"Then we bear you ill news: your father is dead."
Another man stood up in the boat, and said: "Grettir, he was an old man, and you can hardly have expected to hear that he was still alive. But what I have to say concerns you as closely, and is unexpected. Your brother Atli has been slain by Thorbiorn Oxmain."
Then a third man rose and said: "But these tidings concern others first and you secondly. What I have to say concerns you mainly. You have been made an outlaw throughout the length and breadth of the land, and a price is set on your head."
It is said that Grettir did not change colour, nor did a muscle in his whole body quiver; but he lifted up his voice and sang this strain—
"All at once are showered
Round me, the Rhymer,
Tidings sad—my exile,
Father's loss and brother's,
Branching boughs of battle!
Many a blue-blade-breaker
Shall suffer for my sorrow."
The branching bough of battle is a periphrasis for a man, so also is a blue-blade-breaker; and it is the use of such periphrases that constituted poetry to Icelandic ideas. One night Grettir swam ashore. He thought that his enemies would be awaiting him, and should he venture to land in a boat would fall on him in overwhelming numbers; so he took to the water and swam to a point at some distance. Then he took a horse that he found in a farm near where he came ashore, and he rode across country to the Middle-firth, and reached home in two days. He reached Biarg during the night when all were asleep; so instead of disturbing the household, he opened a private door, stepped into the hall, stole up to his mother's bed, and threw his arms round her neck.
She started up, and asked who was there. When he told her, she clasped him to her heart, and laid her head, sobbing, on his breast, saying. "Oh, my son! I am bereaved of my children! Atli, my eldest, has been foully murdered, and you are outlawed; only Illugi remains."
Grettir remained at home a few days in close concealment. Even the men of the farm were not suffered to know that he was there. He heard the story of how Thorbiorn Oxmain had basely and in cowardly manner slain his brother, when Atli was unarmed; and Grettir considered that it was his duty to avenge his death.
CHAPTER XXII
THE SLAYING OF OXMAIN.