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Douglas Hyde, though always at work, had not yet brought the fruits of his researches to light; Miss Eleanor Hull had not collected into a handy volume the materials of "The Cuchullin Saga"; Kuno Meyer we did not know; Standish O'Grady, though he had published his "Heroic Period," had not yet begun popularising the bardic tales in such volumes as "Finn and his Companions."
At last he forced himself back to the chair and sat there, mechanically polishing the barrel of his gun, but his tongue still spoke the saga of illusion. It stopped when the storm dropped into the bottomless silence of dawn. Then there was only the dripping from their eaves. Hugh sat there, very white, his gun laid across his lap. Bella, as white, lifted her face.
'Saga; mulieres barbara factitantes sacrificia, aut pestiferi, si cui mortem intulerint, neque id inficiari poterint, capitis pcena esto. LI. Aethelst. c. 6. apud Lambard. LI. Aelfr. 30. LI. Cnuti. c. 4. Fleta tit et ubi supra. 3 Inst. 44. Trial of witches before Hale, in 1664. The statutes 33 H. 8. c. 8. 5. El. c. 16 and 1.
In two Norman variants the lady forbids the utterance in her presence of the name of Death. These high-born heroines had, forsooth, highly developed sensibilities. In another American tale, where the wife was a snake, she deserted him from jealousy. A Tirolese saga speaks of a man who had a wife of unknown extraction.
One more saga drama was to be written by Bjoernson, but "Sigurd Slembe" remains his greatest achievement in this field of activity. Its single successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," was not published until ten years later, and may not be compared with it for either strength or poetic inspiration.
We shall next perhaps be invited to believe that the authors of the Volsunga Saga obtained the conception of Sigurd from the "Thirty-Nine Articles." It is true that these deities, Athene and Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than any of the other divinities of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or frustrated.
Ugly of countenance, but of great bodily strength and stature, crafty, self-seeking, treacherous and wholly unscrupulous, he is still known in the North as "the wicked Earl Harold," yet the Saga classes him with Sigurd Eysteinsson and Thorfinn Sigurdson as one of the three greatest of the Jarls and Earls of Orkney and Caithness.
Sing us a stave or tell us a saga, kinsman, as well thou knowest how, being gifted with more than a fair share of the scald's craft." The applause with which this proposal was received by the guests and house-carles who crowded the hall from end to end proved that they were aware of Guttorm's gifts, and would gladly hear him.
The peasantry might have said then, what was said long after by Voltaire: "Il faut etre dans ce monde enclume ou marteau; j'etais ne enclume." Voltaire, however, speedily became a hammer, and after 1789 the Tiers Etat also became a hammer, and the Noblesse the anvil. In Iceland there were underground retreats, as we learn from the same Saga that tells us of those in Aquitaine.
The Grimms, in their notes, point to a remarkable parallel in the Saga of Aslaug, the daughter of Brunhild and Sigurd. Here the King Ragnar demands that Aslaug should come to him naked yet clothed, eating yet not eating, not alone but without companion. She uses the fish-net as in the Folk-Tale, bites into an onion, and takes her dog along with her.