Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/322

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

Poetic Edda

  Helgi spake:
33.[1] "Grieve not, Hethin,  for true shall hold
The words we both  by the beer have sworn;
To the isle a warrior  wills that I go,
(There shall I come  the third night hence;)
And doubtful must be  my coming back,
(So may all be well,  if fate so wills.)"

  Hethin spake:
34. "Thou saidst once, Helgi,  that Hethin was
A friend full good,  and gifts didst give him;
More seemly it were  thy sword to redden,
Than friendship thus  to thy foe to give."

[2]Helgi spoke thus because he foresaw his death, for his following-spirits[3] had met Hethin when he saw the woman riding on the wolf. Alf[4] was the name of a king, the son of Hrothmar, who had marked out a battle-place with

  1. ↑ Perhaps this is the remnant of two stanzas, or perhaps two lines (probably the ones in parenthesis) have been interpolated. The isle: duels were commonly fought on islands, probably to guard against treacherous interference, whence the usual name for a duel was "isle-going." A duel was generally fought three days after the challenge. Reckoning the lapse of time by nights instead of days was a common practice throughout the German and Scandinavian peoples.
  2. ↑ Prose. Some editors place all or part of this prose passage after stanza 35.
  3. ↑ Following-spirits: the "fylgja" was a female guardian spirit whose appearance generally betokened death. The belief was common throughout the North, and has come down to recent times in Scottish and Irish folk-lore. Individuals and sometimes whole families had these following-spirits, but it was most unusual for a person to have more than one of them.
  4. ↑ Alf: son of the Hrothmar who killed Helgi's grandfather, and

[286]

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.