by making a magic sign and looking
through a witch's arm held akimbo. They are no good comates for men or
women, and to meddle with a goddess or nymph or giantess was to ensure
evil or death for a man. The god's loves were apparently not always so
fatal, though there seems to be some tradition to that effect. Most of
the god-sprung heroes are motherless or unborn (i.e., born like Macduff
by the Caesarean operation)--Sigfred, in the Eddic Lays for instance.

Besides the gods, possibly older than they are, and presumably mightier,
are the "Fates" (Norns), three Ladies who are met with together, who
fulfil the parts of the gift-fairies of our Sleeping Beauty tales, and
bestow endowments on the new-born child, as in the beautiful "Helge
Lay", a point of the story which survives in Ogier of the Chansons de
Geste, wherein Eadgar (Otkerus or Otgerus) gets what belonged to Holger
(Holge), the Helga of "Beowulf's Lay". The caprices of the Fates, where
one corrects or spoils the others' endowments, are seen in Saxo, when
beauty, bounty, and meanness are given together. They sometimes meet
heroes, as they met Helgi in the Eddic Lay (Helgi and Sigrun Lay),
and help or begift them; they prepare the magic broth for Balder, are
charmed with Hother's lute-playing, and bestow on him a belt of victory
and a girdle of splendour, and prophesy things to come.

The verse in Biarca-mal, where "Pluto weaves the dooms of the mighty and
fills Phlegethon with noble shapes," recalls Darrada-liod, and points to
Woden as death-doomer of the warrior.

"Giants".--These are stupid, mischievous, evil and cunning in Saxo's
eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, monstrous in
extravagant vitality.

The giant nature of the older troll-kind is abhorrent to man and woman.
But a giantess is enamoured of a youth she had fostered, and giants
carry off king's daughters, and a three-bodied giant captures young
children.

Giants live in caves by the sea, where they keep their treasure. One
giant, Unfoot (Ofoti), is a shepherd, like Polyphemus, and has a famous
dog which passed into the charge of Biorn, and won a battle; a giantess
is keeping goats in the wilds. A giant's fury is so great that it takes
twelve champions to control him, when the rage is on him. The troll
(like our Puss-in-Boots Ogre) can take any shape.

Monstrous apparitions are mentioned, a giant hand (like that in one
story of Finn) searching for its prey among the inmates