Note 171 — Chapter VI · LINGUISTIC INFLUENCES.
Reading edition
There is an interesting account of the gelt in the Old Norse Konungs Skuggsjá (Speculum Regale):
“It happens that when two hosts meet and are arranged in battle-array, and when the battle-cry is raised loudly on both sides, cowardly men run wild and lose their wits from the dread and fear which seize them. And they run into a wood away from other men, and live there like beasts and shun the meeting of men like wild beasts. And it is said of these men then when they have lived in the woods in that condition for twenty years, that feathers grew on their bodies like birds, whereby their bodies are protected against frost and cold…”
Cf. Kuno Meyer: On the Irish Mirabilia in the Old Norse “Speculum Regale” (Eríu, Vol. IV., pp. 11-12).
This bears a striking resemblance to a certain passage in the mediæval romance Cath Muighe Rath (Battle of Moy Rath, p. 232. Ed. by O’Donovan). It may also be compared with another romance, which probably dates from the same period, viz., Buile Suibhne, (The Madness of Suibhne, ed. by J. G. O’Keefe for the Irish Texts Society). Cf. also Hávamál (ed. Gering), str. 129, etc.