"Saga" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And pure and deep through plains and playlands go, For me your love and all your kingcups store, And—dark militia of the southern shore, Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines Of that long saga which you sang me, pines, When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree I listened, with my ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... it and read it, that poor thing of mine— Old as a saga, young as the year— Drank in the similes (flattering wine!), Then gave her verdict, "You are a dear; Surely no girl ever had such a song Written for her; I will treasure it long; It's so original—clever—and strong; How could you know ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... acerbity from the best sagas. Not the least meritorious thing in the play, by the way, is the very slight insistence on Thorolf's relations to Helga, notwithstanding its temptation to the author of a social drama betraying strong influence of Ibsen; for the saga—it is to be borne in mind—is the literature of revenge and ambition as ruling motives, love having an incomparably smaller sphere allotted to it. Too much weight laid on that relation would have been ruinous to the ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... loom Olafsson saw with the description in the Nial Saga, he concludes this sort of loom was in use A.D. 1014, in the ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... hallucinations. I remembered the legend of Glam, from whom came our word "glamour," and had a droll feeling of being defeated, like Grettir, in the moment of his victory over that moonshine-giant. As says the Saga, "even as Glam fell a cloud was driven from the moon, and Glam said, Exceedingly eager hast thou sought to meet me, Grettir, but no wonder will it be deemed, though thou gettest no good hap of me." Even so it proved ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... really good saga, about gods and giants, and the fire kingdoms, and the snow kingdoms, and the Aesir making men and women out of two sticks, and ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... the mass of Odysseus' seafaring adventures is condensed into a reported speech—a traveller's tale at the court of Alcinoues. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly—by means of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note, again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his audience knew nothing but ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... apple from his son's head. This is inevitably associated with the legend of William Tell, which is told in the White Book of Obwalden, written about 1470; but similar stories can be found in the Icelandic Saga of Dietrich of Bern (about 1250) and in Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote his Danish History about the year 1200. Three or four other versions of the story are to be found in German and Scandinavian literature before the date of our ballad; but they all agree in ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... a youth, a young man (from "juna", young). belulino, a beauty, a belle (from "bela", beautiful). maljunulo, an old man (from "maljuna", old). sagxulo, a sage, a wise man (from "saga", wise). malricxulino, a ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... told also in the Hartz, about The Dummburg, and closely resembles the Eastern story of 'The Forty Thieves,' where even the rock Sesam, which falls open at the words Semsi and Semeli, recalls the name of the mountain in the German saga. This name for a mountain is, according to a document in Pistorius (3, 642), very ancient in Germany. A mountain in Grabfeld is called Similes and in a Swiss song a Simeliberg is again mentioned. This makes us think of the Swiss word 'Sine!,' for 'sinbel,' round. In Meier, No. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... staunchest admirers, in retrospect we can see now that no one believed more than we that he did it strictly for the dollar. It is likely there was always a small corps of starry-eyed adolescents who found the whole improbable saga entirely believable, or at least half believed it might be partly true. The attitude of the rest of us ranged from a patronizing disparagement that we thought was expected of us, through ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... officers, some spirit into the troops. But he had no one to encourage and support him. Such counselors as he had were all for flight. He stepped into his motor-car, set off for Cintra and Mafra, and is henceforth out of the saga. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... on strong grounds of probability, etymological and other, assigned to this dynasty are Saga-raktiyas, the founder of a Temple of the male and female Sun at Sippara, Ammidi-kaga, Simbar-sikhu, Kharbisikhu, Ulam-puriyas, Nazi-urdas, Mili-sikhu, and Kara-kharbi. Nothing is known at present of the position which any of these monarchs held in the dynasty, or of their relationship to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... were some peasant tales, whose freshness and vividness made an immediate and remarkable impression and practically ensured his future as a writer, while their success inspired him with the desire to create a kind of peasant "saga." He wrote of what he knew, and a delicate sense of style seemed inborn in him. The best known of these tales are Synnoeve Solbakken (1857) and Arne (1858). They were hailed as