Randvar the songsmith

by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

—Northern saying.

The third month of spring was come upon the year when the Songsmith rode back through the forest from his visit at Freya’s Tower; and the spirit of spring was come upon him, so that his blood worked in his veins like sap in a tree.

Sometimes the billowy clouds above him parted over tender blue, and let through bursts of radiant sunshine that tiled his path with gold and golden-lighted the dim aisle stretching out before him. Sometimes they drew together in a lowering mass of gray, and let fall snow-flakes to lie daisy-like upon the patches of springing green. Sometimes it was bright streaks of rain that fell, meeting his cheek like so many soft mouths, changing with the returning sun into laughing eyes winking from every leaf. Whatever came, he took as joyously as the teeming earth.

The thrill that the earth must have known when it looked up at the first rainbow, the Songsmith knew when he came at last to the cross-roads and, through a bushy lattice, glimpsed bright-colored mantles and divined that Brynhild had ridden out to meet him.

Feigning that she had checked her horse only to give her pages more time to search the sodden thickets for flowers, she was lingering between the budding walls of the lane, herself very like a spring flower in her wrappings of leaf-green. When the horseman appeared at the head of the lane, her first impulse was plainly to wheel and ride away from him; her second, to draw her queenful self erect and flash such lightnings from her eyes’ gray sky as should strike dead any presumptuous thought.

But he had no need to tame his joy for it had mounted to that height where it was changed into a delicious terror. Almost was it beyond his power to salute her, to answer becomingly the merry welcome of her women. When at last he had reached her side and dismounted to receive her greeting, the touch of her white hand lighting birdlike on his brown one made his fingers tremble so that she could not fail to mark it.

A moment it seemed as though the blissful panic would even fall on her, so speechless she sat before him, the wild-rose color blowing in her cheeks. But even at the first hint of a surprised pause in the women’s chatter, she recovered herself, and spoke with gracious composure.

“The weeks have seemed long without your songs, my friend. They say my brother has begun to suffer in his temper through missing you and them. Tell us if you gained enough pleasure by the visit to make up his loss; and tell us about the bride, and how her mother likes her strapping new son.”

She said “us,” but after a little space of polite pretence it became doubtful how much interest her maidens had in the telling. As if enamoured of the song-maker’s sleek black horse, they gathered around it to caress its arching neck while they listened. From that, they drew off to the side of the path to pluck up young grass spears for its refreshment; then still farther off to the hedge of lilac bushes, gemmed with long green buds. The time came at last when all who had not slipped through the hedge had vanished around it, into the road, whence the murmur of their voices came back sweetly, blending softly with the tinkle of a brook flowing somewhere through the thicket.