
;
meeting of
first
Sigurd and Brynhild, thus completely changing the character of their relations
and
;
of the feudal
myth
glor5ang in fearlessly
invests the
whole with the manners and the atmosphere
and chivalrous age
which he
in
While Wagner,
Grimm had
Jakob
as the century of
lived.
draws gods and demons, dwarfs and dragons
And
sphere of his music drama.
this, too,
was
the
learnt to
way
of
do,
magic
into the
William
Morris.^^
^
IV.
work was then still comparatively recent. Iceland was His first poems, of 1858, are steeped in French and the gracious charm of French Froissart and Malory
Morris's close concern with the North did not begin with his
upon Sigurd, but not his
first
love.
Celtic romance, in
cathedrals
tured the are told,
it
;
and chateaux, and artist in
of tapestry
him, and they never
and metal work, had cap-
lost their hold.
Northern
Earthly Paradise, eleven years later and these included stoiy of Gudruns Lovers from the Laxdaela saga, where ;
situation of Sigurd
loves him,
stories
alongside Greek or eastern ones, by the mariners of the
and Biynhild
by the hand
of her
—
the lover slain by the
unloved husband
—
the great the very
woman who
reappears, translated
into terms of the feuds of Icelandic farmers in the thirteenth century.
But here,
too, Iceland,
phere of delicate
artistry
decisive experience.
like
Greece, shimmers through an atmos-
and gracious romance.
In 1871,
two years
after the
Then came a great, Earthly Paradise,
three years before Sigurd, he visited Iceland for the
him
His
made on
it
:
"
I
country
have seen many marvels, he ;
slept in the
daela story]
you
time.
first
notes of this journey vividly reflect the deep impression
was
writes,
and some
terrible pieces of
home field where Bolli [the Gunnar of the Lax... I was there yesterday, and from its door
killed.
see a great sea of terrible, inky mountains tossing about
;
there has.
— THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
18
born a most wonderful sunset though.
And sons
this
evening that turned them golden
"^
"
hi>\v
transformed his conception of the events and per-
it
-
:
" Such a dreadful place," he says of Grettir's
new
quite a
my mind
turn in
to the story,
an awful and monstrous being,
Two
like
one
can understand, then, that
into
and the land impressed
again,
him with a sense of " almost sacramental solemnity
We
gave
it
and transfigured Grettir
of the early giants of the world."
went
years later, in 1873, he
" that
lair,
".
new and which already in 870
experience threw a
this
transforming light upon the Volsung story also,
1
he had proclaimed to be one of the great stones of the world, destined to
be to our race what the tale of Troy " was to the Greeks, and to
who came
those
Troy
tale of
is
when our
after,
race has vanished, no
than the
less
".
to us
But these impressions, powerful as they were, did not and could not sweep in
many
away
He
fields.
new and put to
tarily
was
in the
and the old
well as receptive,
the
and
Morris's long
full
were not
coming
birds at the
and
artist
maturity of a genius tenacious as
familiar joys
obliterated because
They were
broke across them.
fiercer joys flight, like
rich experience as a poet
of
only
momen-
storm, to return
full
of
song again when it is over. The Morris who has seen " the fearful " " land," and that great sea of terrible inky mountains tossing about the time
and we never
him
But
is
there
is
Morris the lover of old France, and Morris the weaver of tapestry
all
and experimenter orator,
by and by,
and builder
bower
is
of
sister's
close
is full
summer Gudrun dwell,
to the
ring of
many
for long.
there even, in germ,
London
house
is
there, too,
Morris the
socialist
street-corners, the great-hearted
Utopia.
herald
Brynhild's wild, flame-girt, mountain fire
and snow
in the dale,
Touraine or Kent, embowered
about the roofs
a
;
of the fearful land of
A The
at
new
of a
scended to her house
dye
in
forget
;
but
when
her dwelling
in its
is
she has de-
some manor-
gardens and orchards
:
builded burg arising amid the leafy trees. of
;
fruit,
and
breeze. is
the garden of roses and
in the soaring
turrets the
The Niblung
a mediaeval
lilies
;
doves
flutter
casements stand open
burg, again,
where Gunnar and
town such as Iceland never knew, wdth
towers standing up " stark and sharp and cold " above
—
!
NORSE iMYTH
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
19
a grim old girdling wall " dark red and worn, and ancient," and the
smoke
many
of
dwellers rising over
it.
