and stay with us every time you
rode to or from the west." Gest received the message well, and thought
it a very manly offer, but said he must ride on now as he had purposed.
Gudrun said, "I have dreamt many dreams this winter; but four of the
dreams do trouble my mind much, and no man has been able to explain them
as I like, and yet I ask not for any favourable interpretation of them."
Gest said, "Tell me your dreams, it may be that I can make something of
them." Gudrun said, "I thought I stood out of doors by a certain brook,
and I had a crooked coif on my head, and I thought it misfitted me, and
I wished to alter the coif, and many people told me I should not do so,
but I did not listen to them, and I tore the hood from my head, and cast
it into the brook, and that was the end of that dream." Then Gudrun said
again, "This is the next dream. I thought I stood near some water, and I
thought there was a silver ring on my arm. I thought it was my own, and
that it fitted me exceeding well. I thought it was a most precious
thing, and long I wished to keep it. But when I was least aware of it,
the ring slipped off my arm and into the water, and nothing more did I
see of it afterwards. I felt this loss much more than it was likely I
should ever feel the loss of a mere keepsake. Then I awoke." Gest
answered this alone: "No lesser a dream is that one." Gudrun still
spoke: "This is the third dream, I thought I had a gold ring on my hand,
which I thought belonged to me, and I thought my loss was now made good
again. And the thought entered my mind that I would keep this ring
longer than the first; but it did not seem to me that this keepsake
suited me better than the former at anything like the rate that gold is
more precious than silver. Then I thought I fell, and tried to steady
myself with my hand, but then the gold ring struck on a certain stone
and broke in two, and the two pieces bled. What I had to bear after this
felt more like grief than regret for a loss. And it struck me now that
there must have been some flaw in the ring, and when I looked at the
pieces I thought I saw sundry more flaws in them; yet I had a feeling
that if I had taken better care of it, it might still have been whole;
and this dream was no longer." Gest said, "The dreams are not waning."
Then said Gudrun, "This is my fourth dream. I thought I had a helm of
gold upon my head, set with many precious stones. And I thought this
precious thing belonged to m