Now ready, crown 8vo. in an ornamental binding designed
for the Author, price 12s.
THE STORY OF THE VOLSUNGS
AND NIBLUNGS.
With Songs translated from the Elder Edda.
By WILLIAM MORRIS and E. Magnússon.
The Athenæum.
'The name of the author of "Jason" and "The Earthly Paradise" is in itself enough to draw our eyes with respect and expectation to this book. It is the first English translation of a famous Icelandic Saga or heroic romance, the original prose of which was composed, probably, in the twelfth century, from floating traditions and from songs and fragments of songs. . . . . This "Volsunga Saga" is the Icelandic version of the famous story, which has been called the Iliad of Northern Europe . . . . Every student of popular legendary lore will find this faithful and fine translation highly valuable, and it is, moreover, a thing to be grateful for as a permanent accession to English literature. . . . . To conclude a notice which our space will not allow us to enlarge, we trust this strange old story, in its present dress, will find readers. The English, although we should say too elaborately and obtrusively archaic, is, on the whole, noble and pure—a marvel in these hasty days of novel and newspaper.'
Pall Mall Gazette.
'A work like this entitles its authors to a place of honour among those labouring at that revival of the past, which is the great intellectual task of our time. . . . . . . It is in the central moment of Brynhild's wrath and Sigurd's murder that the real greatness of the work lies. A real human sentiment finds in this place an utterance signally impressive—the sentiment of blind despair, the bitterness burning into rage, that arise out of the relations of a man and woman loving one another, but with the life of each fatally given where love is not. . . . . . In the rendering of these poems (of which others are fine, although this is the finest) our authors have been distinctly felicitous with their short and unrhymed anapaestic metre, into which they have succeeded in throwing an amount of fire and modulation such as would scarcely have been looked for.'
'So draw ye round and hearken, English folk,
Unto the best tale pity ever wrought!
Of how from dark to dark bright Sigurd broke;
Of Brynhild's glorious soul with love distraught;
Of Gudrun's weary wandering unto nought,
Of utter love defeated utterlt:
Of grief too strong to give Love time to die!'
