Völsunga saga: The Brynhild-Story
 

The matter to be addressed in my greetings to Tom is the wooing of Brynhild. Specifically, I wish to examine her attitudes towards Sigurd and the institution of marriage, her motives in devising the flame wall, and her emotions during the wooing. Virtually all readers to whom I have spoken assume that she desires Sigurd as a husband and that her rage results from being tricked into marrying a lesser man (Gunnar). In addition, all the published remarks on the saga that I know of regard the flame wall as a test designed to filter out the bravest suitor (Heusler 1969, 235) or, put less metaphorically, to guarantee “that the right suitor will be identified by his ability to cross the flame wall” (Andersson 1980, 240). I will argue, however, that the heroine of Völsunga saga neither wishes nor intends to wed Sigurd. In fact, her great passion, even perhaps greater than her love of battle, is to stay unmarried; the anger and hatred she expresses towards Sigurd stem from being forced to give up her unmarried state, not from marrying beneath her expectations; finally, I will argue that the wall of flames is not a means of choosing a mate, but rather a stratagem designed by Brynhild to remain celibate.
 

The reason why one saga can produce such contradictory readings is that, as numerous literary historians have painstakingly shown (most fully in English by Andersson 1980), the saga combines, without seeming to harmonize, many apparently mutually contradictory stories about Brynhild. Many readers have expressed their lack of enthusiasm for the narrative art of Völsunga saga (for example, Wieselgren 1935), but I for one am grateful to these paradoxes for what they tell us about how the saga seems to have been formed. While not an exhaustive catalogue, the following narrative units provide an overview of the Brynhild-story: (1) Odin’s curse requiring Brynhild to marry and retire from the battlefield; (2) her oath describing the conditions to be met by the man she marries; (3) her double-betrothal to Sigurd; (4) her marriage to Gunnar; (5) her quarrel with Gudrun in the river; (6) her revenge on Sigurd; (7) and her suicide after his death. All of these story units are assumed to have been taken from various sources and analogues, some of them no longer extant, that predated the composition of the saga. Now it is clear that these elements do not in themselves comprise a narrative, but it is equally clear that they could form the basis of many different tales. Only (1) and (7) must occupy their present order, but units (2) through (6) can be arranged in any way a story-teller wishes. That the plot arranging these elements seems defective to so many readers is another way of explaining why the saga can be read in so many different ways. (Or of explaining why it is really not read at all.) In an effort to understand the Brynhild-story, I will read it for the plot.
 

The first story element in the Brynhild-story, how she came to be playing the role of Sleeping Beauty, is one she herself plots at Sigurd’s request. Accordingly, Odin has decreed—because she killed one of his favorites in battle—that she forgo the battlefield and take a husband; in response she stipulates that she will marry only a man who knows no fear; Odin then puts her to sleep with a ‘sleep thorn.’[1] Her oath could be understood as pointing directly at Sigurd; that is, forced to marry, she decides to make the best of the curse by marrying a man who appeals to her martial character. Thus when Sigurd arrives on the scene, her desire is fulfilled. But if we recognize the paradoxical character of her oath and regard fearlessness not as a virtue which her future husband must possess but rather as a condition which no man can fulfill—even a Garbáty fears something—then she is actually attempting to nullify Odin’s curse.[2] Thus, the oath possesses an enigmatic character, and the joke’s on Odin (or so she thinks)![3] Odin, himself no slouch at riddles, goes her one better in this test of wits by bringing on stage his great-great-great-grandson, Sigurd, and makes him fearless by grooming him in a series of heroic exploits that culminate in his killing the hoard-guarding dragon Fafnir and eating a portion of its heart.[4] By cursing Brynhild to marry, Odin stands to gain two things: to remove an intractable woman from the battlefield, and to provide Sigurd with breeding material that will produce the kind of offspring Odin desires, a fierce race of superior warrior-kings that has eluded him up to this point. Thus, when a suitor who possesses the feature she least expected any man to have wakes her, she recognizes that she has posed a riddle too simple for the likes of Odin, exclaiming, in effect, ‘Damn, here is Sigurd, a completely fearless man, with Fafnir’s helmet and bearing the sword with which he killed him. What do I do now?’[5] From this point until her forced marriage to Gunnar, she attempts to construct a better riddle by adding conditions to the oath which the man she will marry must meet. Let us look at her variations and the contexts in which she makes them.
 

