urselves in Drangey, but there ye shall both lay your bones, and
many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from
wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery;
yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for
nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus
spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for
if we be set upon by weapons it shall be said of thee that thou hast
had sons and not daughters.' And therewith they parted."

[Sidenote: _Great passages of the sagas._]

These moments, whether of incident or expression, are indeed frequent
enough in the sagas, though the main attraction may consist, as has
been said, in the wild interest of the story and the vivid
individuality of the characters. The slaying of Gunnar of Lithend in
_Njala_, when his false wife refuses him a tress of hair to twist for
his stringless bow, has rightly attracted the admiration of the best
critics; as has the dauntless resignation of Njal himself and
Bergthora, when both might have escaped their fiery fate. Of the
touches of which the Egil's Saga is full, few are better perhaps than
the picture in a dozen words of King Eric Blood-axe "sitting bolt
upright and glaring" at the son of Skallagrim as he delivers the
panegyric which is to save his life, and the composition of which had
been so nearly baulked by the twittering of the witch-swallow under
his eaves. The "long" kisses of Kormak and Steingerd, and the poet's
unconscious translation of AEschylus[175] as he says, "Eager to find
my lady, I have scoured the whole house with the glances of my
eyes--in vain," dwell in the memory as softer touches. And for the
sterner, nothing can beat the last fight of Olaf Trygveson, where with
the crack of Einar Tamberskelvir's bow Norway breaks from Olaf's
hands, and the king himself, the last man with Kolbiorn his marshal to
fight on the deck of the Long Serpent, springs, gold-helmed,
mail-coated, and scarlet-kirtled, into the waves, and sinks with
shield held up edgeways[176] to weight him through the deep green
water.

[Footnote 175: Compare, _mutatis mutandis_, _Agam._, 410 _sq._, and
Kormak's "Stray verses," ll. 41-44, in the _Corpus_, ii. 65.]

[Footnote 176: _Heimskringla_ does not _say_ "edgeways," but this is
the clear meaning. Kolbiorn held his shield flat and below him, so
that it acted as a float, and he was taken. Olaf sank.]

[Sidenote: _