With red woof filled
By maiden friends
Of Randver's slayer.
II.
That web is warped
With human entrails,
And is hard weighted
With heads of people;
Bloodstained darts
Do for treadles,
The forebeam's ironbound
The reed's of arrows;
Swords be sleys39
For this web of war.
III.
Hild goes to weave
And Hiorthrimol
Sangrid and Svipol
With swords unsheathed.
Shafts will crack
And shields will burst,
The dog of helms
Will drop on byrnies.
IV.
Wind we, wind we
Web of javelins
Such as the young king
Has waged before.
Forward we go
And rush to the fray,
Where our friends
Engage in fighting.
V.
Wind we, wind we
Web of javelins
Where forward rush
The fighters' standards.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
VI.
Wind we, wind we
Web of javelins,
And faithfully
The king we follow.
Nor shall we leave
His life to perish;
Among the doomed
Our choice is ample.
VII.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
There Gunn and Gondul
Who guarded the king
Saw borne by men
Bloody targets.
VIII.
That race will now
Rule the country
Which erstwhile held
But outer nesses.
The mighty king,
Meweens, is doomed.
Now pierced by points
The Earl hath fallen.
IX.
Such bale will now
Betide the Irish
As ne'er grows old
To minding men.
The web's now woven
The wold made red,
Afar will travel
The tale of woe.
X:
An awful sight
The eye beholdeth
As blood-red clouds
Are borne through heaven;
The skies take hue
Of human blood,
Whene'er fight-maidens
Fall to singing.
XI. Willing we chant
Of the youthful king
A lay of victory—
Luck to our singing!
But he who listens
Must learn by heart
This spear-maid's song
And spread it further.
XII.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
On bare-backed steeds
We start out swiftly
With swords unsheathed
From hence away.
The nine centuries, above referred to, of Roman invasion, intestine war, and ecclesiastical rivalry between the Pictish, Columban and Catholic Churches had now, under Malcolm II, produced a kingdom of Scotland, throughout which the Catholic was in a fair way to become the predominant Church, and in which the authority of the Scottish Crown was for the time being, nominally, but in the north merely nominally, supreme on the mainland from the Tweed to the Pentland Firth. The Isles of Orkney and Shetland and the whole of the Sudreyar or Hebrides, however, owed allegiance, whether their jarls admitted it or not, to the Crown of Norway, and the Scottish kings had no authority over them.40 Moreover, the Northmen—Danes and Norsemen and Gallgaels—held the western seas from the Butt of Lewis to the Isle of Man, and they had severed the connection between the Scots of Ulster and the Scots of Argyll. The latter had thus been forced to move eastwards, in order to avoid constant raids by the Irish Danes and Norsemen and the Gallgaels, who thus possessed themselves of all the coast of Scotland then known as Airergaithel or Argyll, which extended up to Ross and Assynt, west of the Drumalban watershed.
Of the next nine centuries from 1000 to the present time it is proposed to deal with the first two hundred and seventy years only, which, with the preceding century and a half, form a chapter of Scottish history complete in itself. The narrative, as already stated, will be based largely upon the great Stories or Tales known as the Orkneyinga, St. Magnus', and Hakonar Sagas, and also upon Scottish and English chronicles and records so far as they throw their fitful light upon the northern counties of Scotland, and especially upon Caithness and Sutherland, during the dark periods between these Sagas.
Attention will have to be paid to the Pictish family of Moldan of Duncansby, of Moddan, created Earl of Caithness by his uncle Duncan I, and of Moddan "in Dale," each of whom in turn succeeded to much of the estates of the ancient Maormors of Duncansby, but whose people had been driven back from most of the best low-lying lands into the upper valleys and the hills by the foreign invaders of Cat. For, when the Norse Vikings first attacked Cat and succeeded in conquering the Picts there, they conquered by no means the whole of that province. They subdued and held only that part of Ness or modern Caithness which lies next its north and east coasts, and the rest of the sea-board of Ness, Strathnavern and Sudrland, forcing their way up the lower parts of the valleys of these districts, as their place-names still live on to prove; but