giving a revelation ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... of ecstasy she plunged into one of those wild and sea-blown saga-like rhapsodies of the Hungarians, full of the wind in rigging, the storm in the pines, of shrieking, vast forces hurtling unchained through a resounding and infinite space, as though deep down in primeval nature the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... was one of the largest farmers in Iceland, and owned the adjoining island, namely, 'Lonely Island,' or 'Drangey,' famous as the retreat of the outlawed hero of the 'Gretter-Saga.' The legend states that one Christmas night the chief's fire went out, and having no means of rekindling it, he swam from Drangey Island to the Reykir farm to get a light, a distance which to us, humanly speaking, seems impossible for any man to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... dust', see Arago, in the 'Annuaire' for 1832, p. 254. I haave very recently endeavored to show, in another work ('Asie Centrale', t. i., p. 408). how the Scythian saga of the sacred gold, which fell burning from heaven, and remained in the possession of the Golden Horde of the Paralat¾ (Herod., iv., 5-7), probably originated in the vague recollection of the fall of an arolite. The ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... unpathwayed seas, Shot the brave prow that cut on Vinland sands The first rune in the Saga of the West. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Bledri figures as an active, and at the same time a recording, personage. Now that such a body of literature may have existed we are entitled to assume from the fact that two such have survived, one from Wales, in the Llywarch Hen cycle, the other from Ireland, in the Finn Saga. In both cases, the fact that the descriptive poems are put in the mouth, in Wales of Llywarch, in Ireland largely of Oisin, led to the ascription at an early date of the whole literature to Llywarch and Oisin. ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... stand out, in marked relief from those which precede and follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the varnish-brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in seriously obscuring, the essential characteristics of the theology ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... him, partly veiled, lost in profound revery, sits a female form, in whose lofty, intellectual features we recognise the impersonation of the traditional source of all early poetry; it is the impersonation of the Saga or Myth. She recalls those sybils who came from Asia to Greece to proclaim the oracles of the gods. In her hand the helm is still resting, in token that her guidance has brought Homer to Greece. A group of unclad nymphs, mingled with swans, swim ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... of Ireland is vast in extent and rich in quality. The inedited manuscript materials, if published, would occupy several hundred large volumes. Of this mass only a small portion has as yet been explored by scholars. Nevertheless three saga-cycles stand out from the rest, distinguished for their compass, age and literary worth, those, namely, of the gods, of the demigod Cuchulain, and of Finn son of Cumhall. The Cuchulain cycle, also ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... appeared in print; the results of his second trip are unknown. Ibsen had great faith in the availability of this medieval material for dramatic purposes; he even wrote an essay, "The Heroic Ballad and Its Significance for Artistic Poetry," urging its superior claims in contrast to that of the saga material, to which he was himself shortly to turn. The original play based on "The Grouse in Justedal" was left unfinished. After the completion of Lady Inger of Ostrat and The Feast at Solhoug he ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... recommend it, and not a few require a diviner rather than a translator. Yet they are valuable to students as showing the different sources and the heterogeneous materials from and of which the great Saga-book has been compounded. Some are, moreover, striking and novel, especially parts of the series entitled King Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al- Rahwan (pp. 191-355). Interesting also is the Tale of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... iv The "Saga of Beowulf" was the great popular poem of the Saxon races, and as well known to them as the legends of Robin Hood to us. The principal episode is the hero's victory ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... man. He was fully alive to my own anxiety and despair with regard to the risk I ran of forever destroying my ideals and hopes for the future of art. It is true, he declined to receive any further instruction concerning these artistic schemes, and would not even look at my work on the Nibelungen saga. I had just then been inspired by a study of the Gospels to conceive the plan of a tragedy for the ideal stage of the future, entitled Jesus of Nazareth. Bakunin begged me to spare him any details; and when I sought to win him over to my project by a few verbal hints, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Hause - House. Hegel - Name of the German philosopher. Heine, Heinrich - German poet. Heini von Steier - Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Heldenbuch - Is the title of a collection of epic poems, belonging to the cycle of the German Saga. Heller Glorie schein - Bright gloriole. Hereauf, hierauf - Thereupon. Herout,(Ger. Heraus) - Out. Herr Je,(Ger.) - An abbreviation of Herr Jesus (O Lord!); generally only used by those who are fond of meaningless exclamations. Her-re-liche, herrliche - ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... in mind," says Thorkel to Bork, in the Icelandic saga of Gisli the Outlaw, "bear in mind that a woman's counsel is always unlucky."