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Thereafter she fared home, and found the witch-wife and bade her change semblances again, and she did so.
For his thought sped back across the years and once more he seemed to see the face of Gudruda the Gentle as she lay dying, and to hear her voice when she foretold evil to him if he had aught to do with Groa the Witch-wife. And now it seemed to him that the evil was at hand, though whence it should come he knew not. He looked up.
Birdalone woke up in the morning, and arose and clad herself, and she saw not the witch-wife in the chamber, though her bed looked as if it had been slept in. Birdalone accounted little thereof, whereas the dame would oft go on one errand or another much betimes in the morning. Yet was she somewhat glad, for she was nowise wishful for a wrangle with her.
Unna, grow thou white as snow! The draught is drugged and Groa, Ran's gift! Groa the Witch-Wife! Groa, Asmund's love! hath drugged it!" And ere ever a man might lift a hand to stay her Groa glided past the high seat and was gone. For a space all stood silent. Asmund ceased clutching at his breast. Rising he spoke heavily: "Now I learn that sin is a stone to smite him who hurled it.
The Gypsy pulls the bell, when is heard the soft cry of 'Quien es'; the door, unlocked by means of a string, recedes upon its hinges, when in walks the Gitana, the witch-wife of Multan, with a look such as the tiger-cat casts when she stealeth from her jungle into the plain.
When morning was, Birdalone arose, and longed sore to go into the wood to seek Habundia again, but durst not, lest the witch-wife should come to hand again earlier than might be looked for. So she abode quiet and did what was toward near about the house.
She was a weird witch-wife, mother of storm demons and frost giants, who must be fought with steadily, warily, wearily, over dreary heaths and snow-capped fells, and rugged nesses and tossing sounds, and away into the boundless sea or who could live? till he got hardened in the fight into ruthlessness of need and greed.
"On the rough bear's paws, And on Bragi's tongue, On the wolf's claws, And on eagle's bill, On bloody wings, And bridge's end; On loosing palms, And pity's path: "On glass, and on gold, And on goodly silver, In wine and in wort, And the seat of the witch-wife; On Gungnir's point, And Grani's bosom; On the Norn's nail, And the neb of the night-owl.
There is another spell in the wind, stirred up by devil or witch-wife, and it comes from Tosti Godwinsson." "Tosti, the cold-meat butcher? What has he to say to me?" "This, 'If Hereward will come with me to William of Normandy, and help us against Harold, the perjured, then will William do for him all that Harold would have done, and more beside." "And what answered Torfrida?"
There was the old and withered hag, on whom, in our later mediaeval ages the character was mainly bestowed; there was the terrific witch-wife, or wolf-witch, who seems wholly apart from human birth and attributes, like the weird sisters of Macbeth creatures who entered the house at night and seized warriors to devour them, who might be seen gliding over the sea, with the carcase of the wolf dripping blood from their giant jaws; and there was the more serene, classical, and awful vala, or sibyl, who, honoured by chiefs and revered by nations, foretold the future, and advised the deeds of heroes.
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