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Poetic Edda

Thou didst greedily bite,  and thy teeth were busy.

79.[1] "Of thy sons now thou knowest;  few suffer more sorrow;
My guilt have I told,  fame it never shall give me."

  Atli spake:
80.[2] "Grim wast thou, Guthrun,  in so grievous a deed,
My draught with the blood  of thy boys to mingle;
Thou hast slain thine own kin,  most ill it beseemed thee,
And little for me  twixt my sorrows thou leavest."

  Guthrun spake:
81.[3] "Still more would I seek  to slay thee thyself,
Enough ill comes seldom  to such as thou art;
Thou didst folly of old,  such that no one shall find

    Some editions add lines 3-4 to stanza 79; Finnur Jonsson marks them as probably spurious.

  1. ↑ Perhaps these two lines should form part of stanza 78, or perhaps they, rather than lines 3-4 of stanza 78, are a later addition. A gap of two lines after line 1 has also been conjectured.
  2. ↑ The manuscript does not indicate the speaker.
  3. ↑ The manuscript does not indicate the speaker. Lines 1-2 may be the remains of a separate stanza; Grundtvig adds: "Thou wast foolish, Atli,  when wise thou didst feel, / Ever the whole  of thy race did I hate." The Volsungasaga paraphrase, however, indicates no gap. Many editions make a separate stanza of lines 3-6, which, in the Volsungasaga, are paraphrased as a speech of Atli's. Lines 5-6 may be spurious.

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