—On the other hand, quoth Panurge, "Truly I have found a great deal of good in the counsel of women, chiefly in that of the old wives ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the Norse, by Miss Minnie Wright from Madame d'Aulnoy, by Mrs. Lang and Miss Bruce from other French sources, by Miss May Sellar, Miss Farquharson, and Miss Blackley from the German, while the story of 'Sigurd' is condensed by the Editor from Mr. William Morris's prose version of the 'Volsunga Saga.' The Editor has to thank his friend, M. Charles Marelles, for permission to reproduce his versions of the 'Pied Piper,' of 'Drakestail,' and of 'Little Golden Hood' from the French, and M. Henri Carnoy for the same privilege in regard to 'The Six ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... listening to hackneyed tales of domestic tragedy and a stranger's reminiscences? Why did his mind continually linger round the rock of Doom, so noisy on its promontory, so sad, so stern, so like an ancient saga in its spirit? Cecile—he was amazed at it, but Cecile, and the Jacobite cause he had come here to avenge with a youth's ardour, had both fallen, as it were, into a ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... "Fortunio, in the fairy-tale." The gifted companions of Fortunio, Keen-eye, Keen-ear, and so forth, are very old stock characters in Maerchen: their first known appearance is in the saga of Jason ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... students. His last work, "Leif's House in Vineland," with his daughter's supplementary essay on "Graves of the Northmen," is probably the most interesting of the series (Boston, 1893). In Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf" (II.), included in "Tales of a Wayside Inn," there is a description of the athletic sports practised by the Vikings, which are moreover described with the greatest minuteness by ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... (i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horos dead "on the water," and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clue to the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet other Egyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptians had a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as did Hermes), and having had to fly for it to Egypt, where he gave laws and learning to the Egyptians. Yet, curiously enough, this myth probably ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... ones were yet found engraven on the face of rocks, on tombstones, etc. "Do you see, Alette," continued he, eagerly, "this represents a woman and a little child; probably Karlefne's wife, who bore a son during this visit to Vineland. And this must be a bull; and in Karlefne's Saga a bull is mentioned, which terrified the natives by his bellowings; and these figures to the right represent the natives. This must be a shield, and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Thorgils was slain. Snorri said, "You must be mistaken; it must be that Thorgils Hallason has slain some one." The man replied, "Why, the head flew off his trunk." "Then perhaps it is time," said Snorri. This manslaughter was peacefully atoned, as is told in the Saga of Thorgils Hallason. ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... translation of the Njals Saga, under the title The Story of Burnt Njal, which is reprinted in this volume, was published by Messrs. Edmonston & Douglas in 1861. That edition was in two volumes, and was furnished by the author with ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... feast made for me that night, and after it I must sit still and hear the scalds sing of the deeds of Harald the king, which was well enough. But then Thiodolf rose up and sang a great saga about the winning of Sigurd's sword, wherein it seemed that I had fought the dead jarl, and bale fires, and I know not what. He had heard strange tales from Einar's men, if they told ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... which 'The Robbers' appeared, we hear of the capture in Bavaria of a band of outlaws numbering nearly a thousand men. The year 1771 witnessed the execution of the robber-chieftain Klostermayer, who, under the name of the Bavarian Hiesel, became the subject of an idealizing saga in which we recognize the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... that foolish to the Allies but appealing to the Germans, rather appearing to submerge his own personality in the united patriotism of the struggle—such is the picture which the throne machinery has impressed on the German mind. The histrionic gift may be at its best in creating a saga. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts. "Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous, at other times tyrannical ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... saga And from scaldic lore, That heroic warriors Were the Danes of yore. That the noble schildings, And the men they led, Oft for Danish honour Stoutly fought ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... material for poetic imagination and for literary products. It was the development of the old saga hero under new conditions, those of Christianity and humanity, and this led to greater and more profound sentiments concerning life. The crusades also took men out from their narrow surroundings and the belief that the Christian religion, supported by the monasteries, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald in song has told, No Saga taught thee! Take heed, that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse! ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of Calgary was crowded into one lively half-hour (motors were invented to run about new cities). What I heard I picked up, oddly enough, weeks later, from a young Dane in the North Sea. He was qualmish, but his Saga of triumph ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... for the Saga period. But the Sagas of the Kings, and in general the more strictly historical traditions of that far-off age, did not attract me greatly; at that time I was unable to put the quarrels between kings and chieftains, parties and clans, to any dramatic ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... a word, not very dissimilar to Mazer, may be found in Eric Red's Saga, part of the Flatoe Annals, supposed to be written in the tenth century, and one of the authorities for the pre-Columbian discovery of America by the Icelanders. Karlsefne, one of the heroes of the Saga, while his ship was detained by a contrary wind in a Norwegian port, was accosted by a German, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... ear, and convey not only his feelings and thoughts, but also the very tone and condition of the soul in which they have being, he likewise excels.' The reviewer illustrates these remarks, by citing the 'Psalms of Life,' the 'Saga of the Skeleton in Armor,' 'The Village Blacksmith,' etc., which were written by Mr. LONGFELLOW for the pages of this Magazine, and adds, that our poet indulges in no 'wild struggles after an ineffable Something, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... are framing Lean faces, grim and brown, No more keen eyes are aiming To bring the redskin down; But every wind careening Seems here to breathe a song— A song of brave careering, A saga of the strong. ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... this-a-way," began Tom Osby, the morning after Curly's osteopathic horse saga; "I've got to go on up to Vegas after a load of stuff, and I'll be gone a couple of weeks. Now, you know, from what we heard down at Sky Top about this railroad, a heap of things can happen in two weeks. Them fellers ain't showin' their hands ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... is untranslated by Stanley. Rizal conjectures that it may come from the Tagal word saga or jequiriti. But it may be a misprint for the Spanish sagu or ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... that Libu[vs]a, his youngest daughter, should succeed him. Libu[vs]a, according to legend, was a model of all the virtues, and as in those days there was no ever-ready Press lurking to pounce on historical inaccuracies, we may accept the statement of kindly Saga. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... northern explorers let us remind ourselves of the old saga so graphic in its description of their ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... his rifle and started over the ridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eats up the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when he sat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of this one killed and that one maimed; for this he had been schooled when he practised with rifle and revolver until, even as a boy, his aim had become as near an infallible thing as anything human gets to be; for this he had been ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... yet exist, and while treason to the kin was punished by death, the slaying of a king could be recouped by the payment of compensation: a king simply was valued so much more than a freeman.(11) And when King Knu (or Canute) had killed one man of his own schola, the saga represents him convoking his comrades to a thing where he stood on his knees imploring pardon. He was pardoned, but not till he had agreed to pay nine times the regular composition, of which one-third went to himself for the loss of one of his men, one-third to the relatives of the slain man, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... maiden knight, Galahad, the son of the great Launcelot, who in the romances had taken the place of Modred in Geoffrey's history, as the paramour of Queen Guenever. In like manner the love-story of Tristan and Isolde was joined by other romancers to the Arthur-Saga. This came probably from Brittany or Cornwall. Thus there grew up a great epic cycle of Arthurian romance, with a fixed shape and a unity and vitality which have prolonged it to our own day and rendered it capable ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... in the literal phrase, 'how the myths ought to be put together.' The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths. Again, the literal translation of poetes, poet, as 'maker', helps to explain a term that otherwise seems a puzzle in the Poetics. If we wonder why Aristotle, and Plato before him, should lay such stress on the theory that art is imitation, it is a help to realize that common ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... sitting all alone by rock and river, hill and greenwood tree. There are yet in existence on some of this