like a strawberry,[1] tumbled down like a lump of wheaten dough. Hence arose the breed of earth-goblins, hence hast thou, deceitful wretch, originated. Now I conjure thee away. There is no place for thee here; thy place, earth-goblin, is in the earth; thy place, water-devil, is in. the water.
XXXV.—Origin of Stitch and Pleurisy.
(a.)
Formerly a lovely oak grew, an incomparable shoot shot up. It grew extremely high, sought to touch the sky with its head, hindered the clouds from moving, the fleecy clouds from scudding, and darkened half the sun, bedimmed a third of the earth.
The young men deliberate, the middle-aged ponder how they can live without the moon, how exist without the sun in these wretched borderlands, these miserable northern lands.
They needed someone to fell, to lay low the mischievous oak. They searched and found none, they sought and discovered no one. Among this people in our land, among the fully-grown, among the crowd of men, there was none to lay low the mischievous oak, to fell the straight and lofty tree.
A swarthy fellow emerged from the sea, a full-grown man from the surge, neither great nor small, but a full-grown man of medium size, as tall as a straightened thumb [var. as thick as a summer gadfly], the height of three fingers [v. of an ox-hoof]; on his shoulder lay an ornamented axe with an ornamented haft; on his head he wore a tall hat of flagstone, on his feet shoes of stone. Well, that man had a mind to fell the oak, to shatter the hellish (rutimon) tree.[2]
