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Page 24
There were few, if any, Christians among these fine people. King Olaf
and his masterful ways with the heathen were yet to come. And those
who took on the new religion took it lightly. They cast it, like an
outer garment, over shoulders still snug in the livery of Frey and
Thor. It was not allowed to interfere with their customs, which were
free, or their manners, which were hearty. Glum, son of Thorkel, son
of Kettle Black, "took Christendom when he was old. He was wont thus
to pray before the Cross, 'Good for ever to the old! Good for ever
to the young.'" That seems to have been all his prayer, which was
comprehensive enough. But there are older and more obstinate garments
than religions. Illugi the Red and Holm-Starri "exchanged lands and
wives with all their stock." But the plan miscarried, for Sigrid, who
was Illugi's wife, "hanged herself in the Temple because she would not
change husbands." The compliment was greater than Illugi deserved.
With the world as large as it was in those spacious days there was
room for strange things to happen. Here is the experience of Grim,
son of Ingiald. "He used to row out to fish in the winter with his
thralls, and his son used to be with him. When the boy began to grow
cold they wrapt him in a sealskin bag and pulled it up to his neck.
Grim pulled up a merman. And when he came up Grim said, 'Do thou tell
us our life and how long we shall live, or else thou shalt never
see thy home again.' 'It is of little worth to you to know this,' he
answered,' though it is to the boy in the sealskin bag, for thou shalt
be dead ere the spring come, but thy son shall take up his abode and
take land in settlement where thy mare Skalm shall lie down under the
pack.' They got no more words out of him. But later in the winter Grim
died, and he is buried there." So much for Grim. His widow took her
son forth to Broadfrith, and all that summer Skalm never lay down.
Next year they were on Borgfrith, "and Skalm went on till they came
off the heath south to Borgfrith, where two red sand-dunes were, and
there she lay down under the pack below the outermost sand-well."
There the son of Grim set up his rest. There will nevermore be room in
the world for things like that, but it is pleasant to know of them,
"WORKS AND DAYS"
Some time or another, Apollo my helper, I would choose to write a new
_Works and Days_ wherein the land-lore of our own Boeotia should be
recorded and enshrined for a season. There should be less practice
than Tusser gives you, less art than the _Georgics_, but rather more
of each than Hesiod finds occasion for. Though it is long since I read
the _Georgics_, I seem to remember that the poem was overloaded
with spicy merchandise. You might die of it in aromatic pain. As for
Tusser, certainly he is the complete Elizabethan farmer; sooner than
leave anything out he will say it twice; sooner than say it twice, he
will say it three times. Nevertheless he was a good farmer; as poet,
his itch to be quaint and anxiety to find a rhyme combine to make him
difficult. He writes like Old Moore:
Strong yoke for a hog, with a twitcher and rings,
With tar in a tarpot, for dangerous things;
A sheep-mark, a tar-kettle, little or mitch,
Two pottles of tar to a pottle of pitch.
"Mitch" is a desperate rhyme, but nothing to Tusser. He gives you a
league or more of that; all the same, I don't doubt he was a better
farmer than Virgil. More of him anon.
Hesiod also was a better farmer than Virgil, and a poet into the
bargain, though the Mantuan had him there. He prefers terseness to
eloquence, is on the dry side, and avoids ornament as if he was a
Quaker. Such adjectives as he allows himself are Homer's, well-worn
and familiar. The sea is _atrugetos_, Zeus _hypsibremet�s_, the earth
_polyboteir�_, the hawk _tanysipteros_, and so on. They have no more
effect upon you than the egg-and-dart mouldings on your cornices. His
own tropes are more curious than beautiful, but I cannot deny
their charm. The spring, with him, is always _gray_--[Greek: polion
ear]--which is exact for the moment when the breaking leaf-buds are no
more than a mist over the woodlands. You shall begin your harvesting--
When the House-carrier shuns the Pleiades,
And climbs the stalks to get a little ease.
The House-carrier is the snail, of course; and he shuns the heat of
the ground, not the Pleiades. Here again is a maxim deeply involved in
language:
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