King Magnus in the Marsh at Downpatrick
As the dust-cloud came nearer they saw that it was their own men driving the cattle. The Irish king had been faithful to his friends and had sent the kine. Thereupon they all turned to go back to the ships; but the passage was so miry that they could go but slowly and in single file over the boggy places. As they were making their way thus, suddenly from every side up started the Irish and set upon them. Every mound or bushy point seemed to hold an enemy. Fighting began instantly, but in the order in which they were going, divided into various bands and marching singly on a raised passage of ground, they were a good mark for the Irish, and they kept dropping one by one along the route.
Eyvind said to the King: “This retreat is going to be unfortunate for our people; what counsel shall we give them?”
“Blow the war-horn,” said Magnus, “and bid them form themselves as well as they can into a body with their shields linked closely together, and so retreat backward under cover of their shields; as soon as we get on to firm ground out of this treacherous morass we shall clear ourselves fast enough.”
This was done, but though the Irish fell in crowds under their arrows and spears, two seemed to appear out of the marsh for every one who dropped. At one very difficult and swampy piece of ground where there were few places on which they could stand or pass the Norsemen fell in great numbers. The King called one of his lords and bade him take his men out across a ditch to some points of higher ground and shoot from there, while he and the main body got across the bog. But as soon as ever these Northmen found themselves safe at the other side of the ditch, thinking that they had had enough of it, they made off as fast as they could to the ships, leaving their comrades in the lurch.
“Alas that ever I made thee a great man!” said the King when he saw this; “thou art deserting thy friends and thy King like a coward!”
At the same moment King Magnus was wounded severely by a spear, which passed through both his legs above the knees. Laying hold on the spear-shaft between his legs, the King broke it in two, crying out: “This is how we break spear-shafts, my lads. On with you all! Nothing hurts me.”
But it was not long afterward that, as he stumbled along on his wounded legs, an Irishman came up behind and struck him in the neck with an Irish axe, and that was his death-wound. He fell, and those around him fled. But his man, Vidkun Jonson, smote down the Irishman who had killed his master, and escaped, carrying with him the royal banner, and the King’s sword, Segbit. But he was thrice wounded as he ran. He was the last man who got to the ships alive. Many great people fell with Magnus, but more of the Irish died than of the Norse. Those who got to the ships sailed away at once, and took refuge in the Orkney Islands. Magnus was thirty years old when he fell at Downpatrick, in Ulster. He was beloved by his people, and there was quiet at home in Norway in his days. But the bondes thought him harsh, and they were oppressed by the heavy levies he had to raise for his war-expeditions. He was buried in Ireland. He was so fond of that country that in the last song he made, when his followers were trying to persuade him to leave Ireland and return to his capital of Nidaros (now Drontheim) in Norway, he sang:
“Why should we think of faring homeward?
I shall not go back in the autumn to the ladies of Nidaros.