Again he tried, with no better
result; and a third time, full of wrath and chagrin, he guzzled at its
contents, but found that the liquor still foamed near to the brim. He
gave back the horn in disgust. Then Utgard-Loki proposed to him the
childish exercise of lifting his cat. Thor put his hands under Tabby's
belly, and, lifting with all his might, could only raise one foot from
the floor. He was a very Gulliver in Brobdignag. As a last resort, he
proposed to retrieve his tarnished reputation by wrestling with some
Utgardian; whereupon the king turned into the ring his old nurse, Elli,
a poor toothless crone, who brought Thor to his knees, and would have
thrown him, had not the king interfered. Poor Thor! The next morning he
took breakfast in a sad state of mind, and owned himself a shamefully
used-up individual. The fact was, he had strayed unconsciously amongst
the old brute powers of primitive Nature, as he ought to have perceived
by the size of the kids they wore. He had done better than he was aware
of, however. The three blows of his hammer had fallen on nothing less
than a huge mountain, instead of a giant, and left three deep glens
dinted into its surface; the drinking-horn, which he had undertaken to
empty, was the sea itself, or an outlet of the sea, which he had
perceptibly lowered; while the cat was in reality the Midgard Serpent,
which enringed the world in its coils, and the toothless she-wrestler
was Old Age! What wonder that Thor was brought to his knees? On finding
himself thus made game of, Thor grew wroth, but had to go his ways, as
the city of Utgard had vanished into thin air, with its cloud-capped
towers and enormous citizens.
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