Of the other two Old Norse poems in _The Earthly Paradise_ not much need be said. "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" is a fairy tale, in the strain of Morris' prose romances. It was suggested by Thorpe's _Yule-tide Stories_, the tale coming from the _Völundar Saga_. There is a witchery about it that makes it pleasant reading in a dreamy hour, but except the names and a few scenes about the farmstead, there is nothing Icelandic about it. The virile element of the best Icelandic literature is wanting here, and the hero's excuse for leaving weapons at home when he goes to his watch is not at all natural: Withal I shall not see Men-folk belike, but faërie, And all the arms within the seas Should help me naught to deal with these; Rather of such love were I fain As fell to Sigurd Fafnir's-bane When of the dragon's heart he ate. (Vol. II, p. 33.) This passage is nominally in the same meter as the opening lines of the poem: In this your land there once did dwell A certain carle who lived full well, And lacked few things to make him glad; And three fair sons this goodman had. According to old time English prosody, it is the same, too, as the meter of Scott's Marmion! In the passages quoted from "The Lovers of Gudrun" we see a measure called the same as that of Pope's _Essay on Man_! Not seldom in "The Lovers" do we forget that the lines are rhymed in twos; indeed, often we do not note the rhyme at all. We are sometimes tempted to think that in this piece, if not in "The Land East of the Sun," rhyme might have been dispensed with altogether, since it often forces archaic words and expressions into use. But it is to be said generally of Morris's management of the meter in the Old Norse pieces, that it was adequate to gain his end always, whether that end was to tell an Old Norse story in English, or to carry over an Old Norse spirit into English. Of this second achievement we shall speak further in considering _Sigurd the Volsung_. There is one more tale in _The Earthly Paradise_ which originated in Norse legend. "The Fostering of Aslaug" is drawn from Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, which epitomizes older sources. Aslaug is the daughter of Iceland's great hero, Sigurd, and Iceland's great heroine, Brynhild, and her life is set down in this poem most beautifully. Again we note that the added touches of later poets fail to leave the sense of the strenuous in the picture. Aslaug is like a favorite representation of Brynhild that we have seen, a lily-maid in aspect, or a Marguerite. Her mother's masculinity is gone, and with it the Old Norse flavor. It is the privilege of our age to enjoy both the virility of the Old Norse and the delicacy of the mediæval conceptions, and William Morris has caught both. 3. In the opening lines of "The Fostering of Aslaug," our poet wrote his doubts about his ability to sing the life of Sigurd in be-fitting manner. At that time he said: