rifir of the Saga), where the whole story
to come is told with some detail, and which certainly, if drawn out at
length into the prose, would have forestalled the interest of the tale.

In the slaying of the Dragon the Saga adheres very closely to the "Lay
of Fafnir"; for the insertion of the song of the birds to Sigurd the
present translators are responsible.

Then comes the waking of Brynhild, and her wise redes to Sigurd, taken
from the Lay of Sigrdrifa, the greater part of which, in its metrical
form, is inserted by the Sagaman into his prose; but the stanza relating
Brynhild's awaking we have inserted into the text; the latter part,
omitted in the prose, we have translated for the second part of our
book.

Of Sigurd at Hlymdale, of Gudrun's dream, the magic potion of Grimhild,
the wedding of Sigurd consequent on that potion; of the wooing of
Brynhild for Gunnar, her marriage to him, of the quarrel of the Queens,
the brooding grief and wrath of Brynhild, and the interview of Sigurd
with her--of all this, the most dramatic and best-considered parts of
the tale, there is now no more left that retains its metrical form than
the few snatches preserved by the Sagaman, though many of the incidents
are alluded to in other poems.

Chap. xxx. is met by the poem called the "Short Lay of Sigurd",
which, fragmentary apparently at the beginning, gives us something of
Brynhild's awakening wrath and jealousy, the slaying of Sigurd, and the
death of Brynhild herself; this poem we have translated entire.

The Fragments of the "Lay of Brynhild" are what is left of a poem partly
covering the same ground as this last, but giving a different account
of Sigurd's slaying; it is very incomplete, though the Sagaman has drawn
some incidents from it; the reader will find it translated in our second
part.

But before the death of the heroine we have inserted entire into the
text as chap. xxxi. the "First Lay of Gudrun", the most lyrical, the
most complete, and the most beautiful of all the Eddaic poems; a
poem that any age or language might count among its most precious
possessions.

From this point to the end of the Saga it keeps closely to the Songs of
Edda; in chap. xxxii. the Sagaman has rendered into prose the "Ancient
Lay of Gudrun", except for the beginning, which gives again another
account of the death of Sigurd: this lay also we have translated.

The grand poem, called the "Hell-ride of Brynhild", is not represented
directl