Hávamál
The tied dog, and the prudent girl
Near morning the speaker returns, finds the household asleep and a barking dog tied to the maid’s bed, and is met with insults. He concludes that many a sweet maid is fickle towards men.
Reference: stanzas 99–100 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 99–100
99.
Yet nearer morning I went, once more, --
the housefolk slept in the hall,
but soon I found a barking dog
tied fast to that fair maid's couch.
100.
Many a sweet maid when one knows her mind
is fickle found towards men:
I proved it well when that prudent lass
I sought to lead astray:
shrewd maid, she sought me with every insult
and I won therewith no wife.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 99–100 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
In plain English
He went again, nearer morning. The housefolk were asleep in the hall, but he soon found a barking dog tied fast to the maid’s couch.
Many a sweet maid, the speaker says, is found fickle towards men once you know her mind; he proved it when he tried to lead that prudent girl astray. The shrewd maid met him with every insult, and he won no wife by it.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 99–100 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
How the story is told
Stanzas 94 to 99 tell the story in order: waiting in the reeds, finding her sleeping, being told to come in the evening, finding the watch awake, and returning near morning to a tied dog. Stanza 100 then turns it into a general saying about maids.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 99–100 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
In the manuscripts and scholarship
This closes the story of Billing’s daughter. In Bellows’s edition the final stanza of the tale, his 102, has two extra lines at its start that the editor Rask took from a late paper manuscript; they are not in the Codex Regius, c. 1270, the poem’s only full source.
Bellows, like other editors, sees the tale as an illustration attached to the preceding passage on women’s faithlessness. Wikipedia’s summary calls the whole stretch from 81 to 102 an ad hoc insertion into the poem.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Read today, the story can be heard as a joke at Odin’s expense: the god who wins wisdom is outwitted by a prudent girl. The general claim about maids in stanza 100 is the speaker’s, drawn from this one story. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- When did a plan of yours fail because someone was more careful than you had counted on? What did you blame, and what did you learn?