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STORY OF EGIL SKALLAGRIMSSON

form as far as he may, or changing it into rhyme with strict syllabic metre. As the former method of alliteration with some license as to length of line by unaccented syllables allows of a closer rendering of the original, it has been preferred.

But there are several puzzles to solve in Icelandic verse. There is often a curiously complex order of words, an order that sometimes renders a sentence utterly unconstruable at first sight even to one accustomed to the involutions of Latin and German. Were it not for the consentient authority of Scandinavian interpreters, I could never have imagined words to be meant so out of the order in which they are written. To keep their rules of alliterative sound, the skalds broke those of grammatical sense. The subjoined examples (by no means extreme ones) will give an idea of the Icelandic practice in this kind.

(1) 'Now hath the lord of earth slain falls the land under the descendant of Ella forward in fight of rule head-stem three princes.'

Which being interpreted is: 'Now hath the lord of earth, forward in fight, head-stem, slain three princes: the land falls under the rule of the descendant of Ella.'

(2) 'Let listen pleased to the stream of long-haired friend of altars take heed thane of silence thy people the king's of mine.'

Interpreted: 'Let the king's thane listen pleased to the stream of my long-haired altar-friend (= to the stream of song from Odin); let the people take heed of silence.'

The consenting voice of three gives (with hardly a variation in detail) these explanations. Now, these examples in their original order sound much as if Scott had written in the opening of the 'Lady of the Lake':

'At eve had drunk where danced his fill
The stag the moon on Monan's rill.'

This feature of Icelandic verse plainly cannot be kept, nor is it worth keeping. One must presume that somehow the hearers (or most of them) did understand what was sung, but no English hearer or reader could understand his own language so treated. A translator must give up this artificial order. But this peculiarity, besides making the sense hard

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