Jónas Hallgrímsson: The Pipit

Date:	1842/3. Jónas read the poem to the Fjölnir Society on 11 February 1843.
Form:	Seventeen "half-strophes" in an original variant of the skaldic meter draughenda (see Bbk39).
Manuscript:	None surviving.
First published:	1843 (6F11-3; image) under the title "Grátittlingurinn."
Sound recording:	Dick Ringler reads "The Pipit." [2:35]

Commentary: The events described in this poem appear to go back to about the time of Jónas's seventh birthday. When his father's estate was probated a few years later, in October 1816, it included a two-year-old ram and a three-year-old dark grey horse (þrevetru trippi, dökkgráu [1D354]). There is a good chance that these are the animals mentioned in the poem and entrusted to young Jónas's care. Since the colt will have been born in 1813 and the poem describes it as being in its second year (á annan vetri) when these events occurred, everything points to the autumn and early winter of 1814-5, and this tallies with what is known of the weather at that time: "The autumn was mild, except for a spell of bad weather around Michaelmas [29 September]]; then on 7 November the north was hit by a violent storm that damaged hay, buildings, boats, and livestock" (ÁfÍ215).

On the eve of the blizzard described in the poem, young Jónas, deceived by the balmy weather, appears to have left his two animals outside in the pasture for the night. The next day they were unable to forage, and in danger of starving, since the ground was blanketed with snow.

The bird at the center of the poem is the grátittlingur or meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis), a migratory bird that arrives in Iceland in late April or early May and departs between late August and mid-October. In late summer flocks of meadow pipits sometimes descend on the farms to forage in freshly mown homefields or piles of dung. In February 1835 Jónas had described the bird to an Icelandic audience in Copenhagen: "You've often heard it in the spring; it is the best singer of all the songbirds in Iceland. It nests among the tussocks out in the pastures, plaiting its nest from horsehair, and it visits our farms in the autumn before migrating" (9F66).² The pipit in the poem, like young Jónas himself, seems to have been caught off guard by the sudden blizzard.

In this poem Jónas reacts sharply against the conception of God that informs the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament (Genesis 22), based as it is on the belief that God could — and would — demand the sacrifice of either a human being (Isaac) or an animal (the ram offered in Isaac's place). The poet's imagination (and indignation) seem to have been kindled by the general parallel between Abraham's attachment to Isaac in the Bible ("thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest") and his own boyish attachment to his animals ("my joys, my gentle / jealously treasured pleasures") and also by the more specific parallel between the Biblical ram ("caught in a thicket by his horns") that must be killed if the beloved Isaac is to live, and the pipit ("Frozen fast to the mosses") that must be left to die if the urgent search for the beloved animals is not to be interrupted.

"Abraham's brave behavior" is not something that can be — or ought to be — imitated. Jónas insists that the behavior of human beings, at their best, is governed by spontaneous compassionate impulses toward their fellow creatures; also that God is a God of love and compassion (not the God of punishment, wrath, vengeance, etc., who plays so prominent a role in the Old Testament and who had dominated Icelandic religion in the 17th century [see e.g. Íþh340-2]).

It is not unlikely that in writing this poem, and especially its concluding strophe (in which he expresses his own personal desolation and the hope that God will comfort and revive him,³ just as the boy once revived the dying pipit), Jónas had in mind the consolation provided by Christ in Luke 12:6-7, perhaps even as this passage was contextualized and interpreted in J. P. Mynster's Reflections on the Principal Points of Christian Faith, which Jónas and his friends Brynjólfur Pétursson and Konráð Gíslason had translated in 1838-9:

Most men are very little concerned with one another's misery, and many people carry their burdens and fight their battles and sigh their last sighs almost without anyone taking notice. How important, therefore — and how consoling! — are these words uttered from above: "Are not five sparrows [titlingar in the Icelandic translation] sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" (Luke 12:6 [AV]). These words were not spoken by a human being, but by him whom God sanctified and sent into this world to reveal himself; they were spoken by him who also said: "Ye are of more value than many sparrows" [titlingar, ibid.].

Oh, that I could describe the emotion that fills my breast when I try to imagine to myself the vast multitude of human beings, both those living now and those who have lived in the past and sunk to dust, whose graves have long disappeared and their names been swept away by the sea of oblivion.

When my spirit is troubled by the size of this huge multitude, I say to myself: not one of them is forgotten before God. . . . When it seems to me that I am alone and abandoned and everyone has forgotten me, that there is no one to whom I might turn to rest my weary head against their breast — oh, even then, God has not forgotten me! (Hhk147)

For a tune to which Jónas's poem can be sung, see Íþl587-8.