land which was once ours certain mysterious walls or relics of heavy stone-work, which my friend Eben C. Horsford thinks were made by the Norsemen. I hope that they were, for I have read many a saga in Icelandic, old Swedish, and Latin, and the romance thereof is deep in my soul; and as my own name is Godfrey, it is no wonder that the god Frey and his Freya are dear to me. In my boyhood—and it may be still the case—the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a thorough Norse Saga, embodies the doings of the Anglo-Saxons before they emigrated to England, and must have been written long before they set foot on English soil. Older than Beowulf is the lyric poem of Widsith, which has some historical ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... survey seems to have no end of buttons. It must be admitted that I am wearing a bow-tie: but on careful research I find that these were constantly worn by Vikings. A distinct allusion to them is made in that fine fragment, the Tryggvhessa Saga, where the poet says, in the short alliterative lines of Early ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the rarities in Western Americana. In 1927 it was republished by Macmillan, New York, under title of Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, edited by Maurice G. Fulton. This is now OP but remains basic. The most widely circulated biography has been The Saga of Billy the Kid by Walter Noble Burns, New York, 1926. It contains a deal of fictional conversation and it has no doubt contributed to the Robin-Hoodizing of the lethal character baptized as William H. Bonney, who was ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... spirits, revelling in arrangements and directions. But the wind was taken out of his sails by the two young men, who were engaged in enacting a bewildering kind of drama, a saga, of which the venerable Mr. Redmayne appeared to be the hero. Guthrie, who was in almost overpowering spirits, took the part of Mr. Redmayne, whom he imitated with amazing fidelity. He had become, it seemed, a man of low and degrading tastes—'Erb Redmayne, he was called, or old ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of this?" I said one evening, as soon as I understood the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could expostulate read him the whole of "The Saga of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... theft with asportation could not alter property rights, even in favor of innocent purchasers, when the owner did not intend to part therewith. A moment's recollection of what is now perhaps the most familiar of Teutonic saga to the ordinary reader, the text of Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung," will give ample evidence of that mental attitude. But the Oriental mind was far more subtile. To the Jews or Lombards we owe the discovery of that bill of exchange—the first of negotiable instruments, and the ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... that the first place called Ravenser was a Danish settlement just within the Spurn Point, the name being a compound of the raven of the Danish standard, and eyr or ore, meaning a narrow strip of land between two waters. In an early Icelandic saga the sailing of the defeated remnant of Harold Hardrada's army from Ravenser, after the defeat of the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, is mentioned ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... din and clash of shouting and of steel rose the voice of Sigvat the saga-man, or song-man of the young viking, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... There were ban-file, or women-poets, who, like the file, were at the same time soothsayers and poetesses, and there are other evidences of the high esteem in which women were held. There can be no doubt, to judge by the elaborate descriptions of garments in the saga-texts, that the women were very skilful in weaving and needlework. The Irish peasant girls of today inherit from them not a little of their gift for lace-making and linen-embroidery. Ladies of the highest rank practiced needlework as an accomplishment and a recreation. Some of the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Marlowe and Goethe, and yet the tale upon which these two poets wrought is one whose roots are very deep in history, and which revives in a peculiarly vital and interesting fashion the age-long story of man's great conflict. Indeed the saga on which it is founded belongs properly to no one period, but is the tragic drama of humanity. It tells, through all the ages, the tale of the struggle between earth and the spiritual world above it; and the pagan forms which are introduced take us back ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Germany alone threatened by France and Russia; disturbances, like a fantastic renewal of the horrors of the Middle Age, are ready to burst forth on the other side of the Alps, as though, according to the ancient saga of Germany, the dead were about to rise in order to mingle in the last great contest between ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... is new, we must refer to the translations already made of some other of these works,[1] and to the notes which accompany them: a few notes at the end of this volume may be of use to students of Saga literature. ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... thickest part of the battle. They met King Harald in a fjord in Rogaland called Hafrsfjord. The forces on each side were very large, and the battle was one of the greatest ever fought in Norway. There are many accounts of it, for one always hears much about those people of whom the saga is told. Troops had come in from all the country around and from other countries as well, besides a multitude of vikings. Onund brought his ship alongside of that of Thorir Long-chin in the very middle of the battle. King Harald made for Thorir's ship, knowing him to be a terrible berserk, ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... there were song contests which sometimes lasted for three days. This contest of the poets was an old custom with them. And we remember how the ignorant Icelanders, who had never seen a written character, created the splendid Saga, and handed it down from father to son. We shall scarcely find in Europe a peasantry whose abject poverty is not in some measure alleviated by this power which literature gives them to live outside it. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Ages, the record of that life is by a still greater interval in advance of all the common modes of narrative then known to the more fortunate or more luxurious parts of Europe. The conventional form of the Saga has none of the common medieval restrictions of view. It is accepted at once by modern readers without deduction or apology on the score of antique fashion, because it is in essentials the form with which modern readers are acquainted ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Saga relating the adventures of a Viking, Orvar Odd in Aquitaine, describes how he saw some of the natives taking refuge in an underground retreat, and how he pursued and killed them all. [Footnote: Fornmanna Soegwr, Copenhagen, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... these people (we met some) can tell you that "Sagg" Harbor or the "Harbor of Sagg" (it's dropped the "g," as lots of smart people do in England!) came from the word Sagma, or chief. Jack likes to believe that, just as he likes to find a romantic connection between Sagma, chief, or great man, and saga, or great song. But there are other less picturesque suggestions. If you'd seen what a fine old place Sag Harbor is, you'd hate to think it owed its name to a mere ground-nut the Indians called "Sagabon," or, still ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... it with a firm hand, as the Saint in the old paintings bears the church. In her, the Iceland of ancient and modern times meets. She has more warmth, more kindness of heart, more womanly affection, than any antique figure from a Saga. She gives herself completely, resignedly. She is tender and she is mild, without being meek. In her inmost self, however, she is proud. When first this pride is touched, then hurt, and finally the very woman in her is mortally wounded, it is at once perceptible that ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... the intrigue (an outworn expedient Ibsen never condescended to use in the later social dramas). The plot of 'Mistress Inger' is not veracious or convincing or even plausible; and the play lacks the broad simplicity of story to be found in the later 'Vikings,' a saga-like drama, a tale of blood and fate, which recalls Wagnerian opera in its primitive massiveness, in the vigor of its legend, in its tragic pathos, and in its full-blooded characters larger than life and yet pitifully human. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... wide. One of the old Norse sagas, or stories, tells how King Olaf Tryggvesson built a ship, the keel of which, as it lay on the grass, was 74 ells long; in modern measure, it would be a vessel of about 942 tons burden. Even if we make allowance for the exaggeration or ignorance of the writer of the saga, there is still a vast contrast between this vessel and the little ship Centurion in which Anson sailed ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... not wholly, that the myths or plots of not only AEschylus but also Sophocles and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays are lost to us, are taken. The new wine that was poured into the old bottles of the dromena at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga. We know as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly responsible for this inpouring—the great democratic tyrant Peisistratos. We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and then pass to ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... sat an aged minstrel, whose duty it was to fill in the intervals of the feast with the music of his harp, or, if need were, to recite to the company the saga of King Somerled and other great ancestors of the kings ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... fault with a people for their patriotism. I have always admired that love of Gamle Norge which shines through Norwegian history, song, and saga—but when it is manifested in such ridiculous extremes, one doubts the genuineness of the feeling, and suspects it of being alloyed with some degree of personal vanity. There are still evils to be eradicated,—reproaches ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Sally listened to this saga breathlessly. More than ever did she feel responsible for her young protege, and any faint qualms which she had entertained as to the wisdom of transferring practically the whole of her patrimony to the care of so erratic a financier as her brother vanished. It was ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... until lately the universities as a whole have stood rather indifferently