Beyla said:
‘All the mountain-range shakes; I think Thor must be
on his way from home;
he’ll bring peace to the one who badmouths here
all the gods and men.’
Loki said:
‘Be silent, Beyla, you’re Byggvir’s wife
and much imbued with malice;
no worse disgrace came among the Æsir’s children,
you dung-splattered dairy-maid.’
Then Thor arrived and said:
‘Be silent, perverse creature, my mighty hammer
Miollnir shall deprive you of speech;
your shoulder-rock I shall strike off your neck,
and then your life will be gone.’
Loki said:
‘The son of Earth has now come in;
why are you raging so, Thor?
But you won’t be daring when you must fight against the wolf,
when he swallows Odin all up.’
Thor said:
‘Be silent, perverse creature, my mighty hammer
Miollnir shall deprive you of speech;
I shall throw you up on the roads to the east,
afterwards no one will ever see you.’
Loki said:
‘Your eastern journeys you should never
relate to people
since in the thumb of a glove you crouched cowering, you hero!
And then you didn’t seem like Thor.’
Thor said:
‘Be silent, perverse creature, my mighty hammer
Miollnir shall deprive you of speech;
with my right hand I’ll strike you, with Hrungnir’s killer,
so that every one of your bones will break.’
Loki said:
‘I intend to live for a good time yet,
though you threaten me with a hammer;
strong leather straps you thought Skrymir had,
and you couldn’t get at the food,
and you starved, unharmed but hungry.’
Thor said:
‘Be silent, perverse creature, my mighty hammer
Miollnir shall deprive you of speech;
Hrungnir’s killer will send you to hell,
down below the corpse-gate.’
Loki said:
‘I spoke before the Æsir, I spoke before the Æsir’s sons
what my spirit urged me,
but for you alone I shall go out,
for I know that you do strike.
‘Ale you brewed, Ægir, but you’ll never again
prepare a feast;
all your possessions that are here inside—
may flame play over them,
and your back be burnt!’
And after that Loki hid himself in the waterfall of Franangr, in the shape of a salmon. There the Æsir caught him. He was bound with the guts of his son Nari. But his son Narfi turned into a wolf. Skadi took a poisonous snake and fastened it over Loki’s face; poison dripped down from it. Sigyn, Loki’s wife, sat there and held a basin under the poison. But when the basin was full, she carried the poison out; and meanwhile the poison fell on Loki. Then he writhed so violently at this that all the earth shook from it; those are now called earthquakes.
- The Poetic Edda, Lokasenna