I count twelve references, including the one just discussed, to the oath Brynhild imposes upon the successful suitor. Until we look at them in their context the following observations will serve as an initial characterization: (1) while it is convenient to refer to the various manifestations of the conditions with which her prospective husband must comply as the oath, it is, in fact, composed of several clauses that Brynhild is reported to have stipulated at different times; (2) four characters, Brynhild, Budli, Heimir, or Sigurd, report them as having been uttered; (3) it follows, therefore, that they are not speech acts (Austin 1975; Lyons 1977, 725-45; Levin 1983, 227-43)—that is, we never witness Brynhild actually saying something like, “I hereby swear to marry a man who knows no fear”—a distinction whose importance will be apparent later;[6] (4) the clauses form a composite of three character attributes that a successful suitor must possess (fearlessness, martial superiority, and a noble birth) or of deeds that he must perform (to ride through the flame wall on a horse named Grani, and to kill her unsuccessful suitors as she requires). In addition, we can think of the clauses as the computer language to the program that operates the flame wall. That is, we can imagine that Brynhild invents the flame wall and then specifies by means of the oaths that the suitor who conforms to all of the conditions will get through, but that those who do not will be repelled. In order to understand the function of these clauses on the plot level we need to see each of them in their narrative contexts, for it is only then that we will come to recognize that their sometimes contradictory character is a result of Brynhild’s adding parts to the oath as the story develops and her needs change. We will also see that their enigmatic quality is not arbitrary, for after all they are intended to fool the men who put pressure on her to marry, Odin, her father Budli, and her brother Atli. The difficulty we have in understanding the clauses results also from the saga’s indirect method of presenting them. For the narrative is itself a riddle that poses and solves a riddle. Let us examine how this complex narrative method is worked out.
 

The second and the third references to the oath develops two parts of the riddle, why will Brynhild’s intended husband be chosen by the flame wall, and when was it devised? The latter part first: we learn of the flame wall’s existence when (at the beginning of Chapter 29) Sigurd, Gunnar and Hogni petition Budli and then Heimir (her brother-in-law and foster-father) for Brynhild’s hand in marriage. In the third reference to the oath (the second is discussed below) Heimir responds to the suitors, saying “… that her bower was close by and that he thought she would want to marry the man who rode through the burning fire which surrounds her bower” (48). We should notice the enigmatic nature of his statement: he says that she intends to marry the man who rides through the flames, but not that its purpose is to test the suitor—we merely infer this latter point, perhaps because Sigurd/Gunnar does so (as we will see later) and because we are familiar with the motif from its analogues, for example, in The Merchant of Venice. I will put off discussing until later who constructed the flame wall, but we can, for three reasons, wager that it was constructed sometime between Sigurd’s departure from Heimir’s court and his marriage to Gudrun (that is, between the beginning of Chapter 28 and the beginning of Chapter 29). First, the flames are not mentioned prior to this point in the saga (but see Heinrichs 1985, 48; 1986, 116); second, if they had existed prior to Sigurd’s waking Brynhild on the mountain, why did he not have to cross them then or later when they meet at Heimir’s court during the “second betrothal”? Third, we are justified in believing that when a narrative event, as here, lacks a clear indication as to its position in the time scheme, then its relative chronology will be determined by when it is first mentioned. This reference to the flames occurs in a wooing scene that bridges a time gap of about two years or so since Sigurd left Heimir’s and moved on to Gjuki’s court, permitting Aslaug (Brynhild’s and Sigurd’s daughter) to be born and Sigurd and Gudrun to marry and produce a son, Sigmund. We wonder about the state of our heroine, left in the lurch and (we learn at the end of Chapter 29) pregnant to boot: is she pining away in her bower, or has she returned to the battlefield? The flame wall is one answer to these questions, or rather it is a prolegomenon to that answer.
 

