hero owned, seven hundred in all; they took them off and put, them on
again, all but one. The keen-eyed archer Völund came in from hunting,
from a far road.... He sat on a bear-skin and counted his rings, and
the prince of the elves missed one; he thought Hlodve's daughter,
the fairy-maid, had come back. He sat so long that he fell asleep,
and awoke powerless: heavy bonds were on his hands, and fetters
clasped on his feet."

They took him away and imprisoned him, ham-strung, on an island to
forge treasures for his captors. Then Völund planned vengeance:

"'I see on Nithud's girdle the sword which I knew keenest and best,
and which I forged with all my skill. The glittering blade is taken
from me for ever; I shall not see it borne to Völund's smithy. Now
Bödvild wears my bride's red ring; I expect no atonement.' He sat
and slept not, but struck with his hammer."

Nithud's children came to see him in his smithy: the two boys he slew,
and made drinking-cups for Nithud from their skulls; and the daughter
Bödvild he beguiled, and having made himself wings he rose into the
air and left her weeping for her lover and Nithud mourning his sons.

In the Old English poems allusion is made only to the second part
of the story; there is no reference to the legend of the enchanted
brides, which is indeed distinct in origin, being identical with
the common tale of the fairy wife who is obliged to return to animal
shape through some breach of agreement by her mortal husband. This
incident of the compact (_i.e._, to hide the swan-coat, to refrain
from asking the wife's name, or whatever it may have been) has been
lost in the Völund tale. The Continental version is told in the late