, as well as the spring of the action, is
clearly Hallgerd, descendant of Sigurd Fafnirsbane and of
Brynhild--

... a hazardous desirable thing,
A warm unsounded peril, a flashing mischief,
A divine malice, a disquieting voice.

She, and not any superstitious belief in "second-sight" and death
decreed, is the cause of Gunnar's remaining outlawed. She
wrangles about the headdress, not because she particularly wants
it, but to send her husband on a perilous mission to secure it.
She says openly that she has "set men at him to show forth his
might ... planned thefts and breakings of his word" to stir him
to battle. Mr. Abercrombie believes that "She loves her husband
Gunnar, but she refuses to give him any help in his last fight,
in order that she may see him fight better and fiercer." We
should, then, have to suppose that her amazing speech at his
death--

O clear sweet laughter of my heart, flow out!
It is so mighty and beautiful and blithe
To watch a man dying--to hover and watch--

is not for the blow Gunnar had given her when she "planned thefts
and breakings of his word," but is rather, as the lines
powerfully indicate, the exultation of a descendant of the
Valkyrie watching above the battlefields.

Really poetical plays--plays which are both poetic and strongly
dramatic--are indeed exceedingly rare. Mr. Bottomley is one of
the few who have produced such drama in English. For many years
he printed his work privately, in beautiful editions for his
friends; but of late several of the plays have been made
available--_King Lear's Wife in Georgian Poetry_, 1913-15, and in
a volume of the same title, including _Midsummer Eve_ and _The
Riding to Lithend_, published in London last year.

Those who want more stories of this sort will find them in
_Thorgils_ and other Icelandic stories modernized by Mr. Hewlett;
in the _Burnt Njal_, translated by Sir George Dasent, from which
this story itself springs; and in the translations by Eirikr
Magnusson and William Morris, the _Saga Library_--particularly
the stories of the Volsungs and Nibelungs, and of Grettir the
Strong.

_louvre_--a smoke-hole in the roof

_thrall_--a captive or serf

_bill_--a battle-ax

_second sight_--prophetic vision, as in _Riders to the Sea_ and
_Campbell of Kilmhor_

_fetch_--one's double; seeing it is supposed to be a sign that
one is _fey_ or fated to die

_wimpled_--"clouted up," as Hallgerd expresses it, in a headdress