章节正文
in the old Norwegian Fagas for incendiary fire.
That same night Lage Ulfson Kvaerk slew a
black ram, and thanked Asathor for his deliverance;
and the Saga tells that while he was
sprinkling the blood on the altar, the thundering
god himself appeared to him, and wilder he
looked than the fiercest wild Turk. Rams, said
he, were every-day fare; they could redeem no
promise. Brynhild, his daughter, was the
reward Asathor demanded. Lage prayed and
besought him to ask for something else. He
would gladly give him one of his sons; for he
had three sons, but only one daughter. Asathor
was immovable; but so long Lage continued to
beg, that at last he consented to come back in a
year, when Lage perchance would be better
reconciled to the thought of Brynhild's loss.
In the mean time King Olaf built a church to
Christ the White on the headland at the river,
where it stands until this day. Every evening,
when the huge bell rumbled between the mountains,
the parishioners thought they heard heavy,
half-choked sighs over in the rocks at Kvaerk;
and on Sunday mornings, when the clear-voiced
chimes called them to high-mass, a suppressed
moan would mingle with the sound of the bells,
and die away with the last echo. Lage Ulfson
was not the man to be afraid; yet the church-
bells many a time drove the blood from his cheeks;
for he also heard the moan from the mountain.
The year went, and Asathor returned. If he
had not told his name, however, Lage would not
have recognized him. That a year could work
so great a change in a god, he would hardly
have believed, if his own eyes had not testified
to it. Asathor's cheeks were pale and bloodless,
the lustre of his eye more than half
quenched, and his gray hair hung in disorder
down over his forehead.
"Methinks thou lookest rather poorly to-day,"
said Lage.
"It is only those cursed church-bells," answered
the god; "they leave me no rest day or night."
"Aha," thought Lage, "if the king's bells are
mightier than thou, then there is still hope of
safety for my daughter."
"Where is Brynhild, thy daughter?" asked Asathor.
"I know not where she is," answered the
father; and straightway he turned his eyes
toward the golden cross that shone over the
valley from Saint Olaf's steeple, and he called
aloud on the White Christ's name. Then the
god gave a fearful roar, fell on the ground,
writhed and foamed and vanished into the
mountain. In the next moment Lage heard a
hoarse voice crying from within, "I shall return,
Lage Ulfson, when thou shalt least expect me!"
Lage Ulfson then set to work clearing a way
through the forest; and when that was done, he
called all his household together, and told them
of the power of Christ the White. Not long
after he took his sons and his daughter, and
hastened with them southward, until he found
King Olaf. And, so the Saga relates, they all
fell down on their knees before him, prayed for
his forgiveness, and received baptism from the
king's own bishop.
So ends the Saga of Lage Ulfson Kvaerk.
II.
Aasa Kvaerk loved her father well, but
especially in the winter. Then, while she sat
turning her spinning-wheel in the light of the
crackling logs, his silent presence always had a
wonderfully soothing and calming effect upon
her. She never laughed then, and seldom wept;
when she felt his eyes resting on her, her
thoughts, her senses, and her whole being
seemed by degrees to be lured from their hiding-
place and concentrate on him; and from him
they ventured again, first timidly, then more
boldly, to grasp the objects around him. At
such times Aasa could talk and jest almost like
other girls, and her mother, to whom "other
girls" represented the ideal of womanly perfection,
would send significant glances, full of hope
and encouragement, over to Lage, and he would
quietly nod in return, as if to say that he
entirely agreed with her. Then Elsie had bright
visions of wooers and thrifty housewives, and
even Lage dreamed of seeing the ancient honor
of the family re-established. All depended on
Aasa. She was the last of the mighty race.
But when summer came, the bright visions fled;
and the spring winds, which to others bring life
and joy, to Kvaerk brought nothing but sorrow.
No sooner had the mountain brooks begun to
swell, than Aasa began to laugh and to weep;
and when the first birches budded up in the
glens, she could no longer be kept at home.
Prayers and threats were equallyuseless. From
early dawn until evening she would roam about
in forests and fields, and when late at night she
stole into the room and slipped away into some
corner, Lage drew a deep sigh and thought of
the old tradition.
Aasa was nineteen years old before she had a
single wooer. But when she was least expecting it,
the wooer came to her.
