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ment, and doomed his illustrious prisoner to perish with lingering pain in a dungeon, stung by venomous snakes. 48

THE Quida celebrates the depredations of Ragnar on various countries, from the Baltic to England, and on Flanders. It presents to us a view of one of the dreadful states of society in which our species have lived. Every incident is triumphantly described with the imagery of death, and the revolting circumstances attending human slaughter are recollected with exultation. Such were the people for whom the author composed this death-song, that, not content with equalling the pleasures of war to social festivity, and with remembering, without remorse, its destruction of youthful happiness"; he even extols it as rivalling one of the sweetest hours of life; "Was it not like that hour when my bright bride I seated by me on the couch ?" 45 What must have been the characters and the transactions of that nation, in which the conversation

43 2 Langb. 277. Saxo has been thought to place Ella in Ireland, but whoever reads the pages 176, 177, carefully, will see that he speaks of England. The Icelandic authors unanimously station him in Northumbria. This fact ascertains the time of Ragnar's death; for Ella usurped the Northumbrian crown in 862, and perished 867; therefore between these years Ragnar must have expired. The English chroniclers acknowledge that Lodbrog was killed in England ; but so imperfectly was the Northumbrian history known to them, that for the true history of Ragnar's fate, they substitute two contradictory tales. See Matt. West. 314-316., and Bromton, 802.

44"Delightful was the work at Sky, as when the damsels bring the wine." St. 18. "Pleasant was it at Ila's Straits, as when the wine-bearing Nioruns hand the warm streams."

"In the morning I saw struck down

The fair-hair'd wooer of the maiden,

And him whose converse was so sweet to the widow."

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45 Stanza 13., and see Stanza 24.

St. 19.

BOOK and sympathy of love, were felt to be but as charming as a battle!

IV.

WE may concede to the historical traditions of the North, and to the chroniclers of other nations, that Ragnar Lodbrog depredated with success on various parts of Europe, on the British islands, on Sweden, Norway, and the coasts round the Baltic. 46 We admit that he was one of those men whose may lives become models to their contemporaries; and that his activity and genius were fitted to give celebrity to bloodshed, and dignity to plunder. "Fifty and one times," as his Quida asserts, "his messenger, the spear, may have announced the distant enterprise." But it would be an extravagant aggrandisement of his fame, to attribute to him all the horrors which Northern piracy poured upon Europe in the first part of the ninth century. It is indeed a coincidence with his life, that till he lived, few and rare were the aggressions of the sea-king and the vikingr, beyond the northern Hellespont."7 But though he gave to the storm of depredation a new direction; yet when he had once burst beyond the precincts of the Baltic; when he had once crossed new oceans, and thrown the beam of glory round his course, we may believe that adventurers swarmed from every coast, eager to track his way. It is certain that after his life, new heroes appeared

46 We may refer to Saxo, 1. ix. p. 169. 177., with Stephanius's notes; to the Icelandic fragment, in 2 Langb. 270. 280.; to the Ragnar Saga; and to Torfæus, in his Series Dan. and his Hist. Norveg. for the northern account of the particular transactions of Ragnar. Johannes Magnus, and Loccenius, also mention his history.

47 The Baltic is called by some the Hellespont; as by Hevelius, in the Dedic. to his Selenographia. The use of this word has, I think, sometimes misled Northern authors to carry some of their heroes towards the Euxine, the Hellespont of Homer.

every year, and the seas were burthened with ever-succeeding fleets of such greedy and ruthless

savages.

It was the lot of Ragnar to have a numerous posterity 48, and all his passions were infused into his children, whom he educated to be sea-kings like himself. But as our history is concerned with his English exploits only, we will state them from his Quida, in its own language, and in the succession in which they are there placed.

THE Quida begins with Ragnar's attempt on Gothland, by which he obtained his wife Thora. This expedition, and others in Eyra-sound, or the Baltic; at the mouth of the Dwina; at Helsingia, in the bay of Finland; and against Herrauthr, his wife's father; at Scarpey, in Norway; at Uller Akri, near Upsal; at the Indoro Isles, in the bay of Drontheim; and on the island of Bornholm, occupy the first nine stanzas. After these exploits the sea-king comes nearer to the British shores, and begins his southern ravages with an attack on Flanders. This is followed by a bold invasion of England, in which he boasts of the death of the Anglo-Saxon Walthiofr.

We hewed with our swords

Hundreds, I declare lay

Round the horses of the Island-rocks,

At the English promontory.

We sailed to the battle

Six days before the hosts fell.

We chanted the mass of the spears

With the uprising sun.

43 According to Saxo, he had ten sons by his three wives, p. 169, 170. 172. The Ragnar Saga, ap. Torfæus, 346, 347., gives their mothers differently from Saxo.

CHAP.

III.

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CONFLICTS at Perth, and on the Orkneys, are then exultingly sung: another occurs afterwards in England.

Hard came the storm on the shield

Till they fell prone to the earth

On Northumbria's land.

On that morning was there

Any need for men to stimulate

The sport of Hillda, where the sharp
Lightnings bit the helmed skull ?

Was it not as when the young widow

On my seat of pre-eminence I saluted.50

EXPLOITS at the Hebrides; in Ireland; at another coast, where "the thorn of the sheath glided to the heart of Agnar," his son; at the Isle of Sky; and in the bay of Ila, on the Scottish coast, are triumphantly narrated. Another stanza fol

lows, which seems to make Lindisfarne the locality of the battle:

We had the music of swords in the morning

For our sports at Lindis-eyri

With three kingly heroes.

Many fell into the jaws of the wolf;

The hawk plucked the flesh with the wild beasts;

Few ought therefore to rejoice

That they came safe from the battle.

Ira's blood into the sea

Profusely fell; into the clear wave.51

He next records his expedition on the British

isle of Anglesey:

49 Lod. Quid. St. 11. John.
50 St. 15. p. 18.

p. 14.

61 St. 20. p. 24.

The swords bit the shields;
Red with gold resounded

The steel on the clothes of Hillda.
They shall see on Aungol's Eyri,

In the ages hereafter,

How we to the appointed play
Of heroes advanced.

Red were on the distant cape

The flying dragons of the river that gave wounds.52

AFTER two stanzas of eulogy on battles, he begins to commemorate his disastrous change of fortunes, and avows that it was unexpected to him:

It seems to me, from experience,

That we follow the decrees of the fates.

Few escape the statutes of the natal goddesses.
Never did I believe that from Ella
The end of my life would come,
When I strewed the bloody slaughter,
And urged my planks on the lakes.
Largely we feasted the beasts of prey

Along the bays of Scotland. 53

BUT he consoles himself with his belief in his

pagan mythology:

It delights me continually

That the seats of Baldor's father
I know are strewed for guests.
We shall drink ale immediately
From the large hollowed sculls.
Youths grieve not at death

In the mansions of dread Fiolner.
I come not with the words of fear
Into the hall of Vithris.54

He animates his spirit as the adders sting him, with the remembrance of his children, as if he anticipated their fierce revenge for his sufferings:

52 St. 21. p. 24. 54 St. 25. p. 28.

53 St. 24. p. 28.

CHAP.
III.

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