Northern mythology

64 NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY.
added he_, " that you will call me a very insignificant person,
which vexes me exceedingly/-'
Utgarda-Loki answered, " Now that thou art out of the
city, I will tell thee the real state of the case, which, if I
live and have power, thou never again shalt enter ; nor
shouldst thou have entered it this time, had I previously
known that thou hadst so great strength in thee, and
wouldst have so nearly brought us to the verge of destruction.
By magic alone I have deluded thee. When we
first met in the forest, and thou wouldst unfasten the
wallet, I had secured it with iron wire, which thou wast
unable to undo. Thou didst then strike me thrice with
thy hammer. The first blow was the least, and yet it
would have caused my death, had it fallen on me. Thou
sawest in my hall a rock with four square hollows in it,
one of which was deeper than the others :
these were the
dints of thy hammer. I slipt the rock under the strokes
without thy perceiving it. In like manner the sports were
contrived, at which you contended with my people. With
respect to the first, at which Loki proved his prowess, it
was thus : Loki was certainly very hungry and ate voraciously
; but he who was called Logi was fire, which consumed
both meat and trough. The Hugi, with whom
Thialfi strove in running, was my thought, with which it
was impossible for him to contend. When thou didst
drink from the horn with, as it seemed, so little efi'ect,
thou didst in sooth perform a miracle, such as I never imagined
possible. The other end of the horn was out in the
ocean, which thou didst not observe. When thou comest
to the sea, thou wilt see how much it is diminished by thy
di'aughts, which have caused what vri\\ now be called the
ebb.^^ Furthermore he said, ^'^No less a feat does it seem
to me when thou didst lift the cat ; and, the sooth to say,
all were terrified when they saw thee raise one of its feet