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130 NOTES
‘Far off in Gyga
Heard I my pigs a-grunting.
Fie! for a reek of fire in the mountain forests!’
Loud laughter rings around him, and it is indeed matter for laughter
that he, the human reptile, who has in himself so much of the wild-beast
nature, should assume the right to judge.
“But may nota man’s righteous anger wreak itself upon what is mean
and contemptible? Only when it is in the service of a higher power.
A selfish action, although good in and of itself, is prompted by the evil
one. All personal feelings of anger and vengefulness are promptings of
the evil one, who is amused by them. The Gyga-Beast, the master-troll,
is amused when Arnljot deals out justice according to his own ideas.
“The Gyga-Beast,
Grandfather troll,
Wanted to fool thee,
Gave thee my pigs for his sport.
Amid the trees hidden,
Lay he and laughed,
The rascal!”
Arnljot is vengeful. He felt himself in the right when he slew the Iamt-
landers to avenge his father. Now he has laid violent hands upon cer-
tain of his fellow-creatures, repugnant indeed, but destroyed by him
merely because they aroused his scornful anger. Now will fall upon him
the same law of vengeance that he himself has followed.
‘Now I revenge me,
Here I command.
Fit thyself, sea-horse,
To my limping gait!’
“The conflict which takes place in Arnljot’s mind and conscience, is
portrayed in this Song as a conflict in nature. When he is flung about
by invisible powers, and when the earth heaves under him, we have
a symbolical portrayal of the way in which he is flung about by his
changing moods, finding no reasonable outlook for a foothold. When
laughter greets him from the earth beneath, and voices from the air
around, it is his own conscience that speaks, and when he has dealt so
hardly with the worthless in others—symbolized by the wild beasts —
it isin reality himself whom he has scourged. Deep within himself lie
the same faults that he has condemned so severely, and the Gyga-Beast,
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