have been, and how very richly they have been repaid. You owe greater obligations to King Eric than you do to Egill, and it is unseemly that you should take up so hotly the cause of such a man of violence."

Then said Arinbjörn: "If you, Sire and Gunnhild, have made up your minds not to receive any atonement from Egill for wrongs by him committed, then, at least, give him a week's law, that he may seek safety, remembering that he came here voluntarily, and for a pacific purpose."

Gunnhild broke in with: "It is clear as daylight that you hold Egill in higher esteem than you do Eric.”

Arinbjörn proceeded, without noticing her interruption: "Allow Egill a week, and he will go to King Athelstan. It will in no way conduce to your credit, Sire! to kill in cold blood a bonder's son, who came from beyond the seas with words of good will in his mouth seeking your forgiveness. And this, I let you and Gunnhild plainly understand, that I make the cause of Egill my own. It will cost you a heavy price, Sire to take his head; for I and my men, as well as those of Egill, will fight for his life till the last of us falls."

"At that price," answered the king, after a pause for consideration, "I would not wittingly buy Egill's blood, although he has richly deserved death."

Suddenly, when the king had finished speaking, Egill began the recitation of his poem, in a clear sonorous voice; and instantly silence ensued in the hall.

In the song are twenty-one stanzas, and but three can be given here as a sample of the style of poetry in vogue in the tenth century among the northern people. Such poetry consisted in alliteration, and, above all, in never calling anything by its name, but employing periphrases in its place. As for poetical ideas, as we understand them, there are none.

1 Odin.

2 The gift of poetry. In the spring.

"Westward I sail'd o'er the sea,

Vithar1 himself gave to me

The ichor of his breast.2

And with joy I roamed

When riven the ice-floes,3
Forth thrust I the oak tree1
From my mind's chamber,”
Full of my praises,

And learned it by heart.

A ship, i.e. the song launched like a ship. The fancy.

Listen to me, Sire!
Never forgetting

What I am chanting,

Bold, without fear;

For the world wotteth
How thou hast slaughtered

Men, gladding Odin,

On battlefield.

Rent was the buckler,

Red-dyed the sword-blade,

As it dripped blood;

Laughed the Valkyrie

Lo! the small streams ran

Like to a river,

Far o'er the fields rang

Loud the steeds' clangour." "1

Eric sat immovable while Egill recited his poem, watching him narrowly. When the song was concluded, he said: "The lay is very good indeed, and I have considered what I will do, for Arinbjörn's sake. Thou, Egill, shalt depart hence unharmed, because I will do nothing dastardly such as it might be esteemed. if I killed a man who had voluntarily placed himself in my power. But from the moment that thou leavest the hall, thou shalt never come before my eyes again, or before those of my sons. And remember, this is no reconciliation between me and my kinsfolk and thee."

Thus Egill bought his head by a song, and that song is, therefore, called the Höfudlausn, or the head ransom. Then Arinbjörn accompanied Egill south, with a hundred and twenty men, and they parted with much affection, and Egill went to King Athelstan.

Eric Bloodaxe remained as viceroy in York little more than a year after his appointment. But, on the other hand, Snorri Sturlason, in the Heimskringla, says that Eric left shortly after the death of Athelstan, which occurred in 941. During the time he was viceroy in York, as Snorri tells us, as he had little land, he went on a cruise every summer, and plundered in Shetland, the Hebrides, Ireland, and Wales, by which he gathered wealth." On the death of Athelstan, according to the same. authority, when Edmund came to the throne, Eric finding that

1 There is less need for giving the whole of this poem, as it is given, with translation, in the Corpus Poeticum

Boreale of Vigussen and Powell, Oxford, 1883.

The Icelandic 100 always means the full 120.

he was in no favour with Edmund, and suspecting that the English king intended to dispossess him, "set off on a viking cruise to the westward; and from the Orkneys took with him. the Earls Arnkell and Erlend, sons of Earl Torf Einarr. Then he sailed to the Hebrides, where there were many vikings and kings, collecting men, and these joined their forces to his. With all this host he steered to Ireland first, whence he drew all the men he could, and sailed thereafter south to England, and maurauded there as elsewhere. The people fled before him wherever he appeared."

Edmund died in 946, and was succeeded by his brother Edred, who almost at once proceeded to Northumbria, where he received the homage of Archbishop Wulfotan, of York, and the principal men of the country, in 947. But soon after this, the Chronicle informs us that the Northumbrians recalled Eric and elected him king. He answered the call, and went to York, along with Gunnhild and his sons.

Edred immediately marched into Northumbria and burnt the monastery of Ripon, 948, "and as the king went homewards, then the army of York overtook him; the rear of the king's forces was at Chesterford, and there they made great slaughter. Then was the king so wrath that he would have marched his forces in again, and wholly destroyed the land. When the Northumbrian Witan understood that, they forsook Eric, and made composition for the deed with King Edred."

The Chronicle goes on to say: "949. This year Aulaf (Olaf) Cuaran came to Northumberland," and in 952, “This year the Northumbrians expelled King Aulaf, and received Eric, Harald's son (Bloodaxe)." 954. This year the Northumbrians expelled Eric, and Edred obtained the kingdom of the Northumbrians." There is a mistake in the date. Matthew of Westminster would seem to have had some independent source of information, for he enters into particulars not found in the Chronicle, and places not the expulsion only, but the death of Eric in 950. "King Eilric, with his son Henry and his brother Reginald, were treacherously slain in a desolate place called Stanmore, through the treachery of Count Osulf, and by the hand of the Commander, Mace; after that, Edred reigned over these provinces." In Henry the son and Reginald the brother we recognise Harek and Rögnvald, stated in the Heimskringla to have fallen with Eric. Those who fell, according to Snorri, were Guthorm and his two sons Ivar and Harek,

Sigurd and Rögnvald, and the two sons of the Earl of Orkney. "A dreadful battle, in which many Englishmen fell; but for one who fell came three in his place out of the country behind, and when evening came on the loss of men turned to the side of the Northmen. . . . . When Gunnhild and her sons knew for certain that King Eric had fallen, after having plundered the land of the king of England, they thought there was no peace to be expected from them; and they made themselves ready to depart from Northumbria, with all the ships King Eric had left, and all the men who would follow them. They took also all the loose property and goods which they had gathered, partly as taxes in England, partly as booty on their expeditions. With their host they first steered northward to Orkney."

The Rey cross at Stanmoor, between Richmond, Westmorland, and Cumberland, marks the site of the battle. Unhappily, it is now but a fragment, but we have a seventeenth century description of it before it was mutilated.

The name of Osulf is known to us as High Sheriff of Bamborough, in a diploma of 949. The Saga of Hakon the Good affirms that after the death of their father, the sons of Eric directed their attacks upon Norway, and these attacks, we know, occurred in 950, 952, and 954, making it probable that Matthew of Westminster's date, 950, for the death of Eric is correct.

The Egill's Saga also informs us that the death of Eric was at but a little interval from that of Athelstan.1

Gunnhild had a lay composed in honour of Eric, and it is interesting, though preserved in only a fragmentary condition. It shows us how little impression Christianity had made on some who rather prided themselves on having renounced paganism. It consisted of a dialogue between Odin and Bragi, the god of poetry, and Sigmund, the father of Sigurd the dragon slayer.