which he is much noised of in Snorro and the Sagas: by this Slim-Deacon, Gylle was put an end to (murdered by night, drunk in his sleep); and poor blind Magnus was brought out, and again set to act as King, or King's Cloak, in hopes Gylle's posterity would never rise to victory more. But Gylle's posterity did, to victory and also to defeat, and were the death of Maguus and of Slim-Deacon too, in a frightful way; and all got their own death by and by in a ditto. In brief, these two kindreds (reckoned to be authentic enough Haarfagr people, both kinds of them) proved now to have become a veritable crop of dragon's teeth; who mutually fought, plotted, struggled, as if it had been their life's business; never ended fighting, and seldom long intermitted it, till they had exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in death. One of these later Gylle temporary Kings I remember by the name of Harald Herdebred, Harald of the Broad Shoulders. The very last of them I think was Harald Mund (Harald of the Wry-Mouth), who gave rise to two Impostors, pretending to be Sons of his, a good while after the poor Wry-Mouth itself and all its troublesome belongings were quietly underground. What Norway suffered during that sad century may be imagined.

CHAPTER XIV.

SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON THE OLD.

THE end of it was, or rather the first abatement, and beginning of the end, That, when all this had gone on ever worsening for some forty years or so, one Sverrir (A.D. 1177), at the head of an armed mob of poor people called Birkebeins, came upon the scene. A strange enough figure in History, this Sverrir and his Birkebeins! At first a mere mockery and dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened Norway public. Nevertheless by unheard-of fighting, hungering, exertion, and endurance, Sverrir, after ten years of such a death-wrestle

against men and things, got himself accepted as King; and by wonderful expenditure of ingenuity, common cunning, unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or almost Popular Preaching, and (it must be owned) general human faculty and valor (or value) in the overclouded and distorted state, did victoriously continue such. And founded a new Dynasty in Norway, which ended only with Norway's separate existence, after near three hundred years.

This Sverrir called himself a Son of Harald Wry-Mouth; but was in reality the son of a poor Comb-maker in some little town of Norway; nothing heard of Sonship to WryMouth till after good success otherwise. His Birkebeins (that is to say, Birchlegs; the poor rebellious wretches having taken to the woods; and been obliged, besides their intolerable scarcity of food, to thatch their bodies from the cold with whatever covering could be got, and their legs especially with birch bark; sad species of fleecy hosiery; whence their nickname), — his Birkebeins I guess always to have been a kind of Norse Jacquerie: desperate rising of thralls and indigent people, driven mad by their unendurable sufferings and famishings, theirs the deepest stratum of misery, and the densest and heaviest, in this the general misery of Norway, which had lasted towards the third generation and looked as if it would last forever: - whereupon they had risen proclaiming, in this furious dumb manner, unintelligible except to Heaven, that the same could not, nor would not, be endured any longer! And, by their Sverrir, strange to say, they did attain a kind of permanent success; and, from being a dismal laughing-stock in Norway, came to be important, and for a time all-important there. Their opposition nicknames, "Baglers (from Bagall, baculus, bishop's staff; Bishop Nicholas being chief Leader)," " Gold-legs," and the like obscure terms (for there was still a considerable course of counter-fighting ahead, and especially of counter-nicknaming), I take to have meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, "bloated Aristocracy," "tyrannous Bourgeoisie," — till, in the next century, these rents were closed again!

King Sverrir, not himself bred to comb-making, had, in

his fifth year, gone to an uncle, Bishop in the Faroe Islands; and got some considerable education from him, with a view to Priesthood on the part of Sverrir. But, not liking that career, Sverrir had fled and smuggled himself over to the Birkebeins; who, noticing the learned tongue, and other miraculous qualities of the man, proposed to make him Captain of them; and even threatened to kill him if he would not accept, which thus at the sword's point, as Sverrir says, he was obliged to do. It was after this that he thought of becoming son of Wry-Mouth and other higher things.

