Not many nowadays take the trouble to cheer the old man. No indeed.
Any news? It's so long since you have been to see me, a year or
more.

No news everyone hasn't heard: hard times, shortage of hay, and
worry everywhere. That is only to be expected. It's been a hard
winter, the stock stall-fed for so long, at least sixteen weeks, on
some farms twenty.

Quite true, said Brandur. It's been a cold winter, and the end is
not yet. The cold weather may not break up before the first of June,
or even Midsummer Day. The summer will be cold, the hay crop small,
and the cold weather will probably set in again by the end of
August, then another cold hard winter, and ...

He meant to go on, foretelling yet worse things to come, but Gudrun
broke in: Enough of that, father. Things can't be as bad as that It
would be altogether too much. I hope for a change for the better
with the new moon next week, and mark you, the new moon rises in the
southwest and on a Monday; if I remember right, you always thought a
new moon coming on a Monday brought good weather.

I did, conceded Brandur. When I was a young man, a new moon coming
on a Monday was generally the very best kind of moon. But like
everything else, that has changed with the times. Now a Monday new
moon is the worst of all, no matter in what quarter of the heavens
it appears, if the weather is like this--raging sad carrying on so;
that is true.

But things are in a pitiful state, said Gudrun, what with the hay