an Old Norse story in
English, or to carry over an Old Norse spirit into English. Of this
second achievement we shall speak further in considering _Sigurd the
Volsung_.

There is one more tale in _The Earthly Paradise_ which originated in
Norse legend. "The Fostering of Aslaug" is drawn from Thorpe's _Northern
Mythology_, which epitomizes older sources. Aslaug is the daughter of
Iceland's great hero, Sigurd, and Iceland's great heroine, Brynhild, and
her life is set down in this poem most beautifully. Again we note that
the added touches of later poets fail to leave the sense of the
strenuous in the picture. Aslaug is like a favorite representation of
Brynhild that we have seen, a lily-maid in aspect, or a Marguerite. Her
mother's masculinity is gone, and with it the Old Norse flavor. It is
the privilege of our age to enjoy both the virility of the Old Norse and
the delicacy of the mediaeval conceptions, and William Morris has caught
both.

3.

In the opening lines of "The Fostering of Aslaug," our poet wrote his
doubts about his ability to sing the life of Sigurd in be-fitting
manner. At that time he said:

But now have I no heart to raise
That mighty sorrow laid asleep,
That love so sweet, so strong and deep,
That as ye hear the wonder told
In those few strenuous words of old,
The whole world seems to rend apart
When heart is torn away from heart.

(Vol. III, p. 28.)

It is a common complaint against the poetry of William Morris that it is
too long-winded. Each to his taste in this matter, but we beg to call
attention to one line in the above passage:

In those few strenuous words of old.

Whatever may have been Morris' tendency when he wrote his own poetry, he
knew when concision was a virtue in the poetry of others. There is no
better description of the _Voelsunga Saga_ than the above line, and
William Morris gave the English people a literal version of the saga, if
mayhap that strenuous paucity might translate the old spirit. But, as if
he knew that many readers would fail to make much of this version, he
tried again on a larger scale, and the great volume _Sigurd the
Volsung_, epic in character and proportions, was the result. Of these
two we shall now speak.

The _Voelsunga Saga_ was published in 1870, only two years after Morris
had begun to study Icelandic with Eirikr Magnusson. The latter's name is
on the title page as the first of the two co-translators. The _S