His Birkebeins and he had certainly a talent of campaigning which has hardly ever been equalled. They fought like devils against any odds of number; and before battle they have been known to march six days together without food, except, perhaps, the inner barks of trees, and in such clothing and shoeing as mere birch bark: at one time, somewhere in the Dovrefjeld, there was serious counsel held among them whether they should not all, as one man, leap down into the frozen gulfs and precipices, or at once massacre one another wholly, and so finish. Of their conduct in battle, fiercer than that of Buresarks, where was there ever seen the parallel? In truth they are a dim strange object to one, in that black time; wondrously bringing light into it withal; and proved to be, under such unexpected circumstances, the beginning of better days!

Of Sverrir's public speeches there still exist authentic specimens; wonderful indeed, and much characteristic of such a Sverrir. A comb-maker King, evidently meaning several good and solid things; and effecting them too, athwart such an element of Norwegian chaos-come-again. His descendants and successors were a comparatively respectable kin. The last and greatest of them I shall mention is Hakon VII., or Hakon the Old; whose fame is still lively among us, from the Battle of Largs at least.

CHAPTER XV.

HAKON THE OLD AT LARGS.

IN the Norse annals our famous Battle of Largs makes small figure, or almost none at all among Hakon's battles and feats. They do say indeed, these Norse annalists, that the King of Scotland, Alexander III. (who had such a fate among the crags about Kinghorn in time coming), was very anxious to purchase from King Hakon his sovereignty of the Western Isles; but that Hakon pointedly refused; and at length, being again importuned and bothered on the business, decided on giving a refusal that could not be mistaken. Decided, namely, to go with a big expedition, and look thoroughly into that wing of his Dominions; where no doubt much has fallen awry since Magnus Barefoot's grand visit thither, and seems to be inviting the cupidity of bad neighbors! "All this we will put right again," thinks Hakon, "and gird it up into a safe and defensive posture." Hakon sailed accordingly, with a strong fleet; adjusting and rectifying among his Hebrides as he went long, and landing withal on the Scotch coast to plunder and punish as he thought fit. The Scots say he had claimed of them Arran, Bute, and the Two Cumbraes ("given my ancestors by Donald Bain," said Hakon, to the amazement of the Scots) "as part of the Sudöer" (Southern Isles): so far from selling that fine kingdom! — and that it was after taking both Arran and Bute that he made his descent at Largs.

Of Largs there is no mention whatever in Norse books. But beyond any doubt, such is the other evidence, Hakon did land there; land and fight, not conquering, probably rather beaten; and very certainly "retiring to his ships," as in either case he behooved to do! It is further certain he was dreadfully maltreated by the weather on those wild coasts; and altogether credible, as the Scotch records bear, that he was

so at Largs very specially. The Norse Records or Sagas say merely, he lost many of his ships by the tempests, and many of his men by land fighting in various parts, tacitly including Largs, no doubt, which was the last of these misfortunes to him. "In the battle here he lost 15,000 men, say the Scots, we 5,000"! Divide these numbers by ten, and the excellently brief and lucid Scottish summary by Buchanan may be taken as the approximately true and exact.1 Date of the battle is A.D. 1263.

To this day, on a little plain to the south of the village, now town, of Largs, in Ayrshire, there are seen stone cairns and monumental heaps, and, until within a century ago, one huge, solitary, upright stone; still mutely testifying to a battle there, altogether clearly, to this battle of King Hakon's; who by the Norse records, too, was in these neighborhoods at that same date, and evidently in an aggressive, high kind of humor. For "while his ships and army were doubling the Mull of Cantire, he had his own boat set on wheels, and therein, splendidly enough, had himself drawn across the Promontory at a flatter part," no doubt with horns sounding, banners waving. "All to the left of me is mine and Norway's," exclaimed Hakon in his triumphant boat progress, which such disasters soon followed.

Hakon gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made for Orkney. It is possible enough, as our Guide Books now say, he may have gone by Iona, Mull, and the narrow seas inside of Skye; and that the Kyle-Akin, favorably known to sea-bathers in that region, may actually mean the Kyle (narrow strait) of Hakon, where Hakon may have dropped anchor, and rested for a little while in smooth water and beautiful environment, safe from equinoctial storms. But poor Hakon's heart was now broken. He went to Orkney; died there in the winter; never beholding Norway more.

He it was who got Iceland, which had been a Republic for four centuries, united to his kingdom of Norway: a long and intricate operation, — much presided over by our Snorro

1 Buchanani Hist. i. 130.