Step 1 of 12 · Youth, Age and Learning
Sprinkling a newborn
Why this step
The trail starts at birth. In stanza 157, the thirteenth of the speaker’s songs, sprinkling a warrior’s newborn son with water means the youth will not fail when he goes to war and will never bow before a sword. The entry says this is usually read today as an old naming or blessing rite, and that the poem says no more about it. It is a wish spoken over a child who cannot yet know anything of it.
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.