Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/198

182 in Scandinavian but practically unknown in Anglo-Saxon; and therefore Professor Lawrence, who was first to study this phase of it, assumed it to be a translation out of the Norse. As it follows Deor in the Exeter manuscript, and Deor also has refrain and what have been taken for stanzas, the two poems are bracketed for similar origins.

Is Deor, then, a translation, and is his song to be ranged as an early specimen of those innumerable effusions, studied or improvised, of the Scandinavian bard, which are paraphrased in Saxo’s Latin and recorded now in the prose of the Sagas and now in the actual verse? Or is it an original English poem based on traditions of the old minstrel life in Germania,—a document for the Germanic singer in days of the common legendary store in which all Ingævonic peoples about North Sea and Baltic had their part? Here is Signy’s Lament for comparison,—if a Lament it be, and the supposed making of that tragic person.

My people suppose they are pleasured with gifts. . . ........... They will surely oppress him if peril comes o’er him. Unlike are our lots.

Wolf’s on an isle and I on another; firm is the island, by fen surrounded. Unmerciful are they, the men on the isle; They will surely oppress him if peril comes o’er him. Unlike are our lots.