THORSTEIN OF THE MERE: A SAGA OF THE NORTHMEN IN LAKELAND.
[Illustration: Thorstein finds Thurston-water.]
[Illustration]
THORSTEIN OF THE MERE: A SAGA
OF THE NORTHMEN IN LAKELAND:
BY W. G. COLLINGWOOD.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD,
Publisher to the India Office.
T. WILSON, PRINTER, KENDAL.
1895.
(_All rights reserved._)
TO R. C.
Thorstein is yours. You’ve made him yours
By masterful appropriation:
As long as right of might endures
I dare no other dedication,
Whatever name allures.
You’ve seized my copy and revise,
Absorbed the proofs, devoured the pages,
Retold the tale in travesties,
And sketched and played the personages
In many a quaint disguise.
Thanks, Robin: for the wide world o’er
A writer asks no finer flattery,
No kinder fate of all in store,
Than Five-years-old’s assault and battery
Demanding more and more.
But now to risk the wider test.
Of one applauding hand I’m certain,—
Let doubts and fears go unconfessed.
So stop the fiddle,—lift the curtain,—
And, puppets, play your best.
[Illustration: GREENODD ON THE LEVEN]
HERE BEGINS THE STORY OF THORSTEIN OF THE MERE.
CHAPTER I.
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN.
There was a man called Swein, who came into our country once upon a time,
and built a house at Greenodd on the Leven. His father Biorn had been a
landholder in Norway, ploughing his own acres, and living in health and
wealth, until King Harald Fairhair fell upon the people, and fought with
them and made himself lord and master. Then, it is well known, good men
of the old sort, who could not abide to see new laws made and old laws
undone, took to their ships and sailed away west. Some of them landed in
Iceland; some went to Orkney, and others wandered about the coasts of the
Irish Sea to find a home; and wherever they could get shelter and safety,
there they settled.
Biorn, with his people and his young child Swein, came to the South
Isles, as they called them then,—the Western Isles we call them nowadays.
He lived as best he might, and died at last in battle, when Harald swept
the vikings from out of the seas between Lewis and Man. But Swein found
friends and plenty of work; for there was always farming to do in spring
and fighting in summer; and in the end he wedded well, and sat down under
Bardi Ottarson, who was then the chief among the Northmen in the Isle of
Man. For by this time Ketel Flatnose and his folk were gone to Iceland,
and the good King Orry was not yet come therefrom.
Unna was wife to Swein Biornson. She was the child of a viking akin to
Olaf the White, the great King of Dublin, and her mother was Irish.
Unna was a notable dame, and Swein was the sort of man who could serve
his friends; so that they were both well thought of in the island, and
hoped for a safe home there. But before long came Ragnwald the Dane,
of the sons of Ivar, he that was king in Waterford for a little while
afterwards; and he killed Bardi and most of his people in a sea-fight.
Then Swein fled out of the battle hastily, and took his wife and whatever
he could lay hands on, and steered for the far-away blue fells that
showed under the morning sun, over against the Manx fells. For he knew
that some of his kinsfolk had already found lodging on the coasts of
Galloway and Cumberland and Wales, where the land was no man’s land at
that time; and creeks and firths among the hills gave them sheltered
hiding places, well out of sight when great fleets swept the high seas
and ravaged the open shore.
When Black Comb grew tall on the skyline, arose a stormy north-easter,
and drove him down the Cumberland coast, until he made Furness, the great
foreland in the bay of Morecambe. When the wind fell, the tide flowed,
and carried him up a broad firth like a gate into the hills. Upward he
drifted, spying on all sides for a good landing spot; and try as he
might to the shoreward, he ran upon sand, and never came nigh the soil.
But in a while he turned round a green point, high and rocky and covered
with trees, standing out into the deep channel. Behind it was a green
field, even with the water, snug and sheltered among hanging woods. A
great beck flowed through the field to meet the broad firth. There were
no people to be seen, nor smoke of houses, nor cattle about in the good
lea-land. And the channel of the river at last came in-shore. So he
stayed there, and called that green point in his language _Græn Oddi_,
and Greenodd it is called to this day.