“Read me the dream and I will name the child.”
“Nay, first name thou the babe: for then no harm shall come to her at thy hands.”
So Asmund took the child, poured water over her, and named her.
Then Groa spoke: “This lord, is the reading of thy dream, else my wisdom is at fault: The silver dove is thy daughter Gudruda, the golden snake is my daughter Swanhild, and these two shall hate one the other and strive against each other. But the swan is a mighty man whom both shall love, and, if he love not both, yet shall belong to both. And thou shalt send him away; but he shall return and bring bad luck to thee and thy house, and thy daughter shall be blind with love of him. And in the end he shall slay the eagle, a great lord from the north who shall seek to wed thy daughter, and many another shall he slay, by the help of that raven with the bill of steel who shall be with him. But Swanhild shall triumph over thy daughter Gudruda, and this man, and the two of them, shall die at her hands, and, for the rest, who can say? But this is true—that the mighty man shall bring all thy race to an end. See now, I have read thy rede.”
Then Asmund was very wroth. “Thou wast wise to beguile me to name thy bastard brat,” he said; “else had I been its death within this hour.”
“This thou canst not do, lord, seeing that thou hast held it in thy arms,” Groa answered, laughing. “Go rather and lay out Gudruda the Fair on Coldback Hill; so shalt thou make an end of the evil, for Gudruda shall be its very root. Learn this, moreover: that thy dream does not tell all, seeing that thou thyself must play a part in the fate. Go, send forth the babe Gudruda, and be at rest.”
“That cannot be, for I have sworn to cherish it, and with an oath that may not be broken.”
“It is well,” laughed Groa. “Things will befall as they are fated; let them befall in their season. There is space for cairns on Coldback and the sea can shroud its dead!”
And Asmund went thence, angered at heart.