{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/onp/onp04.htm","path":"neu/onp/onp04.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/onp/onp04.htm","text":"IN THE sixth book of Saxo Grammaticus\u2019s Gesta Danorum there are embedded, in the narrative of the Danish hero, Starkath\u2019s, life and deeds, two extensive poems, the Lay of Ingiald and Starkath\u2019s Death Song; and a third lay, somewhat related to the Icelandic V\u00edkarsb\u00e1lk, is to be inferred from Saxo\u2019s prose narrative. That there were current lays about Starkath, not only in Scandinavia, but also in Anglo-Saxon England, brought thither from the old home, and that they were in favor, is amply evident from that reproachful passage in one of Alcuin\u2019s letters:1 \u201cQuid enim Hinieldus cum Christo? Angusta est domus; utrosque tenere non poterit\u201d\u2014What hath Ingiald to do with Christ? Small is the house, it will not hold both\u2014even if we did not have the well-known Ingeld episode of B\u0113owulf (2024-2069).\nLike the Biarkam\u00f3l, and likewise Danish in origin, the Lay of Ingiald is an \u201cexhortation\u201d\u2014even more narrowly so\u2014not to loyal devotion unto death in the king\u2019s cause, but addressed to the son of the slain father, to bestir himself to revenge. Both the situation and the reaction to it are typical of the Germanic North in pre-Christian times.\nAccording to the oldest, and no doubt most original, account as found in B\u0113owulf, the matter is as follows: In a great battle with the Heathobards,2 their king, Fr\u014dda, was slain. In order to effect a reconciliation between the two hostile nations, the Danish king, Hr\u014dthg\u0101r, gave his daughter, Fr\u0113awaru, in marriage to Ingeld, the son of Fr\u014dda; but at the marriage feast\u2014it seems, in the royal hall of the Heathobards\u2014a young warrior, stung to the quick by the repeated eggings on of an old warrior, slays one of the Danish company, in order to avenge his father. Ingeld\u2019s love of the Danish princess \u201ccools\u201d (i.e., he puts her away), the feud breaks out again which according to W\u012bds\u012bth, ends with the disastrous defeat of the Heathobards before Heorot, the royal hall of the Danes.\nThis matter is significantly changed, and condensed to far greater dramatic effect, in the Old Danish lay. There, the injured party are the Danes, the ignominious peace and marriage lies in the past. Starkath, the stern old warrior and companion in arms of Fr\u00f3thi, arrives incognito in Leire, where a sumptuous banquet is being given by Ingiald to his brothers-in-law (here called the sons of Sverting), and arouses him by bitter denunciation of his supineness to slay them and put away their sister, his wife. To the r\u00f4le of the formidable hereditary enemies of the land have succeeded the Germans3\u2014as well they might under the powerful and aggressive (Saxon) Ottones, who finally compelled the Danes to accept their overlordship and Christianity. The lay has gained, furthermore, by the fierce denunciation of the new and hated Southron ways and by concentrating this invective on Ingiald; who avenges himself on the spot.\nStarkath\u2019s own personality is kept in the background, though he is unmistakably felt to be the representative of the older and better ideals of the Viking Age. Since this age, to which the lay harks back with such approbation, had come to an end in the ninth century, after the conquest and settlement of the western and northern Atlantic littoral; since the poem is still thoroughly heathen in spirit; and since the fear and hatred of the Saxon and his ways could have arisen only after the accession of the Saxon emperors, it is safe to conclude that the lay was composed during the tenth century.\nAs for its contents, we are altogether dependent on Saxo\u2019s prolix and highly rhetorical Latin version\u2014in Sapphic stanzas and hexameters.4 From these, Olrik by judicious reduction brought out the lay approximately as it may have come to the knowledge of Saxo. The version here offered leans on Olrik\u2019s, but is shorter by nine stanzas through the elimination of some fulsome details improbable in an old lay and, especially, the omission of the weak ending which in Olrik\u2019s version mars the fine climax of exultation over the revenge accomplished, which Starkath calls on \u00d3thin to witness.\n| 1 | \u201cGo from the grey-beard!\u2003No longer make game of me, ye deedless swains in the Danish court! No outcast is the old man before you: oft hoary hair hideth a hardy mind. | \n| 2 | \u201cI formerly followed\u2003Fr\u00f3thi for years, sate in the high-seat,5 and was served before others; but now I sit nameless and unknown in the hall, I like a fish at ebb-tide finding a waterhole. | \n| 3 | \u201cI formerly sate\u2003on soft cushions; now in a corner I sit, crowded by every one. Fain out of doors would they drive the grey-beard but wall and wainscot gave welcome foothold. | \n| 4 | \u201cThe courtiers laugh at me\u2003who come from afar off, no one gets up to greet me or to cheer the guest! What be the ways now in the hall of the Skioldungs? I should like to learn Leire\u2019s6 new breeding. | \n| 5 | \u201cThinkest thou, Ingiald,\u2003as at ease thou sittest, to avenge Fr\u00f3thi, thy father, on his banesmen? Or are you pleased, rather to fill your paunch