Jónas Hallgrímsson: Mowing Song

23. Mowing Song (Sláttuvísa)

Mowing Song		Sláttuvísa
Swishing, stripping, slashing, slowly he goes mowing, scythe-blade lashing lithely, lethally beneath him. Gallant flowers are falling, fate betrays the daisies. Iron edge is tireless; under him, earth thunders. "Let's be glad!" the little lamb bleats out and gambols, "glad that when the winter wakens, and they take me from its dread and deadly dangers to the manger, loads of luscious fodder lie there sweet and drying!" Slashing, stripping, swashing, sweeping, he goes reaping, scythe is swishing blithely. Slow, behind the mower, walks a woman raking — watch your distance, mistress! not too near me, darling — near my vicious whishing! All the flowers have fallen, fairest grasses perish: life is brief, aborted by the ripper's stripping. Haft is humming softly, hefted firmly, deftly; iron edge is tireless; under him, earth thunders.		Fellur vel á velli verkið karli sterkum, syngur enn á engi eggjuð spík og rýkur grasið grænt á mosa, grundin þýtur undir, blómin bíða dóminn, bítur ljár í skára. Gimbill gúla þembir, gleður sig og kveður: "Veit ég, þegar vetur vakir, inn af klaka hnýfill heim úr drífu harður kemst á garða, góðir verða gróðar gefnir sauðarefni." Glymur ljárinn, gaman! grundin þýtur undir, hreifir sig í hófi hrífan létt mér ettir, heft er hönd á skafti, höndin ljósrar drósar. Eltu! áfram haltu! ekki nær mér, kæra! Arfi lýtur orfi, allar rósir falla, stutta lífið styttir sterkur karl í verki, heft er hönd á skafti, hrífan létt mér ettir, glymur ljárinn, gaman! grundin þýtur undir.

Date:	November 1843 or soon afterward (see KJH311).
Form:	Four dróttkvætt strophes.
Manuscript:	JS 129 fol., where it is entitled "Sláttuvísa" (facsimile KJH152-3; image), and KG 31 b V, where it is entitled "Sláttuvísa!" (facsimile KJH163-4; image).
First published:	1844 (7F28-9; image) under the title "Sláttuvísa" ("Mowing Song"); reprinted A139-40 under the title "Sláttuvísur" ("Mowing Stanzas").
Sound recording:	Anton Helgi Jónsson reads "Sláttuvísa." [1:39]

Commentary: Brynjólfur Pétursson read this poem to the Fjölnir Society at its meeting on 9 March 1844 and it was unanimously accepted for publication (33Eim87; BPB46). At its most obvious level it is a celebration of haymaking, one of the characteristic seasonal occupations on an Icelandic farm, when men scythed the grass and women walked behind them raking (for details see Íþh76-83).

But of course the poem has a deeper resonance, since — as Jónas rather broadly hints — the mower is also Death, the "Grim Reaper."¹ In Iceland, as in the rest of Europe, he was a familiar figure — and still is. Hallgrímur Pétursson (ca.1614-1674) had described him in some famous lines as

Death the grass-cutter, going
grimly after his prey,
agile and eager, mowing
everything in his way.²

When this dimension of the poem is taken into account, the picture of the little lamb (a male lamb, gimbill), licking his chops over his winter fodder, may well be intended to strike the reader as darkly ironic (and monitory in the best tradition of memento mori). Most male lambs were slaughtered in the fall.

Notes

¹ "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth" (Isaiah 40:7 [AV]).

² The lines are from his hymn "On the Uncertain Time of Death" ("Um dauðans óvissan tíma"):

Dauðinn má svo með sanni
samlíkjast, þykir mér,
slyngum þeim sláttumanni
er slær allt, hvað fyrir ber.

See Hallgrímsljóð: Sálmar og kvæði eftir séra Hallgrím Pétursson (Reykjavík: H.f. Leiftur, 1944), p. 227.