Now comes in a juggler. He can perform many tricks, and among them is that of keeping three daggers in motion, so that one is always in his hand and the two others in the air. Further, he offers to show his skill on the following day by stepping from oar to oar on the outside of a ship while it is being rowed. He will step thus from stem to stern and back again, and moreover will keep his three daggers moving all the time. The challenge is accepted and he shall have his choice of presents from Hrafn if he can succeed in doing what he says he will.
Challenges are in the air, it seems. Here is Bersi, one of Hrafn’s karls, challenging Egil, a karl of Ulf, because he finds that while he has been away from home Egil has married the maiden to whom he was betrothed. And Bersi is not at all pleased with the course of events, so he has challenged the other karl for his wife. To-morrow they will go to the holmgang,[[18]] and fight it out; and if Egil is not the victor, he will lose his wife and Bersi will gain one.
The excitement caused by Bersi’s challenge is dying down when further excitement arises from the entrance of a karl with news of a strange sight to be seen in the sky. It had been a dark, cloudy night, but suddenly the clouds broke up and there between two clouds appeared a star with a long light streaming from it like a tail of fire. It is there for all to see if they don’t believe him.
So a rush is made for the men’s door and the hall is left deserted. Outside there are groups of wondering men looking upwards at a bright ‘hairy star,’ and asking one another with bated breath what evil fortune to their land this marvellous sight portends.
X.
TWO FAMOUS BATTLES OF LONG AGO.
In 901 died Alfred, King of the West Saxons, and Edward, his son, succeeded him, to be succeeded in turn by his son Aethelstan in the year 925. King Alfred had, it will be remembered, agreed with Guthrum the Dane to divide England into two parts, one of which each of them should rule.
But Alfred’s son Edward enlarged his power so greatly that he was in 924 ‘chosen to father and lord by the Scots King and all the Scots people, by all the men of Northumbria—both English and Danes and Northmen—and by the King of the Strathclyde Welsh.’ To Aethelstan was accorded still greater honour, for it fell to his lot to be the first king crowned as ‘King of England.’
Now in the reign of Aethelstan there took place the greatest battle that had yet been fought between the English and the Northmen. The compact of Edward’s reign was short-lived; for in 937 the Danes of Northumbria entered into a league with Constantine, King of the Scots, and Owen, King of the Strathclyde Britons, against the King of England. Their league was joined also by two Norse Kings from Ireland, named Anlaf, one of whom had married the daughter of Constantine. To meet these disturbers of the peace Aethelstan marched north, and at a place known as Brunanburh the famous battle between them was fought.
So great was the victory here won by King Aethelstan that the chronicler who records it bursts into song when he tells how
Aethelstan the King, the lord of Earls,