The Greatest Spell

The Poetic Edda contains the narrative of a young man, Svipdag, who raises his mother from her burial mound to help him on an impossible quest to find the beloved of his soul, his "fated bride". Groa was and is a völva, or seeress. Before she died, with her knowledge of things to come, she told him to call her back when he needed help.

Groa weaves nine spells of protection over him, to preserve him from flood and fire and to change the hearts of enemies so they cannot reach for their swords. The great spell is probably the ninth. If Svipdag finds himself in a "war of words", his own will not fail him.

Wit nor words be wanting you

At behest of the heart

- Grógaldr (The Spell of Groa) in Lee Hollander (trans) The Poetic Edda

The story of Svipdag and Groa has many counterparts in Norse tradition. In the Völuspá, the greatest of the poems in the Poetic Edda, a seeress summoned from the Underworld by the high god Odin tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming destruction and rebirth.

In tale in the Flateyjarbók, a poet is made by dreaming on the burial mound of a dead poet.

Dream Poetry from the Mound

An Icelandic shepherd lay down to sleep on the burial mound of a poet, hoping for inspiration to compose a poem in the style of the bard he admired, though he had no skill with words. While the sheep browsed and dozed, the dead poet appeared to the shepherd in a dream. “I will give you a rare verse. If you learn the verse by heart and can recite it without flaw when you wake, you will become a great poet.”

- Flateyjarbók I: 174 quoted in H. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe.

The Norse stories have counterparts in other traditions. A story from Ireland weaves together the theme of calling on wise ancestors and the power of poetic speech.

Raising a Bard to Lift the Fog of Forgetfulness

There is a legend that the great Irish epic, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, or Cattle Raid of Cooley, was brought back from the fogs of forgetfulness when the foremost poets of Ireland gathered at night on the burial mound of Fergus, the ancient druid of dreams and battles. They called on Fergus to awaken. They praised him with drink and gallant words, and above all with fresh poetry.

When one of them delivered a fine enough poem, a deeper mist rose from the tomb, and from the mist came Fergus with his shining hair, to sing again the lost epic of gods and heroes and warrior queens. And the poets caught the words and carried them to the written page.

Illustration: "Old Birch at the Sogneford" by Thomas Fearnley (1839)

Fergus and Yeats in the Poop Park

‎[Druid] What would you, Fergus?

[Fergus] Be no more a king
But learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours...

- W.B.Yeats, "Fergus and the Druid"

Half a block east of my home is a small neighborhood park I call the Poop Park, because it is highly utilitarian: every second person in the neighborhood has a dog and people are constantly rushing down to empty their dogs on the way to or from work and other things.

When we first moved to this neighborhood, I was struck by how many of the dogs in the Poop Park had names out of myth and poetry and legend - Zeus, Tiamat, Xenobia were early acquaintances. I would hear the laughter of the gods as I was introduced to a shaggy Zeus or a bottom-sniffing Xenobia.

One day a woman came running after me to strike up a conversation. Bounding with her was a beautiful and puppy-wild Irish setter who jumped up and licked my face. "This is Fergus," she made the introduction.

"Fergus. That's a very Celtic name."

"Yes. I got it from the poem by Yeats."

Almost in the same breath, we started reciting the poem.

For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all disheveled wandering stars.

As we came to the last line, I looked down and noticed that, in the dark, I had put on mismatched socks. One had the pattern of stars, another an animal pattern. That morning, I joked, I was the "disheveled wandering star" - all the more since I had to rush to the airport to fly off and give a lecture and would not take time to change my socks.

Since then, every single time I have met Fergus in the Poop Park I have been researching or dreaming or writing about Yeats. Every time. No kidding. The deeper world comes through to us any way it can.