"Saga" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 rite ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... 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
... 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 ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that the one writer has chosen to spend the best years of his life in countries not his own, while the other has never long absented himself from the scarred and storm-beaten shores of the land, rich in historic memories and "dreams of the saga-night," that gave him birth and nurture. Tourguenieff lived apart from his fellow-countrymen for as many years as Ibsen has done, yet remained a Russian to the core. It is rather a difference of native intellectual bent that has left Bjoernson to stand as the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... just 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 ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... two modern Icelandic cases, for the purpose of leading up to the famous Icelandic legend of Grettir and Glam the Vampire, from the Grettis Saga. It is plain that such incidents as those in the two modern Icelandic cases (however the effects were produced) might easily be swollen into the prodigious tale of Glam in the course of two or three centuries, between Grettir's ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... the men who idolised Robin Hood will be found to have been men 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, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... arrived in England, 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, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Tegne'r's poem, "Fridthjof's Saga," has been printed in Sweden in many large editions and in almost every possible style. It has been illustrated, and it has been set to music. It has been translated into nearly all the modern European languages. Moreover it has been rendered into English by ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... were the prologue to a most stirring and active life. Few men have had a more adventurous career than he, his whole life being one of romance, activity and peril. He became a leading hero of the saga writers, who have left us many striking stories of his young ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... only the suffrage prisoners but the "regulars." Locked in separate cells, as in the District Jail, the suffragists could still communicate by song. The following lively doggerel to the tune of "Captain Kidd" was sung in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair comb. It became a saga. Each day a new verse was added, relating the day's particular controversy with the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... feuds and perpetual assassinations, with its code of honour making vengeance a pious duty, its tariff of blood money, and its council for adjusting civil and criminal wrongs, has a close resemblance to everyday life among the free Afghan tribes beyond the North-West Frontier of India. But the Saga writers flourished, I understand, when this state of things had passed or was passing away; while the Afghans are still a rude illiterate folk who have only songs, recited by the professional bards. The best collection of these popular songs has been made by a Frenchman, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... children of thy Vinland, The youngest of the world's high peers, O land of steel, and song, and saga, To greet ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... been mortally wounded, nor Hirtius killed, nor was it known that Decimus had been relieved; but it was understood that Antony had received a check. Servilius had proposed a supplication, and had suggested that they should put away their saga and go back to their usual attire. The "sagum" was a common military cloak, which the early Romans wore instead of the toga when they went out to war. In later days, when the definition between a soldier and a civilian became more complete, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... literary efforts 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 of the Norwegian character, and the first-named was translated into English ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... America too? At least the Norsemen thought so. For centuries the name Great Ireland or Whitemen's Land was accepted in Norse geography as meaning a region far west of Ireland, a parallel to Great Sweden (Russia), which lay far east of Sweden. The saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, first to attempt colonizing America, makes it plain that his followers believed Great Ireland to be somewhere in that region, and it is explicitly located near Wineland by the twelfth century Landnamabok. Also there were specific tales afloat ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... saga in a whirl of enthusiasm. "Gee! if they're right to start with, if they're born right, if they've got the grit in them, you can't sterilize it out of 'em if you use up half the germ-killer in the country. From the way that kid acted you'd have thought he'd been spending the last year in a training-camp. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... upon his left. Behind 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 around the vessel; one of them rises wholly from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... little and sat on her knee, She gave us her saga with pictures to see. We read till our eyes opened wide and moist, While nodding and ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... early as the ninth century, 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 ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... ii., p. 278.).—Your correspondent W.H.F., when referring to the Orkneyinga Saga, requests information regarding the Codex Flateyensis, in which is contained one of the best MSS. of the Saga above mentioned. W.H.F. labours under the misapprehension of regarding the Codex Flateyensis as a mere manuscript of the Orkneyinga Saga, whereas that Saga constitutes but a very small part of the magnificent volume. The Codex Flateyensis ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... 