In Book II we have other great speeches that the poet has put into the mouth of his characters with little or no justification in the original saga. Chap. XIV of the saga contains Regin's tale of his brothers, and of the gold called "Andvari's Hoard," and that tale is severely brief and plain. The account in the poem is expanded greatly, and the conception of Regin materially altered. In the saga he was not the discontented youngest son of his father, prone to talk of his woes and to lament his lot. In the poem he does this in so eloquent a fashion that almost we are persuaded to sympathize with him. Certainly his lines were hard, to have outlived his great deeds, and to hear his many inventions ascribed to the gods. The speech of the released Odin to Reidmar is modeled on Job's conception of omnipotence, and it is one of the memorable parts of this book. Gripir's prophecy, too, is a majestic work, and its original was three sentences in the saga and the poem Grípisspá in the heroic songs of the Edda. Here Morris rises to the heights of Sigurd's greatness:
Sigurd, Sigurd! O great, O early born!
O hope of the Kings first fashioned! O blossom of the morn!
Short day and long remembrance, fair summer of the North!
One day shall the worn world wonder how first thou wentest forth!
(P. 111.)
Those who have read William Morris know that he is a master of nature description. The "Glittering Heath" offered a fine opportunity for this sort of work, and in this piece we have another departure from the saga, Morris made hundreds of pictures in this poem, but the pages describing the journey to the "Glittering Heath" are packed with them to an extraordinary degree. Here is Iceland in very fact, all dust and ashes to the eye:
More changeless than mid-ocean, as fruitless as its floor.
We confess that there is something in the scene that holds us, all shorn of beauty though it is. We do not want to go the length of Thomas Hardy, however, who, in that wonderful first chapter of The Return of the Native has a similar heath to describe. "The new vale of Tempe," says he, "may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young.... The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the mournful sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain, will be all of nature that is absolutely consonant with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtlegardens of South Europe are to him now." Is it not a suggestive thought that England and the nineteenth century evolved a pessimism which poor Iceland on its ash-heap never could conceive? William Morris was an Icelander, not an Englishman, in his philosophy.
In this same scene, a notable deviation from the saga is the conversation between Regin and Sigurd concerning the relations that shall be between them after the slaying of Fafnir. Here Morris impresses the lesson of Regin's greed, taking the un-Icelandic device of preaching to serve his purpose:
Let it lead thee up to heaven, let it lead thee down to hell,
The deed shall be done tomorrow: thou shalt have that measureless Gold,
And devour the garnered wisdom that blessed thy realm of old,
That hath lain unspent and begrudged in the, very heart of hate:
With the blood and the might of thy brother thine hunger shalt thou sate:
And this deed shall be mine and thine; but take heed for what followeth then!
(P. 119.)
In still another place has Morris departed far from the saga story. According to the poem, Sigurd meets each warning of Fafnir that the gold will be the curse of its possessor with the assurance that he will cast the gold abroad, and let none of it cling to his fingers. The saga, however, has this very frank confession: "Home would I ride and lose all that wealth, if I deemed that by the losing thereof I should never die; but every brave and true man will fain have his hand on wealth till that last day." Here, again, we see an adaptation of the story of the poem to modern conceptions of nobility. It remains to be said that the ernes move Sigurd to take the gold for the gladdening of the world, and they assure him that a son of the Volsung had nought to fear from the Curse. The seven-times-repeated "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd," is an admirable poem, but it does not contain information concerning Brynhild, as do the strophes of Reginsmál which are the model for this lay.