“Priests and widows let him defend,
And his reign, I trow, will not be brief;
The outlaw crew let him pursue,
And hang unpitying every thief.
“These are the first things I request,
And now I’ll crave another thing;
Ye’ll bury me with my ancestry
In our Lady’s Church as beseems your King.”
To Bergen’s shore came tidings o’er
Which made the hearts of the dauntless faint:
“Hacon is dead, our regal head,
Relation near to Olaf Saint.”
In Orkney isle expir’d the King,
On a Thursday morning that befell;
’Twas Pentecost when the King they lost,
The mighty King whom they lov’d so well.
From high Kirkwall now sail’d they all,
And to Bergen o’er their course they ply;
They laid in grave the Monarch brave,
In the spot where the Monarch wish’d to lie.
A braver heart ne’er play’d a part,
And never shone in Minstrel’s lay;
No King on earth can vie in worth
With Hacon the Good of Norroway.
BRAN AND THE BLACK DOG
The day we went to the hills to chase
Of dogs we had a brave company;
There heard we the songs of the feather’d race,
The blare of the elk, and the roebuck’s cry.
In the hills we had no common sport,
With our dogs and our arms many deer we slew;
When at noon we return’d to our silvan court,
We were a well-pleas’d, laughing crew.
That night the house of the Fenian king
With a band of joyous guests was fill’d;
The manner we sang, whilst we plied the string,
In which the buck and the elk we kill’d.