For I must go to marry me, to take a wife unto me;
The black earth for my wife I take, the tombstone as her mother
And yonder little pebbles all her brethren and her sisters[1370].’
Here evidently we have the funeral-dirge of an old man, and, as is usual in these poems, a large part of the words are put into his mouth. In this fragment the first two lines are the dead man’s complaint, the next two are an answer returned to him, and then again he takes up his parable. The second example which I will give is from a lamentation for a young girl. The first few lines are addressed by the father and mother to their dead child, and with a quaint directness contrast the gloom of the lower world with the simple joys of a peasant’s life here above; while the last three lines are an answer put into the dead girl’s mouth.
‘Dear child, there where thou purposest to hie thee down, in Hades,
There, sure, no cock doth ever crow, nor hen is heard a-clucking,
There is no spring of water found, nor grass in meadows growing.
Art hungered? nought thou tastest there; athirst? there nought thou drinkest;
Would’st lay thee down and take thy rest? of sleep no fill thou takest.
Then stay, dear child, in thine own house, stay then with thine own kindred.’