own house, and in the end carried her off. When Ottar heard of this, he
ransacked the recesses of the mountain in search of the maiden, found
her, slew the giant, and bore her off. But the assiduous giant had bound
back the locks of the maiden, tightly twisting her hair in such a way
that the matted mass of tresses was held in a kind of curled bundle; nor
was it easy for anyone to unravel their plaited tangle, without using
the steel. Again, he tried with divers allurements to provoke the maiden
to look at him; and when he had long laid vain siege to her listless
eyes, he abandoned his quest, since his purpose turned out so little to
his liking. But he could not bring himself to violate the girl, loth
to defile with ignoble intercourse one of illustrious birth. She then
wandered long, and sped through divers desert and circuitous paths, and
happened to come to the hut of a certain huge woman of the woods, who
set her to the task of pasturing her goats. Again Ottar granted her his
aid to set her free, and again he tried to move her, addressing her in
this fashion: "Wouldst thou rather hearken to my counsels, and embrace
me even as I desire, than be here and tend the flock of rank goats?

"Spurn the hand of thy wicked mistress, and flee hastily from thy
cruel taskmistress, that thou mayst go back with me to the ships of thy
friends and live in freedom.

"Quit the care of the sheep entrusted to thee; scorn to drive the steps
of the goats; share my bed, and fitly reward my prayers.

"O thou whom I have sought with such pains, turn again thy listless
beams; for a little while--it is an easy gesture--lift thy modest face.

"I will take thee hence, and set thee by the house of thy father, and
unite thee joyfully with thy loving mother, if but once thou wilt show
me thine eyes stirred with soft desires.

"Thou, whom I have borne so oft from the prisons of the giants, pay thou
some due favour to my toil of old; pity my hard endeavours, and be stern
no more.

"For why art thou become so distraught and brainsick, that thou wilt
choose to tend the flock of another, and be counted among the servants
of monsters, sooner than encourage our marriage-troth with fitting and
equal consent?"

But she, that she might not suffer the constancy of her chaste mind to
falter by looking at the world without, restrained her gaze, keeping her
lids immovably rigid. How modest, then, must we think, were the women of
that age, when, under the s