Morris the art-worker, too, finds or makes
looked
but
like,
how
Morris,
;
His
the door.
silver nails in
he
him
finds
Wrath
Sigurd ")
of
he
;
The
Blue
of rare
and
costly materials,
is
of
his royal staff
sword (" The
We
the zest of the metal-worker.^^
of
full
and
forging of Sigurd's
us in his letters that he often Ma-ote wdth blue
tells
hands, and some of the blue seems, in poetry.
is
Morris was experimenting with blue dye while engaged
too, that
on the poem
is
simply that the
the young Sigurd goes to his uncle's
the hall sea-green,
floor of
tipped with a crystal knob.
know,
tells
a chair of walrus-tusk, and his robe
sitting in
mountain gold, and the
saga
not content, adds that there were
furniture
When
and cunningly wrought. hall,
The
they were made.
had a golden roof
halls
He
opportunities.
his
not merely, like your mere literary poet, what things
likes to tell us
is
the colour of every
fact, to
ones
When Gudrun
warriors are blue-clad.
have come
best clothes.
them from a throne covered with dark-blue
Even
on
to the
The Niblung
goes with her maids to
Brynhild, they put on their dark-blue gear, and Biynhild
sleep on dark-blue bolsters.
off
And
cloth.
visit
meet
rises to
at night they
the Valkyrie Brynhild's awesome,
bower, built by Odin on Hyndfell, has been provided by a
fire-girt
thoughtful upholsterer with a bed and bolster of blue.'^ If
was, in
Moms the art-worker found
his opportunities,
Morris the
socialist
not made, certainly nourished and stimulated by what he saw
if
The
Iceland.
where the
republican society of which he read in the sagas,
be met
greatest chief might
had already attracted and problems
his interest,
in his hay-field
and begun
to the fore in his mind.
the land of the Volsungs
is
Thus
tedding his hay,
thrust social questions
to
the curse that
lies
upon
conceived not as a pestilence, or an un-
appeasable blood feud, but simply as the present state of society, the
economic system founded on labour and
So
when
that
Men's
the curse
is
under which
we
live.
removed. and they cry, the sun shines now and they shall reap that sow
hearts are fulfilled of joyance
With never
capital,
a curse to hide
it,
;
(p. 53).
And when Niblungs,
Sigurd goes forth
—
his
victory
the lowly
will
man
to battle
with
bring in the reign
exalted,
and
his
new
kinsfolk
of social equality
the mighty brought alow
:
the :
;
JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
TH1-:
20
summer shall come aback lo the land. on the fields of the tiller that fears no heavy hand Tlie sheaf shall be for the plougher, and the loaf for him that sowed, Through every furrowed acre where the son of Sigmund rode.
And whrn
thr sun of
shall hlunc
It
;
V.
.
But
was
it
worked
Iceland, or
above
and
the great
all
its
not as yet the society which chiefly attracted him in creatively
Volsung
on
his imagination.
It
was, of course,
heroic
and
tragic intensity,
story
itself, its
But it was also the scenery, the savage and daemonic horror. and it was, not less, those " tenible inky mountains"
wild tossing of
;
the grave, melancholy wisdom,
doom
sense of
the of
in earthly things,
humanity
lips of this tragic
or in
ciisis,
the
last
Where Whose
is
midst of
this stern nature, at
hours
Let us see
what
when
his
eye
is
really
on
first
it.
over a wall of mountains is a mighty water hurled, hidden head none knoweth, nor where it meeteth the sea
behind the green arch
The
hush of the desert
of the waterfall as
it
leaps sheer from the
cliff,
amid the water's roar, the bleak sun lighteth the wave-vault, and tells of the fruitless the showers that nourish nothing, and the summer come in vain.
That
is
is felt
the haunt of the dwarf Andvari,
And
treasure of the Niblungs. is
in the
an emanation, from
rises like
" a desert of dread in the uttermost part of the w^orld,'*
And
And And
which
encounter with death.
Morris's Iceland looks like
There
penetrated writh foreboding and the
riding
towards
is
who
man and
guards the fateful Sigurd
Brynhild's Hyndfell.
For days he rides through
it.
vain for the dwellings of length,
here
this desert,
human
the joyance of
plain.
longing in
speech.
At
one dawn,
From out of the tangled crag-walls, amidst the cloudland grey Comes up a mighty mountain, and it is as though there burns
A He
torch amidst of
rides on,
and
at
day wears, the winds
cloud-wreath.
its
noon rise
it
is
Then, as the
covered with clouds.
and disperse the
clouds.
And,
lifted a measureless mass o'er the desert cragwalls high. Cloudless the mountaun riseth against the sunset sky .
