touched on
these things lest, when I relate of sleights and marvels, I be checked
by the disbelief of the reader. Now I will leave these matters and
return to my theme.

Swipdag, now that he had slain Gram, was enriched with the realms of
Denmark and Sweden; and because of the frequent importunities of his
wife he brought back from banishment her brother Guthorm, upon his
promising tribute, and made him ruler of the Danes. But Hadding
preferred to avenge his father rather than take a boon from his foe.

This man's nature so waxed and throve that in the early season of
his youth he was granted the prime of manhood. Leaving the pursuit of
pleasure, he was constantly zealous in warlike exercises; remembering
that he was the son of a fighting father, and was bound to spend his
whole span of life in approved deeds of warfare. Hardgrep, daughter of
Wagnhofde, tried to enfeeble his firm spirit with her lures of love,
contending and constantly averring that he ought to offer the first
dues of the marriage bed in wedlock with her, who had proffered to his
childhood most zealous and careful fostering, and had furnished him with
his first rattle.

Nor was she content with admonishing in plain words, but began a strain
of song as follows:

"Why doth thy life thus waste and wander? Why dost thou pass thy years
unwed, following arms, thirsting for throats? Nor does my beauty draw
thy vows. Carried away by excess of frenzy, thou art little prone to
love. Steeped in blood and slaughter, thou judgest wars better than the
bed, nor refreshest thy soul with incitements. Thy fierceness finds no
leisure; dalliance is far from thee, and savagery fostered. Nor is thy
hand free from blasphemy while thou loathest the rites of love. Let
this hateful strictness pass away, let that loving warmth approach, and
plight the troth of love to me, who gave thee the first breasts of milk
in childhood, and helped thee, playing a mother's part, duteous to thy
needs."

When he answered that the size of her body was unwieldy for the embraces
of a mortal, since doubtless her nature was framed in conformity to her
giant stock, she said:

"Be not moved by my unwonted look of size. For my substance is sometimes
thinner, sometimes ampler; now meagre, now abundant; and I alter and
change at my pleasure the condition of my body, which is at one time
shrivelled up and at another time expanded: now my tallness rises to the
heavens, and now I settle down into a