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 ancients had also some strange ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... saga of the sacred gold which fell burning from heaven. The ancients had also some strange fictions of silver which fell from heaven, and with which it had been attempted, under the Emperor ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... 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 ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... expedition, an Icelandic woman was killed by some Skrellings, and in 1867, a tomb was exhumed, bearing a runic inscription, and containing bones, and some articles of the toilet, which are now preserved in the museum at Washington. This discovery was made at the exact spot indicated in the Saga which related these events, and which was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... "Bear 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 ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... like Siegfried, the noble child, That song-and-saga wonder, Who, when his fabled sword was forged, His anvil ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... century: that is, he was as long before Columbus as Columbus was before our own day. In any case Norsemen settled in Iceland and discovered Greenland; so it may even be that the "White Eskimos" found by the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913 were the descendants of Vikings lost a thousand years ago. The Saga of Eric the Red tells how Leif Ericsson found three new countries in the Western World—Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. As two of these must have been Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which Cabot discovered with his English crew in 1497, it is certain that Canada was ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... Faereyinga-Saga eller Faeroboernes Historie, in Icelandic, Danish, and the Faroer Dialect, by Rafn, imp. 8vo. Large Paper, bds. 7s. 6d. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... N. Horsford are well known, but his opinions are not yet generally accepted by 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 ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... classics are once read, and in a hencoop world no saga-man arises in their stead? They say that by then we shall have enlarged our borders and gone in our chariots of petrol to visit the wheeling stars. But I misdoubt these Icarian flights. It seems to me more likely that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... laid aside the instrument, saying: "Ah, how bold! I did not know I was among proficients," and continued, "From olden time the soh-koto was peculiarly adopted by female musicians. The fifth daughter of the Emperor Saga, from whom she had received the secret, was a celebrated performer, but no one of equal skill succeeded her. Of course there are several players, but these merely strike or strum on the instrument; but in this retreat there is a skilful hand. How ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... 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 Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... 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. Power again there is in a third drama dealing with the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... 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 Esaias ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... 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! For this ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... fourth is named o'er which the gelid waves resound; Odin and Saga there, joyful each ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... years! And it is not for profit they do it. For honor and glory then? These may be scant enough. It is the same thirst for achievement, the same craving to get beyond the limits of the known, which inspired this people in the Saga times that is stirring in them again to-day. In spite of all our toil for subsistence, in spite of all our "peasant politics," sheer utilitarianism is perhaps not so ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... and in the "Vilkina Saga," Germans are referred to as sources for some details of the Sigurd story. So strong was, in Scandinavia, the tradition of the Teutonic origin of the tale, down to the twelfth century, that, in a geographical work written in Norse by the Abbot Nicolaus, the Gnita Heath, where Sigurd was said ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Butts no good. As they had watched the calm demeanour of the man, under suspicion of what was worse, in their eyes, than murder, there had come over the bystanders a wave of that primitive cruelty that to this hour will wake in modern men and cry as loud as in Judean days, or in the Saga times of Iceland, "Retribution! Let him suffer! Let him pay in blood!" And here again, on the Yukon, that need of visible atonement to right the crazy ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... snow-fields. These seem originally to have been used by the Finns, "for which reason," says a Swedish writer, "they were called 'Skrid Finnai' (Sliding Finns)—a common name for the most ancient inhabitants of Sweden, both in the North saga and by ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... exclaimed Olaf, with sparkling eyes, for the boy dearly loved anything that bore the faintest resemblance to a saga or ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... quantity of valuable matter which is thus deposited in obscure but still accessible places. A deal of useful work, too, has been done in the way of translation; and where the book to be dealt with is an Icelandic saga, a chronicle in Saxon, in Irish Celtic, or even in old Norman, one may confess to the weakness of letting the original remain, in some instances, unexamined, and drawing one's information with confiding gratitude from the translation ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... oldsters. Although we were always his 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
