{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/morris/thow/thow04.htm","path":"neu/morris/thow/thow04.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/morris/thow/thow04.htm","text":"The House of the Wolfings, by William Morris, [1889]\nCHAPTER III\u2014THIODOLF TALKETH WITH THE WOOD-SUN\nBut yet sat Thiodolf under the Hall-Sun for a while as one in deep thought; till at last as he stirred, his sword clattered on him; and then he lifted up his eyes and looked down the hall and saw no man stirring, so he stood up and settled his raiment on him, and went forth, and so took his ways through the hall-door, as one who hath an errand.\nThe moonlight lay in a great flood on the grass without, and the dew was falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent.\nThiodolf turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose boles grew smooth and silver-grey, high and close-set: and so on and on he went as one going by a well-known path, though there was no path, till all the moonlight was quenched under the close roof of the beech-leaves, though yet for all the darkness, no man could go there and not feel that the roof was green above him. Still he went on in despite of the darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him, that grew greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the turf grew again, though the grass was but thin, because little sunlight got to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round about it. In the heavens above it by now there was a light that was not all of the moon, though it might scarce be told whether that light were the memory of yesterday or the promise of to-morrow, since little of the heavens could be seen thence, save the crown of them, because of the tall tree-tops.\nNought looked Thiodolf either at the heavens above, or the trees, as he strode from off the husk-strewn floor of the beech wood on to the scanty grass of the lawn, but his eyes looked straight before him at that which was amidmost of the lawn: and little wonder was that; for there on a stone chair sat a woman exceeding fair, clad in glittering raiment, her hair lying as pale in the moonlight on the grey stone as the barley acres in the August night before the reaping-hook goes in amongst them. She sat there as though she were awaiting someone, and he made no stop nor stay, but went straight up to her, and took her in his arms, and kissed her mouth and her eyes, and she him again; and then he sat himself down beside her. But her eyes looked kindly on him as she said:\n\"O Thiodolf, hardy art thou, that thou hast no fear to take me in thine arms and to kiss me, as though thou hadst met in the meadow with a maiden of the Elkings: and I, who am a daughter of the Gods of thy kindred, and a Chooser of the Slain! Yea, and that upon the eve of battle and the dawn of thy departure to the stricken field!\"\n\"O Wood-Sun,\" he said \"thou art the treasure of life that I found when I was young, and the love of life that I hold, now that my beard is grizzling. Since when did I fear thee, Wood-Sun? Did I fear thee when first I saw thee, and we stood amidst the hazelled field, we twain living amongst the slain? But my sword was red with the blood of the foe, and my raiment with mine own blood; and I was a-weary with the day's work, and sick with many strokes, and methought I was fainting into death. And there thou wert before me, full of life and ruddy and smiling both lips and eyes; thy raiment clean and clear, thine hands stained with blood: then didst thou take me by my bloody and weary hand, and didst kiss my lips grown ashen pale, and thou saidst 'Come with me.' And I strove to go, and might not; so many and sore were my hurts. Then amidst my sickness and my weariness was I merry; for I said to myself, This is the death of the warrior, and it is exceeding sweet. What meaneth it? Folk said of me; he is over young to meet the foeman; yet am I not over young to die?\"\nTherewith he laughed out amid the wild-wood, and his speech became song, and he said:\n \u00a0\u00a0 \"We wrought in the ring of the hazels, and the wine of war we drank:\n \u00a0\u00a0 From the tide when the sun stood highest to the hour wherein she sank:\n \u00a0\u00a0 And three kings came against me, the mightiest of the Huns,\n \u00a0\u00a0 The evil-eyed in battle, the swift-foot wily ones;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And they gnashed their teeth against me, and they gnawed on the shield-rims there,\n \u00a0\u00a0 On that afternoon of summer, in the high-tide of the year.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Keen-eyed I gazed about me, and I saw the clouds draw up\n \u00a0\u00a0 Till the heavens were dark as the hollow of a wine-stained iron cup,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the wild-deer lay unfeeding on the grass of the forest glades,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And all earth was scared with the thunder above our clashing blades.\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"Then sank a King before me, and on fell the other twain,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And I tossed up the reddened sword-blade in the gathered rush of the rain\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the blood and the water blended, and fragrant grew the earth.