60 



ODIX OF THE NORTH. 



Odin was believed not only to give victory to his favourites, 

 but other gifts, and is represented as corning to the aid of his 

 followers, in the guise of an one-eyed old man- 



Ride shall we 



To Valhalla, 



To the holy place. 



Let us ask the father of hosts 



To be kind (to us) ; 



He pays and gives 



Gold to his host ; 



He gave to Hermod 



A helmet and brynja, 



And to Sigmund 



He gave a sword. 



He gives victory to his sons, 

 And wealth to some ; 



Eloquence to rnay, 

 And wisdom to men ; 

 Fair winds to warriors, 

 And song to poets, 

 And luck in love 

 To many a man. 



She (Freyja) will worship Tlior, 



And ask him 



That he always 



Be at peace with thee ; 



Though he is no friend 



To the jotun- brides. 1 



[Hyudlulj6d.] 



" King Siggeir ruled Gautland ; he was powerful and had 

 many men ; he went to King Yolsung and asked him to give 

 Signy to him in marriage. The king and his sons received 

 this offer well ; she herself was willing, but asked her father 

 to have his way in this as in other things referring to herself. 

 Her father made np his mind that she should be married, and 

 she was betrothed to Siggeir. The wedding-feast was to be at 

 King Volsung's, and Siggeir was to come to him. The king 

 prepared as good a feast as he could. When it was ready the 

 guests and Siggeir's men came on the appointed day ; Siggeir 

 had many men of rank with him. It is said that great fires 

 were made along the hall, 2 and the large tree before mentioned 

 stood t in the middle of the hall, and that when men were 

 sitting before the fires in the evening a man walked into the 

 hall whom they did not know. He wore a spotted hekla 

 (frock) ; he was barefooted, and had linen breeches fastened to 

 his legs ; he had a sword in his hand, and wore a hood low 

 down over his face ; he was very grey-haired, and looked old, 

 and was one-eyed. 3 He went to the tree, and drew the sword, 

 and stuck it into the trunk so that it sank up to the hilt. No 

 man dared to speak to him. He said: ' He who pulls this 

 sword out of the trunk shall get it as a gift from me, and will 

 find that he never had a better sword in his hand than this 

 one.' The old man then went out, and no one knew who he 

 was, or where he went. Then all the foremost men tried to 



Because he was always fighting 

 against the Jbtnar. 



The fires were always in the centre, 



lengthwise. 



3 This man was Odin, who is always 

 represented as having only one eye. 