And And And
the light that afar the mountain
there
is
the
is
was
a torch
black above
head
it,
.
.
grown a river of fire. and below it is dark and dim,
is
of Hindfell, as
an island
in the sun.
(p. 155).
NORSE MYTH But even
in the
and awe
desolation
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
southern type of scenery hints of
moments
at
Icelandic
this
Thus hard by
intrude.
21
the Niblung
" a black pool huge and awful, unfathomable, and lined with
burg
is
And when
men and women who
the
their thoughts
uttered
about
amid these scenes
lived
and death,
life
was
it
in
a
sense which
appealed powerfully to Morris, so that he would gladly have made his
— a kind
own,
of brave
men, unconscious of
"
a glorious outcome of the worship of courage these stories are
What
he once wrote
.
.
.
and Evil break
also the gods
times it
we
not be
must
"It
:
loose
.
.
And
and
.
the kings and heroes
like
that imperfect earth.
we must live again enough that we helped to make ;
temper
this is the
yet
in the
wisdom
of the
He
.
.
.
Some-
.
not,
would
me
pretty
much
the re-
that Morris has put into the
in the great troth-plighting scene
did not find
corresponding saga scene
women, and drunsen
is
it
in
the magnificent contempt of
genuine stanza
doom
:
—
just before,
I
will not
burial
life
As so, in
long as
company with
my
Moms
ease.
And
is to
is
and courage are
my
their
love will
the
mean
fate,
love thee only
but against
in the
all
the moralists,
many days
he
bliss instead
of
spirit of
choice of Sigurd's
has framed the wisdom of
lines, for instance,
Sigurd's reply in
inspires
life shall last.
Achilles,
it
and
;
chooses a brief existence of supreme
common-place
him avoid the
bids
of provoking feuds,
warning that
though death be to blench
fly,
Born I was not All I would have
with " wis-
and represents
of later origin
She
Her
ideas quite out of keeping with
:
which
to her
his source.
beware
brawlers,
dead have decent
see that the
that
.
unnameable glory and
this
on the whole a sound prudential morality.
And
.
were
that
if
This seems to
Valkyria Biynhild,
Sigurd on Hyndfell.
their
then,
the world shall worsen
that
think that
of his
v/iles of
And
" !
the Northmen."
ligion of
dom "
may be
who made
die,
lived not altogether heedless ?
mouth
untouched by Christian hopes.
Christianity,
after re-reading Njala, the greatest of them.
to another correspondent
it
and untaught philosophy, the philosophy
of intuitive
his
this
own
Brynhild.
of
In these
he has nobly expressed the great thought that heroism vital
to the
life
of
the universe
— that
they are the
JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
nil.
Zl sustaining its tall
po\vn>
tluit
h-cp (he (ahric of the world from tottering to
:
Know thoii. most niij^htv of men, thai llic Noins shall order all, And vrt without thme helping shall no whit of their will befall And the night of the Norns, and tiieir slumber, and the tide when ;
the world
runs back. the way of the sun is tangled, it is wrought of the dastard's lack But the day when the fair earth blossoms, and the sun is bright abore, Of the daring deeds is it fashioned and the eager hearts of love.
And
;
163).
(p.
Nor does
she
warn him,
She
him
act
bids
nor exult
in
it,
keep out
in the spirit of Polonius, to
where need
but a/)idc
it
calls,
and then
and then he
;
of quaiTels.
neither repent his action
will
be enthroned above
all
the chances of time,
And
look on to-day
And how did
How is
and to-morrow as those
Morris handle these deeds and sufferings themselves
them as an
did he shape and present
no doubt, Iceland had her
story tellers
no
that never die.
less
way
wath him
?
artist ?
Here, too, there
he
the spell of her
;
felt
And
than of her makers of story.
it
was
strong
make him defy very deep-rooted and authoritative canons of enough art. The great tradition of epic poetry would have bidden him conto
upon the supreme central phase
centrate
the ///(Ki^
is
not the siege of Troy, but an episode in
action of the
Orfyssey covers
the waking in
poraries Leconte
moment
the waking of
six
the subject of
;
its last
years
the
;
weeks, that of Paradise Lost, from
Hell to the expulsion from Eden, need not be more
than a few days.
poignant
of the story
Fastidious poetic
de
Lisle
the flawless marble or
French contemsingle
Sigurd and Brynhild's terrible laugh,
of
or the slaymg of
onyx
his
and Sully Prudhomme, had taken a
— the death
Angentyr
artists, like
of their verse.
