Then Harold fell into a mighty fury. Everything was given to Paul, he cried; but this vest he should not have, and he tore it out of the wretched women’s hands. Fraukirk and Helga threw themselves at his feet, crying out that there was death in the vest, and imploring him not to wear it. But he thrust them aside, assumed the coveted garment, and strode from the bower. Suddenly an appalling shriek was heard, and the inhabitants of the palace rushing simultaneously into the great hall, found Earl Harold writhing in mortal agony, and vainly endeavouring to tear off the vest, which only clung the more closely. His mother and aunt approached, but he repulsed them savagely; then turning to his brother who held him in his arms, told him to beware of them, and even as he spoke his spirit passed away.
When Paul learned the cause of his death, he swore to be avenged on the murderers. Fraukirk and Helga, however, warned of their danger, fled away into Scotland, where they had great possessions. Their death was a miserable one—they were burnt alive in their castle by a marauding viking.
The fate of Snorro is wrapt in mystery. When Earl Paul went to seek him, he found the Dwarfie Stone untenanted, nor was there any clue to the hiding-place of the recluse. It was suspected, however, that he had followed Fraukirk to Scotland, to claim that bad woman’s protection. But the country-people had another tale to tell. They declared that the trollds had spirited the Dwarf away on account of his evil deeds. Be that as it may, he was no more seen in Orkney, and with him disappeared all hope of acquiring the magic carbuncle.
Balked of his vengeance, Paul returned to Orphir, and soon after his luckless brother’s funeral, Morna and he were married. That their happiness was lasting is testified by the saying, ‘As happy as Earl Paul and Countess Morna,’ which was current in Orkney for many succeeding generations.
HUMOROUS DEFINITIONS.
A witty, humorous, or satirical definition cannot be universally acceptable, since it usually hurts somebody’s susceptibilities. No man or woman delighting in a burst across country at the heels of the hounds, but would think it rank heresy to hold with Pope that hunting is nothing better than pursuing with earnestness and hazard something not worth the catching; and the novelist who says æstheticism means, ‘none of the old conventionalities, no religion, very little faith, hardly any charity, and nearly all sunflowers,’ has few admirers, we may be sure, among the worshippers of bilious hues and graceless garments. Ladies ambitious of platform popularity would indignantly deny the truth of Whately’s ‘Woman is a creature that cannot reason, and pokes the fire from the top;’ and how angrily your golden-haired girl graduate would curl her pretty lips at hearing a young lady defined as a creature that ceases to kiss gentlemen at twelve, and begins again at twenty. Her agreeing or disagreeing regarding matrimony being justly described as a tiresome book with a very fine preface, would depend upon whether she had private reasons inclining her to venture upon Heine’s ‘high sea for which no compass has yet been found.’
The gentlemen who instruct the British public respecting the merits and demerits of authors, artists, and actors, cannot be expected to own Lord Beaconsfield right in saying, ‘Critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.’ The newspaper writer who pronounced a journalist to be a man who spent the best years of his life in conferring reputations upon others, and getting none himself, would probably demur at that by which he lives being described as ‘groundless reports of things at a distance;’ and if an American, he would loudly exclaim against the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table defining ‘interviewers’ as ‘creatures who invade every public man’s privacy, listen at every keyhole, tamper with every guardian of secrets; purveyors to the insatiable appetite of a public which must have a slain reputation to devour with its breakfast, as the monster of antiquity called regularly for his tribute of a spotless virgin.’
The witness who enlightened judge and jury by explaining that a bear was a person who sold what he had not got; and a bull, a man who bought what he could not pay for, thought he said a smart thing; but he had been partly anticipated by Bailey, who in his Dictionary tells us that to ‘sell a bear’ means among stock-jobbers to sell what one hath not. The worthy lexicographer lays it down that a definition is ‘a short and plain description of the meaning of a word, or the essential attributes of a thing,’ but does not always contrive to attain to his own ideal. For example, we do not learn much about the essential attributes of things when told that bread is the staff of life; a bench, a seat to sit upon; a cart, a cart to carry anything in; that thunder is a noise well known to persons not deaf; dreaming, an act well known; that elves are scarecrows to frighten children; and birch, ‘well known to schoolmasters.’ He defines a wheelbarrow as a barrow with one wheel, and informs us that a barrow is a wheelbarrow. Some of his definitions are instructive enough, as showing how words have departed from their original signification. Thus we find that in his time a balloon meant a football; defalcation, merely a deduction or abating in accounts; factory, a place beyond seas where the factors of merchants resided for the conveniency of trade; farrago, a mixture of several sorts of grain; novelist, a newsmonger; saucer, a little dish to hold sauce; politician, a statesman; and ‘the people,’ the whole body of persons who live in a country, instead of just that part of them happening to be of one mind with the individual using that noun of multitude.
Philosophers are rarely masters of the art of definition, their efforts that way, as often as not, tending to bewilder rather than enlighten. What a clear notion of ‘common-sense’ does one of these afford us by describing it as ‘the immediate or instinctive response that is given in psychological language, by the automatic action of the mind; or in other words, by the reflex action of the brain, to any question which can be answered by such a direct appeal to self-evident truth.’ Still better or worse is the definition of the mysterious process called ‘evolution’ as a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations; which an eminent mathematician has thus rendered for the benefit of English-speaking folk: ‘Evolution is a change from a no-howish untalkaboutable all-likeness to a some-howish and in-general talkaboutable not-at-all likeness, by continuous somethingelseifications and sticktogetherations.’ Putting this and that together, he who does not comprehend exactly what evolution is must be as obtuse as the playgoer who sitting out a play does not know he is witnessing ‘a congeries of delineations and scenes co-ordinary into a vivid and harmonious picture of the genuine features of life.’
Impromptu definitions have often the merit of being amusing, whatever may be said as to their correctness. ‘What on earth can that mean?’ asked Hicks of Thackeray, pointing to the inscription over a doorway, ‘Mutual Loan Office.’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered the novelist, ‘unless it means that two men who have nothing, agree to lend it to one another.’ Said Lord Wellesley to Plunket: ‘One of my aides-de-camp has written a personal narrative of his travels; pray, what is your definition of “personal?”’ ‘Well, my lord,’ was Plunket’s reply, ‘we lawyers always consider personal as opposed to real;’ an explanation as suggestive as that of the London magistrate who interpreted a ‘housekeeper’ as meaning ‘a sort of a wife.’ ‘Pray, my lord,’ queried a gentleman of a judge, ‘what is the difference between common law and equity?’ ‘Very little in the end,’ responded his lordship: ‘at common law you are done for at once; in equity, you are not so easily disposed of. The former is a bullet which is instantaneously and charmingly effective; the latter, an angler’s hook, which plays with the victim before it kills him. Common law is prussic acid; equity is laudanum.’ An American contemplating setting a lawsuit going, his solicitor said he would undertake the matter for a contingent fee. Meeting Mr Burleigh soon afterwards, the would-be litigant asked that gentleman what a contingent fee might be. ‘A contingent fee,’ quoth Mr Burleigh, ‘is this—if the lawyer loses the case, he gets nothing; if he wins it, you get nothing.’ ‘Then I don’t get anything, win or lose?’ said his questioner. ‘Well,’ was the consolatory rejoinder, ‘that’s about the size of a contingent fee.’ So Brough was not very much out in defining a lawyer as a learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it himself.