FOR OUR BOYS & GIRLS

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 448, 22 February 1890, Page 3

FOR OUR BOYS & GIRLS

EDITED BY MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT, [COPYRIGHT.] [All Rights Reserved.] thelagas.

By Andrew Lang,

What is a Saga? Ib is neither quite a piece of history nor yet a romance. Ib is a very old story of things and adventures that really happened, but happened so long ago that in course of time marvels and miracles found their way into the legend. The best Sagas are those of Iceland, and those, in translation, are the finest reading that anybody can desire. If you want true pictures of life and character, which are always the same at bottom, or true pictures of manners, which are always changing, and of strange customs and lost beliefs, in the Sagas they are to be found. Or if you like tales of enterprise, of fighting by land and sea, fighting with men and beasts, with storms, and ghosts, and friends, the Sagas are full of this entertainment.

The stories of which we are speaking were first told in Iceland. When Norway and Sweden were still heathen, a thousand years ago, they were possessed by families of noble birth, owning no master, and often at war with each other, when the men were nob sailing the seas, robbing and killing in Scotland, England, France, Italy, and away east as far as Constantinople, or further. Though they were mere wild sea robbers and warriors, they were sturdy farmers, great shipbuilders ; every man of them, however wealthy, could be his own carpenter, smith, shipwright, and ploughman. They forged their own good short swords, hammered their own armour, ploughed their own fields. In short, they lived like Odysseus, the hero of Homer, and were equally skilled in the arts of war and peace. They were mighty lawyers, too, and had a most curious and minute system of laws on all subjects, land, marriage, murder, trade, and so forth. These laws were nob written, though the people had a kind of letters called runes. But they did not use them much for large writings, but merely for carving a name on a sword blade, or a tombstone, or on great gold rings such as they wore on their arms. Thus the laws existed in the memory and judgment of the oldest and wisest, and most righteous men of the country. The most important was about murder. If one man slew another he was nob tried by a jury, but any relation of the dead killed him ‘at sight’ wherever he found him, even in an earl’s hall. Kari struck the head off one of his friends, Njal’s Burners, and the head bounded on the board, among the trenchers of mead and the cups of mead or ale. But it was possible, if the relations of a slain man consented, for the slayer to pay his price—every man was valued at so much—and then revenge was not taken. But, as a rule, one revenge called for another. Say Hrut slew Hrap, then Abli slew Hrub, and Gisli slew Atli, and Kari slew Gisli, and so on till perhaps a whole family was extineb and nobody left to do the killing. The gods were nob offended by manslaughter openly done, but were angry with treachery, cowardice, meanness, theft, perjury, and every kind of shabbiness. This was the state of affairs in Norway when a king arose who tried to bring all these proud people under him, and to make them pay taxes and live more regularly and quietly. They revolted at this, and when they were too weak to defy the king they set sail and fled to Iceland. There, in the lonely north, between the snow and fire, the hob-water springs, the volcano, Hecla, the great rivers full of salmon that rush down such tails as Golden Foot, there they lived their old-fashioned life, cruising as pirates and merchants, taking foreign service at Mickle Garth, or in England or Egypt, filling the world with the sound of their swords, and the sky with the smoke of their burnings. For they feared neither God nor man, nor ghost, and were no less cruel than brave : the best of soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the Zulus, who are a kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them ‘ Bersark’s gang ’ would fall ; that is they would become in a way mad ; slaying all and sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a furious strength beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children when it passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men’s enemies, and to kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The women were worthy of the men, bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some were loyal, like Bergthora. who foresaw how all her sons and her husband were to be burned, but she would nob leave them, and perished in the burning without a cry. Some were treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she had, and was the death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did a mean thing, and he slapped her face. She never, forgave him. At last enemies besieged him in his house. The doors were locked, all was quiet within. One of the enemies climbed up to a window slit, and Gunnar thrust him through with his lance. ‘ Is Gunner at home ?’ said the besiegers. ‘I know nob—but his lance is,’ said the man, and died with that last jest on his lips. For long Gunnar kept them at bay with his arrows, but at last one of them cut the arrow string, * Twist me a string with thy'hair,’ he said to his wife, Halgerda, whose yellow hair was very long and beautiful. ‘ Is it a matter of thy .life or death ?’ she asked. ‘ Ay,’ he said. ‘ Then I remember that blow thou gavest me, and I will see thy death.’ So Gunnar died, overcome by numbers, and they had killed Samr, his hound, but not before Samr killed a man. go they lived always with sword or axe m hand—so they lived and fought and died. Then Christianity was brought to them by Thangbrand, and if any man said he did not believe a word of it Thangbrand said, ‘ Will you fight?’ So they fought a duel on an island, that nobody might interfere, holm-gang they called that, and Thangbrand usually killed his man. In Norway Saint Olaf did the like, killing and torturing those who held by the old gods—Thor, Odin, and Freya, and the rest. So, partly by force and partly because they were some deal tired of bloodshed, horsefights, and the rest, they received the word of the white Christ and were baptised, and lived by written law, and did not avenge themselves by their own hands. . ■ Christians they were now, but they did not forget the old times, the old feuds and

fightings and Bersarks, and dealings with Trolls, or fiends, and with ghosts, and with ; dead bodies that arose and wrought horrible things, haunting houses and strangling men. True stories of the ancient days were told at the fireside in the endless winter nights by storytellers or Scalds. It was thought a sin for anyone to alter these old stories, but as generations passed, more and more wonderful matters came into the legend. It was thought that dead gunner sang within his cairn, or ‘ Howe,’ the mound wherein he was buried ; and his famous bill, orcuttingspear, was said to have been made by magic, and to sing in the night before the wounding of men and the waking of war. People were believed to be * second-sighted,’ that is, to have prophetic vision. The night when Njal’s house was burned his wife saw all the meat on the table ‘ one gore of blood.’ Just as in Homer the prophet Theoclymenus beheld blood falling in gouts from the walls, before the slaying of the Wooers. The valkyries were seen by living eyes, the Choosers of the slain, and the Norns who wove the fates of men at a ghastly loom. In the graves where treasures were hoarded the Barrowwights dwelt, ghosts that were sentinels over the gold, witchwives changed themselves into wolves and other monstrous animals, and for many weeks the heroes Signy and Sinfjotli ran wild in the guise of wolves.

