A famine after laid them low;
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried,
'The Gods are moved against the land.'
The priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand:
'Help us from famine
And plague and strife!
What would you have of us?
Human life?
Were it our nearest,
Were it our dearest,--Answer,
O answer!--
We give you his life.'"

The Gods seemed to say that the victim must be either the king's wife or
the king's child; which it should be, was the terrible question that the
king had to answer. The choice seemed to have fallen on the child, but
the wife would not have it that he was the king's dearest, and she
rushed to her own immolation. The poem reflects the common notion of
those dark days, that the angry Gods could only be propitiated by the
slaughter of those whom men loved the best. From this horrible idea the
Jewish people were delivered by the insight of their great ancestor.

Dark notions about God still lingered among them, however, and the Old
Testament record shows us how they slowly disappeared. Moses and Samuel
were good men for their time, but the God whom they worshiped was a very
different being from the God of Hosea or of the later Isaiah.