"'Ah! my sons twain, there ye depart from me, and one death ye shall have together, for no man may flee from that which is wrought for him. On no day now shall I see either of you once again. Let one fate, then, be over you both; for I know not what weal ye go to get for yourselves in Drangey, but there ye shall both lay your bones, and many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery; yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for if we be set upon by weapons it shall be said of thee that thou hast had sons and not daughters.' And therewith they parted." [Sidenote: _Great passages of the sagas._] These moments, whether of incident or expression, are indeed frequent enough in the sagas, though the main attraction may consist, as has been said, in the wild interest of the story and the vivid individuality of the characters. The slaying of Gunnar of Lithend in _Njala_, when his false wife refuses him a tress of hair to twist for his stringless bow, has rightly attracted the admiration of the best critics; as has the dauntless resignation of Njal himself and Bergthora, when both might have escaped their fiery fate. Of the touches of which the Egil's Saga is full, few are better perhaps than the picture in a dozen words of King Eric Blood-axe "sitting bolt upright and glaring" at the son of Skallagrim as he delivers the panegyric which is to save his life, and the composition of which had been so nearly baulked by the twittering of the witch-swallow under his eaves. The "long" kisses of Kormak and Steingerd, and the poet's unconscious translation of AEschylus[175] as he says, "Eager to find my lady, I have scoured the whole house with the glances of my eyes--in vain," dwell in the memory as softer touches. And for the sterner, nothing can beat the last fight of Olaf Trygveson, where with the crack of Einar Tamberskelvir's bow Norway breaks from Olaf's hands, and the king himself, the last man with Kolbiorn his marshal to fight on the deck of the Long Serpent, springs, gold-helmed, mail-coated, and scarlet-kirtled, into the waves, and sinks with shield held up edgeways[176] to weight him through the deep green water. [Footnote 175: Compare, _mutatis mutandis_, _Agam._, 410 _sq._, and Kormak's "Stray verses," ll. 41-44, in the _Corpus_, ii. 65.] [Footnote 176: _Heimskringla_ does not _say_ "edgeways," but this is the clear meaning. Kolbiorn held his shield flat and below him, so that it acted as a float, and he was taken. Olaf sank.] [Sidenote: _Style._]