If Heimir makes it clear when the flames began to flicker, then Budli’s response (the second oath reference) to the proposal of the three kings allows us to understand when and why Brynhild began to specify who would ride through these flames: “he responded favorably to their request, on the condition that she would not refuse it, and said that she was so proud that she would marry only the man she desired” (48). Budli implies that Brynhild has emended her original oath (which I will call the Fearless-Man Clause) so as to marry the man of her choice (the Man-of-Her-Choice Clause); she sounds in good fettle, even feisty. What he does not tell us is why he has agreed to this clause, a procedure unprecedented in the saga.[7] Moreover, he does not explain whether the Man-of-Her-Choice Clause is a corollary of the Fearless-Man Clause. For example, does this mean that if two men of perfect courage appear, then she will be able to choose between them, or does it mean she can choose anyone she wants? As we will see below, there is reason to believe that Budli’s testy remark is not to be seen in relation to the Fearless-Man Clause but rather as a veiled allusion to the heated dispute with his daughter to which she refers later in Chapter 31 and in which she adds two clauses to the oath. 
 

Without explaining who has invented the flame wall nor why, the next scene partially explains how the oath acquires so many parts. When Sigurd disguised as Gunnar—the latter’s mother Grimhild, a witch, has taught them how to “shift shapes”—rides through the flames and says to Brynhild (in the fourth reference to her oath), “you were promised to me as my wife by your father and foster-father if I rode through the flames and if you agreed” (Chapter 29, 49), he, like us, has been led to believe that the oath is a straightforward proposition, namely that whoever rides through the fire marries Brynhild. In response, she explodes this assumption by adding (in the fifth reference) two further conditions that the man of destiny must be prepared to fulfill: “Gunnar … do not speak like that to me, unless you are superior to every other man and are prepared to kill those men who have sued for my hand, if you have the courage to do so” (Chapter 29, 49). That is, the successful suitor, in addition to being able to ride through the flame wall, must now possess (1) exceptional military might (the Fastest-Sword Clause) and (2) the ability and willingness to eliminate previous suitors (the Dispatching-of-Suitors Clause). It is possible that she has invented these two additional prerequisites ad hoc when she realizes that Gunnar has unexpectedly met the first two conditions (the Fearless-Man Clause, and the Flame-Wall Clause).[8] But if we assume, as most readers do, that the flame wall is tailored to exclude everybody but Sigurd (or its corollary to let only him pass), then we ought to believe that this proviso predates this scene. After all, he is the surest bet to eliminate other suitors, including any whom Odin or Budli might have forced upon her before Sigurd finally conquers the wall. But in analyzing her further references to her oath, I will provide evidence that while she specified before this scene that the successful suitor would be expected to eliminate all the others, she did not anticipate that Sigurd would be the man to come through the flames. We are still pretty much in the dark at this point, but Sigurd/Gunnar calls her to order by insisting (in the sixth reference to the oath) that the agreement as laid down by Heimir has precedence over all other clauses: “You have indeed wrought great deeds, but I call your attention to your oath, that if someone rides through this fire, then you would marry the one who accomplishes it” (49). Recognizing the “validity” of his argument, Brynhild stands up and greets him formally. Together they endure the three “chaste nights” (Heinrich’s artful phrase, 1986, 119), the three kings return home, and Brynhild visits Heimir.
 