apart from the Church. They have somewhat indulgently regarded it as one more historic institution for preserving myth and legend. To them the Christ-life has meant little more than the Beowa-myth, the Arthur-saga, the Nibelungen cycle, the Homeric stories, the Thor-and-Odin tales! Druids, fire-worshippers, moon-dancers, and Christian communicants have been comparatively studied, with a view to understanding the race-progress in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... after three tragedies proper there came a play, still in tragic diction, with a traditional saga plot and heroic characters, in which the Chorus was formed by these Satyrs. There was a deliberate clash, an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with Satyrs ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... only a few years ago, yet agreeing in all essential details with the version of the Book of Leinster. Such a record is unique in the history of oral tradition, outside Ireland, where, however, it is quite a customary experience in the study of the Finn-saga. It is now recognised that Macpherson had, or could have had, ample material for his rechauffe of the Finn or "Fingal" saga. His "Darthula" is a similar cobbling of our present story. I leave to Celtic specialists the task of settling ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of beauty, sung of old, Or saga of the dead heroic days, And not a blossom laughing by the ways, Or wind of April blowing on the wold But in my heart shall have the power to stir The shy communion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... long-headed pestles. It is merely a question of a few years, however, until the intelligent Japs will discard all their old clumsy methods and introduce the latest agricultural improvements of the West into their country. Passing through a mile or more of Saga's smooth and continuously ridable streets, past big school-houses where hundreds of children are reciting aloud in chorus, past the big bronze Buddha for which Saga is locally famous, the road continues through a somewhat undulating ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... her," with bated breath Frank repeated the monotonous refrain of her saga, "and he made her thwow ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... who were themselves in revolt against oppressive law, or who, finding law powerless to prevent tyranny, glorified the lawless punishment of wrongs and the bold denunciation of perverted justice. The warriors who listened to the saga of Beowulf looked on physical prowess as the best of all heroic qualities, and the Normans who admired Roland saw in him the ideal of feudal loyalty. To every age, and to every nation, there is a peculiar ideal of heroism, and in the popular legends of ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... brought to England during the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Parts of the material, such as the dragon-fights, are purely mythical. They relate to Beowa, a superman, of whom many legends were told by Scandinavian minstrels. The Grendel legend, for example, appears in the Icelandic saga of Gretti, who slays the dragon Glam. Other parts of Beowulf are old battle songs; and still others, relating to King Hygelac and his nephew, have some historical foundation. So little is known ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... 524. In the Ynglinga saga Niord takes his sister to wife, because the law of Van-land allowed it, although that of the Ases did not.[1706] Other cases in the Edda go to show that the taboo on such marriages was not in the ancient mores of Scandinavia.[1707] In the German poems of the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... however, did not effectually conciliate the Somerlidian tribe. The Norwegian Monarch, disappointed in his negotiations, had recourse to the sword, and sailed with a fleet, which both the Sturlunga-saga, and the Flateyan annals represent as the most formidable that ever left the ports ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson
... the goddesses? Har answered: Frigg is the first; she possesses the right lordly dwelling which is called Fensaler. The second is Saga, who dwells in Sokvabek, and this is a large dwelling. The third is Eir, who is the best leech. The fourth is Gefjun, who is a may, and those who die maids become her hand-maidens. The fifth is Fulla, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... in a chant the saga-singer's tale of the king killing all the colts save one that it might have the nursing of the twelve. His eye sparkled and glowed; his colour mounted; his soul was so stirred with the story that his spirit ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... public ever stand such an opus? Gude kens, but it tickles me. Two or three historical personages will just appear: Judge Jeffreys, Wellington, Colquhoun, Grant, and I think Townsend the runner. I know the public won't like it; let 'em lump it then; I mean to make it good; it will be more like a saga. - ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... duty a soldier of soldiers, might perhaps have cared to interest himself in a warrior of long ago, a hero of our Northern stock, whose days were spent in strife, and whose latest desire was Rest. But it may not be; like the Golden Eric of this Saga, and after a nobler fashion, he has passed through the Hundred Gates into the ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... to-day are not like other wars, and