... King Olaf recorded in this story of his kinsman are therefore from the Norse "Saga of King Olaf the Holy," and the various incidents are assigned as nearly as may be to their place in the sequence of events given from the death of Swein to the accession of Cnut, in the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is our most reliable ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... they get him to talk Norse again, he says, 'I have not been far, but I have news for you. I have found vines and grapes!' 'Is that true, foster-father?' says Leif. 'True it is,' says the old German, 'for I was brought up where there was never any lack of them.' The saga—as given by Rafn—has a detailed description of this quaint personage's appearance; and it would not be amiss if American wine-growers should employ an American sculptor—and there are great American sculptors—to render that description into marble, and set up little Tyrker in some public place, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... connection with Ethan Allen. I am, myself. But everybody has always called her Miss Hetty till few people remember that she has another name. She was born there in the old house below 'the Burning,' and she has lived there for eighty years, and that is all her saga. You can't see her house from here, but it is part of Crittenden's all the same, although it is a mile away by the main road as you go towards the Dug-Way. But you can reach it in six or seven minutes from here by a back lane, through the Eagle ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... like a 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 all ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... 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 the ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... 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 round ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... for granted. If he gave an opinion it was clear and sound enough; of course with the old Ruskinian waywardness of idea which always puzzled his public. But he knew what he was about, and knew what was going on. He was like the aged Queen Aud in the saga, who "rose late and went to bed early, and if anyone asked after her ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Well may we see that thou art a woman, for thou usest many words. To what end? If Thorolf is slain, then is his saga over. ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... AEtiologist; He by shrewd and subtle guess Wrote Descriptive Letterpress, Setting forth the various causes For the drawings on the vases, All the motives, all the plots Of the painter of the pots, Entertained the nations with Fable, Saga, Solar Myth, Based upon ingenious shots At the Purpose of the Pots, Showing ages subsequent What the painter really meant (Which, of course, the painter hadn't; He'd have been extremely saddened Had he seen his ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... 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 maps and plans; with a lengthy introduction dealing with Iceland's history, religion and social ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... where it is told of Palnatoki, King Harold Gormson's thane and assassin. In the thirteenth century the Wilkina Saga relates it of Egill, Voelundr's—our Wayland Smith's—younger brother. So also in the Norse Saga of Saint Olof, king and martyr; the king, who died in 1030, eager for the conversion of one of his heathen chiefs Eindridi, competes with him in various athletic exercises, first in swimming and then in archery. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... januas vel fenestras corporis earum capaces, per quas eas intromittit quae putant se formam animalculi parvi, mustelae, catti, locustae, et aliorum induisse. At si forte contingat ut per parietem se delatam confiteatur Saga, tunc, si non totum hoc praestigiosum est, daemonem tamen maxima celeritate tot quot sufficiunt lapides eximere et sustinere aliosne ruant, et postea eadem celeritate iterum eos in suum locum reponere, existimo: ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the first two-fifths of the MS. is mythological, the rest heroic. I propose to observe this distinction, and to deal in this study with the stories of the Gods. In this connexion, Snorri's Edda and the mythical Ynglinga Saga may also be considered, but as both were compiled a couple of centuries or more after the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, it is uncertain how much in them is literary explanation of tradition whose meaning was forgotten; some also, especially in Snorri, is probably pure invention, ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... 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] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... a "saga" is history, and that these sagas in particular furnish an account of the first discovery of America, no less a thing. Nevertheless, while I have been scrupulous in leaving the related facts as I found them, I have not hesitated to dwell ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... frockcoat, which from a superficial 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the 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.
... forces at work in producing a poem like ‘Sigurd.’ Think of the mingling of the drudgery of the Dryasdust with the movements of an imaginative vision unsurpassed in our time; think, I say, of the collaborating of the ‘Völsunga Saga’ with the ‘Nibelungenlied,’ the choosing of this point from the Saga-man, and of that point from the later poem of the Germans, and then fusing the whole by imaginative heat into the greatest epic of the nineteenth century. Was there not work enough ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... me to think that it is in English literature we possess the first sketch of that mighty saga [the Volsunga Saga Wlsinges gewin] which has for so many centuries engaged all the arts, and at last in the hands of Wagner the art of music."—Br., p. 63. