THE GIANT’S BOON.
Haymaking was begun when our Northmen started on their journey to Dacor:
and it was not yet finished when they came back, as empty-handed as they
went. When they were once again in the hall at home, and the red man had
brought them safe and sound through flood and fell, Swein said to his
wife, “Now that this man our guide has taken us in good faith through
strange places, and brought us home again, though little we have got by
our travelling unless it be gain to be no worse off than we were, but the
more assured of peace and quietness: I would not send him away without
thanks, but I would give him a gift, even if it be a good weapon, or as
many sheep as he can drive. Ask him then to make his choice, and he shall
not find us stingy.”
Unna agreed very readily to this: and when she had set it forth, the red
man was silent for a time, looking round as if to choose something out of
the house. At last he stood up, and made a long speech in his own tongue,
waving his arms and shaking his head. While he spoke, they saw her grow
pale as grass, and the tears came into her eyes.
“Swein,” she said, “and friends all, here is a hard thing for us to
answer: and indeed I know not myself what to do. For the man says that
he has enough and to spare of all the goods he needs; and that he is
a chief among his own people, so that he may not take a hired man’s
wages for service done rather to his king than to strangers. But if I
understand him aright he says that he saw at Dacor how men had respect to
thee, Swein Biornson: and that even the great king of the Saxons spoke
with thee friendly, as with a great chief. And moreover I gather from
his words that he has some foresight from his own dreams or from a wise
man’s, that you strangers are to be mighty in this land, and that nothing
will stand against you in the end: and that you will wipe his people from
the face of the earth, and take from them the homes of their fathers. Now
he says that he would be thy friend and brother; and for a pledge of our
peace, he would have nothing else but the fostering of one of our sons.”
With that they all cried out astonished, and Swein laughing a little and
harshly, said, “Tell him that we do not give our lads to giants and wild
men of the woods nowadays, even if Signy gave her child to Sigmund once
on a time, as the old song says.”
“Nay,” she said, “I will not anger him, or he will do us a bad turn one
of these days.”
“Tell him that we humbly thank his lordship for the honour, and one day
we will wait on his lordship at his lordship’s palace.”
But the red man, though he could make nothing of the words, knew very
well from the horse-laugh and the rough gesture of Swein that he was
despised and his offer scorned: and before Unna could speak, he dashed
his great club on the ground so that it tore a hole in the paving, and
made the cobbles fly. Then turning round, he went swiftly and disappeared
into the woods as before.
They looked at one another as if mischief should come next, but Swein
said, “Take courage, wife, and never fear that I will give up child of
ours to such a foster-father: and you, friends all, be on your guard, and
keep a watch on the ford and the woods, so that we be not taken unawares.
As for you, barns, let me not say it twice: stay with your mother, and
never wander away out of her sight, or the sight of the good fellows who
have charge of you.”
Days passed, and months: and all that winter nothing was seen or heard of
the red man: until it became a jest among them. For when any of the boys
were unruly, they would say to snape him, “Folk would think the giant had
thy fostering.”
But what with fear of this wood-man, and what with lack of neighbours,
Orm and Hundi and Thorstein grew up in their father’s house, and were not
put out to foster parents like many children of that day. For all that,
they were not brought up in idleness, to be spoiled lads and good for
nought; since, although there was plenty of servants, it was the way of
these people to do their own work, and to show their mastery in craft of
hand as well as in cunning of head.
There was a smithy on the farm; for how else could they shoe their nags
or fettle their weapons? and Swein was proud to be called master smith
of them all, and would spend many a winter day at the anvil, forging the
iron they brought in their boats from the Pennings’ people. So the boys
picked up something of the craft, maybe not so workmanlike as others,
and yet serviceably for the needs of people whose things were less for
show than for use. Their fine jewellery and goldsmith’s work they had
from abroad: but even so there was always some conceit of daintiness or
quaintness in the way they turned out their homely jobs, because their
time was before them, and they liked smithying, and lingered over it as a
pastime: curling the horns of a door-latch or a candlestick into ringlets
with the tongs: twisting the bar of a horse-bit into a screw, and
engraving a blade with devices or punching it into patterns. And every
bit of work was a lesson to the boys.
Beside smithying there was always woodwork to be done, for their houses
were wooden, and many things for which we use potter’s wares, they made
of wood: as cups and platters and all sort of vessels. In the winter
evenings especially this work went on round the hearth, while the women
spun and wove. The lads were not long at whittling sticks before they
were set to make arrows and shafts for weapons and tools, and it was
a proud day when they made their first piggin with hoops and staves
complete. And from that they got to carving, since these people were as
nice about their woodwork as their iron, and could not abide a blank
kist-panel or door-post, after they had once got roof raised and land
stubbed.
Moreover on these winter evenings there was story-telling and singing
of ballads, which let the lads into some knowledge of olden times, of
the kings and the gods, and especially adventures in strange lands. Add
to this that their mother, half Irish as she was, and the Welsh thralls
with whom they consorted, as children will with servants, taught them
something of other tongues than their own. And Unna showed them their
letters, drawing the runestaves with a charred stick on a board for them
to carve. As to book-learning, they got on very well without it.