the wonders of them are unlike other wonders. If we do not see in them the saga and epic, how shall we tell ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... Thomas Howard to escape, but which Sir Richard Grenville refused to take "at Flores, in the Azores"; and built at his own expense, the largest privateer then or perhaps ever constructed, the Malice Scourge—for the remarkable subsequent history of which, see Mr. David Hannay's article, "The Saga of a Ship," ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Abbe Morillot, and several are to be found in Rink's Legends. When we learn that the Norsemen, during their three centuries of occupation of Greenland, brought away many of the marvelous tales of the Eskimo, it is not credible that they left none of their own. Thus we are told in the Floamanna Saga how a hero, abandoned on the icy coast of Greenland, met with two giant witches (Troldkoner), and cut the band from one of them. An old Icelandic work, called the Konungs Skuggsjo (Danish, Kongespeilet), has much ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a nap, and Alexandra read. During the week she read only the newspaper, but on Sunday, and in the long evenings of winter, she read a good deal; read a few things over a great many times. She knew long portions of the "Frithjof Saga" by heart, and, like most Swedes who read at all, she was fond of Longfellow's verse,—the ballads and the "Golden Legend" and "The Spanish Student." To-day she sat in the wooden rocking-chair with the Swedish Bible open on ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... two sons, Eric and Svein, often also mentioned in this Saga. On their father's death they fled to Sweden, to Denmark, and were busy stirring up troubles in those countries against Olaf Tryggveson; till at length, by a favorable combination, under their auspices chiefly, they ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... discovered a great tract of land to the west of Iceland, which they called Grand Iceland; but this has been pronounced a fabulous tradition. The most plausible account is one given by Snorro Sturleson, in his Saga or Chronicle of King Olaus. According to this writer, one Biorn of Iceland, sailing to Greenland in search of his father, from whom he had been separated by a storm, was driven by tempestuous weather far to the southwest, until he came in sight of a low country, covered with ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... "That fellow in the Saga, you mean. He laughed only at the end, I think, when the great roof-beam burned through and the hall fell in. But my castle tumbled about my ears in the beginning, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Wagner's full ideal is, generally speaking, but little perceptible. The really great Wagner operas are his later works, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg, and, above all, that gigantic tetralogy (a complete musico-dramatic rendering of the Icelandic Saga put into English verse under the title of Sigurd the Volsung by William Morris) which consists of four stupendous operas, Das Rheingold, Die Walkuere, Siegfried, and Gotterdaemmerung. These marvellous works, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... been written on chess, of which the most esteemed have been Aben Ezra 1175, (translated by Dr. Hyde) Conrad Von Ammenhusen and Lydgate's "Love Battle" in the fourteenth century Vida, Bishop of Alba 1525, Sir William Jones 1761, and Frithiofs Saga by ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... the fame of Charles D. Stewart has lately fallen. His Partners of Providence suffers from the inevitable comparison with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn which it cannot stand, though it continues the saga of the Mississippi with sympathy and knowledge; but The Fugitive Blacksmith has a flavor which few comparisons and no neglect can spoil. Its protagonist, wrongly accused of a murder which he by mischance finds it difficult to explain, takes to his heels and lives by his mechanic wits ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... this, the King replied, "Thy lore is by thy tongue belied; For never was I so enthralled Either by Saga-man or Scald." Dead rides ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he was accompanied according to an Icelandic Saga,(49) by King Olaf, of Norway, who assisted him in expelling the Danes from Southwark, and gaining an entrance into the city. The manner in which this was carried out, is thus described. A small knot of Danes occupied a stronghold in the City, whilst others ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Florence Fontane, M. For Self-Examination For Sweden and Norway Fourier France Nouvelle, La Frascati Frederik VII French Literature French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century, The French Revolution Frithiof's Saga Frossard Gabrielle Gallenga, Antonio Gambetta Gautier Geneva Gerhard Germany Gerome Gerusalemme liberata, Tasso's Ghost Letters Ghosts Girardin Gladstone Gleyre God Gods of the North, The Goethe Goldschmidt, Dr. Goldschmidt, M. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... King of Parmenia named Riwalin Kanelengres (in the Norse saga he is King of Bretland; in the English he is called Rouland rise, King of Ermonric), who, leaving his own country in the charge of his marshal, Rual li foitenant, joined the court of the powerful King Marke of Cornwall "and of England" ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight |