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... drawn from personal experience, when life and death form opinions, of the way it had acted as an auxiliary to their part of the line. A tank that conquered machine-gun positions and enfiladed trenches was an heroic comrade surrounded by a saga of glorious anecdotes. One which became stalled and failed in its enterprise called for satirical comment which ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... grip so well as his other, even his slighter, plays. Is it not because he is moving away from the common life, which he knows so well how to light up into the uncommon atmosphere of the grim, the fanciful, the romantic, into the already half-conventionalised art atmosphere of the old heroic Saga? Most of his success in Deirdre of the Sorrows is due to the fact that he has treated Deirdre as if she were just one of the peasant women whom he has known; but the ready-made plot has hampered him, and he is shut off from ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... that, in the opinion of Saturninus, the sovereign authority of the consuls and senate had been taken away just a hundred years before the death of Caius, A.D. 41, or in the sixtieth year before the Christian saga, when the first triumvirate began ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... am delighted with the thoughts of the portraits [of his mother and sister, who had promised to have their likenesses taken], und i bi korios wias da gleich sieht; wons ma gfoin, so los i mi und den Vodan a so macho. Maidli, lass Da saga, wo list dan gwesa he? [Footnote: "And I am anxious to see what they are like, and then I will have my father and myself also taken. Fair maiden, say, where have you been, eh?" [Patois.]] The opera here is Jomelli's; it is fine, but too grave and old-fashioned for this stage. Madame ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... Irish case 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, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... The saga then goes on to say that trading voyages to the settlement which had been formed by Karlsefne now became frequent, and that the chief lading of the return voyages was timber, which was much needed in Greenland. A bishop of Greenland, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... how 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 ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... unsatisfactory in the case of The House of the Wolfings, two hundred and fifty copies were printed on Whatman paper of about the same size as the paper of the ordinary copies. A small stock of this paper remained over, and in order to dispose of it seventy-five copies of the translation of the Gunnlaug Saga, which first appeared in the Fortnightly Review of January, 1869, and afterwards in Three Northern Love Stories, were printed at the Chiswick Press. The type used was a black-letter copied from one of Caxton's founts, and the initials were left blank to be rubricated by hand. ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... thinker, Jenkin was an equally clear and graphic writer. He read the best literature, preferring, among other things, the story of David, the ODYSSEY, the ARCADIA, the saga of Burnt Njal, and the GRAND CYRUS. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Boccaccio, Scott, Dumas, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, were some of his favourite authors. He once began a review of George Eliot's biography, but ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... belonged to the same group. The New School was in turn opposed by the Gothic Society or Scandinavian School, among whom were Ling and Geijer. Franzen and Wallin devoted themselves to religious poetry. The most famous of all modern Swedish poets was Esaias Tegner, whose "Frithiof's Saga" achieved an international reputation. Politically, he was conspicuous for his inveterate hostility to the "Holy Alliance" and its reactionary spirit in state, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... into slavery in Russia. There, one day, in the marketplace of an Esthonian town, he was recognized by a relative, Sigurd, the brother of Astrid, and was freed from bondage and trained to arms as a page at the Court of the Norse adventurers who ruled the land. The "Saga" tells how Olaf, the son of Tryggva, grew to be tall of stature, and strong of limb, and skilled in every art of land and sea, of peace and war. None swifter than he on the snow-shoes in winter, no bolder swimmer when the summer had cleared the ice from the waters. He could throw darts with both ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... song 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... far morning—and O streams that slow 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
... book on Iceland.[107] It is mentioned in some of the Sagas,[108] and appears to have been a refuge for robbers in the tenth century, and Sturla Sigvatson, with a large band of followers, spent some time here. The Landnama Saga derives the name Surtshellir from a huge giant called Surtur, who made his abode in the cave; but Olafsen believed that the name merely meant black hole, from surtur or svartur, and was due to the darkness of the cave and the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... between Honnef and Dollendorf. These hills with their step-and-terrace formation were once fortified by Valentinian against the formidable Frankish hordes, and German poetry early began to find scenery in them worthy of its national epic, and so laid the scene of the Saga of Wilkina among these mountains and valleys. Here, above the legends of Roland and Siegfried and the Christian captive, who, exposed to the dragon of the rock, vanquished him by the cross, so that he fell backward and broke his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... 