Although her meeting with Heimir following the flame-wall scene does not yet provide us with the solution to the riddle, it does represent a key point in my argument that she wishes to avoid the institution of marriage, that she does not desire Sigurd, and that she has fashioned the flame wall to preserve her celibacy. (In other words we can only appreciate what is going on in this scene by reading ahead, taking the additional clues on board, and then rereading this scene.) She approaches Heimir and tells him in secret that a king appeared in her bower, having ridden through the flame wall, “and said that he had come to marry me and that his name was Gunnar” (50). She then utters this revealing remark (in the seventh reference to her oath): “I said that only Sigurd, my lover to whom I swore an oath on the mountain, would be able to do that” (50). Presumably, the oath to which she refers is her betrothal oath, and by “do that” she means ride through the flame wall rather than propose marriage to me. She might also mean “would do that,” in the sense that she expected that only Sigurd would in fact get through the fire, as opposed to being the only man capable of doing so, whether he tried or not. Whatever her precise meaning, she did not make any such statement to Sigurd/Gunnar in the scene that occurs only some two or three lines previously,[9] a juxtaposition which suggests that we are not meant to regard her remark as an oversight on the author’s part but as an important and intended addition to the narrative. Her puzzlement serves at least four narrative functions: first, to alert us to a feature of the riddle we had not previously known about (The Only-Sigurd Clause); second, we are led down the garden path into believing that the Only-Sigurd Clause entails her desire that he succeed. (Hint: this clause is a dummy; she actually does not expect anyone to cross the flames); third, in eliciting Heimir’s response (he said that things would have to rest there), her consternation, and his muted answer, make it clear that he is a party to the conspiracy;[10] fourth, the riddle seems to be doubling back on Brynhild (how did Gunnar figure out how to get through the flames against her expectations that only Sigurd would be able to accomplish this feat?). Brynhild sets out to answer this question two paragraphs later by staging the quarrel in the river with Gudrun,[11] but let us continue our examination of how Brynhild programs the flame wall and constructs her riddle. 
 
 

The remaining four oaths add narrative details to what we learn in this scene. Later in the mousetrap exchange with Gunnar she repeats her assertion (the ninth reference) that she “swore an oath at [her] father’s that [she] would marry the one most nobly born, and that is Sigurd” (53). At first glance this oath seems to be a repetition of the Only-Sigurd Clause, but given the enigmatic character of all her oaths, an equally plausible interpretation is that the phrase, “and that is Sigurd,” merely acknowledges his noble birth without asserting that she swore to marry him. Her exchange with Gunnar, we must remember, occurs after she has discovered how she was tricked and in the course of an acrimonious argument that initiates her revenge upon Sigurd. Many statements that she makes after Chapter 31 must be seen in this context and must be used very carefully as evidence as to her motives before the “false wooing” scene, Sigurd’s crossing the flames disguised as Gunnar. Space prohibits my discussing them here.
 

Of the remaining three references she makes to her oath only one (the twelfth) requires much comment.[15] After Sigurd has been betrayed and killed, she reproves Gunnar by revisiting the scene in which the three kings rode into Budli’s to woo her: “Then Atli spoke to me and asked whether I wanted to marry the one riding Grani. He was not like you, and then I was betrothed to the son of Sigmund and no one else …” (59-60). It is easy to see why readers might understand this passage to mean that she became betrothed to Sigurd at her own request or that she expressed such a desire. That is, she seems to be telling Gunnar that she had said at that time, in response to Atli’s query, “I hereby betroth myself to the son of Sigmund.” But actually her reference only adds a narrative detail that allows us to reconstruct the scene with more precision: The three kings appear in Budli’s court, petition for Brynhild’s hand, and threaten Budli; he in turn takes her aside and orders her to marry the man he chooses or face his displeasure; she then placates him by devising the Grani-Clause; he goes back to the three kings and tells them that she will marry the man of her choice; in the meantime she has spoken to Atli and retreated to her bower surrounded by the flames, and the false wooing follows. This reconstruction allows us to understand that what she actually said was something like, “Yes, I will marry the man riding Grani….” in response to Atli’s question, not “I want Sigurd.” In other words she is telling Gunnar how the Grani Clause came about, not repeating her exact words. She adds as a further goad to Gunnar the phrase, “and he was not like you, and then I was betrothed to the son of Sigmund” simply as a way of identifying the man who was riding Grani, of making it clear that she knows Gunnar was not that man, and of contrasting Sigurd’s nobility with Gunnar’s cowardice. 
 

