550yet me ’gainst the monsters my mailéd coat,
hard and hand-linked, help afforded,—
battle-sark braided my breast to ward,
garnished with gold. There grasped me firm
and haled me to bottom the hated foe,
555with grimmest gripe. ’Twas granted me, though,
to pierce the monster with point of sword,
with blade of battle: huge beast of the sea
was whelmed by the hurly through hand of mine.
IX
Me thus often the evil monsters
560thronging threatened. With thrust of my sword,
the darling, I dealt them due return!
Nowise had they bliss from their booty then
to devour their victim, vengeful creatures,
seated to banquet at bottom of sea;
565but at break of day, by my brand sore hurt,
on the edge of ocean up they lay,
put to sleep by the sword. And since, by them
on.the fathomless sea-ways sailor-folk
are never molested.—Light from east,
570came bright God’s beacon; the billows sank,
so that I saw the sea-cliffs high,
windy walls. For Wyrd oft saveth
- ↑ A Germanic commonplace. It occurs in the Andreas of Cynewulf, in part in the Hildebrand Lay, v. 55, and in sundry Norse poems. “Undoomed” is “one who is not fey.”—Da sterbent wan die veigen, Nibelungen, 149, “only the fey die,” may be compared with the ballad phrase in Archie o’ Cawfield, Child, III, 489:
