The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

BOOK I.-6

Loud Sigmund laughed, and answered: “I have heard of that son of a king,

Who might not be scared from his bread for all the worms of the land.”

And therewith he went to the meal-sack and thrust therein his hand,

And drew forth an ash-grey adder, and a deadly worm it was:

Then he went to the door of the cave and set it down in the grass,

While the King’s son quaked and quivered: then he drew forth his sword from the sheath,

And said:

“Now fearest thou this, that men call the serpent of death?”

Then said the son of King Siggeir: “I am young as yet for the war,

Yet e’en such a blade shall I carry ere many a month be o’er.”

Then abroad went the King in the wind, and leaned on his naked sword

And stood there many an hour, and mused on Signy’s word.

But at last when the moon was arisen, and the undark night begun,

He sheathed the sword and cried: “Come forth, King Siggeir’s son,

Thou shalt wend from out of the wild-wood and no more will I foster thee.”

Forth came the son of Siggeir, and quaked his face to see,

But thereof nought Sigmund noted, but bade him wend with him.

So they went through the summer night-tide by many a wood-way dim,

Till they came to a certain wood-lawn, and Sigmund lingered there,

And spake as his feet brushed o’er it: “The June flowers blossom fair.”

So they came to the skirts of the forest, and the meadows of the neat,

And the earliest wind of dawning blew over them soft and sweet:

There stayed Sigmund the Volsung, and said:

“King Siggeir’s son,

Bide here till the birds are singing, and the day is well begun;

Then go to the house of the Goth-king, and find thou Signy the Queen,

And tell unto no man else the things thou hast heard and seen:

But to her shalt thou tell what thou wilt, and say this word withal:

‘Mother, I come from the wild-wood, and he saith, whatever befal

Alone will I abide there, nor have such fosterlings;

For the sons of the Gods may help me, but never the sons of Kings.’

Go, then, with this word in thy mouth—or do thou after thy fate,

And, if thou wilt, betray me!—and repent it early and late.”

Then he turned his back on the acres, and away to the woodland strode;

But the boy scarce bided the sunrise ere he went the homeward road;

So he came to the house of the Goth-kings, and spake with Signy the Queen,

Nor told he to any other the things he had heard and seen,

For the heart of a king’s son had he.

But Signy hearkened his word;

And long she pondered and said: “What is it my heart hath feared?

And how shall it be with earth’s people if the kin of the Volsungs die,

And King Volsung unavenged in his mound by the sea-strand lie?

I have given my best and bravest, as my heart’s blood I would give,

And my heart and my fame and my body, that the name of Volsung might live.

Lo the first gift cast aback: and how shall it be with the last,—

—If I find out the gift for the giving before the hour be passed?”

Long while she mused and pondered while day was thrust on day,

Till the king and the earls of the strangers seemed shades of the dreamtide grey

And gone seemed all earth’s people, save that woman mid the gold

And that man in the depths of the forest in the cave of the Dwarfs of old.

And once in the dark she murmured: “Where then was the ancient song

That the Gods were but twin-born once, and deemed it nothing wrong

To mingle for the world’s sake, whence had the Æsir birth,

And the Vanir and the Dwarf-kind, and all the folk of earth?”

Now amidst those days that she pondered came a wife of the witch-folk there,

A woman young and lovesome, and shaped exceeding fair,

And she spake with Signy the Queen, and told her of deeds of her craft,

And how the might was with her her soul from her body to waft

And to take the shape of another and give her fashion in turn.

Fierce then in the heart of Signy a sudden flame ‘gan burn,

And the eyes of her soul saw all things, like the blind, whom the world’s last fire

Hath healed in one passing moment ‘twixt his death and his desire.

And she thought: “Alone I will bear it; alone I will take the crime;

On me alone be the shaming, and the cry of the coming time.

Yea, and he for the life is fated and the help of many a folk,

And I for the death and the rest, and deliverance from the yoke.”

Then wan as the midnight moon she answered the woman and spake:

“Thou art come to the Goth-queen’s dwelling, wilt thou do so much for my sake,

And for many a pound of silver and for rings of the ruddy gold,

As to change thy body for mine ere the night is waxen old?”

Nought the witch-wife fair gainsaid it, and they went to the bower aloft

And hand in hand and alone they sung the spell-song soft:

Till Signy looked on her guest, and lo, the face of a queen

With the steadfast eyes of grey, that so many a grief had seen:

But the guest held forth a mirror, and Signy shrank aback

From the laughing lips and the eyes, and the hair of crispy black,

But though she shuddered and sickened, the false face changed no whit;

But ruddy and white it blossomed and the smiles played over it;

And the hands were ready to cling, and beckoning lamps were the eyes,

And the light feet longed for the dance, and the lips for laughter and lies.