I have argued that we learn from the references to Brynhild’s oath that she changes its character in response to the increasing pressure put upon her to embrace matrimony. These references are neither ill-formed nor indicative of the author’s failure to harmonize his sources; on the contrary, they develop a rigid narrative logic that dramatizes Brynhild’s mounting desperation in her attempts to escape from the threat that the man-made law—a woman will marry the man chosen by their fathers—represents to her sense of self. The order in which these references are presented to us by the plot is as follows: 1) the Fearless-Man Clause (“I swore the oath in return to marry no one who knew fear,” Chapter 21); 2) the Man-of-Her-Choice Clause ([Budli] said that she was so proud that she would marry only the man she desired, Chapter 29); 3) the Flame-Wall Clause ([Heimir] said that she would want to marry that man who rode through the burning fire which surrounds her bower, Chapter 29); 4) the Flame-Wall Clause (“you were promised to me as my wife by your father and foster-father if I rode through the flames and if you agreed,” Chapter 29); 5) the Fastest-Sword Clause (“Gunnar … do not speak like that to me, unless you are superior to every other man and are prepared to kill those men who have sued for my hand, if you have the courage to do so,” Chapter 29); 6) the Flame-Wall Clause (“You have indeed wrought great deeds, but I call your attention to your oath, that if someone rides through this fire, then you would marry the one who accomplished it,” Chapter 29); 7) the Only-Sigurd Clause (“I said that only Sigurd, my lover to whom I swore an oath on the mountain, would be able to do that,” Chapter 29); 8) the Faithful-Horse Clause/the Flame-Wall Clause/the Dispatching-of-Suitors Clause (“and so I promised myself to the one who would ride the horse Grani with Fafnir’s legacy, ride through my flame wall, and kill those men I chose,” Chapter 31); 9) the Only-Sigurd Clause (“I swore an oath at my father’s that I would marry the man most nobly born, and that is Sigurd,” Chapter 31); 10) the Dispatching-of-Suitors Clause (“Gunnar did not ride through the fire to me, nor did her pay me as a bride price of the executed dead,” Chapter 31); 11) the Flame-Wall Clause (“I swore an oath to marry the man who rode my flame wall, and I will keep that oath or die” Chapter 31); 12) the Faithful-Horse Clause/the Only-Sigurd Clause (“Then Atli spoke to me and asked whether I wanted to marry the one riding Grani. He was not like you, and then I was betrothed to the son of Sigmund and no one else …” Chapter 32).
 

Assigning each of them a relative chronology will clarify the carefully structured character of the Brynhild-story: the Fearless-Man Clause (1) is the earliest version of the oath, occurring when Odin cursed Brynhild, followed by number (3) and (11), which refer to the Flame-Wall Clause and which were sworn either immediately after Sigurd left Brynhild or following the news that he had married Gudrun. Next come (2), (8), (9), and (12), all of which invoke a variety of clauses that were sworn in response to the appearance of the three kings at Budli’s court. It is at this point in the narrative that she is at her most inventive, reacting to Budli’s panicked demand to choose one of the three kings. The final group of references, (4), (5), (6), (7), and (10), occur during the false wooing. Again, they comprise a variety of clauses, and four of them (number 4 through 7), are the only references to the oath that occur in dramatized scene rather than a recollection of it; (10) is merely Brynhild’s retrospective reference to this scene. The ultimate test of the validity and usefulness of the above scheme must be that in rereading the saga, one will understand things that heretofore were unclear. I can only hope that my discussion will cause readers to reevaluate its “eerie charm” (Shippey, 275). 
 

Brynhild is thus a tragic heroine not because she is cheated out of the man she desires—a decidedly non-feminist reading of the saga—but because she is cheated out of her wish to remain celibate. This radical conclusion presupposes that the anti-feminism of the middle ages had its contemporary opponents, and that Völsunga saga can be read as a marriage manual directed at kings advising them that women married against their will make bad bed-fellows.
 

