Step 8 of 12 · Home, Kin and Belonging
Sprinkling a newborn
Why this step
Stanza 157 is the thirteenth of the speaker’s songs: if he sprinkles a warrior’s newborn son with water, that youth will not fail when he goes to war. The entry says it is usually read today as an old naming or blessing rite, and that the poem says no more about it than this. It is the trail’s only picture of a newcomer being received, and a thin one.
The text, stanza 157
157.
A thirteenth I know: if the new-born son
of a warrior I sprinkle with water,
that youth will not fail when he fares to war,
never slain shall he bow before sword.
- 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), stanza 157 (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.
From the Lorebook
The thirteenth song: sprinkling a warrior’s newborn son with water means he will not fail in war and will never fall to a sword.