son to death, has his wife torn to pieces, and ruins the happiness of many individuals and, at last, of his realm. From these luckless folk Deor turns to the picture of the Sorrowful Person, and for the first time theology peers over the shoulder of our cheerful bard. Then he tells of himself, his loss, his bad outlook; with a last and personal change rung on his brave refrain, and waking a fervent desire in the reader that the second clause of it “came true,” this sane and sound old singer ends his song.
I
Wayland learned bitterly banishment’s ways,
earl right resolute; ills enduréd;
had for comrades Care and Longing,[1]
winter-cold wanderings; woe oft suffered
5when Nithhad forged the fetters on him,[2]
bending bonds on a better man.
That he surmounted: so this may I!
II
Beaduhild mourned her brother’s death
less sore in soul than herself dismayed
10when her plight was plainly placed before her,—
birth of a bairn. No brave resolve
might she ever make, what the end should be.
That she surmounted: so this may I!
- ↑ Perhaps an allusion to one of the two Wayland stories, where his wife, once swan-maid, resuming her swan-raiment, leaves him, and he pines vainly for sight of her.
- ↑ A slight change in the text would square the account with that version of the story which has Wayland hamstrung:—
When Nithhad put such need upon him,
laming wound on a lordlier man.
