ss, as to make bold to unite his
contemptible and filthy race with a splendid and illustrious line, or to
dare to lay his peasant finger upon the royal family: and, not content
even with such a claim, to aspire, as it seemed, to a share even in the
kingdom of another. Then he bade Ebbe fight him, saying that he must get
the victory before he got his wish. The other answered that the night
was the time to fight with monsters, but the day the time with men;
but Halfdan, to prevent him shirking the battle by pleading the hour,
declared that the moon was shining with the brightness of daylight.
Thus he forced Ebbe to fight, and felled him, turning the banquet into a
spectacle, and the wedding into a funeral.

Some years passed, and Halfdan went back to his own country, and
being childless he bequeathed the royal wealth by will to Yngwin, and
appointed him king. YNGWIN was afterwards overthrown in war by a rival
named Ragnald, and he left a son SIWALD.

Siwald's daughter, Sigrid, was of such excellent modesty, that though a
great concourse of suitors wooed her for her beauty, it seemed as if she
could not be brought to look at one of them. Confident in this power of
self-restraint, she asked her father for a husband who by the sweetness
of his blandishments should be able to get a look back from her. For in
old time among us the self-restraint of the maidens was a great subduer
of wanton looks, lest the soundness of the soul should be infected by
the licence of the eyes; and women desired to avouch the purity of their
hearts by the modesty of their faces. Then one Ottar, the son of Ebb,
kindled with confidence in the greatness either of his own achievements,
or of his courtesy and eloquent address, stubbornly and ardently desired
to woo the maiden. And though he strove with all the force of his wit to
soften her gaze, no device whatever could move her downcast eyes; and,
marvelling at her persistence in her indomitable rigour, he departed.

A giant desired the same thing, but, finding himself equally foiled, he
suborned a woman; and she, pretending friendship for the girl, served
her for a while as her handmaid, and at last enticed her far from her
father's house, by cunningly going out of the way; then the giant rushed
upon her and bore her off into the closest fastnesses of a ledge on
the mountain. Others think that he disguised himself as a woman,
treacherously continued his devices so as to draw the girl away from her