It was late one summer night; the young
maiden was sitting on the brink of the ravine,
pondering on the old legend and peering down
into the deep below. It was not the first
time she had found her way hither, where but
seldom a human foot had dared to tread. To
her every alder and bramble-bush, that clothed
the naked wall of the rock, were as familiar as
were the knots and veins in the ceiling of the
chamber where from her childhood she had
slept; and as she sat there on the brink of the
precipice, the late summer sun threw its red lustre
upon her and upon the fogs that came drifting
up from the deep. With her eyes she followed
the drifting masses of fog, and wondered, as
they rose higher and higher, when they would
reach her; in her fancy she saw herself dancing
over the wide expanse of heaven, clad in the
sun-gilded evening fogs; and Saint Olaf, the
great and holy king, came riding to meet her,
mounted on a flaming steed made of the glory
of a thousand sunsets; then Saint Olaf took her
hand and lifted her up, and she sat with him on
the flaming steed: but the fog lingered in the
deep below, and as it rose it spread like a thin,
half-invisible gauze over the forests and the
fields, and at last vanished into the infinite
space. But hark! a huge stone rolls down over
the mountain-side, then another, and another;
the noise grows, the birches down there in the
gorge tremble and shake. Aasa leaned out over
the brink of the ravine, and, as far as she could
distinguish anything from her dizzying height,
thought she saw something gray creeping slowly
up the neck-breaking mountain path; she
watched it for a while, but as it seemed to
advance no farther she again took refuge in her
reveries. An hour might have passed, or perhaps
more, when suddenly she heard a noise
only a few feet distant, and, again stooping out
over the brink, saw the figure of a man strug-
gling desperately to climb the last great ledge
of the rock. With both his hands he clung to
a little birch-tree which stretched its slender
arms down over the black wall, but with every
moment that passed seemed less likely to
accomplish the feat. The girl for a while stood
watching him with unfeigned curiosity, then,
suddenly reminding herself that the situation
to him must be a dangerous one, seized hold
of a tree that grew near the brink, and leaned
out over the rock to give him her assistance.
He eagerly grasped her extended hand, and
with a vigorous pull she flung him up on the
grassy level, where he remained lying for a
minute or two, apparently utterly unable to
account for his sudden ascent, and gazing around
him with a half-frightened, half-bewildered
look. Aasa, to whom his appearance was no
less strange than his demeanor, unluckily hit
upon the idea that perhaps her rather violent
treatment had momentarily stunned him, and
when, as answer to her sympathizing question
if he was hurt, the stranger abruptly rose to his
feet and towered up before her to the formidable
height of six feet four or five, she could no
longer master her mirth, but burst out into a
most vehement fit of laughter. He stood calm
and silent, and looked at her with a timid but
strangely bitter smile. He was so very different
from any man she had ever seen before;
therefore she laughed, not necessarily because
he amused her, but because his whole person
was a surprise to her; and there he stood, tall
and gaunt and timid, and said not a word, only
gazed and gazed. His dress was not the national
costume of the valley, neither was it like
anything that Aasa had ever known. On his head
he wore a cap that hung all on one side, and
was decorated with a long, heavy silk tassel.
A threadbare coat, which seemed to be made
expressly not to fit him, hung loosely on his
sloping shoulders, and a pair of gray pantaloons,
which were narrow where they ought to have
been wide, and wide where it was their duty to
be narrow, extended their service to a little
more than the upper half of the limb, and, by a
kind of compromise with the tops of the boots,
managed to protect also the lower half. His
features were delicate, and would have been called
handsome had they belonged to a proportionately
delicate body; in his eyes hovered a dreamy
vagueness which seemed to come and vanish,
That same night Lage Ulfson Kvaerk slew a
black ram, and thanked Asathor for his deliverance;
and the Saga tells that while he was
sprinkling the blood on the altar, the thundering
god himself appeared to him, and wilder he
looked than the fiercest wild Turk. Rams, said
he, were every-day fare; they could redeem no
promise. Brynhild, his daughter, was the
reward Asathor demanded. Lage prayed and
besought him to ask for something else. He
would gladly give him one of his sons; for he
had three sons, but only one daughter. Asathor
was immovable; but so long Lage continued to
beg, that at last he consented to come back in a
year, when Lage perchance would be better
reconciled to the thought of Brynhild's loss.
In the mean time King Olaf built a church to
Christ the White on the headland at the river,
where it stands until this day. Every evening,
when the huge bell rumbled between the mountains,
the parishioners thought they heard heavy,
half-choked sighs over in the rocks at Kvaerk;
and on Sunday mornings, when the clear-voiced
chimes called them to high-mass, a suppressed
moan would mingle with the sound of the bells,
and die away with the last echo. Lage Ulfson
was not the man to be afraid; yet the church-
bells many a time drove the blood from his cheeks;
for he also heard the moan from the mountain.
The year went, and Asathor returned. If he
had not told his name, however, Lage would not
have recognized him. That a year could work
so great a change in a god, he would hardly
have believed, if his own eyes had not testified
to it. Asathor's cheeks were pale and bloodless,
the lustre of his eye more than half
quenched, and his gray hair hung in disorder
down over his forehead.