So that eve in the mid-hall’s high-seat was the shape of Signy the Queen,

While swiftly the feet of the witch-wife brushed over the moonlit green,

But the soul mid the gleam of the torches, her thought was of gain and of gold;

And the soul of the wind-driven woman, swift-foot in the moonlight cold,

Her thoughts were of men’s lives’ changing, and the uttermost ending of earth,

And the day when death should be dead, and the new sun’s nightless birth.

Men say that about that midnight King Sigmund wakened and heard

The voice of a soft-speeched woman, shrill-sweet as a dawning bird;

So he rose, and a woman indeed he saw by the door of the cave

With her raiment wet to her midmost, as though with the river-wave:

And he cried: “What wilt thou, what wilt thou? be thou womankind or fay,

Here is no good abiding, wend forth upon thy way!”

She said: “I am nought but a woman, a maid of the earl-folk’s kin:

And I went by the skirts of the woodland to the house of my sister to win,

And have strayed from the way benighted: and I fear the wolves and the wild

By the glimmering of thy torchlight from afar was I beguiled.

Ah, slay me not on thy threshold, nor send me back again

Through the rattling waves of thy ford, that I crossed in terror and pain;

Drive me not to the night and the darkness, for the wolves of the wood to devour.

I am weak and thou art mighty: I will go at the dawning hour.”

So Sigmund looked in her face and saw that she was fair;

And he said: “Nay, nought will I harm thee, and thou mayst harbour here,

God wot if thou fear’st not me, I have nought to fear thy face:

Though this house be the terror of men-folk, thou shalt find it as safe a place

As though I were nought but thy brother; and then mayst thou tell, if thou wilt,

Where dwelleth the dread of the woodland, the bearer of many a guilt,

Though meseems for so goodly a woman it were all too ill a deed

In reward for the wood-wight’s guesting to betray him in his need.”

So he took the hand of the woman and straightway led her in

Where days agone the Dwarf-kind would their deeds of smithying win:

And he kindled the half-slaked embers, and gave her of his cheer

Amid the gold and the silver, and the fight-won raiment dear;

And soft was her voice, and she sung him sweet tales of yore agone,

Till all his heart was softened; and the man was all alone,

And in many wise she wooed him; so they parted not that night,

Nor slept till the morrow morning, when the woods were waxen bright:

And high above the tree-boughs shone the sister of the moon,

And hushed were the water-ouzels with the coming of the noon

When she stepped from the bed of Sigmund, and left the Dwarf’s abode;

And turned to the dwellings of men, and the ways where the earl-folk rode.

But next morn from the house of the Goth-king the witch-wife went her ways

With gold and goods and silver, such store as a queen might praise.

But no long while with Sigmund dwelt remembrance of that night;

Amid his kingly longings and his many deeds of might

It fled like the dove in the forest or the down upon the blast:

Yet heavy and sad were the years, that even in suchwise passed,

As here it is written aforetime.

Thence were ten years worn by

When unto that hidden river a man-child drew anigh,

And he looked and beheld how Sigmund wrought on a helm of gold

By the crag and the stony dwelling where the Dwarf-kin wrought of old.

Then the boy cried: “Thou art the wood-wight of whom my mother spake;

Now will I come to thy dwelling.”

So the rough stream did he take,

And the welter of the waters rose up to his chin and more;

But so stark and strong he waded that he won the further shore:

And he came and gazed on Sigmund: but the Volsung laughed, and said:

“As fast thou runnest toward me as others in their dread

Run over the land and the water: what wilt thou, son of a king?”

But the lad still gazed on Sigmund, and he said: “A wondrous thing!

Here is the cave and the river, and all tokens of the place:

But my mother Signy told me none might behold that face,

And keep his flesh from quaking: but at thee I quake not aught:

Sure I must journey further, lest her errand come to nought:

Yet I would that my foster-father should be such a man as thou.”

But Sigmund answered and said: “Thou shalt bide in my dwelling now;

And thou mayst wot full surely that thy mother’s will is done

By this token and no other, that thou lookedst on Volsung’s son

And smiledst fair in his face: but tell me thy name and thy years:

And what are the words of Signy that the son of the Goth-king bears?”

“Sinfiotli they call me,” he said, “and ten summers have I seen;

And this is the only word that I bear from Signy the Queen,

That once more a man she sendeth the work of thine hands to speed,

If he be of the Kings or the Gods thyself shalt know in thy need.”

So Sigmund looked on the youngling and his heart unto him yearned;

But he thought: “Shall I pay the hire ere the worth of the work be earned?

And what hath my heart to do to cherish Siggeir’s son;

A brand belike for the burning when the last of its work is done?”

But there in the wild and the thicket those twain awhile abode,