Bibliography: In his article "Dýrðardæmi Abrahams" ("Abraham's Glorious Example"), Páll Valsson interprets Jónas's poem as a reaction to (or commentary on) contemporary theological discussions arising from the difficulty of reconciling the Old Testament (where Abraham = unquestioning obedience) and the New (where Jesus = unquestioning love); see 57TMm50-63.⁴ Páll's interpretation and the interpretation in the above commentary agree at some points and disagree at others; the most important point of disagreement, and the one which ultimately sends the interpretations in different directions, is that Páll understands the last strophe as being spoken by the same voice as the rest of the poem (i.e., the boy, who has fallen from grace and is in misery because of his disobedience to God), whereas the commentary understands it as spoken by the poet in propria persona (and/or perhaps representative of a generalized Christian sufferer), and hoping for God's loving mercy.

21. The Pipit (Grátittlingurinn)

The Pipit

Grátittlingurinn

Notes

	The Pipit	Grátittlingurinn
	Out in the fields, one autumn, when easy southern breezes¹ blew, I blew into straw-blades, blissfully making whistles. Later a brute wind blustered, bracing men to face danger. They made me sit inside then, sullen, dull, with the women. I feared the freezing blizzard, fretted about my pet ram and Toppa too, my stripling two-year-old colt, my jewel. These were my joys, my gentle jealously treasured pleasures; I thought they both, that bitter biting cold night, might perish. By dawn the wind had dwindled. Day broke, brilliant but chilly. We suited up and set out to search the blowing snowfields. My ram and tripping Toppa, the two I loved unduly, fetching but foolish creatures, floundered around the ice-slopes. I felt at fault. I needed to feed my pets, to lead them — both of my youthful beauties — back unharmed to the farmstead. What happened next? I'm happy to hail our frail endowments: men have, though hopelessly evil, a heart that God imparted. I saw, deep in a snowdrift somewhere among the hummocks — cowering — an olive-colored crippled meadow pipit. Frozen fast to the mosses, flight and hiding denied it, the weary creature watched me, wary with fear and terror. If God had suddenly sent me psalm-singing angels who promised rams by the ton and twenty Toppas, I swear, declaring: Out in Iceland, a little ardent boy could hardly aim at imitating Abraham's brave behavior. But now, zealously kneeling, knees in the freezing snowdrifts, he lay down flat and let his lips brush the thin, cold pinions. Unfaltering mercy melted the maiming, laming fetters those ranting winds of winter had wound around our darling. Surely "our darling" — surely! for sheer affection yearly hurries the happy pipits, heading back to our meadows. — Bolting aloft, it lilted its love to God above me; down below, but not downcast — deep in joy! — I sat weeping. Frozen in fate's dark blizzard, felled to the earth — quite mirthless — I'd flourish were my Father's informing breath to warm me!	Ungur var eg og ungir austan um land á hausti laufvindar blésu ljúfir, lék eg mér þá að stráum. En hretið kom að hvetja harða menn í bylsennu, þá sat eg enn þá inni alldapur á kvenpalli. Nú var trippið hún Toppa, tetur á annan vetur, fegursta hross í haga, og hrúturinn minn úti. Þetta var allt, sem átti ungur drengur, og lengi kvöldið þetta hið kalda kveið eg þau bæði deyði. Daginn eftir var aftur upp stytt, svo að menn hittu leið um snjóvgar slóðir storðar, og frost var orðið. En það, sem mest eg unna úti — Toppa og hrútur — óvitringarnir ungu einmana kuldann reyna. Sekur var eg, og sækja sjálfsagt hlaut eg með þrautum aleigu mína og ala ötull bæði við jötu. Hvurnig fór? Hér eg gjarna hjarta mannlegt um sanna, að hvað sem hinu líður hjartað gott skóp oss drottinn. Ég fann á millum fanna í felling á blásvelli lófalága við þúfu lítinn grátittling sýta. Flogið gat ekki hinn fleygi, frosinn niður við mosa, augunum óttabljúgum á mig skaut dýrið gráa. Hefði eg þá séð mér hefði hundrað Toppum og undrum ótal hornóttra hrúta heitið drottinn, eg votta: Abrahams dýrðardæmi drengur í litlu gengi aldrei á Ísafoldu eftir breytir, en neitar. Kalinn drengur í kælu á kalt svell, og ljúft fellur, lagðist niður og lagði lítinn munn á væng þunnan. Þíddi allvel og eyddi illum dróma, með stilli sem að frostnóttin fyrsta festi með væng á gesti. Gesti yðar! því ástar óhvikul tryggð til byggða vorra leiðir á vorum vegarslynga tittlinga. Lítill fugl skaust úr lautu, lofaði guð mér ofar, sjálfur sat eg í lautu sárglaður og með tárum. Felldur em eg við foldu frosinn og má ei losast; andi guðs á mig andi, ugglaust mun eg þá huggast.