The old women approach the young ones gradually.
Little ones, do not doubt us. Could we hurt you?
Because we are ugly must we be bewitched?
Steinvor.
Nay, but bewitch us.
Biartey. Not in a litten house:
Not ere the hour when night turns on itself
And shakes the silence: not while ye wake together.
Sweet voice, tell us, was that verily Gunnar?
Steinvor.
Arrh—do not touch me, unclean flyer-by-night:
Have ye birds' feet to match such bat-webbed fingers?
Biartey.
I am only a cowed curst woman who walks with death;
I will crouch here. Tell us, was it Gunnar?
Oddny.
Yea, Gunnar surely. Is he not big enough
To fit the songs about him?
Biartey. He is a man.
Why will his manhood urge him to be dead?
We walk about the whole old land at night,
We enter many dales and many halls:
And everywhere is talk of Gunnar's greatness,
His slayings and his fate outside the law.
The last ship has not gone: why will he tarry?
Oddny.
He chose a ship, but men who rode with him
Say that his horse threw him upon the shore,
His face toward the Lithe and his own fields;
As he arose he trembled at what he gazed on
(Although those men saw nothing pass or meet them)
And said.... What said he, girls?
Astrid. "Fair is the Lithe:
So fair I never thought it was so fair.
Its corn is white, its meadows green after mowing.
I will ride home again and never leave it."
Oddny.
'Tis an unlikely tale: he never said it.
No one could mind such things in such an hour.
Plainly he saw his fetch come down the sands,
And knew he need not seek another country
And take that with him to walk upon the deck
In night and storm.
Gudfinn. He he he! No man speaks thus.
Jofrid.
No man, no man: he must be doomed somewhere.
Biartey.
Doomed and fey, my sisters.... We are too old,
Yet I'd not marvel if we outlasted him.
Sisters, that is a fair fierce girl who spins....
My fair fierce girl, you could fight—but can you ride?
Would you not shout to be riding in a storm?
Ah ... h, girls learnt riding well when I was a girl,
And foam rides on the breakers as I was taught....
My fair fierce girl, tell me your noble name.
Oddny.
My name is Oddny.
Biartey. Oddny, when you are old
Would you not be proud to be no man's purse-string,
But wild and wandering and friends with the earth?
Wander with us and learn to be old yet living.
We'd win fine food with you to beg for us.
Steinvor.
Despised, cast out, unclean, and loose men's night-bird.
Oddny.
When I am old I shall be some man's friend,
And hold him when the darkness comes....
Biartey.
And mumble by the fire and blink....
Good Oddny, let me spin for you awhile,
That Gunnar's house may profit by his guesting:
Come, trust me with your distaff....
Oddny. Are there spells
Wrought on a distaff?
Steinvor. Only by the Norns,
And they'll not sit with human folk to-night.
Oddny.
Then you may spin all night for what I care;
But let the yarn run clean from knots and snarls,
Or I shall have the blame when you are gone.
Biartey, taking the distaff.
Trust well the aged knowledge of my hands;
Thin and thin do I spin, and the thread draws finer.
She sings as she spins.
They go by three,
And the moon shivers;
The tired waves flee,
The hidden rivers
Also flee.
I take three strands;
There is one for her,
One for my hands,
And one to stir
For another's hands.
I twine them thinner,
The dead wool doubts;
The outer is inner,
The core slips out....
Hallgerd re-enters by the daïs door, holding a pair of shears.
Hallgerd.
What are these women, Oddny? Who let them in?
Biartey, who spins through all that follows.
Lady, the man of fame who is your man
Gave us his peace to-night, and that of his house.
We are blown beggars tramping about the land,
Denied a home for our evil and vagrant hearts;
We sought this shelter when the first dew soaked us,
And should have perished by the giant hound
But Gunnar fought it with his eyes and saved us.
That is a strange hound, with a man's mind in it.
Hallgerd, seating herself in the high-seat.
It is an Irish hound, from that strange soil
Where men by day walk with unearthly eyes
And cross the veils of the air, and are not men
But fierce abstractions eating their own hearts
Impatiently and seeing too much to be joyful....
If Gunnar welcomed ye, ye may remain.
Biartey.
She is a fair free lady, is she not?
But that was to be looked for in a high one
Who counts among her fathers the bright Sigurd,
The bane of Fafnir the Worm, the end of the god-kings;
Among her mothers Brynhild, the lass of Odin,
The maddener of swords, the night-clouds' rider.
She has kept sweet that father's lore of bird-speech,
She wears that mother's power to cheat a god.
Sisters, she does well to be proud....
Jofrid and Gudfinn. Ay, Well....
Hallgerd, shaping the tissue with her shears.
I need no witch to tell I am of rare seed,
Nor measure my pride nor praise it. Do I not know?
Old women, ye are welcomed: sit with us,
And while we stitch tell us what gossip runs—
But if strife might be warmed by spreading it.
Biartey.
Lady, we are hungered; we were lost
All night among the mountains of the East;
Clouds of the cliffs come down my eyes again....
I pray you let some thrall bring us to food.
Hallgerd.
Ye get nought here. The supper is long over;
The women shall not let ye know the food-house,
Or ye'll be thieving in the night. Ye are idle,
Ye suck a man's house bare and seek another.
'Tis bed-time; get to sleep—that stills much hunger.
Biartey.
Now it is easy to be seeing what spoils you.
You were not grasping or ought but over warm
When Sigmund, Gunnar's kinsman, guested here.
You followed him, you were too kind with him,
You lavished Gunnar's treasure and gear on him
To draw him on, and did not call that thieving.
Ay, Sigmund took your feuds on him and died
As Gunnar shall. Men have much harm by you.
Hallgerd.
Now have I gashed the golden cloth awry:
'Tis ended—a ruin of clouts—the worth of the gift—
Bridal dish-clouts—nay, a bundle of flame.
I'll burn it to a breath of its old queen's ashes:
Fire, O fire, drink up....
She throws the shreds of the veil on the glowing embers: they waft to ashes with a brief high flare. She goes to Jofrid.
There's one of you
That holds her head in a bird's sideways fashion:
I know that reach o' the chin.... What's under thy hair?—
She fixes Jofrid with her knee, and lifts her hair.