Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/157

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Harbarthsljoth

  The ferryman spake:
2.[1] "What kind of a peasant is yon,  that calls o'er the bay?"

  Thor spake:
3.[2] "Ferry me over the sound;  I will feed thee therefor in the morning;
A basket I have on my back,  and food therein, none better;
At leisure I ate,  ere the house I left,
Of herrings and porridge,  so plenty I had."

  The ferryman spake:
4.[3] "Of thy morning feats art thou proud,  but the future thou knowest not wholly;
Doleful thine home-coming is:  thy mother, methinks, is dead."

  Thor spake:
5.[4] "Now hast thou said  what to each must seem
The mightiest grief,  that my mother is dead."

[5]

  1. ↑ The superscriptions to the speeches are badly confused in the manuscripts, but editors have agreed fairly well as to where they belong.
  2. ↑ From the fact that in Regius line 3 begins with a capital letter, it is possible that lines 3-4 constitute the ferryman's reply, with something lost before stanza 4.
  3. ↑ Thy mother: Jorth (Earth)
  4. ↑ Some editors assume a lacuna after this stanza.
  5. ↑ Three good dwellings: this has been generally assumed to mean three separate establishments, but it may refer simply to

[123]

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.