SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

208 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
Skirnir'« Ride and The Lay of Harbord, The poems are
translated in the original metres, and the task of alliteration has
sometimes slightly distorted meaning. For example, exception
may be taken to
The glory of the great dead
as the English for
d6mr of daunan hvern.
Also there are occasional excursions into William Morris
diction. But these are minor blemishes, which will not
impede a reader's enjoyment of a veracious and stirring
rendering.
And who is this reader? Chiefly no doubt it will be an
introduction welcomed by students. But should it fall into the
hands of a general reader, it may well kindle his enthusiasm for
an attitude to life which deserves to be remembered:
Finish, friends, the foaming ale,
The stout pillars are starting to crack.
Men shall remember while men live
The march of our host to the maker of war.
A. P. PEARSON
THE PLACE-NAMES OF BIRSAY. By HUGH MARWICK. Edited
and introduced by W. F. H. NICOLAISEN. Aberdeen University
Press, 1970. xii + 135 pp. £1'20.
Mr William Sabiston of Scrutabreck collected the place-names
considered in this volume, and he is the author of a learned
appendix in it, an analysis of the 1595 rental of Birsay, on pp. 99­
II5. He deserves congratulations; and why not a place on the
title-page?
Over 600 nature names, farm and house names and miscellaneous
names collected from a single Orkney parish are here
published with Dr Marwick's suggestions as to their origin, lightly
edited, too lightly perhaps, by Dr Nicolaisen. The work was
submitted to the editor in 1961 and finally given entirely into his
care because of Dr Marwick's failing health (it will be remembered
that he died in May 1965). To the scholar or the merely curious
the book will be valuable as a source of information, but it would
have been of much greater general use if the introduction had
attempted to show what light the names throw on matters such
as settlement and occupation, work and play, English and Norse.
(I may insert a word of warning on Dr Marwick's old-fashioned