Our covenant are fast as the Norna's will.
This is her translation of the last stanzas of the account of Ingeborg's marriage to Frithiof:—
In come Ingeborg in hermine sack, and bright jewels, followed of a crowd of maids like de stars wid de moon. Wid de tears in de beautiful eyes she fall to her brother's heart; but he lead the dear sister up to Frithiof's noble breast; and over the God's altar she reach-ched her hand to de childhood's friend, to her heart's beloved.
A few days before I left Christiania, Katrina had come shyly up to my table, one evening, and tossed down on it a paper, saying,—
"Dere is anoder. Dis one is for you."
On looking at it, I found it contained four stanzas of Norwegian verse, in which my name occurred often. No persuasions I could bring to bear on her would induce her to translate it. She only laughed, said she could not, and that some of my Norwegian friends must read it to me. She read it aloud in the Norwegian, and to my ignorant ear the lines had a rhythmical and musical sound. She herself was pleased with it. "It is nice song, dat song," she said; but turn it into English for me she would not. Each day, however, she asked if I had had it translated, and finding on the last day that I had not, she darted into her room, shut the door, and in the course of two hours came out, saying, "I got it part done; but dey tell you better, as I tell you."
The truth was, the tribute was so flattering, she preferred it should come to me second hand. She shrank from saying directly, in open speech, all that it had pleased her affectionate heart to say in the verses. Three of the stanzas I give exactly as she wrote them. The rest is a secret between Katrina and me.
THANKS.
The duty command me to honor
You, who with me