Bibliography
 

Andersson, Theodore M. 1980. The Legend of Brynhild. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press.

Austin, J. L. 1975. How to do Things with Words. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Finch, R. G., ed. and trans. 1965. The Saga of the Volsungs. Icelandic Texts. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons.

Garbáty, Thomas J. 1980. “And Gladly Teche The Tales of Caunterbury.” In Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed. Joseph Gibaldi, 46-56. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Harris, Joseph. 1993. “Sigrdrífumál.” In Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano et al., 581-82. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 934. Garland Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages 1. New York: Garland Publishing.

Heinemann, Fredrik J. 1994. “The Post-Scenic Element in the Icelandic Saga.” In “Contemporary Sagas” (preprints from the Ninth International Saga Conference, Akureyri, Iceland, 31.7.-6.8.1994), 323-44.

_____. 1998. “Saga Dialogue and Brynhild’s Mouse Trap.” alvíssmál 8:51-66.

Heinrichs, Anne. 1985. “Brynhild als Typ der präpatriarchalen Frau.” In Arbeiten zur Skandinavistik: 6. Arbeitstagung der Skandinavisten des deutschen Sprachgebiets: 26.9-1.10, 1983 in Bonn, ed. Heinrich Beck, pp. 45-66. Frankfurt a. M., etc.: Peter Lang.

________. 1986. “Annat er várt e›li: the type of the prepatriachal woman in Old Norse literature.” In Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature, eds. John Lindow, Lars Lönnroth, Gerd Wolfgang Weber, 110-140. Odense: Odense Univ. Press.

Heusler, Andreas. 1902. “Die Lieder der Lücke im codex Regius der Edda,” in Germanistische Abhandlungen Hermann Paul dargebracht. Strasbourg: Trübner. 1-98. Rpt. in his Kleine Schriften, Vol. 2, ed. Stefan Sonderegger, 223-91. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969.

Levin, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. II. Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

See, Klaus von. 1981. “Freierprobe und Königinnenzank in der Sigfridsage.” In idem Edda, Saga, skaldendichtung: Aufsätze zur skandinavischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 214-23. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Shippey, T. A. 1992. The Road to Middle-Earth. London: Grafton.

Wieselgren, Per. 1935. Quellenstudien zur Völsungasaga. Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis, B XXXIV.3. Tartu: K. Mattiesens Buchdruckerei.


 

Appendix
 

While cobbling together my article on dialogue in Völsunga saga (thus assuring fame and fortune), I began to rewrite the following exchange between Brynhild and Gunnar in order to make clear to myself some differences between dialogue in sagas and one kind of dialogue in modern novels. What started out as a serious experiment quickly got out of hand and became Done Gone with the Wind. Unlike my essay in the volume, my parody was not created especially for Tom’s Festschrift, but I nevertheless offer it now as a tribute to his unique ability to breathe life into even the most potentially exasperating activities, such as shopping in an American supermarket, slogging through a museum or even “initiat[ing students] into the mystic rite of the Bradshaw Shift” (Garbáty 1980, 51). May it bring a smile or two to his little face!
 

Done Gone with the Wind

“Gunni, darlin’, what did you do with that, ehh, gold ring I done give you?”

“Um, what, heh, heh, ring was that, then, my little ol’ shield-maiden?”

“You know, the one Big Daddy Budli give me when you all came acourtin’, and you threatened him …”

“Say what, Baby-Cakes? We never threaten’ no one …”

“Bless my soul, you men-folk’d forget yo’ heads if they wasn’t afixed on to yo’ fat sweaty li’l red necks …”

“Whoa, Sugar-Plum, slow down some, I wouldna’ forgot threatnin’ Big Daddy Budli, he’s yo’ pappy, and one bad motha’…”

“He took me aside and said I had to choose one a you all …”

“What is you talkin’ about, girl? You wasn’t even there when we paid our respects to Big Daddy… you was off in that-there bower thing inside them flickering flames …”

“… scarin’ the beejeebers out of that poo’ man with burnin’ and destroyin’ and what-not if’n I didn’t accept yo’ all’s proposal …”

“Girl, you’s alosin’ yo’ marbles. Yo’ Daddy said you’d choose one of us and …”

“He threatened me, said if …”

“Hush woman, you talkin’ to yousself now … The servant-girls is startin’ t’ listen in!”