Hjartan, and carved
it
in
But Morris, Hke the German
poet Hebbel, whose Nibelungeyi trilogy had appeared thirteen years before
(
1
862),
felt,
with the old saga writer, the grandeur of the whole
lays, the story
cycle of
not of Sigurd only but of the
Volsungs —his forbears and into his as
Moms may
clared,
—
poem.
It
his
progeny
moves before
— and
of the
he put the whole cycle
us like a vast piece of tapestry such
have been weaving as he made
it,
was worth anything who could not make an
where everything
House
that belongs to the story
is
for
no
poet,
he de-
epic while he
wove
naively put into
it,
—
—
NORSE MYTH men and
gods, trees
power and
23
human and subhuman,
the tragic
beasts, the
and he accepts and renders
value,
hearted and equable serenity.
it
for
him
own
its
and awestruck
This did not always tend
propitiate
to
allusion the incestuous birth
Arthur, was
of
disconcerted to read at the very outset the primeval loves of
and Signy
told
length
at
;
and
from "Topsy".
friend
his
dragon as "
Fafnir's transformation into a retort
kind
with the same large-
Victorian England, for which Tennyson had veiled in
his readers.
distant
ENGLISH POETRY
Every moment and incident has
and grotesque. of
and
IN
—
Even
in
Wagner
Sigmund
Rossetti angrily silly,"
derided
provoking a drastic
the dragon has tried the
patience of the unelect.
VI. Nevertheless,
the
enduring interest
Wagner's Niebelungen Ring, must lyric
power
of the great central
rest
scenes.
of
Moms's Sigurd,
Gunnar's
When
hall, as his bride, sees
seated beside them, and
mainly upon the tragic and
is
courtly
words
answer
in
Brynhild, for instance, coming into
one
far surpassing the
Niblung brother,
it is
Sigurd, once her betrothed,
full of
restrained passion under the
told that
she addresses him v/ith a greeting
of
Here, again and again, the
equable flow of Morris's verse becomes close knit and weighty to the grip of the situation.
as
:
All grief, sharp scorn, sore longing, stark death in her voice he knew, But gone forth is the doom of the Norns, and what shall he answer thereto
And
he
.
.
replies,
.
with anguish no
She heard and turned But
to
Then
Gudrun
to
Gunnar
less resolutely
kept
down
:
as a queen that seeketh her place,
she gave no greeting, nor beheld the Niblung' s face.
the discovery scene, in the river, where Brynhild suddenly
wading deeper
in,
Gudrun
cries
:
Why wadest thou so deeps and upper waters, and wilt leave me here bciow ? Tlien e'en as one transfigured loud Brynhild cried and said So oft shall it be between us at hall and board and bed E'en so shall the gold cloths lap me, when we sit m Odin's hall, While thou shiverest, Httle hidden, by thy lord the Helper's thrall, By the serving man of Gunnar, who all his bidding doth, In the
;
;
.
.
.
—
;
AnJ
waits by the cJihh
my
But
O
well,
is
Thro
troth- breakers
ye
of
my
stretched forth her
White waxed
And And
there
!
1
hand
till
the
troth.
Fire,
his heart's desire.
was found
she
lie
man
a
to ride
by Brynhild
waded up
s
side.
the stream
Brynhild, and thereon
to
Wavering
was
a golden gleam
the face of Brynhild as she looked on the glittering thing " " By all thou lovest, whence haddest thou the ring ?
she spake
:
:
she turns on the mocking
And Gudrun "
who rode
Flickering Fire to
Then no word answered Gudrun
And
win
to
master pHghteth the
his
wliile
lH>\vor.
the
luddy death
at the
waves
the
of
the Kinjj of the Kinsfolk
in.Ate is
And m^Kked it
JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
THh:
24
;
tells
Gudrun "
O
Brynhild, on the night had the ring the semblance of Gunnar left thee
Thus he wooed
who
clutches a knife ".
the deadly secret.
When
For he cloaked him
as one
in
Gunnar's semblance and
the bride for
morn, golden hall forlorn."
that followed the in thy
Gunnar, and
his
shape
in
Gunnar rode
for
Gunnar's hid
the
:
fire.
And he held thy hand for Gunnar, and lay by thy dead desire. Brynhild, and great is thy renown have known thee for long, In this shalt thou joy henceforward, and nought in thy nodding crown.
O
We
;
Now
is Brynhild wan as the dead, and she openeth her mouth to speak, But no word cometh outward. .
.
Then ing gloom,
.
follows the long, bitter brooding of Brynhild in ever deepen-
and the great scene where Sigurd seeks her
(or her love despite the
and begs
out,
bonds which bind them both elsewhere.