\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"There long I turned and twisted within the battle-girth\n \u00a0\u00a0 Before those bears of onset: while out from the grey world streamed\n \u00a0\u00a0 The broad red lash of the lightening and in our byrnies gleamed.\n \u00a0\u00a0 And long I leapt and laboured in that garland of the fight\n \u00a0\u00a0 'Mid the blue blades and the lightening; but ere the sky grew light\n \u00a0\u00a0 The second of the Hun-kings on the rain-drenched daisies lay;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And we twain with the battle blinded a little while made stay,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And leaning on our sword-hilts each on the other gazed.\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"Then the rain grew less, and one corner of the veil of clouds was raised,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And as from the broidered covering gleams out the shoulder white\n \u00a0\u00a0 Of the bed-mate of the warrior when on his wedding night\n \u00a0\u00a0 He layeth his hand to the linen; so, down there in the west\n \u00a0\u00a0 Gleamed out the naked heaven: but the wrath rose up in my breast,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the sword in my hand rose with it, and I leaped and hewed at the Hun;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And from him too flared the war-flame, and the blades danced bright in the sun\n \u00a0\u00a0 Come back to the earth for a little before the ending of day.\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"There then with all that was in him did the Hun play out the play,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Till he fell, and left me tottering, and I turned my feet to wend\n \u00a0\u00a0 To the place of the mound of the mighty, the gate of the way without end.\n \u00a0\u00a0 And there thou wert.\u00a0 How was it, thou Chooser of the Slain,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Did I die in thine arms, and thereafter did thy mouth-kiss wake me again?\"\nEre the last sound of his voice was done she turned and kissed him; and then she said; \"Never hadst thou a fear and thine heart is full of hardihood.\"\nThen he said:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"'Tis the hardy heart, beloved, that keepeth me alive,\n \u00a0\u00a0 As the king-leek in the garden by the rain and the sun doth thrive,\n \u00a0\u00a0 So I thrive by the praise of the people; it is blent with my drink and my meat;\n \u00a0\u00a0 As I slumber in the night-tide it laps me soft and sweet;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And through the chamber window when I waken in the morn\n \u00a0\u00a0 With the wind of the sun's arising from the meadow is it borne\n \u00a0\u00a0 And biddeth me remember that yet I live on earth:\n \u00a0\u00a0 Then I rise and my might is with me, and fills my heart with mirth,\n \u00a0\u00a0 As I think of the praise of the people; and all this joy I win\n \u00a0\u00a0 By the deeds that my heart commandeth and the hope that lieth therein.\"\n\"Yea,\" she said, \"but day runneth ever on the heels of day, and there are many and many days; and betwixt them do they carry eld.\"\n\"Yet art thou no older than in days bygone,\" said he. \"Is it so, O Daughter of the Gods, that thou wert never born, but wert from before the framing of the mountains, from the beginning of all things?\"\nBut she said:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"Nay, nay; I began, I was born; although it may be indeed\n \u00a0\u00a0 That not on the hills of the earth I sprang from the godhead's seed.\n \u00a0\u00a0 And e'en as my birth and my waxing shall be my waning and end.\n \u00a0\u00a0 But thou on many an errand, to many a field dost wend\n \u00a0\u00a0 Where the bow at adventure bended, or the fleeing dastard's spear\n \u00a0\u00a0 Oft lulleth the mirth of the mighty.\u00a0 Now me thou dost not fear,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Yet fear with me, beloved, for the mighty Maid I fear;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And Doom is her name, and full often she maketh me afraid\n \u00a0\u00a0 And even now meseemeth on my life her hand is laid.\"\nBut he laughed and said:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"In what land is she abiding?\u00a0 Is she near or far away?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Will she draw up close beside me in the press of the battle play?\n \u00a0\u00a0 And if then I may not smite her 'midst the warriors of the field\n \u00a0\u00a0 With the pale blade of my fathers, will she bide the shove of my shield?\"\nBut sadly she sang in answer:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"In many a stead Doom dwelleth, nor sleepeth day nor night:\n \u00a0\u00a0 The rim of the bowl she kisseth, and beareth the chambering light\n \u00a0\u00a0 When the kings of men wend happy to the bride-bed from the board.