“Oh, land-a-Goshen, neve’ mind all that! (Pause) You silly ol’ thing, let’s not quarrel. I’m just askin’ about the ring I give you when you braved my shimmerin’ flame wall and claimed lit­tle ol’ me and put that bright shiny sabra between us in the bed, whateve’ fo’, I’ll neve’ know.”

“Ahhh, Sweet-Pea, thaaat ring! Let me think …”

“Boy, you fixin’ to catch you some Alzheimer’s. Gudrun says the ring …” 

“Yesss, a’ course. I believe I did give it to Runi, ’cause …

“Now, aint that strange? She says she obtained it from Sig when he rode his noble steed Grani through the flickering flames and …”

“Siggi didn’t ride through no fire, woman, I …”

“Now, Gunni darlin’, you wouldnt wanta lie to yo’ wife! …”

“Damn you, Brunni, I aint lying’, I had trouble with my mount, couldnt git him goin’ and Siggi, he loaned me …” 

“You never could sit a horse worth a damn, got near bucked off, you as pale as a forpynéd ghost …”

“Pale as a what ghost? Women, you watch yo’ tongue or …”

“Or what? What is the likes of you goin’ do to me, you aint never caught a rabbit let alone been at no battle except to dally with them camp-followers.”

“Shiiit, give it a rest! That was all befo’ we was married! One thing for sure: Good-ol’-boy Siggi never gave Runi no ring, nor no one else, neither—that boy’s tighter’n wallpaper! Hoards all that gold, got worse breath’n that damn fire-breathin’ dragon on top of ever’ thin’ else…”

“Watch yo’ language, boy, and leave the jokes to me. Now why, Gunni my pet, would you be agivin’ you’ little ol’ bell-of-the-ball sister the ring I gave you on our first rendevous?”

“Well, well, er, ah, you know how she is some of the time …” 

“Dumb as a daffodil all the time …”

“But for the grace of God, my pet, tut, tut. (pause) But Brunni, my sweet pea, what was you doin’ with that Yankee soldier-boy you killed in your house the other day? You thought no one saw you, I guess …”

“Why, Gunnar Gjukason, don’t lay no guilt trip on me!—I was apickin’ that boy’s pocket, we gotta eat, you know.”

“You was pickin’ at somethin’ else, woman, somethin’ that coulda give you that boy’s northern disease, if you ask me. They said you momma was a witch, but I had no idea that you was one too. How’d you git …?”

“Your talkin’ a witches reminds me that you’ momma don’t put no bread on the table, why she …”

“Bitch, get off my momma’s case! She ain't done you no harm. She don’t do it for no­body but my daddy. She don’t rut on no dead men.”

“Why, Gunni, honey, I do believe you sound every day more and more like some disgustin’ New Yorker in one of them Woody Allen films. Defendin’ yo’ slut-of-a-momma, I do declare! Every last tinker and panhandler and assistant-pro between here and Xanten that’s showed up at the back door for the last five years ’s laid that old girl—like a turtle, once she’s on her back, she’s helpless—least she could do is pass the plate round once n’a while, not that she’d get any donations. My nature is different: I don’t like it with nobody!”

“At least she aint all the time abitchin’!”

“She aint got no time to complain, what with half the county lined up spittin’ tobacca juice all over the veranda … Why that ol’ gal’s like …”

“Now you done gone too faa’ …”

“Boy, you aint even worth killin’.”

“Hogni, put her in chains.”

“Chains or no chains, the well just dried up for you, boy! You’ll be spittin’ on yo’ hand from now on!”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”