The king exchanged a few words with the men of letters assembled about him, and he spoke in this way:
"Of your first hymn I was able to say that it was a happy summation of all that has been written in Ireland.
This poem surpasses all that has gone before, and obliterates it. It holds one in thrall, it thrills, it dazzles.
It will pass over the heads of the ignorant, and their praises will not be yours, but the praises of the few, the learned—ah! An ivory chest shall hold the only copy. From the pen that has penned such a lofty work, we may expect one that is more elevated yet...."
Then he added, smiling:
"We are figures in a fable, and it is only right that we recall that in fables, the number three is first above all others."
"The three gifts of the wizard, the triads, and the indubitable Trinity," was all that the poet dared allow himself to murmur.
The king went on:
"As a token of our thanks, take this mask. It is of gold."
"I thank you, and I understand and obey," the poet said.
The anniversary returned. The palace sentinels noticed that this time the poet did not bring a manuscript.
Not without dismay did the king look upon the poet: he was greatly changed. Something, which was not simply time, had furrowed and transformed his features. His eyes seemed to stare far into the distance, or to have been rendered blind. The poet begged to be allowed to speak to the king. The slaves cleared the hall.
"Have you not composed the ode?" asked the king.
"I have," said the poet sadly. "Would that Christ our Lord had forbade it."
"Can you recite it?"
"I dare not."
"I charge you with the courage that you need," the king declared.
The poet spoke the poem. It was a single line.
Unable to summon the courage to speak it again aloud, the poet and his king mouthed the poem, as though it were a secret supplication, or a blasphemy. The king was no less astounded and cowed than the poet. The two men, very pale, looked at each other.
"In the years of my youth," said the king, "I sailed toward the setting sun. On an island there, I saw silver greyhounds that hunted golden boars to their death. On another we were feted with the fragrance of magic apples.
On yet another I saw walls of fire. On the most remote of all, there was a vaulted river that hung from the sky, and in its waters swam fish and sailing ships. Those were marvels, but they do not compare with your poem, which somehow contains them all. What sorcery has given you this?"
"At dawn," said this poet, "I awoke speaking words that at first I did not understand. Those words are the poem. I felt I had committed some sin, perhaps that sin which the Holy Spirit cannot pardon."
"The sin the two of us now share," mused the king. "The sin of having known Beauty, which is a gift forbidden mankind. Now we must atone for it. I gave you a mirror and a golden mask; here is the third gift, which shall be the last."
He laid in the poet's right hand a dagger.
Of the poet, we know that he killed himself when he left the palace; of the king, that he is a beggar who wanders the roads of Ireland, which once was his kingdom, and that he has never spoken the poem again.
"Undr"
I must inform the reader that the pages I translate and publish here will be sought in vain in the Libellus (1615) of Adam of Bremen, who, as we all know, was born and died in the eleventh century. Lappenberg found the text within a manuscript in the Bodleian, at Oxford; given its wealth of circumstantial detail, he judged it to be a late interpolation, but he did publish it as a curiosity in his Anakcta Germanica(Leipzig, 1894). The opinion of a mere Argentine amateur is worth very little; readers may judge these pages as they will. My translation is not literal, but it is faithful. Thus writes Adam of Bremen:
... Of the several nations that border the wide desert which lies on the far shore of the Gulf, beyond the lands where the wild horse mates, that one most worthy of mention is the nation of the Urns. The imprecise or fabulous reports of merchants, the difficulty of the road, and the depredations of nomads prevented me from ever reaching its borders. I know, however, that its precarious and remote villages lie within the lowlands of the Wisla River. Unlike the Swedes, the Urns profess the true faith in Christ, unsullied by the Arianism and bloody worship of devils from which the royal houses of England and the other nations of the North draw their lineage. They are shepherds, ferrymen, sorcerers, swordsmiths, and ropemakers. The severity of their wars almost entirely prevents them from tilling their lands. The plains and the tribes that roam them have made the Urns skillful with horse and bow. In time, one inevitably comes to resemble one's enemies. Their lances are longer than ours, for theirs are made for horsemen, not for infantry.
As one might imagine, the use of pen, inkhorn, and parchment is unknown to them. They carve their characters in stone, as our forebears carved the runes revealed to them by Odin, after having hung from the ash tree—Odin sacrificed to Odin—for nine long nights.
To these general bits of knowledge I will add the story of my conversation with the Icelander UlfSigurdarson, a man of grave and measured speech. We had met in Uppsala, near the temple. The wood fire had died; the cold and the dawn light were seeping in through the uneven chinks in the walls. Outside, the gray wolves that devour the flesh of pagans sacrificed to the three gods were leaving their cautious spoor upon the snow. Our talk had begun in Latin, as is the habit between members of the clergy, but soon we had passed into the language of the North, known from Ultima Thule to the markets of Asia. This is what the man told me:
"I am of the line of skalds; the moment I learned that the poetry of the Urns is a poetry of a single word, I went in quest of them, in quest of the route that would lead me to their land. Not without weariness and labor did I reach it, one year later. It was night; I noticed that the men I met along my way regarded me curiously, and I could not fail to note that I was struck by an occasional stone. I saw the glow of a smith's forge, and I entered.
"The smith offered me shelter for the night. His name, he said, was Orm, and his language was more or less our own. We exchanged a few words. It was from his lips that I first heard the name of the king who then ruled over them—Gunnlaug. I learned that he had fought in their last war, that he looked with suspicion upon foreigners, and that it was his custom to crucify them. In order to avoid that fate, which was more fitting for a God than for a man, I undertook to write a drapa, a laudatory composition— z sort of eulogy praising the king's victories, his fame, and his mercy. No sooner had I committed the poem to memory than two men came for me. I refused to relinquish my sword, but I allowed myself to be led away.
"The stars were still in the sky. We traveled through a stretch of land with huts scattered here and there along the way. I had heard tales of pyramids; what I saw in the first square we came to was a stake of yellow wood. On its sharp point I could make out the black figure of a fish. Orm, who had accompanied us, told me that the fish was the Word. In the next square I saw a red stake, with a disk. Orm said once more that this was the Word. I asked him to tell me what word it was; he replied that he was but a simple artisan, and did not know.