\n \u00a0\u00a0 It is little to say that she wendeth the edge of the grinded sword,\n \u00a0\u00a0 When about the house half builded she hangeth many a day;\n \u00a0\u00a0 The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way\n \u00a0\u00a0 By the mountain-hunter fareth where his foot ne'er failed before:\n \u00a0\u00a0 She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river's shore:\n \u00a0\u00a0 The mower's scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep\n \u00a0\u00a0 Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot,\n \u00a0\u00a0 But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not.\n \u00a0\u00a0 So therefore I bid thee not fear for thyself of Doom and her deed,\n \u00a0\u00a0 But for me: and I bid thee hearken to the helping of my need.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Or else\u2014Art thou happy in life, or lusteth thou to die\n \u00a0\u00a0 In the flower of thy days, when thy glory and thy longing bloom on high?\"\nBut Thiodolf answered her:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"I have deemed, and long have I deemed that this is my second life,\n \u00a0\u00a0 That my first one waned with my wounding when thou cam'st to the ring of strife.\n \u00a0\u00a0 For when in thine arms I wakened on the hazelled field of yore,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Meseemed I had newly arisen to a world I knew no more,\n \u00a0\u00a0 So much had all things brightened on that dewy dawn of day.\n \u00a0\u00a0 It was dark dull death that I looked for when my thought had died away.\n \u00a0\u00a0 It was lovely life that I woke to; and from that day henceforth\n \u00a0\u00a0 My joy of the life of man-folk was manifolded of worth.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Far fairer the fields of the morning than I had known them erst,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the acres where I wended, and the corn with its half-slaked thirst;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the noble Roof of the Wolfings, and the hawks that sat thereon;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the bodies of my kindred whose deliverance I had won;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the glimmering of the Hall-Sun in the dusky house of old;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And my name in the mouth of the maidens, and the praises of the bold,\n \u00a0\u00a0 As I sat in my battle-raiment, and the ruddy spear well steeled\n \u00a0\u00a0 Leaned 'gainst my side war-battered, and the wounds thine hand had healed.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Yea, from that morn thenceforward has my life been good indeed,\n \u00a0\u00a0 The gain of to-day was goodly, and good to-morrow's need,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And good the whirl of the battle, and the broil I wielded there,\n \u00a0\u00a0 Till I fashioned the ordered onset, and the unhoped victory fair.\n \u00a0\u00a0 And good were the days thereafter of utter deedless rest\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the prattle of thy daughter, and her hands on my unmailed breast.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Ah good is the life thou hast given, the life that mine hands have won.\n \u00a0\u00a0 And where shall be the ending till the world is all undone?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Here sit we twain together, and both we in Godhead clad,\n \u00a0\u00a0 We twain of the Wolfing kindred, and each of the other glad.\"\nBut she answered, and her face grew darker withal:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"O mighty man and joyous, art thou of the Wolfing kin?\n \u00a0\u00a0 'Twas no evil deed when we mingled, nor lieth doom therein.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Thou lovely man, thou black-haired, thou shalt die and have done no ill.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Fame-crowned are the deeds of thy doing, and the mouths of men they fill.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Thou betterer of the Godfolk, enduring is thy fame:\n \u00a0\u00a0 Yet as a painted image of a dream is thy dreaded name.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Of an alien folk thou comest, that we twain might be one indeed.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Thou shalt die one day.\u00a0 So hearken, to help me at my need.\"\nHis face grew troubled and he said: \"What is this word that I am no chief of the Wolfings?\"\n\"Nay,\" she said, \"but better than they. Look thou on the face of our daughter the Hall-Sun, thy daughter and mine: favoureth she at all of me?\"\nHe laughed: \"Yea, whereas she is fair, but not otherwise. This is a hard saying, that I dwell among an alien kindred, and it wotteth not thereof. Why hast thou not told me hereof before?\"\nShe said: \"It needed not to tell thee because thy day was waxing, as now it waneth. Once more I bid thee hearken and do my bidding though it be hard to thee.\"\nHe answered: \"Even so will I as much as I may; and thus wise must thou look upon it, that I love life, and fear not death.\"\nThen she spake, and again her words fell into rhyme:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"In forty fights hast thou foughten, and been worsted but in four;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And I looked on and was merry; and ever more and more\n \u00a0\u00a0 Wert thou dear to the heart of the Wood-Sun, and the Chooser of the Slain.