Fiolxhildis

Mihi Duracoto nomen est, patria Islandia, quam veteres Thulen dixêre: mater erat Fiolxhildis, quæ nuper mortua, scribendi mihi peperit licentiam, cujus rei cupiditate pridem arsi. Dum viveret, hoc diligenter egit, ne scriberem. Dicebat enim, multos esse perniciosos osores artium, qui quod præ hebetudine mentis non capiunt, id calumnientur: legesque figant injuriosas humano generi; quibus sanè legibus non pauci damnati, Heclæ voraginibus fuerint absorpti. Quod nomen esset patri meo, ipsa nunquam dixit, piscatorem fuisse, et centum quinquaginta annorum senem, decessisse perhibebat, me tertium ætatis annum agente, cùm ille septuagesimum plus minus annum in suo vixisset matrimonio.

My name is Duracotus. My homeland is Iceland, which the ancients called Thule. My mother was Fiolxhilde. Her recent death has set me free to write, as I have long burned to do. While she lived, she took great care that I should not write. She said there are many dangerous people who hate the arts. What they are too dull to understand, they slander, and they make laws that harm the human race. Under those laws, not a few people have been condemned and swallowed up in the chasms of Hekla. She never told me my father’s name. She said he was a fisherman and died an old man of a hundred and fifty, when I was in my third year. He had been married for about seventy years.

Ipse itaque relictis, Dæmone narrante, et auditoribus, Duracoto filio cum matre Fiolxhildi, ut erant obvolutis capitibus, ad me reversus, verè caput pulvnari, corpus stragulis obvolutum deprehendi.

So I left the daemon still talking, and his listeners, Duracotus and his mother Fiolxhilde, with their heads still wrapped up. I came back to myself and found that in truth my head was on a pillow and my body wrapped in blankets.