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      Swear? Why should I?

      Åse

      It’s a lie from first to las

      See, you dare not!t.

      Peer [stopping]

      It is true — each blessed word!

      Åse [confronting him]

      Don’t you blush before your mother?

       First you skulk among the mountains

       monthlong in the busiest season,

       stalking reindeer in the snows;

       home you come then, torn and tattered,

       gun amissing, likewise game;—

       and at last, with open eyes,

       think to get me to believe

       all the wildest hunters’-lies!—

       Well, where did you find the buck, then?

      Peer

      West near Gendin.

      Åse [laughing scornfully]

      Ah! Indeed!

      Peer

      Keen the blast towards me swept;

       hidden by an alder-clump,

       he was scraping in the snow-crust

       after lichen —

      Åse [as before]

      Doubtless, yes!

      Peer

      Breathlessly I stood and listened,

       heard the crunching of his hoof,

       saw the branches of one antler.

       Softly then among the boulders

       I crept forward on my belly.

       Crouched in the moraine I peered up;—

       such a buck, so sleek and fat,

       you, I’m sure, have ne’er set eyes on.

      Åse

      No, of course not!

      Peer

      Bang! I fired!

       Clean he dropped upon the hillside.

       But the instant that he fell

       I sat firm astride his back,

       gripped him by the left ear tightly,

       and had almost sunk my knife-blade

       in his neck, behind his skull —

       when, behold! the brute screamed wildly,

       sprang upon his feet like lightning,

       with a back-cast of his head

       from my fist made knife and sheath fly,

       pinned me tightly by the thigh,

       jammed his horns against my legs,

       clenched me like a pair of tongs;—

       then forthwith away he flew

       right along the Gendin–Edge!

      Åse [involuntarily]

      Jesus save us —!

      Peer

      Have you ever

       chanced to see the Gendin–Edge?

       Nigh on four miles long it stretches

       sharp before you like a scythe.

       Down o’er glaciers, landslips, scaurs,

       down the toppling grey moraines,

       you can see, both right and left,

       straight into the tarns that slumber,

       black and sluggish, more than seven

       hundred fathoms deep below you.

       Right along the Edge we two

       clove our passage through the air.

       Never rode I such a colt!

       Straight before us as we rushed

       ’twas as though there glittered suns.

       Brown-backed eagles that were sailing

       in the wide and dizzy void

       half-way ’twixt us and the tarns,

       dropped behind, like motes in air.

       Ice-floes on the shores broke crashing,

       but no murmur reached my ears.

       Only sprites of dizziness sprang,

       dancing, round;— they sang, they swung,

       circle-wise, past sight and hearing!

      ÅSE [dizzy]

      Oh, God save me!

      Peer

      All at once,

       at a desperate, break-neck spot,

       rose a great cock-ptarmigan,

       flapping, cackling, terrified,

       from the crack where he lay hidden

       at the buck’s feet on the Edge.

       Then the buck shied half around,

       leapt sky-high, and down we plunged

       both of us into the depths!

      [ÅSE totters, and catches at the trunk of a tree. PEER GYNT continues:]

      Mountain walls behind us, black,

       and below a void unfathomed!

       First we clove through banks of mist,

       then we clove a flock of sea-gulls,

       so that they, in mid-air startled,

       flew in all directions, screaming.

       Downward rushed we, ever downward.

       But beneath us something shimmered,

       whitish, like a reindeer’s belly.—

       Mother, ’twas our own reflection

       in the glass-smooth mountain tarn,

       shooting up towards the surface

       with the same wild rush of speed

       wherewith we were shooting downwards.

      Åse [gasping for breath]

      Peer! God help me —! Quickly, tell —!

      Peer

      Buck from over, buck from under,

       in a moment clashed together,

       scattering foam-flecks all around.

       There we lay then, floating, plashing,—

       But at last we made our way

       somehow to the northern shore;

       buck, he swam, I clung behind him:—

       I ran homewards —

      Åse

      But the buck, dear?

      Peer

      He’s there still, for aught I know;—

      [Snaps his fingers, turns on his heel, and adds:]

      catch him, and you’re welcome to him!

      Åse

      And your neck you haven’t broken?

       Haven’t broken both your thighs?

       and your backbone, too, is whole?

       Oh, dear Lord — what thanks, what praise,

       should be thine who helped my boy!

      

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