\n \u00a0\u00a0 But now whereas ye are wending with slaughter-herd and wain\n \u00a0\u00a0 To meet a folk that ye know not, a wonder, a peerless foe,\n \u00a0\u00a0 I fear for thy glory's waning, and I see thee lying alow.\"\nThen he brake in: \"Herein is little shame to be worsted by the might of the mightiest: if this so mighty folk sheareth a limb off the tree of my fame, yet shall it wax again.\"\nBut she sang:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"In forty fights hast thou foughten, and beside thee who but I\n \u00a0\u00a0 Beheld the wind-tossed banners, and saw the aspen fly?\n \u00a0\u00a0 But to-day to thy war I wend not, for Weird withholdeth me\n \u00a0\u00a0 And sore my heart forebodeth for the battle that shall be.\n \u00a0\u00a0 To-day with thee I wend not; so I feared, and lo my feet,\n \u00a0\u00a0 That are wont to the woodland girdle of the acres of the wheat,\n \u00a0\u00a0 For thee among strange people and the foeman's throng have trod,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And I tell thee their banner of battle is a wise and a mighty God.\n \u00a0\u00a0 For these are the folk of the cities, and in wondrous wise they dwell\n \u00a0\u00a0 'Mid confusion of heaped houses, dim and black as the face of hell;\n \u00a0\u00a0 Though therefrom rise roofs most goodly, where their captains and their kings\n \u00a0\u00a0 Dwell amidst the walls of marble in abundance of fair things;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And 'mid these, nor worser nor better, but builded otherwise\n \u00a0\u00a0 Stand the Houses of the Fathers, and the hidden mysteries.\n \u00a0\u00a0 And as close as are the tree-trunks that within the beech-wood thrive\n \u00a0\u00a0 E'en so many are their pillars; and therein like men alive\n \u00a0\u00a0 Stand the images of god-folk in such raiment as they wore\n \u00a0\u00a0 In the years before the cities and the hidden days of yore.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Ah for the gold that I gazed on! and their store of battle gear,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And strange engines that I knew not, or the end for which they were.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Ah for the ordered wisdom of the war-array of these,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the folks that are sitting about them in dumb down-trodden peace!\n \u00a0\u00a0 So I thought now fareth war-ward my well-beloved friend,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the weird of the Gods hath doomed it that no more with him may I wend!\n \u00a0\u00a0 Woe's me for the war of the Wolfings wherefrom I am sundered apart,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the fruitless death of the war-wise, and the doom of the hardy heart!\"\nThen he answered, and his eyes grew kind as he looked on her:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"For thy fair love I thank thee, and thy faithful word, O friend!\n \u00a0\u00a0 But how might it otherwise happen but we twain must meet in the end,\n \u00a0\u00a0 The God of this mighty people and the Markmen and their kin?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Lo, this is the weird of the world, and what may we do herein?\"\nThen mirth came into her face again as she said:\n\"Who wotteth of Weird, and what she is till the weird is accomplished? Long hath it been my weird to love thee and to fashion deeds for thee as I may; nor will I depart from it now.\" And she sang:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"Keen-edged is the sword of the city, and bitter is its spear,\n \u00a0\u00a0 But thy breast in the battle, beloved, hath a wall of the stithy's gear.\n \u00a0\u00a0 What now is thy wont in the handplay with the helm and the hauberk of rings?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Farest thou as the thrall and the cot-carle, or clad in the raiment of kings?\"\nHe started, and his face reddened as he answered:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"O Wood-Sun thou wottest our battle and the way wherein we fare:\n \u00a0\u00a0 That oft at the battle's beginning the helm and the hauberk we bear;\n \u00a0\u00a0 Lest the shaft of the fleeing coward or the bow at adventure bent\n \u00a0\u00a0 Should slay us ere the need be, ere our might be given and spent.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Yet oft ere the fight is over, and Doom hath scattered the foe,\n \u00a0\u00a0 No leader of the people by his war-gear shall ye know,\n \u00a0\u00a0 But by his hurts the rather, from the cot-carle and the thrall:\n \u00a0\u00a0 For when all is done that a man may, 'tis the hour for a man to fall.\"\nShe yet smiled as she said in answer:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"O Folk-wolf, heed and hearken; for when shall thy life be spent\n \u00a0\u00a0 And the Folk wherein thou dwellest with thy death be well content?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Whenso folk need the fire, do they hew the apple-tree,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And burn the Mother of Blossom and the fruit that is to be?