‘An you keep on this rate We soon to Ran shall go’— Quoth Thor: ‘Take heart, must yet A score good leagues or so.’ ‘Score leagues!’ cried Hymir: ‘why, Art mad! mark’st not the storm! E’en now I can descry Where lies fell Midgard’s worm.’ ‘And what care I for worm!’ Cried Thor, the fisher good: ‘The bleak north’s bitterest storm But fans my heated blood— I love the tempest’s roar— Ha! there the foul worm struck, Now I’ll take in mine oar, And try with line my luck.’ Then rising to full height, The iron kedge he took, Which, though it seem’d him light, Must serve him for a hook. The gory bullock’s head He took him for a bait— The giant, pale with dread, In the stern, trembling, sate. For line, he next made loose His belt, and one end pass’d Twice round his waist, with noose Well bound to th’ other fast The baited hook he tied, And in the ocean threw: O’er the boat’s yielding side The girdle, hissing, flew.” _Ohlenschlager_. “It must be confessed,” says the prose Edda, “that Thor here made quite as great a fool of Jormungandur as Utgard’s-Lok did of him, when the giant king caused him to lift up the worm, believing it was a cat. The worm gulped down the ox’s head so ravenously, that the hook stuck deep in his jaws. As soon as he perceived this, he plunged with such violence, that both Thor’s fists struck against the sides of the boat, on which the god’s anger got up and his strength at the same time, and he pulled so furiously against the snake, that both his legs went through the boat, and he remained standing on the bottom of the sea. He now pulled up the serpent to the edge of the boat, and, to say the truth, it was a terrible sight to see Thor look so grim at the serpent, and the serpent all the while gaping and spewing out poison against Thor. It is reported also that the giant Hymir changed colour, and became white with fear, when he saw the snake, and the dark blue sea breaking through the sides of the boat.