"Methinks thou lookest rather poorly to-day,"
said Lage.
"It is only those cursed church-bells," answered
the god; "they leave me no rest day or night."
"Aha," thought Lage, "if the king's bells are
mightier than thou, then there is still hope of
safety for my daughter."
"Where is Brynhild, thy daughter?" asked Asathor.
"I know not where she is," answered the
father; and straightway he turned his eyes
toward the golden cross that shone over the
valley from Saint Olaf's steeple, and he called
aloud on the White Christ's name. Then the
god gave a fearful roar, fell on the ground,
writhed and foamed and vanished into the
mountain. In the next moment Lage heard a
hoarse voice crying from within, "I shall return,
Lage Ulfson, when thou shalt least expect me!"
Lage Ulfson then set to work clearing a way
through the forest; and when that was done, he
called all his household together, and told them
of the power of Christ the White. Not long
after he took his sons and his daughter, and
hastened with them southward, until he found
King Olaf. And, so the Saga relates, they all
fell down on their knees before him, prayed for
his forgiveness, and received baptism from the
king's own bishop.
So ends the Saga of Lage Ulfson Kvaerk.
II.
Aasa Kvaerk loved her father well, but
especially in the winter. Then, while she sat
turning her spinning-wheel in the light of the
crackling logs, his silent presence always had a
wonderfully soothing and calming effect upon
her. She never laughed then, and seldom wept;
when she felt his eyes resting on her, her
thoughts, her senses, and her whole being
seemed by degrees to be lured from their hiding-
place and concentrate on him; and from him
they ventured again, first timidly, then more
boldly, to grasp the objects around him. At
such times Aasa could talk and jest almost like
other girls, and her mother, to whom "other
girls" represented the ideal of womanly perfection,
would send significant glances, full of hope
and encouragement, over to Lage, and he would
quietly nod in return, as if to say that he
entirely agreed with her. Then Elsie had bright
visions of wooers and thrifty housewives, and
even Lage dreamed of seeing the ancient honor
of the family re-established. All depended on
Aasa. She was the last of the mighty race.
But when summer came, the bright visions fled;
and the spring winds, which to others bring life
and joy, to Kvaerk brought nothing but sorrow.
No sooner had the mountain brooks begun to
swell, than Aasa began to laugh and to weep;
and when the first birches budded up in the
glens, she could no longer be kept at home.
Prayers and threats were equallyuseless. From
early dawn until evening she would roam about
in forests and fields, and when late at night she
stole into the room and slipped away into some
corner, Lage drew a deep sigh and thought of
the old tradition.
Aasa was nineteen years old before she had a
single wooer. But when she was least expecting it,
the wooer came to her.
It was late one summer night; the young
maiden was sitting on the brink of the ravine,
pondering on the old legend and peering down
into the deep below. It was not the first
time she had found her way hither, where but
seldom a human foot had dared to tread. To
her every alder and bramble-bush, that clothed
the naked wall of the rock, were as familiar as
were the knots and veins in the ceiling of the
chamber where from her childhood she had
slept; and as she sat there on the brink of the
precipice, the late summer sun threw its red lustre
upon her and upon the fogs that came drifting
up from the deep. With her eyes she followed
the drifting masses of fog, and wondered, as
they rose higher and higher, when they would
reach her; in her fancy she saw herself dancing
over the wide expanse of heaven, clad in the
sun-gilded evening fogs; and Saint Olaf, the
great and holy king, came riding to meet her,
mounted on a flaming steed made of the glory
of a thousand sunsets; then Saint Olaf took her
hand and lifted her up, and she sat with him on
the flaming steed: but the fog lingered in the
deep below, and as it rose it spread like a thin,
half-invisible gauze over the forests and the
fields, and at last vanished into the infinite
space. But hark! a huge stone rolls down over
the mountain-side, then another, and another;
the noise grows, the birches down there in the
gorge tremble and shake. Aasa leaned out over
the brink of the ravine, and, as far as she could
distinguish anything from her dizzying height,
thought she saw something gray creeping slowly
up the neck-breaking mountain path; she
watched it for a while, but as it seemed to
advance no farther she again took refuge in her
reveries. An hour might have passed, or perhaps
more, when suddenly she heard a noise
only a few feet distant, and, again stooping out
over the brink, saw the figure of a man strug-
gling desperately to climb the last great ledge
of the rock. With both his hands he clung to
a little birch-tree which stretched its slender
arms down over the black wall, but with every
moment that passed seemed less likely to
accomplish the feat. The girl for a while stood
watching him with unfeigned curiosity, then,
suddenly reminding herself that the situation
to him must be a dangerous one, seized hold
of a tree that grew near the brink, and leaned
out over the rock to give him her assistance.
He eagerly grasped her extended hand, and
with a vigorous pull she flung him up on the
grassy level, where he remained lying for a
minute or two, apparently utterly unable to
account for his sudden ascent, and gazing around
him with a half-frightened, half-bewildered
look. Aasa, to whom his appearance was no
less strange than his demeanor, unluckily hit
upon the idea that perhaps her rather violent
treatment had momentarily stunned him, and
when, as answer to her sympathizing question
if he was hurt, the stranger abruptly rose to his
feet and towered up before her to the formidable
height of six feet four or five, she could no
longer master her mirth, but burst out into a
most vehement fit of laughter. He stood calm
and silent, and looked at her with a timid but
strangely bitter smile. He was so very different
from any man she had ever seen before;
therefore she laughed, not necessarily because
he amused her, but because his whole person
was a surprise to her; and there he stood, tall
and gaunt and timid, and said not a word, only
gazed and gazed. His dress was not the national
costume of the valley, neither was it like
anything that Aasa had ever known. On his head
he wore a cap that hung all on one side, and
was decorated with a long, heavy silk tassel.
A threadbare coat, which seemed to be made
expressly not to fit him, hung loosely on his
sloping shoulders, and a pair of gray pantaloons,
which were narrow where they ought to have
been wide, and wide where it was their duty to
be narrow, extended their service to a little
more than the upper half of the limb, and, by a
kind of compromise with the tops of the boots,
managed to protect also the lower half. His
features were delicate, and would have been called
handsome had they belonged to a proportionately
delicate body; in his eyes hovered a dreamy
vagueness which seemed to come and vanish,
- mingle [´miŋgəl]
v.(使)混合；交往 (初中英语单词) - fearful [´fiəfəl] a.可怕的；担心的 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- concentrate [´kɔnsəntreit] v.聚集；浓缩；全神贯注 (初中英语单词)
- equally [´i:kwəli] ad.相等地；平等地 (初中英语单词)
- useless [´ju:sləs] a.无用的，无价值的 (初中英语单词)
- hither [´hiðə] ad.到此处 (初中英语单词)
- childhood [´tʃaildhud] n.幼年(时代)；早期 (初中英语单词)
- refuge [´refju:dʒ] v.&n.避难(所)；庇护 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- unable [ʌn´eibəl] a.不能的；无能为力的 (初中英语单词)
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli] ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词)
- laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
- valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- vanish [´væniʃ] vi.消失；消散；消灭 (初中英语单词)
- redeem [ri´di:m] vt.买回；偿还；履行 (高中英语单词)
- gladly [´glædli] ad.愉快地，高兴地 (高中英语单词)
- straightway [´streitwei] ad.立刻 (高中英语单词)
- southward [´sauθwəd] a.&n.向南方向(的) (高中英语单词)
- forgiveness [fə´givnis] n.原谅，饶恕；宽仁 (高中英语单词)
- significant [sig´nifikənt] a.重要的；意义重大的 (高中英语单词)
- encouragement [in´kʌridʒmənt] n.鼓励；赞助；引诱 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- desperately [´despəritli] ad.绝望地；拼命地 (高中英语单词)
- vigorous [´vigərəs] a.精力旺盛的；健壮的 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- ascent [ə´sent] n.上升；攀登；上坡路 (高中英语单词)
- necessarily [´nesisərili] ad.必定，必然地 (高中英语单词)
- compromise [´kɔmprəmaiz] n.妥协，和解 (高中英语单词)
- norwegian [nɔ:´wi:dʒən] a.&n.挪威人(语)(的) (英语四级单词)
- perchance [pə´tʃɑ:ns] ad.偶然；可能 (英语四级单词)
- poorly [´puəli] a.不舒服的 ad.贫穷地 (英语四级单词)
- steeple [´sti:pəl] n.(礼拜堂等的)尖塔 (英语四级单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- baptism [´bæptizəm] n.洗礼 (英语四级单词)
- flaming [´fleimiŋ] a.熊熊燃烧的；热情的 (英语四级单词)
- ravine [rə´vi:n] n.沟壑；深谷 (英语四级单词)
- loosely [´lu:sli] ad.松散地 (英语四级单词)
- immovable [i´mu:vəbəl] a.不能移动的，固定的 (英语六级单词)
- headland [´hedlənd] n.岬 (英语六级单词)
- timidly [´timidli] ad.胆怯地 (英语六级单词)
- thrifty [´θrifti] a.节俭的；兴旺的 (英语六级单词)
- expanse [ik´spæns] n.广阔；宽阔的区域 (英语六级单词)
- extended [iks´tendid] a.伸长的；广大的 (英语六级单词)
- vehement [´viəmənt] a.猛烈的；热烈的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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