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 ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 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 ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... suppose, after all, that the Saga of Jabberwocky is one of the universal heirlooms which the Aryan race at its dispersion carried with it from the great cradle of the family? You must really consult Max Mueller about this. It begins to be probable that the origo ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Beltu, meaning "lady," meant also the chief goddess of any place, as "Aruru, lady of the gods of Sippar of Aruru," "Nin-mah, lady of the gods of E-mah," a celebrated temple within Babylon, recently excavated by the Germans, "Nin-hur-saga, lady of the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... then the blue-eyed Norseman told A Saga of the days of old. "There is," said he, "a wondrous book Of Legends in the old Norse tongue, Of the dead kings of Norroway— Legends that once were told or sung In many a smoky fireside nook Of Iceland, in the ancient day, By wandering Saga-man or Scald; 'Heimskringla' ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... An ancient saga tells us how In the beginning the First Cow (For nothing living yet had birth But Elemental Cow on earth) Began to lick cold stones and mud: Under her warm tongue flesh and blood Blossomed, a miracle to ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... an abandon 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 powers of the world had been loosed. Back and forth, here and there, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... "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
... extract from the Glenn Masain "Deirdre," is in the actual form that we have it, older than the Norman Conquest of Ireland, older than the Norse Sagas. Its manuscript authority is older than that of the Volsunga Saga; its present form precedes the birth of Chretien de Troyes, the first considerable name in French literature, and, in a form not much unlike that in which we have it, it is probably centuries older than its actual manuscript date. The whole thing stands at the very beginning of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Tegner's "Frithiof Saga" has been translated once at least into every European tongue, and more than eighteen times into English and German. Goethe spoke of the work with the greatest enthusiasm, and the tale, which gives a matchless picture of the life of our heathen ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... 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 poor woman ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... "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
... of Rafn still holds its place of authority, very little in the way of new material having been brought to light. The portion of his narrative which follows covers the main facts of the history, and the translation from the saga furnishes an excellent example of its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... 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, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... clash of shouting and of steel rose the voice of Sigvat the saga-man, or song-man of the young viking, singing loud ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... in Caithness saw terrific visions of Valhalla "the day after the battle." In the NIALA SAGA a Norwegian prince is introduced as asking after his men, and the answer is, "they were all killed." Malcolm of Scotland rejoiced in the defeat and death of his dangerous and implacable neighbour. "Brian's ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... classical period. Athens is the centre from which Homeric influence radiates over the mainland of Greece. Its effect upon literature was of course enormous. It can be traced in various ways. By the content of the literature, which now begins to be filled with the heroic saga. By a change of style which emerges in, say, Pindar and Aeschylus when compared with what we know of Corinna or Thespis. More objectively and definitely it can be traced in a remarkable change of dialect. The old Attic poets, like Solon, were comparatively little affected by the ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... the poetry is the prose of this literature, especially the Sagas. The saga is a prose epic, characteristic of the Norse countries. It records the life of a hero, told according to fixed rules. As we have said, the sagas were based upon careers run in Iceland's stormy time. They are both mythical and historical. In the mythical group are, among ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... of coasts beyond Greenland awakened no definite ideas, and, except for a brief season, excited no interest. The Zeno narrative indicates that the Vinland voyages had practically lapsed from memory before the end of the fourteenth century.[308] Scholars familiar with saga literature of course knew the story; it was just at this time that Jon Thordharson wrote out the version of it which is preserved in the Flateyar-bok. But by the general public it must have been forgotten, or else the Fisherman's ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... The Seraph, singing his morning song. It was a tuneless drone, yet not unmusical. Always the first to open his eyes in the morning, he began his day with a sort of Saga of his exploits of the day before, usually meaningless to us but fraught with colour from his own peculiar sphere. At last he laughed outright—a Jovian laugh—at some remembered prank—and I rubbed my eyes and came to full consciousness. The sun was slanting through the shutters. Where, ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... ocean which we find in the ancient chronicles, so interwoven with narrative we know to be true, as to make it impossible not to attach a certain amount of credit to them. This particular story is the more interesting as its denouement, abruptly left in the blankest mystery by one Saga, is incidentally revealed to us in the course of another, relating to events with which the first had no connection. [Footnote: From internal evidence it is certain that the chronicle which contains ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... meal, in its raw state, will keep good about a month. The Malays and natives of the Eastern Islands, with whom it forms the chief article of sustenance, partially bake it in earthenware moulds into small hard cakes, which will keep for a considerable time. In Java the word "saga" signifies bread. The sago palm (Metroxylon Sagus) is one of the smallest of its tribe, seldom reaching to more than 30 feet in height, and grows only in a region extending west to Celebes and Borneo, north to Mindanao, south to Timor, and east to Papua. Ceram is its chief seat, and there ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... of the Saga. 2. The Northern Form of the Saga. 3. The Saga as Preserved in the Nibelungenlied. 