to his greatness that in the most ancient poems of the Danes royal dignity is implied in his very name.  He practiced with the most zealous training whatsoever serves to sharpen and strengthen the bodily powers.  Taught by the fencers, he trained himself by sedulous practice to parrying and dealing blows.  He took to wife the daughter of his upbringer, Roar, she being his foster-sister and of his own years, in order the better to show his gratefulness for his nursing.  A little while after he gave her in marriage to a certain Bess, since he had ofttimes used his strenuous service.  In this partner of his warlike deeds he put his trust; and he has left it a question whether he has won more renown by Bess’s valour or his own.

Gram, chancing to hear that Groa, daughter of Sigtryg, King of the Swedes, was plighted to a certain giant, and holding accursed an union so unworthy of the blood royal, entered on a Swedish war; being destined to emulate the prowess of Hercules in resisting the attempts of monsters.  He went into Gothland, and, in order to frighten people out of his path, strode on clad in goats’ skins, swathed in the motley hides of beasts, and grasping in his right hand a dreadful weapon, thus feigning the attire of a giant; when he met Groa herself riding with a very small escort of women on foot, and making her way, as it chanced, to the forest-pools to bathe, she thought it was her betrothed who had hastened to meet her, and was scared with feminine alarm at so strange a garb:  so, flinging up the reins, and shaking terribly all over, she began in the song of her country, thus: 

“I see that a giant, hated of the king, has come, and darkens the highways with his stride.  Or my eyes play me false; for it has oft befallen bold warriors to skulk behind the skin of a beast.”

Then began Bess:  “Maiden, seated on the shoulders of the steed, tell me, pouring forth in thy turn words of answer, what is thy name, and of what line art thou born?”

Groa replied:  “Groa is my name; my sire is a king, glorious in blood, gleaming in armour.  Disclose to us, thou also, who thou art, or whence sprung!”

To whom Bess:  “I am Bess, brave in battle, ruthless to foes, a terror to nations, and oft drenching my right hand in the blood of foes.”

Then said Groa:  “Who, prithee, commands your lines?  Under what captain raise ye the war-standards?  What prince controls the battle?  Under whose guidance is the war made ready?”

Bess in answer:  “Gram, the blest in battle, rules the array:  force nor fear can swerve him; flaming pyre and cruel sword and ocean billow have never made him afraid.  Led by him, maiden, we raise the golden standards of war.”

Groa once more:  “Turn your feet and go back hence, lest Sigtryg vanquish you all with his own array, and fasten you to a cruel stake, your throats haltered with the cord, and doom your carcases to the stiff noose, and, glaring evilly, thrust out your corpses to the hungry raven.”