Like
the sun-god he shines upon her despair, radiant with the temper that looks eagerly to the future
Awake, With But
O
Brynhild
the light of the sun
all
And she And my
hope
fled
is
cried
is
!
will not for the
succumb
house
is
awakened, and the hope
to the past
:
smitten thro' of
deeds
to do.
from her.
"1 may
:
heart
Then once
A
arise,
and
live
no longer,
for the
the forge of sorrow, and
my
gods have forgotten the
life is
earth.
a wasting dearth."
again spoke Sigurd, once only and no more
:
golden he stood on the sunlit floor eyes were the eyes of Odin, and his face was the hope of the world,
pillar of light all
And
his
And
he cried
:
"
1
am
Sigurd the Volsung, and belike the tales shall be true,
That no hand on the earth may hinder what
my hand would
fashion
and do
:
— NORSE MYTH O
ENGLISH POETRY
IN
25
and thee on the earth will 1 wed. and all those shall be as the dead." (But his breast so swelled within him that the breastplate over it burst,) And he saw the eyes of Brynhild, and turned from the word she spake " / will not wed thee, Sigiird, nor any man alive" Brynhild beloved
live, live,
And
away Gudrun
put
!
the Nibling,
—
:
A great she
line, terrible in its
own
Sigurd, Brynhild's victim,
is
now
to
herself, like the
more
naked
simplicity, preluding the ruin
about to bring upon them both.
is
wan
is
Then,
Her vengeance
end.
be her bridegroom and she
dying Cleopatra,
"
pray thee a prayer, the
I
That ye bear me
And
my
She arrays
her royal robes, and her face no
in
side
'
word
last
:
world
in the
and the hand
forth to Sigurd,
lay his sword,
Betwixt
her
Sigurd,
;
his bride.
then thrusts the blade into her breast, and delivers her
;
charge to Gunnar helplessly standing by
last
over
is
which
death of
after the
speak,
1
my hand would
seek.
the blade that frighted death,'
and Sigurd's as
lay that while agone,
it
When once in one bed together we twain were laid alone How then when the flames flare upward may be left behind ? :
I
How How Clash
to
With **
may
then
the road he
wendeth be hard
then in the gates of Valhall
on the heels of Sigurd, as
that magnificent
Husband,
come
I
cry
"
I
!
for
of
I
triumph
in
death,
facile
among
world,
it
is
style of
plainly not wdth the subtle
style.
art of
poetry (
1
?
)
who up
It
to
expository, tell
then, has
we
If
are to
and compressed manner, or the
Nor, save
Homer.
for its
The
we
Norse myth and
things
simplicity of
influence
its
must place
spontaneous flow, does
Homer
a flawless clarity of outline and a limpid speech which
Two
bom
Sigurd with that of any of the great epics of the
easy, spontaneous flow.
What,
poems
admit, save at rare
high-v^ought harmonies of Vergil or Milton, that
recall the simpler
the supreme
troubadour eloquence of the
romancer was too deeply engrained in him to moments, the rigour and the economy of great
compare the
Cleopatra's
like
close.
The
English literature.
feet to find ?
the door of the gleaming ring " follow on my king ?
Morris's Sigui'd can hardly be counted of
my
may
fits
meant
its it
goes with
the meaning. for
English
:—
brought to the cognizance of our eighteenth century poets, 1
760, with
and
a story, a
all their brilliant
satiric verse,
new and noble
knew
accomplishment
neither
how
in oratorical,
to sing a song nor to
poetry of which song and story were the
THt JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
26
Percy's Rt'/ujucs were
breath and blcxxd.
vital
Burns was but
Bums'
born
just
can match the
s<.ings
Eddie
finest
long before William Morris, to sing
are great in
scale,
still
when
The Norse
deductions have been made, has
all
made
our
if
in
in verse,
larger
us the
left
our time.
own
has learned to see
prosaic, the tonic spectacle of a
some indefinable way, age
is
rich with the intellectual spoils it
in
were dared and
colossal things
And
stoy
Tennyson, Byron,
but cannot shape a
idylls,
good-humouredly
humanity which was
far off.
mastery of
its
influence brought into a soaety fastidiously refined,
or sordidly gross, or
where
but
;
episodes,
nearest approach to great epic
(2)
nineteenth century had learnt,
and uncertain.
faltering
single scenes,
Morris,
whole.
was
come, anJ
lays in power, or in exemption
The
from the vicious diction of the age.
on a grand
to
still
only the greatest of the old ballads and of
:
suffered,
great,
simple,
heroic,
and the gods were never
more complex, more experienced, more
and the
only the more
world,
spiritual treasures of the
clearly
and comprehensively,
this
elemental poetry, where Life, and Death, and Love, the eternal themes of
poetry, are thought of in so great
all
and simple a way, and where
beauty,
the beauty begotten of a " fearful land," and only possible
there,
so superbly
is
wiung from
fear.