These and many other marvels crept into the Sagas, and made the listeners feel a shudder of cold beside the great fire that burned in the centre of the skali or hall where the chief sat, giving meat and drink to all who came, where the women span, and the Saga-man told the tales of long ago. Finally, at the end of the middle ages, these Sagas were written down in Icelandic, and in Latin occasionally, and many of them have been translated into English. Unluckily, these translations are often expensive to buy, and not always to be had easily. For the wise world, which reads newspapers all day and half the night, does not care much for books, still less for good books, least of all for old books. You can make no money out of reading Sagas, they have nothing to say about stocks and shares, nor about Presidents and politics. Nor will they amuse you if nothing amuses you but accounts of races and murders, or gossip about Mrs Nokes’s new novel, Mrs Stokes’ new dresses, or Lady Jones’s diamonds. The Sagas only tell you how brave men—of your own blood very likely —lived, and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died, before there was much reading or writing, when they sailed without steam, travelled without railways, and warred hand to hand, not with hidden dynamite and sunk torpedoes. But for stories of gallant life and honest purpose, they are among the best in the vvorld. Of Sagas in English one of the best is the ‘Volsunga,’ the story of the Niflungs and Volsungs. This, in England at least, can be bought for a shilling. It is a strange tale in which gods have their parts, the tale of that oldest Treasure Hunt, the Hunt for the gold of the dwarf Andvari. This was guarded by the serpent, Bafnir, who had once been a man, but ho was killed by the hero Sigard. But Andvari had cursed the gold, because his enemies robbed him of it to the very last ring, and had no pity. Then the brave Sigard was involved in the evil luck. He it was who rode through the fire, and woke the fair enchanted Brynhild, the Shield-maiden. And she loved him, and he her, with all their hearts, always, to the death. Bub by ill fate she was married to another man, Sigard’s chief friend, and he to another woman. And the woman fell to jealousy and quarrelling, as women will, and they dragged the friends into the feud, and one manslaying after another befell, till that great murder of men in the Hall of Ath, the King. The curse came on one and all of them, a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of wibchwork destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in one red ruin. Fate and evil luck are the heroes of the Sagas. They seldom ‘ end well,’ as people say, unless, when a brave man lies down to die on the bed he has strewn of the bodies of his foes, you call that ending well. So died Grebtir the Strong, the hero of another Saga. Even from a boy he was strong and passionate, short of temper, quick of stroke, but loyal, brave, and always unlucky. His worst luck began after he slew Glam. This Glam was a wicked heathen herdsman, who would not fast on Christmas Eve. So on the hills his dead body was found, swollen as great as an ox, and as blue as death. What killed him they did not know. But he haunted the farmhouse, riding the roof, kicking the sides with his heels, killing cattle, and destroying all things. Then Grettir came that way, and he slept in the Hall. At night the dead Glam came in, and Grebtir arose, and to it they went, struggling and dashing the furniture t.o bits. Glam even dragged Grebtir to the door, that he might slay him under the sky, and for all his force Grettir yielded ground. Then on the very threshold he suddenly gave way when Glam was pulling hardest, and they fell, Glam undermost. Then Grettir drew the short sword • Kari’s loom,’ that he had taken from a haunted grave, and stabbed the dead thing that lived again. But, as Glam lay a dying in the second death, the moon fell on his awful eyes, and Grettir saw the horror of them, and from that hour he would not endure to be in the dark, and he never dared to go alone. This was his death, for he had an evil companion who betrayed him to his enemies, but when they set on Grebtir, though tired and sick of a wound, many died with him. No man died like Grettir the Strong, nor slew so many in his death. Besides those Sagas, there is the best of all, but the longest. ‘Njala’ (pronounced ‘Nyoula’) the story of Burnt Njal. That is too long for me to sketch here, but ib tells how, through the hard hearts and jealousy of women, ruin came at last on the gentle Gunnar, the reckless Skarphodin of the exe, 4 The Ogress of War,’ and how Njal the wisest, the most peaceful, the most righteous of men, was burned with all his house, and how that evil deed was avenged on the Burners of Kari. The site of Njal’s house is yet to be seen, after these nine hundred years, and the little glen where Kari hid when he leaped through the smoke and the flame that made his sword blade blue. Yes, the very black sand that Bergthora and her maids threw on the fire lies there yet, and remnants of the whey they cast on the flames, when water failed them. They were still there beneath the earth when Mr Rider Haggard dug up some of the ground last year, and ib is said that an American gentleman found a gold ring in the house of Njal. The story of him and of his brave sons, and of his slaves, and of his kindred, and of Queens and Kings of Norway, and of the coming of the white Christ, are all in the'Njala.’ Thatandthe obherSagas would bear being shortened ; once they were all the people had bv way of books, and they liked 1 them long. But, shortened or nob, they are brave books for men, for tho world is a place of battle sbiil, and life is war. These old heroes knew it, and did not shirk it, but foughtit out, and left honourable names and widening glory. For the story of Njal and Gunnar, and Skarphedin was told by Captain Speedy to the guards of Theodore, King of Abyssinia. They liked it well, and with queer altered names and changes of the tale, that Saga will be told in Abyssinia, and thence carried all through Africa where white men have never wandered, o