ek me
If we set not the lists of the holmgang."

Thus they parted; and then Cormac went home to Mel and saw his mother.
She healed his hand; it had become ugly and healed badly. The notch in
Skofnung they whetted, but the more they whetted the bigger it was.
So he went to Reykir, and flung Skofnung at Skeggi's feet, with this
verse:--

(28)
"I bring thee, thus broken and edgeless,
The blade that thou gavest me, Skeggi!
I warrant thy weapon could bite not:
I won not the fight by its witchcraft.
No gain of its virtue nor glory
I got in the strife of the weapons,
When we met for to mingle the sword-storm
For the maiden my singing adorns."

Said Skeggi, "It went as I warned thee." Cormac flung forth and went
home to Mel: and when he met with Dalla he made this song:--

(29)
"To the field went I forth, O my mother
The flame of the armlet who guardest,--
To dare the cave-dweller, my foeman
And I deemed I should smite him in battle.
But the brand that is bruited in story
It brake in my hand as I held it;
And this that should thrust men to slaughter
Is thwarted and let of its might.

(30)
For I borrowed to bear in the fighting
No blunt-edged weapon of Skeggi:
There is strength in the serpent that quivers
By the side of the land of the girdle.
But vain was the virtue of Skofnung
When he vanquished the sharpness of Whitting;
And a shard have I shorn, to my sorrow,
From the shearer of ringleted mail.

(31)
Yon tusker, my foe, wrought me trouble
When targe upon targe I had carven:
For the thin wand of slaughter was shattered
And it sundered the ground of my handgrip.
Loud bellowed the bear of the sea-king
When he brake from his lair in the scabbard,
At the hest of the singer, who seeketh
The sweet hidden draught of the gods.

(32)
Afar must I fare, O my mother,
And a fate points the pathway before me,
For that white-wreathen tree may woo not
--Two wearisome morrows her outcast.
And it slays me, at home to be sitting,
So set is my heart on its goddess,
As a lawn with fair linen made lovely
--I can linger no third morrow's morn."

After that, Cormac went one day to Reykir and talked with Skeggi, who
said the