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information, and that pleasure alone can plead for a subject devoid of utility.
In regard to the Poetical Treatise at the end of the Edda, what I can say of it is confined to some Remarks and Examples selected from among the few articles which are capable of being translated. The three pieces remaining of the more ancient Edda of Soemund deserve our close attention, both on account of their antiquity and their contents. The first, stiled Voluspa, or “Oracles of the Prophetess,” appears to be the Text, on which the Edda is the Comment. In the second, called Havamaal[1], or “the Sublime Discourse,” are found lectures on morality, supposed to have been given by Odin himself. The third is the “Runic Chapter,” which contains a short system of ancient Magic, and especially of the enchantments wrought by the operation of Runic characters. At the end of the Edda will be found some account of these three Tracts; it would have been very difficult to have been more diffuse about them.
- ↑ Maal or Mael, signinifies Speech in the old Icelandic; nor is the word unknown in the other dialects of the Gothic language. “Mell, vet. Ang. Loqui. Mellynge, Collocutio. A. S. Mælan. Isl. ad maela. quæ respondent Goth. MATHLJAN. Huc pertinent Lat. Barb. “Mallus & Mallare.” Lye apud Jun. Etym.
