Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

and in one of the dotted lines the verb must have been found which governed the
accusative object þann. The lines which should take the place of the dots have, in their
present form, the following appearance:
Á fellur austan
um eiturdala.
The verb which governed þann must then be áfellur, that is to say, the verb fellur
united with the preposition á. But in that case á is not the substantive á, a river, a running
water, and thus the river which falls from the east around venom dales has its source in an
error.
Thus we have, under this supposition, found that there is something that fellur á,
falls on, streams down upon, him who seduces the wife of another. This something must
be expressed by a substantive, which is now concealed behind the adverb austan, and
must have resembled it sufficiently in sound to be transformed into it.
Such a substantive, and the only one of the kind, is austur. This means something
that can falla á, stream down upon; for austur is bail-water (from ausa, to bail), wastewater,
water flowing out of a gutter or shoot.
A test as to whether there originally stood austur or not is to be found in the
following substantive, which now has the appearance of eiturdala. For if there was
written austur, then there must, in the original text, have followed a substantive (1) which
explained the kind of waste-water meant, (2) which had sufficient resemblance to
eitrdala to become corrupted into it.
The sea-faring Norseman distinguished between two kinds of austur: byttu-austr
and dælu-austr. The bail-water in a ship could be removed either by bailing it out with
scoops directly over the railing, or it could be scooped into a dæla, a shoot or trough laid
over the railing. The latter was the more convenient method. The difference between
these two kinds of austur became a popular phrase; compare the expression þá var byttuaustur,
eigi dælu-austur. The word dæla was also used figuratively; compare láta dæluna
ganga, to let the troughs run (Grettla, 98), a proverb by which men in animated
conversation are likened unto dælur, troughs, which are opened for flowing
conversation. 1
Under such circumstances we might here expect after the word austur the word
dæla, and, as venom here is in question, eitur-dæla.
Eitur-dæla satisfies both the demands above made. It explains what sort of wastewater
is meant, and it resembles eitur-dala sufficiently to be corrupted into it.
Thus we get á fellur austur eitrdæla: "On (him who seduces another man's wife)
falls the waste-water of the venom-troughs." Which these venom-troughs are, the strophe
in its entirety ought to define. This constitutes the second test of the correctness of the
reading.
1 Although I cannot find this phrase in the modern edition of the saga itself, Vigfusson quotes it and the
reference under the entry "dæla" in his dictionary, making it likely Vigfusson's Dictionary was Rydberg's
source for this. Another reference there to Grettis Saga 95, actually appears in chapter 17. Regardless, the
conversion of austr-dæla into eitur-dæla is extremely unlikely.