NOTES. ^
(p.
that the
It is unimportant for the present purpose 5) Beoii'ulf, 885 f. scene of the recital of the Volsung song, is laid in a Scandinavian
The his own by an Anglian poet. have Scandinavian analogues but the evidence does not justify us in reckoning it the first (and one of the greatest) exzimples of Scandinavicin literary influence by assigning it to a Scandinavian
land
the story
;
Beowulf
story of
was
in
any case made
itself is
well
known
to
;
source.
The Volsung story as told in Beowulf differs from other versions in making Sigmund, not Sigurd his son, slay the dragon, and win deathless glory thereby.
Miillenhoff peremptorily dismisses this as a perversion of the original
But
story.
it
has to be remembered that
any other version. (p. 6) This
is
Thus Nashe
Saxo.
story of the
two
^
;
in
friends
— a mixture
(p. 7)
emerges centuries
earlier than
consistent with the occasional quotation of a story
Piers Petinilesse
Asmundus and
buried in the other's grave, and
corpse
it
of
is
tells
from
this
Asuitus, one of
from
source the gruesome
whom
insists
on being
found, some days after, mutilated by the
romance and horror quite
in the
Elizabethan vein.
Inserted by Alfred into his translation of Orosius's History
the World, reproduced in Sweet's
Anglo-Saxon Reader
III,
of and elsewhere..
:
NORSE MYTH
IN
ENGLISH POETRY
* (p. 7) Egils saga Skallagrimssoner, poetry was, of course, composed on English
Norse, not
for
English,
eleventh centuries
all
had
The
ears.
c.
soil
Skallagrimsson's
own
other Norse was intended for of the tenth and
it
Scandinavian kings
Thus Thjodolf Amorsson sang the of his master, King Harald,
there.
but
some of them invaded commemorated then and
fighting singers in their train
Elngland, and had their battles, or their death, thus
and the death
Much
55. ;
27
;
Stamford Bridge (1066), it himself. Egil most famous poem, Hofudlaus7i [Corp. Poet, Bar., f„ battle of
after fighting in
in a York prison, as the price of his life. It is needless here to notice the contention of Vigfusson that a great part of the Norse poetic
266),
was composed
literature
was
actually
composed
in these islands.
He
stood practically alone
in this view. (p. 7) Egil Skallagrimsson, who praised Athelstane, could have understood without great difficulty the praise of Shakespeare written two years ago, in the same measure, by the veteran Icelandic poet Matthias Jochumsson, '•'
for the Book of Shakespeare Homage. It arrived too late to appear there and was separately published ( Ultima Thtde Sendeth Greetings : Univ. of Oxford Press, 1916). " (p. 7) Sophus Bugge, Studies on the Origin of the Scandinavian Stories of Gods and //^r<3^j', Christiania, 1881-9. The Heroic Poems in the Older Edda, ibid., 1896. The latter is translated by W. H. Schofield {The Home of the Eddie Poems London, 1899). good brief discussion is given by H. Gering, Die Edda, Introd.
A
^
^
(p.
{Camb.
9)
W.
P. Ker,
Lit. History, Vol.
The Literal y Influence of X, Chapter X), to which this
the
Middle Ages
section
is
otherwise
indebted. ^^
(p.
9)
Though
often translated
inspired no notable poetry in English.
L'Epee Appendix
in
^
d' Angentyr
and always admired, the Waking has Leconte de Lisle rendered it finely
{Poemes Barbares).
A notice
of
it is
subjoined in
I.
(p. 11)
It is
interesting to
remember
that
when Gray's
lay
was published
768, it was read by a clergyman in the Orkneys to the peasants there. After a few lines they said they knew it in Norse and had often sung it to him when he asked them to recite an old song. Scott, Pirate, XV. " (p. 14) Harvard Studies, Vol. IX, 1903. ^^ Byron notices him in the (p. 14) Select Icelandic Poetry, 1804. in
1
English Bards
—
Herbert
wield Thor's hammer, and sometimes rugged rhymes.
shall
In gratitude thou'lt praise his ^^
(p. 14) It of skulls " being
was based on a curious misunderstanding, " crooked boughs merely a poetic periphrasis for drinking horns.
(p. 6) Of this scene, as known to us through the prose of the saga, Andrew Lang wrote {Homer and the Epic, p. 396, quoted by Professor Ker, The Dark Ages, p. 282) " Homer has no such scene, no such ideas. The ^'
1
:
mastery of love in Brunhild's heart, her scene with Sigurd, where he ranges through every choice before them, to live as friends, to live as lovers, her disdainful rejection of friendship, her northern pride of puiily, his anguish^
"
;
THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
28
all this is mere perfection, all her drtrrminalion to slay and follow him on thr loftiest level of Shakespeare, and has no parallel in Greek or Roman .
.
.
is
This and several other crucial scenes, are known
poetry."
to us unfortunately
only from the prose paraphrase, the corresponding verse ha\ ing belonged to the lost
leaves of the great '^
On
(p. 17)
"* '*
the
Edda MS. German development
(p.
18) Journ.ils of J'mir/ in
(p.
19)
The
of the story see
/<>•/
forging of this sword, called
suggests comparison with the famous
showmg how
Appendix
11.
1871.
"The Wrath
Homeric making
Sigurd,"
of
of the shield of Achilles
;
done and made, his insight into All the famous writers of epic arts and crafts, is in fact a Homeric trait. were men of letters whose only artistry before him, Virgil, Tasso, Milton was verse Morris alone was craftsman as well as poet. It is true that the motive of Morris's forging scene is not only, like Homer's, the craftsman's art; Regin, the Northern Vulcan, is " Master of the Masters in the smithying craft," but he is also cunning with all the cunning of the dwarf race, and does his best to cheat the boy of the sword he has promised him so when it is tried on the anvil it shivers into fragments. The scene is thus tense with Morris's
love of
things are
—
:
:
drama
;
we
but
feel the craftsman's instinct in the vivid
exposure of the fraud
:
Then Regin trembled and
As
As
fell
the steel flakes
:
shrank, so bright his eyes outshone
and smote the sword thereon and Sigurd's heart grew wroth " Lo, there the right hand's troth tinkled about him
he turned about
But the shards
rendering of that fierce
Sigurd bids Regin try the finished weapon
to the anvil,
shivering earthward,
1
:
There is a closer parallel to the Homeric shield with its inwrought basreliefs Greek life, in the description of Brynhild's weaving (Morris's special craft)
of
of
a golden web, with
not forget to
tell
dark-blue
(p.
of
'^
for
it
(p.
all
the feats of Sigurd wrought in
us that the
weaver
it.
And
of the glittering gold is seated
he does on cloths
186).
19) Blue
is
was derived from
frequent in the early art of artistry not archaeology.
man; but Morris's
turn
APPENDIX
I.
The Waking of Angentyr. Waking of Angentyr
The
is one of the pieces which reflect most savage grandeur and the volcanic terrors of Iceland. In poetic greatness, as in concentrated power of style, it surpasses anything in Old
distinctly the
Hervor, daughter of the dead hero Angentyr has come across the sea where her father lies buried, to wake him from his death- sleep and demand of him the magic sword Tyrfing, forged by the dwarfs, her It is a sinister heirloom, fraught with disaster to her race, and the heritage. girl's quest, like Childe Roland's in Browning, is at once heroic and tragic, an undaunted thrusting on towards an end which, she knows, means her doom. And as only in the tragedies of the primitive myth world, and as in that wonderful fantasia on them, Childe Roland'xXs,^, all the earth and heaven,
EngHsh.
to the island
man and
nature, appears as grim onlookers
at the
tragic
whole scene with bodeful or mocking voices and appalling is
action
filling
the
Nothing
visions.
indifferent.
The whole two
story
of narrative.
with a flock."
"
is
At
told in brief pregnant dialogue, with barely a line or
sunset in
A weird
Munarvoe
haunting picture in
the young maid met a shepherd
The shepherd
itself.
bids her
and seek shelter. She scornfully refuses, and asks the way to the mounds. He is horror-struck. " Ask me not that, thou art in evil
turn back burial
Let us run thence fast as feet can carry us for out of doors all is to men's eyes." She offers him gifts to guide her. But the richest gifts would not keep him from rushing home. For all the island is ablaze with " What of the graves are opening, field and fen are all alight. flames " though all the island be aflame, we must not let the that," quoth Hervor dead men scare us so soon we have to parley with them." And so the shepherd speeds away to the woods, but " greater grows at the stress of peril the close-knit heart in the breast of Hervor ". She comes to the grave mound and calls aloud to her father through the flames " Wake thou, Give me Angentyr It is Hervor thy only daughter that bids thee wake There is no answer. the sword out of the grave which the Dwarfs forged." " Surely ye are become heaps of She turns to scoff at all the buried chiefs. dust since ye will not answer me." And she calls again, and curses theii obstinacy. At last Angentyr unwillingly replies " Hervor, daughter, why dost thou call and curse ? Thou art walking to thy doom mad art thou She answers grown, and wild of wit that thou wakenest ihe dead ? case
!