\n \u00a0\u00a0 Or me wilt thou bid to thy grave-mound because thy battle-wrath\n \u00a0\u00a0 May nothing more be bridled than the whirl wind on his path?\n \u00a0\u00a0 So hearken and do my bidding, for the hauberk shalt thou bear\n \u00a0\u00a0 E'en when the other warriors cast off their battle-gear.\n \u00a0\u00a0 So come thou, come unwounded from the war-field of the south,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And sit with me in the beech-wood, and kiss me, eyes and mouth.\"\nAnd she kissed him in very deed, and made much of him, and fawned on him, and laid her hand on his breast, and he was soft and blithe with her, but at last he laughed and said:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"God's Daughter, long hast thou lived, and many a matter seen,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And men full often grieving for the deed that might have been;\n \u00a0\u00a0 But here my heart thou wheedlest as a maid of tender years\n \u00a0\u00a0 When first in the arms of her darling the horn of war she hears.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Thou knowest the axe to be heavy, and the sword, how keen it is;\n \u00a0\u00a0 But that Doom of which thou hast spoken, wilt thou not tell of this,\n \u00a0\u00a0 God's Daughter, how it sheareth, and how it breaketh through\n \u00a0\u00a0 Each wall that the warrior buildeth, yea all deeds that he may do?\n \u00a0\u00a0 What might in the hammer's leavings, in the fire's thrall shall abide\n \u00a0\u00a0 To turn that Folks' o'erwhelmer from the fated warrior's side?\"\nThen she laughed in her turn, and loudly; but so sweetly that the sound of her voice mingled with the first song of a newly awakened wood-thrush sitting on a rowan twig on the edge of the Wood-lawn. But she said:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"Yea, I that am God's Daughter may tell thee never a whit\n \u00a0\u00a0 From what land cometh the hauberk nor what smith smithied it,\n \u00a0\u00a0 That thou shalt wear in the handplay from the first stroke to the last;\n \u00a0\u00a0 But this thereof I tell thee, that it holdeth firm and fast\n \u00a0\u00a0 The life of the body it lappeth, if the gift of the Godfolk it be.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Lo this is the yoke-mate of doom, and the gift of me unto thee.\"\nThen she leaned down from the stone whereon they sat, and her hand was in the dewy grass for a little, and then it lifted up a dark grey rippling coat of rings; and she straightened herself in the seat again, and laid that hauberk on the knees of Thiodolf, and he put his hand to it, and turned it about, while he pondered long: then at last he said:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"What evil thing abideth with this warder of the strife,\n \u00a0\u00a0 This burg and treasure chamber for the hoarding of my life?\n \u00a0\u00a0 For this is the work of the dwarfs, and no kindly kin of the earth;\n \u00a0\u00a0 And all we fear the dwarf-kin and their anger and sorrow and mirth.\"\nShe cast her arms about him and fondled him, and her voice grew sweeter than the voice of any mortal thing as she answered:\n\u00a0\u00a0 \"No ill for thee, beloved, or for me in the hauberk lies;\n \u00a0\u00a0 No sundering grief is in it, no lonely miseries.\n \u00a0\u00a0 But we shall abide together, and that new life I gave,\n \u00a0\u00a0 For a long while yet henceforward we twain its joy shall have.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Yea, if thou dost my bidding to wear my gift in the fight\n \u00a0\u00a0 No hunter of the wild-wood at the changing of the night\n \u00a0\u00a0 Shall see my shape on thy grave-mound or my tears in the morning find\n \u00a0\u00a0 With the dew of the morning mingled; nor with the evening wind\n \u00a0\u00a0 Shall my body pass the shepherd as he wandereth in the mead\n \u00a0\u00a0 And fill him with forebodings on the eve of the Wolfings' need.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Nor the horse-herd wake in the midnight and hear my fateful cry;\n \u00a0\u00a0 Nor yet shall the Wolfing women hear words on the wind go by\n \u00a0\u00a0 As they weave and spin the night down when the House is gone to the war,\n \u00a0\u00a0 And weep for the swains they wedded and the children that they bore.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Yea do my bidding, O Folk-wolf, lest a grief of the Gods should weigh\n \u00a0\u00a0 On the ancient House of the Wolfings and my death o'ercloud its day.\"\nAnd still she clung about him, while he spake no word of yea or nay: but at the last he let himself glide wholly into her arms, and the dwarf-wrought hauberk fell from his knees and lay on the grass.\nSo they abode together in that wood-lawn till the twilight was long gone, and the sun arisen for some while. And when Thiodolf stepped out of the beech-wood into the broad sunshine dappled with the shadow of the leaves of the hazels moving gently in the fresh morning air, he was covered from the neck to the knee by a hauberk of rings dark and grey and gleaming, fashioned by the dwarfs of ancient days.","title":"The House of the Wolfings: Chapter III\u2014Thiodolf Tal...","type":"page"}