n "every creature of earth" surprised even King Heithrek into
comment. The keen and whimsical observation that noted that even a
spider is a "marvel" and that it "carries its knees higher than its
body" is the same spirit that inspired a poem to the

Wee sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie.

The poet who noticed that water falling as hail on rock looks _white_
by contrast, yet forms little _black_ circles when it falls into the
sand as rain, had much in common with one who noticed that rock and
sand yield opposite sounds when struck by the same object--

Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoed away.

But though these things are pleasing in themselves, they are, of
course, slight. Gestumblindi cannot rise to the heights of true poetry
reached by Burns or Tennyson.

Besides the Riddles, this saga has preserved for us two far finer
poems--in fact two of the finest Norse poems that we possess--the
dialogue between Hervoer and Angantyr at the Barrows of Samso, and
the narrative of the great battle between the Goths and the Huns, the
_Chevy Chase_ of the North. The ruthlessness and barbaric splendour of
the Hunnish leaders, the cruelty and the poetry of warfare a thousand
years ago, are here vividly depicted in Norse verse at its simplest
and best.

We may notice too the little vignettes that appear from time to time
both in the poetry itself and in the prose narrative, some of which is
evidently derived from lost verses.--Hervoer standing at sunrise on the
summit of the tower and looking southward towards the forest; Angantyr
marshalling his men for battle and remarking drily that there used to
be more of them when mead drinking was in question; great clouds of
dust rolling over the plain, through which glittered white corslet and
golden helmet, as the Hunnish host came riding on.

The dialogue between Hervoer and Angantyr, despite a certain
melodramatic element in the setting, is treated with great delicacy
and poetic feeling, and an atmosphere of terror and mystery pervades
the whole poem. The midnight scene in the eerie and deserted
burial-ground, the lurid flickering of the grave fires along the
lonely beach, the tombs opening one by one as the corpses start to
life--all these work on the imagination and create an atmosphere
of dread. The poet understood the technique of presenting the
supernatural, and he is deliberately vague and suggestive. Much more
is implied than is stated, and muc