note to stanzas 37–39), but this section of the Lay of the Volsungs can be seen as an imagination of it. It is a selection of moments of dramatic force, and many elements of the prose Saga are omitted; in particular the most savage features of the story are eliminated (see notes to stanzas 30–32, 37–39).
The
1–2 These two stanzas are an extreme reduction of the opening chapters of the Saga which tell of Volsung’s immediate ancestry in a prosaic fashion: my father clearly found this unsuited to his purpose.
2 ‘child of longing’: Rerir’s wife was for long barren.
4 In the Saga the tree in the midst of King Volsung’s hall is named the Barnstock, and is said to have been an apple-tree.
7 ‘Birds sang blithely’: the birds were sitting in the boughs of the great tree that upheld the hall; so again in stanza 11, and see III.2.
10 King Siggeir and many other guests came to the wedding feast held in King Volsung’s hall.
12–13 In the Saga the old man is described in terms that make it plain that he was Odin, but he is not named. Here in the Lay he is
The ‘standing stem’ in 13 line 3 is the trunk of the Barnstock, into which Odin thrust the sword.
14 ‘Gaut and Volsung’: Volsung’s children and race are often called
16 This was the beginning of hatred and the motive for Siggeir’s attack on Volsung and his sons when they came to Gautland as his guests (21–23); Siggeir was enraged at Sigmund’s answer, but (in the words of the Saga) ‘he was a very wily man, and he behaved as if he were indifferent’.
‘bade’: offered (so also ‘I bid thee’ in I.8); ‘boon’: request.
17–22 It is told in the Saga that on the day following the night of the wedding feast (‘last night I lay / where loath me was’, 19) Siggeir left very abruptly and returned with Signy to Gautland, having invited Volsung and his sons to come as his guests to Gautland three months later (21). Signy met them when they landed to warn them of what Siggeir had prepared for them (22), but (according to the Saga) Volsung would not listen to Signy’s entreaty that he return at once to his own land, nor to her request that she should be allowed to stay with her own people and not return to Siggeir.
20 ‘toft’: homestead.
29 In the Saga the sons of Volsung were set in stocks in the forest to await the old she-wolf who came each night. Signy, on the tenth day, sent her trusted servant to Sigmund, who alone survived, to smear honey over his face and to put some in his mouth. When the wolf came she licked his face and thrust her tongue into his mouth; at which he bit into it. Then the wolf started back violently, pressing her feet against the stocks in which Sigmund was set, so that they were split open; but he held on to the wolf’s tongue so that it was torn out by the roots, and she died. ‘Some men say,’ according to the Saga, ‘that the wolf was King Siggeir’s mother, who had changed herself into this shape by witchcraft.’
While in the Saga the stocks are an important element in the story at this point, in the Lay there is no suggestion of stocks, but only of fetters and shackles; the wolf is ‘torn and tongueless’, but ‘by the tree riven’. See the note on stanzas 30-32.
30–32 This passage is very greatly condensed, and elements in the Saga essential to the narrative are passed over. Thus in the Saga, Signy found Sigmund in the woods, and it is explicit that they decided that he should make a house for himself under the ground, where Signy would provide for his needs. There is nothing in the Saga to explain Signy’s words in the Lay ‘Dwarvish master, thy doors open!’ In the opening prose passage of this section (p.72) it is said that ‘Sigmund dwelt in a cave in the guise of a dwarvish smith.’
In this connection it is curious, if nothing more, to observe that in William Morris’ poem
Signy had two sons by Siggeir, and when the elder was ten years old she sent him out to Sigmund in the forest to be a help to him should he attempt to avenge Volsung; but the boy, told by Sigmund to make the bread while he himself went out for firewood, was frightened to touch the bag of flour because there was something alive in it. When Sigmund told Signy about this she told him to kill the boy, since he had no heart; and Sigmund did so. The next year Signy sent her second son by Siggeir out into the woods, and things went in the same way.
After that Signy changed shapes with a sorceress, and the sorceress slept with Siggeir for three nights in Signy’s form, while Signy slept with her brother. The son born to them was named Sinfjotli.
33 On lines 5–6 of this stanza see the note to 35–36.
‘bast’: flexible bark, used for making baskets, and for tying.
33–34 In the Saga Sigmund subjected Sinfjotli to the same test as Siggeir’s sons, and when he came back to the underground house Sinfjotli had baked the bread, but he said that he thought that there had been something alive in the flour when he started kneading it. Sigmund laughed, and said that Sinfjotli should not eat the bread he had baked, ‘for you have kneaded in a great venomous snake.’ There is no mention in the Saga of Sinfjotli’s bringing Sigmund’s sword (see note to 37–39).
35–36 A long passage is devoted in the Saga to the ferocious exploits of Sigmund and Sinfjotli in the forest, where they became werewolves; and it is an important point that Sigmund thought that Sinfjotli was the son of Signy and Siggeir (cf. 33 ‘Fair one, thy father / thy face gave not’), possessing the energy and daring of the Volsungs but the evil heart of his father.
37–39 In the Saga Sigmund and Sinfjotli entered Siggeir’s hall and hid themselves behind ale barrels in the outer room; but the two young children of Siggeir and Signy were playing with golden toys, bowling them across the floor of the hall and running along with them, and a gold ring rolled into the room where Sigmund and Sinfjotli sat. One of the children, chasing the ring, ‘saw where two tall, grim men were sitting, with overhanging helms and shining mailcoats’; and he ran back and told his father.
