Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/432

 412 Reviews.

One must risk something.

Better 7-ow easier and tireak nothing.

It is ill to speak scorn of sacklcss men, i.e.. It is ill to mock

the innocent. The stern is bound to lag behind. A tale is but half told if one man tells it. The fairest women talk the most. A man's tongue often grows too long. That will be known when it is tried. Too soon clutch evil's claws.

Trust no man so well as not to trust thyself better. There is no trusting man's might or man's luck. Trusting too much has been many a man's bane. IVoods must hide the hunted.' Words are free. Many a man is tongue-strong and weak-\is.x\([eA.

With the chronology of the Saga, difficult as it stands, we have not to do here, there are enough indications left in it and else- where to enable us to range the birth and death of Grettir within a small margin of the real dates, c. 996-1032.

There are a few passages worth giving here as of special bearing on folklore, e.g.^ the charming of the log and the curses of the witch : —

" And when they came to the strand, she [the witch] went limping along by the sea as if she were led thither. There lay there before her a root-log as big as a man might carry. She looked at the tree and bade them turn it over there before her. It looked as if it had been singed and rubbed on one side ; where it was rubbed she had a little flat place cut. Then she took her knife and cut runes on the root and reddened them with her blood and spoke spell- songs over them. She walked backwards and against the sun round the log and cast many rank spells over it. After that she had the log thrust into the sea and spoke over it to the end that it should drift out to Drangey and turn to the complete hurt of Grettir. The wind was blowing up along the frith, but the old woman's root-log sailed against the gale and seemed to go no slower than might be looked for."

" Now this is the spell I lay on thee, Grettir, that thou be reft of health, of all thy living and luck, of all thy wit and wisdom, ever the more, the longer thou livest. And I think that thou shalt have here fewer happy days hence- forward than hitherto ! "

The exact correspondence of the revenge with the insult is to be noticed. The old woman's thigh was broken by a stone (which a witch could not propel), and she gets Grettir's leg maimed above

' Cf. Glam's verse :

" uel hafa uiSir scogar uargi opt um borgit,'' and Harold Ilardrede's verses on his escape from Sticklestead.