Page:The Story of Egil Skallagrimsson.djvu/17

as 'the bear' (bjorn) of the birchwood's terror (of arin, ‘the hearth,' on which birchwood is burnt).

This fondness for wrapping up wisdom in riddles we see in Eastern nations. Solomon (Prov. i. 6) puts it as a desirable learning to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their dark sayings' (marg. ‘riddles'); the LXX. has παραβολὴν καὶ σκοτεινὸν λόγον ῥήσεις τε σοφῶν καὶ αἰνίγματα. There are phrases like Icelandic kennings in Solomon; e.g., in Eccles. xi. 3, 4, 'the keepers of the house, the strong men, the grinders, those that look out of the window,' are of this kind, as also perhaps some of those expressions that follow. And riddles of the older type are so. Take, for example, Samson's riddle, 'Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' What is this but describing what had happened with the kennings, 'eater' and 'strong' for lion, 'meat' and 'sweetness' for honey?

In some respects the use of certain epithets in ancient Greek poetry is like the use of kennings. We find in Homer stock epithets, names, titles, repeatedly occurring where they do not specially fit the passage. Men are 'articulating, enterprising' (μέροπες, ἄλφησται); the earth is 'black, all-feeding, rye-giving' (μέλαινα, πουλυβότειρα, ζείδωρος); the sea is 'divine, fishful' (δια, ιχθυόεσσα); kings and chiefs 'Jove's nurslings, blameless' (διοτρεφέες, ἀμύμονες), etc., without regard to the special circumstances. But in Greek with the epithet the noun is mostly expressed; whereas in Icelandic it has to be guessed.

Very many kennings are based on mythology. This is not only true of the names of the gods, but also of other persons and things; they are frequently described by periphrases which can only be explained from the Edda, and are therefore meaningless to those who are not well versed in the details of that same.

And now it will be seen that these various kennings present a double difficulty, first to understand, then to deal with in translation. Suppose them understood, still how shall they be rendered? When they are poetical figures appropriate to the passage they are fairly manageable, sometimes without change, sometimes by simile, sometimes as