:
awesome ;
;
:
:
!
!
:
:
"
sharply of thee
:
:
"
1
give
was ever held to be me the sword " !
like other
He
mortals
pretends that 2CJ
till it is
1
came
hither in search
not there
;
for
foemen
THE JOHN F^YLANDS LIBRARY
30
buried him .tnd kept Tyrfing.
Lei her hurry back to her ship out of the
She only answers by threatening to lay spells on ihem so that they would rot and be really dead. At last he confesses that the magic sword lies under him, all wrapped about with fire, and no maid on flames while she may.
earth dares brandish
it.
my
it.
"I care nothing
for the
burning
fire,
the flame sinks
And when
she rushes forward towards the fire to clasp " for I cannot deny he thinks only of savmg her and gives her the sword
before
eyes."
:
"Well hast an exultmg ci*y Viking chief me sees a happier lot is mine than if 1 had conthou done. But the father answers sadly and scornfully he quered all Norway ". " Thou knowest not, knows that her joy is vain and the prelude to doom. hapless are thy words. daughter, whereat thou rejoicest Thou shalt bear thee,
thou young
maiden!" She breaks
O
into
:
;
:
:
a son
who
" Little
shall
wield Tyrfing, and
how my
it
shall
be the ruin
of
all
thy race."
may quarrel, the daughter of kings is of high heart." And she speeds away with a last greeting to the dead in the mound. But now, like Lady Macbeth, after the crisis she knows what she has gone " Truly through. felt between life and death, she mutters, when all around " mc the fires were burning 1
reck
sons
1
!
APPENDIX
11.
The German and the Northern Versions
of the Volsung
Story. German
epic the complex story has an artistic unity which it has on the other hand, the primitive sublimity of the tale has been attenuated along with its primitive paganism we are reading a romance In the
not in the North
:
;
of adventure, reflecting the Christianized manners, the brilliant court
life,
and
the chivalry, of the Minnesinger age. fell top,
only to be
won
Instead of the Valkyrie on the wild by riding through the ring of flames, Brynhild is a
princess in a palace, overcome by cunning in a test of strength.
more concentrated and better organized. In story of Gudmund and Signy, so loosely attached
is
The whole
particular,
the antecedent
to that of
Sigurd, and so
deeply tinged with the savage grandeur of the pagan age, falls away altogether, and had probably quite faded out of the German tradition. The sequel story, on the other hand, receives a new and powerful motive, which for the
first
time knits
it
close to the story of Sigurd.
For
it
becomes now
the story of Gudrun's vengeance upon her brothers for the murder of her passionately loved lord. Whereas in the Northern version, Gudrun's
new chapter in a story already complete and on Gunnar is motived not by vengeance for Sigurd, but by hunger for the treasure he has won. Gudrun's passion of grief for the glorious hero she has lost is incomparably rendered in the northern poems but they have nothing parallel to the terrible heroine of the Second Part of the Nibelungenlied, transformed by her loss from a tender woman into a pitiless avenger, insatiable in her consuming anger until the last of her guilty kinsmen is dead. The central story, on the other hand, has in the German version been impoverished by the loss of its most potent trait. Brynhild and Sigurd have had no earlier meeting on Hyndfell, no exchange of vows nor of rings. Hence, when he helps Gunnar to win her by personating him in shape and name, he is not playing false to an old love, and the wrong she marriage to Atli begins a
;
Atli's treacherous attack
;
suffers,
though mortifying to her pride,
jured lover.
The
is
not the deadly offence of the per-
tragic tension of the situation
is
therefore very sensibly
diminished. It
was necessary
German developments
to indicate the chief
of the
points in
German legend go
the great nineteenth century versions of the
which the Norse and
apart, in order to appreciate
Volsung
story.
It
is
the strongest
evidence of the superiority of the fragmentary but sublime Norse poetry to the rounded, coherent, and humanized German epic that the Norse form of the Volsung story rather than the German was chosen by the two great poets who nearly at the same time were occupied with it, one of them a German himself,
— Richard Wagner and William Morris.
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