The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Christopher Tolkien
nýja and Guðrúnarkviða en nýja in the manuscript. One concerns the actual organization of the poem. The Lay of the Völsungs following the opening section Upphaf (‘Beginning’) is divided into nine sections, to which my father gave titles in Norse without translation, as follows:
| I | Andvara-gull [Andvari’s gold] |
| II | Signý |
| III | Dauði Sinfjötla [The Death of Sinfjötli] |
| IV | Fœddr Sigurðr [Sigurd born] |
| V | Regin |
| VI | Brynhildr |
| VII | Guðrún |
| VIII | Svikin Brynhildr [Brynhild Betrayed] |
| IX | Deild [Strife] |
I have retained these titles in the text, but added translations, as above, to those which are not simply proper names. In the Lay of Gudrún, on the other hand, there is no division into sections.
To sections I, II, V, and VI in the Lay of the Völsungs, but not to the other five, explanatory prose head-notes are added (perhaps in imitation of the prose notes inserted by the compiler of the Codex Regius of the Edda).
The marginal indications of the speakers in both poems are given exactly as they appear in the manuscript, as also are the indications of new ‘moments’ in the narrative.
The second difference in presentation between the two poems concerns the line-divisions. In Upphaf, alone of the sections of the Lay of the Völsungs, but throughout the Lay of Gudrún, the stanzas are written in eight short lines: that is to say, the unit of the verse, the half-line or vísuorð, is written separately:
Of old was an age
when was emptiness
(the opening of Upphaf ). But apart from Upphaf the whole of the Lay of the Völsungs is written in long lines (without a metrical space between the halves):
Of old was an age when Ódin walked
(the opening of Andvara-gull ). At the top of this page, however, my father wrote in pencil: ‘This should all be written in short line form, which looks better – as in Upphaf .’ I have therefore set out the text of the Lay of the Völsungs in this way.
§4 THE SPELLING OF NORSE NAMES
I have thought it best to follow closely my father’s usage in respect of the writing of Norse names in an English context. The most important features, which appear in his manuscript of the poems with great consistency, are these:
The sound ð of voiced ‘th’ as in English ‘then’ is replaced by d: thus Guðrún becomes Gudrún, Hreiðmarr becomes Hreidmar, Buðli becomes Budli, Ásgarðr becomes Ásgard.
As two of these examples show, the nominative ending -r is omitted: so also Frey, Völsung, Brynhild, Gunnar for Freyr, Völsungr, Brynhildr, Gunnarr.
The letter j is retained, as in Sinfjötli, Gjúki, where it is pronounced like English ‘y’ in ‘you’ (Norse Jórk is ‘York’).
The only case where I have imposed consistency is that of the name of the god who in Norse is Óðinn. In his lecture notes my father naturally used the Norse form (which I have retained in the text of his lecture on the ‘Elder Edda’, p.22). In the carefully written manuscript of the ‘New Lays’, on the other hand, he ‘anglicized’ it, changing ð to d, but (as generally in all such cases) retaining the acute accent indicating a long vowel. But he used two forms, favouring one or the other in different parts of the Lay of the Völsungs: Ódin and Ódinn. But in section VI, Brynhildr, where the name occurs frequently in the form Ódinn, he wrote (stanza 8) Ódinn bound me, Ódin’s chosen. This is because in the Norse genitive nn changes to ns: Óðins sonr, ‘son of Ódin’.
Seeing that in section VIII, stanza 5, where the name is repeated, Ódin dooms it; Ódinn hearken!, my father later struck out the second n of Ódinn, and since it seems to me that inconsistency in the form of the name serves no purpose, I have settled for Ódin. In the case of the name that is in Norse Reginn my father wrote Regin throughout, and I have followed this.
§5 THE VERSE-FORM OF THE POEMS
The metrical form of these Lays was very evidently a primary element in my father’s purpose. As he said in his letters to W.H. Auden, he wrote in ‘the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’, and I give here an abbreviated account of its nature.
There are three metres found in the Eddaic poems, fornyrðislag, malaháttr, and ljóðaháttr (on this last see the note to the Lay of the Völsungs, section V, lines 42–44, pp.211–13); but here we need only consider the first, in which most of the narrative poems of the Edda are composed. The name fornyrðislag is believed to mean ‘Old Story Metre’ or ‘Old Lore Metre’ – a name which, my father observed, cannot have arisen until after later elaborations had been invented and made familiar; he favoured the view that the older name was kviðuháttr, meaning ‘the “manner” for poems named kviða’, since the old poems in fornyrðislag, when their names have any metrical import, are usually called ~kviða: hence his names Völsungakviða and Guðrúnarkviða.
The ancient Germanic metre depended, in my father’s words, on ‘the utilization of the main factors of Germanic speech, length and stress’; and the same rhythmical structure as is found in Old English verse is found also in fornyrðislag. That structure was expounded by my father in a preface to the revised edition (1940) of the translation of Beowulf by J.R. Clark-Hall, and reprinted in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983). In that account he defined the nature of the Old English verse-structure in these words.
The Old English line was composed of two opposed word-groups or ‘halves’. Each half was an example, or variation, of one of six basic patterns.
The patterns were made of strong and weak elements, which may be called ‘lifts’ and ‘dips’. The standard lift was a long stressed syllable, (usually with a relatively high tone). The standard dip was an unstressed syllable, long or short, with a low tone.
The following are examples in modern English of normal forms of the six patterns:
A, B, C have equal feet, each containing a lift and dip. D and E have unequal feet: one consists of a single lift, the other has a subordinate stress (marked `) inserted.
These are the normal patterns of four elements into which Old English words naturally fell, and into which modern English words still fall. They can be found in any passage of prose, ancient or modern. Verse of this kind differs from prose, not in re-arranging words to fit a special rhythm, repeated or varied in successive lines, but in choosing the simpler and more compact word-patterns and clearing away extraneous matter, so that these patterns stand opposed to one another.
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