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And in the evening, when the party were seated in King Gunther's hall, Siegfried, at the command of the May-queen, who was none other than Kriemhild the peerless, amused them by telling the story of Idun and Her Apples. It is a story that Bragi told while at the feast in AEgir's hall. Idun is Bragi's wife.
Odin came, and on his shoulder? sat his two ravens, whose croaking drew clouds down over the Asa's face, for Thought and Memory sang one sad song that day. Frigga came, Frey, Gerda, Freyja, Thor, Hoenir, Bragi, and Iduna. Heimdall came sweeping over the tops of the mountains on Golden Mane, his swift, bright steed.
Frey, smiling a welcome, showed a bench to Loki. It was beside Bragi's and next to Freya's. Loki did not take the place; instead he shouted out, "Not beside Bragi will I sit; not beside Bragi, the most craven of all the Dwellers in Asgard." Bragi sprang up at that affront, but his wife, the mild Iduna, quieted his anger.
The old man shook his head, and answered, "Were I Bragi; as some think I am, or were I even a strolling harper, I might do as you ask. But I am neither, and I know no gladsome songs. Men have called me a messenger of ill omen; and such, indeed, I have sometimes been, although through no wish of my own.
But he sang not of spring, as Bragi does, nor yet of youth nor of beauty, nor like one whose home is with the song-birds, and who lives beside the babbling brooks and the leaping waterfalls.
In either case, the world will never forget me. I am Loki." Then one among the Asa-folk spoke up, and said, "Let him sit with us. He is mad; and when he slew Funfeng, he was not in his right mind. He is not answerable for his rash act." But Bragi the Wise, who sat on the innermost seat, arose, and said, "Nay, we will not give him a seat among us.
"Or rather for catching men," said Bragi; "for it is strangely like the Sea-queen's net." "In that case," said Hermod the Nimble, "he has made a trap for himself; for, no doubt, he has changed himself, as is his wont, to a slippery salmon, and lies at this moment hidden beneath the Fanander torrent. Here are plenty of cords of flax and hemp and wool, with which he intended to make other nets.
Idun thought long and anxiously upon the words which Loki had spoken; and, the more she thought, the more she felt troubled. If her husband, the wise Bragi, had been at home, what would she not have given? He would have understood the mischief-maker's cunning.
And all Isenland slept too, because Brunhild, the Maiden of Spring, lay wounded with the Sleepful thorn. When Siegfried heard this story, he knew that the land which lay before them was Isenland, and that the castle was Isenstein, and that Brunhild was sleeping within that circle of fire. "My songs have no power to awaken such a sleeper," said Bragi.
Of the other Gods, Bragi is a later development; his name means simply king or chief, and his attributes, as God of eloquence and poetry, are apparently borrowed from Odin. Heimdal, the watchman and "far-seeing like the Vanir," who keeps guard on the rainbow bridge Bifröst, is represented in the curious poem Rigsthula as founder of the different social orders.
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