device would be
a hindrance to the story-telling. As it is, nowhere in the more than
nine thousand lines of _Sigurd the Volsung_ is this alliteration an
excrescence, but everywhere it is woven into the grand design of a
fabric which is the richer for its foreign workmanship.

Notice that _duke_ and _battle_ and _master_ are the only words not
thoroughly Teutonic. This overwhelming predominance of the Anglo-Saxon
element over the French is in keeping with the original of the story. Of
course it is an accident that so small a proportion of Latin derivatives
is found in these six lines, but the fact remains that Morris set
himself to tell a Teutonic story in Teutonic idiom. That idiom is not
very strange to present-day readers, indeed we may say it has but a
fillip of strangeness. Archaisms are characteristic of poetic diction,
and those found in this poem that are not common to other poetry are
used to gain an Old Norse flavor. The following words taken from Book I
of the poem are the only unfamiliar ones: _benight_, meaning "at night";
"so _win_ the long years over"; _eel-grig_; _sackless_; _bursten_, a
participle. The compounds _door-ward_ and _song-craft_ are
representative of others that are sprinkled in fair number through the
poem. They are the best that our language can do to reproduce the fine
combinations that the Icelandic language formed so readily. English
lends itself well to this device, as the many compounds show that Morris
took from common usage. Such words as _roof-tree_, _song-craft_,
_empty-handed_, _grave-mound_, _store-house_, taken at random from the
pages of this poem, show that the genius of our language permits such
formations. When Morris carries the practice a little further, and makes
for his poem such words as _door-ward_, _chance-hap_, _slumber-tide_,
_troth-word_, _God-home_, and a thousand others, he is not taking
liberties with the language, and he is using a powerful aid in
translating the Old Norse spirit.

One more peculiar characteristic of Icelandic is admirably exhibited in
this poem. We have seen that Warton recognized in the "Runic poets" a
warmth of fancy which expressed itself in "circumlocution and
comparisons, not as a matter of necessity, but of choice and skill."
Certainly Morris in using these circumlocutions in _Sigurd the Volsung_,
has exercised remarkable skill in weaving them into his story. Like the
alliterations, they are part of an harmonious design. Examples aboun