4. Mythical Element and ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi, Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the Corpus Boreale, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the Pilgrim's Progress, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above them. And then an odd Badminton volume, French Memoires, a Dante, a Homer, and a badly printed ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... furnished 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 ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... the subject 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
... existing in the times of Etzel (Attila, king of the Huns). But this is undoubtedly the invention of popular fancy. The Nibelungenlied was put into its present shape between the middle and the end of the twelfth century. The poet has changed more than one feature of the original saga, has blended, not unskillfully, primitive Teutonic myth with historic personages and events of the early Middle Ages, and has interpolated sayings and traditions of his own times. The Viennese of the twelfth century sought, with pardonable vanity, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... heart a lover of peace, though by 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 Valhalla ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... admitted the unreality of the miracles, left a marvel,—namely, her power to cause the 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 lately, when I told my friend, Anne Besant, that Madame ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... cartridges, the keepers, the dogs, and everything else. The pleasant array of plates and glasses, and the savoury odours of the meats mitigated, but did not dispel the frowns. Then suddenly there dropped down amongst us, as it were from the sky, the Great Woodcock Saga. In a moment the events of the morning were forgotten, brows cleared, tempers were picked up, and an eager hilarity reigned over the company, while the adventures of the wonderful bird were pursued from tree to tree, from clump to clump, through all the zig-zags of his marvellous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... Saga, was an apostate Christian, who had "thrown off his faith, and become God's dastard." He was both tall and strong, and had such long black hair that he tucked it under his belt; he had also the reputation of being a ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... had learnt shipbuilding and navigation from the Romans, settled on the opposite coasts of Britain and Gaul, and gave their name to both. Not then for the first time, nor at the invitation of the Britons, as the Saga declares,[4] did the descendants of Wodan make their first trial of the sea in light vessels. Alternating between piracy and alliance—now with a usurper and now with the lawful Emperor, between independence and subjection, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... pick out from the confusion of these unsorted fragments all the heroes of Emily Bronte's saga. There is Gleneden, who kills a tyrant and is put in prison for it. There is Julius Angora, who "lifts his impious eye" in the cathedral where the monarchs of Gondal are gathered; who leads the patriots of Gondal ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... 'The Lady of Lyons,' which was played by the Carl Rosa company in 1876, seems to have won little success. 'Thorgrim,' produced by the same company in 1889, was more fortunate. The plot is founded upon an Icelandic saga, and has but little dramatic interest. There is much charm in Dr. Cowen's music, and some of the lighter scenes in the opera are gracefully treated, but his talent is essentially delicate rather than powerful, and the fierce passions ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the last he felt afraid. There had been many changes, of that he felt sure. Would it still be home? And if not, would not the loss be most irreparable and bitter? Would it not be better to go away, having looked at it from the hill and having heard the saga of the firs, keeping his memory of it unblurred, than risk the probable disillusion of a return to the places that had forgotten him and friends whom the varying years must certainly have changed as he had changed himself? No, he would not go down. It had been a foolish ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Ildico sat weeping beneath her veil by the dead king's bedside. He died as a fool dieth; and his warriors gashed their cheeks and wept tears of blood, and gave him a splendid burial. And his name passed into legend as the King Etzel of the Niebelungen Lied, and Alti of the Saga. But his "loutish sons" quarrelled among themselves. The Teutons, Goths, Gepidae, Alani, and Heruli reasserted their independence in the great victory of Netad in Pannonia in 454; and though the Huns left their name in Hungary, henceforth the empire of Attila became mere "drift-wood, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the structure of the work looked at as a whole, it strikes us as a decided fault, that the Saga of King Olaf is so disproportionately long, especially as many of the pieces which compose it are by no means so well done as the more strictly original ones. We have no quarrel with the foreign nature of the subject as such,—for ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... daughter of Fin Arnason. Earl Ragnvald thought he should have two-thirds of the land, as Olaf the Saint had promised to his father Bruse, and as Bruse had enjoyed as long as Olaf lived. This was the origin of a great strife between these relations, concerning which we have a long saga. They had a great battle in Pentland Firth, in which Kalf Arnason was with Earl Thorfin. So ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson |
