There were with him more than five hundred huntsmen, armed with bows, arrows, knives, and spears; and they had with them at least two hundred of the strong, wiry, rough-haired Scottish hounds, to scour the hills for game.
For many days the sport was carried over hill and through valley; and every night the hunters formed a camp. A fire was lighted of fuel piled up as high a house, and often the houses of the poor were unroofed for the purpose.
The glare of this great fire was visible at midnight from the mountains of Pomona and the Pentland Skerries far away out in the lonely ocean. Around it were scores of pots and kettles boiling salmon and chickens; and thereat were heathcocks, capercailzie, ptarmigan, venison, boars' hams, and partridges, being baked, broiled, roasted, or stewed; while ale, usquebaugh, and wines from Burgundy and the Flemings of Ostende were drunk by the roystering huntsmen, who often danced hand in hand round the vast roaring pyramid of flame, as their pagan sires were wont to do at the Baal-tein feasts of old, and if one by chance fell in, the fun was all the greater.
At times they would fill their cups to the brim. and standing in a circle round Morrar na Shean, whose goblet was full of wine, of ale, and of usquebaugh mixed together, they shouted,—
"Oh! Lord, let the world be turned upside down, that brave men may make bread out of it!"
And then the cups were drained and, amid wild hurrahs, flung high into the air.
Morrar na Shean, though he lived in so early an age of Scottish history, was not without some skill in mechanics, for we are informed that "there was a chest or some kind of machine fixed in the mouth of the stream below the castle (of Lochmore), for catching salmon in their ingress into the loch, or their egress out of it, and that immediately on the fish being entangled in the machine, the capture was announced to the family by the ringing of a bell, which the struggles of the fish set in motion, by means of a fine cord, one end of which was attached to a bell in the middle of an upper room, and the other end to the machine in the stream below."
This was an ingenious fish-trap; but while the Lord of the Venison pursued his more furious sports and drunken orgies, the poor Princess Gunhilda was left in utter loneliness at the castle of Braal; and the long nights which her husband spent in roystering among his wild followers, were passed by her, often in tears, and at the deeply arched windows of the lofty hall or of her bower chamber, watching the merry dancers, the streamers of the northern lights, which made her think of her Danish home, of her mother's farewell kiss, of the castle of Axel-huis, and the green, waving woods of Zealand.
Harold was soon weary of his wife, for her extreme gentleness tired him, and he loved her not, though he longed for a son—a little Count of Orkney—to heir his vast possessions, and in whose baby face he might see his own ferocious visage reflected.
He prayed at holy wells, and, candle in hand, he went bare-foot in sackcloth garments, with ashes on his head, to every shrine of sanctity in the Northern Isles; he sent gifts to Adam the bishop, and offerings to the altar of St. Magnus at Kirkwall, with silver lamps, rich garments, candles of perfumed wax, and jars of oil and wine; seeking in return of the prebendaries only their prayers that he might have a son; but on the Yule-day of 1153, the countess had a daughter, whom she named after her mother the queen, Algiva.