than to make stern war on the murderers of your father? | \n| 6 | \u201cThat feared I, when farewell\u2003to the folkwarder I said, that slain by the sword he soon would lie. From Fr\u00f3thi afar the folklands I roamed when I learned that our liege had been laid low by Saxons. | \n| 7 | \u201cHad that time I been\u2003with the thane\u2019s shield-bearers, then not deedless had I seen my dear lord\u2019s fall: my sword had then smitten the Saxon traitors, or else had I fallen by Fr\u00f3thi\u2019s side. | \n| 8 | \u201cNow on wilding ways\u2003I wended from Sweden, hoping to find Fr\u00f3thi\u2019s heir-taker\u2014 p. 15 and find a feaster but for food hankering, and instead of a king, a coward and wanton. | \n| 9 | \u201cBut sooth did say\u2003the Swedish king\u20147 that \u2018deedless scions follow doughty father.\u2019 Shall strangers steal the stores of your father? Shall his red-gold rings fall in robbers\u2019 hands?\u201d | \n(Then the queen, frightened, and wishing to appease the terrible old man, undid her golden fillet and handed it to him; but Starkath hurled it back at her scornfully and said:)\n| 10 | \u201cAway from the warrior\u2003with your woman\u2019s finery! About your own brow bind your fillet, or else your husband\u2019s, who will highly prize it, fingering for food steaked fowls\u2019 inwards. | \n| 11 | \u201cEvil art, thou,\u2003Ingiald\u2019s mistress! Saxland\u2019s ways soft to Sealand thou broughtest! In the king\u2019s kitchen cook they now tidbits, such as war-workers ne\u2019er would have eaten. | \n| 12 | \u201cBut on board, bloody,\u2003the meat of beeves8 was laid for strong men as they right the battlefield. In their frosted beards oft bit the rowers, nor slaked their thirst with sweet milk for babies. | \n| 13 | \u201cAthelings eleven,\u2003all told, were there with Haki,9 when we rode the horse-of-the-sea.10 Beigath and Belgi at board with us sate; seldom on sea fared swains more hardy. | \n| 14 | \u201cWith smoked salt meat\u2003we sated our hunger, and slaked our thirst with swallows of ale; nor was honeyed mead ever Haki\u2019s delight, nor soft bread, either, when at sea he fared. | \n| p. 16 | | \n| 15 | \u201cBut weregild no one\u2003e\u2019er would have taken, or by payment of pence in his purse borne his father;11 nor was ever heard that the heir of his father sate at festive board with his father\u2019s banesmen. | \n| 16 | \u201cSo, when in the hall\u2003great heroes are spoken of, and skalds are chanting the champions\u2019 great deeds, then in shame I hide under hood my glances, for Fr\u00f3thi\u2019s first-born showed but faint-heartedness. | \n| 17 | \u201cWhy so sternly, Ingiald,\u2003starest thou at me? Never saw the sneering Saxons such glances! Thou who never didst win other warfare than cutting down bread and killing puddings. | \n| 18 | \u201cA cruel fate has befallen\u2003Fr\u00f3thi\u2019s kinsmen when the king was given such a coward as heir: no greater worth hast thou than a hunted goat, or than sheep in shambles shrinking in terror. | \n| 19 | \u201cShall Sverting\u2019s12 seed\u2003hold sway over Denmark, Seated at Leire with Saxon warriors, on thy lap whilst thou fondlest the linen-clad woman, the fair-haired daughter of thy father\u2019s banesman. | \n(Roused by these words, Ingiald leapt up and drew his sword on Sverting\u2019s sons who sate in the high-seat with him.)\n| 20 | \u201cRail now, Ingiald!\u2003Thou art awakened! No more wavering weakness, thou warriors\u2019 leader, but slay with the sword all of Sverting\u2019s kinsmen! Alike be their death as alike was their deed! | \n| 21 | \u201cLet thralls drag then\u2003the dead from the high-seat, cart away the killed ones from the king\u2019s mead-hall, toss the dead out-of-doors\u2014 nor dig graves for them\u2014 to feed on the heath foxes and ravens. | \n| p. 17 | | \n| 22 | \u201cStill further shalt, Ingiald,\u2003if foresight thou hast, put away the woman wily and evil! The she-wolf\u2019s whelps will take after her: beware of the wolf though weak he be now. | \n| 23 | \u201cBehold now, Hrauthi,13\u2003thou who whettest to strife, that full vengeance for Fr\u00f3thi is taken: the seven sons of Sverting by sword are laid low, his false friends now are felled by Ingiald. | \n| 24 | \u201cThough hoary my hair\u2003that hope never left me that Fr\u00f3thi\u2019s first-born would not flinch in trial; as only heir shall Ingiald rule here over the lands of the Danes and Leire\u2019s high-seat.\u201d | \n1 A.D. 797.\n2 This warlike tribe was located south of Denmark, north of the lower Elbe.\n3 Or \u201cSaxons\u201d as they are called, from the nearest German tribe.\n4 The metre of the original is assumed to have been m\u00e1lah\u00e1ttr.\n5 The raised seat of honor in the middle of the hall. The seats for servants and hangers-on were at the gable-end, near the door.\n7 With whom Starkath had dwelt during his absence.\n8 Cf. the Second Lay of Helgi, stanzas 8, 9.\n9 Typical name for a viking.\n10 Kenning for \u201cship.\u201d\n11 To \u201ccarry one\u2019s kinsman in one\u2019s purse\u201d was a current expression of utmost contumely for enriching one\u2019s self by accepting weregild, instead of avenging him.\n12 The king of the Saxons.\n13 \u201cThe Destroyer;\u201d which seems to be a name of \u00d3thin, the inciter to warfare.","title":"THE LAY OF INGIALD","type":"page"}