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been deaf, O my parents, to your voice; for my thoughts were fixed on Dargo. O that death would repeat on me his stroke! O that the wild boar had also torn Crimoina's breast! Then should I mourn on Morven no more, but joyfully go with my love on his cloud!

"Last night I slept on the heath by thy side; is there not room, this night, in thy shroud? Yes, beside thee I will lay me down; with thee, this night too, I will sleep, my love, my Dargo !'

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"We heard the faltering of her voice; we heard the faint note dying in her hand. We raised Dargo from his place.

Crimoina was no more.

But it was too late.

The harp dropped from

her hand. Her soul she breathed out in the song. She fell beside her Dargo."

Every reader may believe what he pleases of the translations from the Caledonian by Tacitus and John Smith. The historians are greater liars than the poets, without excepting Tacitus, who, however, poured his burning words upon tyrants, as quick lime is thrown upon corpses for the purpose of consuming them.

ANGLO-SAXONS AND DANES.

THE Anglo-Saxons, having succeeded the Romans, and the Danes having come in their turn to the partition of Great Britain, it would be almost impossible to take a separate view of literature during the epoch of the Anglo-Saxons and that of the Danes; I shall therefore treat of them together.

The Danes took with them their Scalds these mingled with the Welsh Bards. In Wales there were three things belonging to a free man that could not be seized for debt-his horse, his sword, and his harp. Whole nations, in their heroic age, are poets: people sang in battle, they sang at entertainments, they sang before death; they dreaded, above all things, dying in their beds, like women. Starcather, not having been fortunate enough to meet with death in fight, put a gold chain round his neck, and

declared that he would give it to the first passenger who would have the charity to rid him of his head. Siward, the Danish earl of Northumberland, ashamed of growing old, and fearing lest he should be carried off by disease, said to his friends: "Put on me my coat of mail; gird my sword by my side; place my helmet on my head, my buckler in my left hand, my gilt battle-axe in my right; that I may fall in the garb of a warrior."

On the field of battle, the sound of hymns, accompanied with the clash of arms, burst forth in so awful a manner that the Danes made their horses deaf lest they should be frightened by it.

Religion was on a level with these poetic manners. Fifteen young women and eighteen young men were one day playing at ball in a churchyard. Robert, the priest, who was reading mass, begged them to retire, but they only laughed at him. The priest prayed to God and St. Magnus to punish the impious crew by obliging them to sing and dance for a whole year. His prayer was granted. One of the party took by the hand his sister who was his partner in the dance; the arm came away from her body, but she lost not a drop of blood and kept dancing on. For the whole year round the dancers felt neither cold nor heat, neither

hunger, thirst, nor weariness; nor did their garments become the worse for wear. The incessant motion of their feet wore down the mould to such a degree that they sank in it to the waist. At the year's end, Bishop Hubert broke the invisible spell which bound the dancers, who immediately fell into a profound sleep, which lasted three days and three nights.

An old woman, named Thorbiorga, a famous sorceress, was summoned to the castle of Earl Torchill, to tell when the plague and the famine which were ravaging his domains should cease. Thorbiorga arrived towards evening; she had on a gown of green cloth buttoned from top to bottom; a collar of glass beads; a black lambskin lined with a white cat-skin on her head; calf-skin shoes, the hairy side inward, tied with leathern thongs; gloves of white cat-skin, the hair inside; an huntandic girdle from which hung a pouch full of magical scrawls. The sorceress supported her feeble body by means of a staff with copper ferule. She was received with high respect placed upon an elevated seat, she was treated with goat's milk porridge and the stewed hearts of different animals. The next day, Thorbiorga, after arranging her astrological instruments according to the celestial theme, ordered her young attendant, Godreda,

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to sing the magic invocation called vardtokur. Godreda obeyed, and sang in a voice so sweet that the household of Earl Torchill was quite transported. In those days most unfortunate would have been the wight who had not been born a poet.

Kings themselves were poets. Alfred the Great, Canute the Great, were the pride of the Walkiries. The Bards and the Scalds were feasted at the tables of princes, who loaded them with presents. "If I were to ask my host for the moon,' exclaimed a bard, "he would give it to me." Poets have always shown a fondness for the moon.

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Cædmon dreamt in verse, and composed poems in his sleep what is poetry but dreaming!

"I I know," said another bard, "a song that will soften iron; I know a song that will still the storm." These inspired personages were known by their looks: they seemed to be intoxicated their air and their gestures were designated by a particular term: skallvienglpoetic frenzy.

The Saxon Chronicle narrates in verse a victory gained by the Anglo-Saxons over the Danes; and the History of Norway preserves the apotheosis of a pirate of Denmark slain, with

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