but
another name for Veliant, and that this was the selfsame foreman whom we
knew in Siegfried's younger days. But, be this as it may, he was at this
time the master of all smiths, and no one ever wrought more cunningly.
And men say that his grandfather was Vilkinus, the first king of that
land; and that his grandmother, Wachitu, was a fair mermaid, who lived
in the deep green sea; and that his father, Wada, had carried him,
when a child, upon his shoulders through water five fathoms deep, to
apprentice him to the cunning dwarfs, from whom he learned his trade.
And if this story is true, he could not have been Veliant. He was wedded
to a beautiful lady, who sometimes took the form of a swan, and flew
away to a pleasant lake near by, where, with other swan-maidens, she
spent the warm summer days among the reeds and the water-lilies. And
many other strange tales were told of Welland the smith: how he had once
made a boat from the single trunk of a tree, and had sailed in it all
around the mid-world; how, being lame in one foot, he had forged a
wondrous winged garment, and flown like a falcon through the air;
and how he had wrought for Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon hero, a gorgeous
war-coat that no other smith could equal.[EN#28] And so pleasantly did
Welland entertain his guests that they were loath to leave him; but on
the fourth day they bade him farewell, and wended again their way.

Now our heroes rode forward, with greater speed than before, across many
a mile of waste land, and over steep hills, and through pleasant wooded
dales. Then, again, they came to fair meadows, and broad pasture-lands,
and fields green with growing corn; and every one whom they met blessed
them, and bade them a hearty God-speed. Then they left the farmlands
and the abodes of men far behind them; and they passed by the shore of a
sparkling lake, where they heard the swan-maidens talking to each other
as they swam among the rushes, or singing in silvery tones of gladness
as they circled in the air above. Then they crossed a dreary moor, where
nothing grew but heather; and they climbed a barren, stony mountain,
where the feet of men had never been, and came at last to a wild, dark
forest, where silence reigned undisturbed forever.

It was the wood in which dwells Vidar, the silent god, far from the
sound of man's busy voice, in the solemn shade of century-living oaks
and elms. There he sits in quiet but awful grandeur,--strong almost as
Thor, but h