"Gather footmen, gather horsemen, To the field, ye valiant Norsemen ! "Halt ye not for food or slumber, View not vantage, count not number; Jolly reapers, forward still, Grow the crop on vale or hill, To the charge, ye gallant Norsemen ! "Fatal chuser of the slaughter, O'er you hovers Odin's daughter; Hear the choice she spreads before ye,— Or old Valhalla's roaring hail, Her ever-circling mead and ale, The joys of wassail and of fight. Headlong forward, foot and horsemen, Charge and fight, and die like Norsemen !" "The poor unhappy blinded heathens !" said Triptolemus, with a sigh deep enough for a groan; "they speak of their eternal cups of ale, and I question if they kenn'd how to manage a croft land of grain !" "The cleverer fellows they, neighbour Yellowley," answered the poet, "if they made ale without barley." "Barley !—alack-a-day !" replied the more accurate agriculturist, "who ever heard of barley in these parts? Bear, my dearest friend, bear is all they have, and wonderment it is to me that they ever see an awn of it. Ye scart the land with a bit thing ye ca' a pleugh-ye might as weel give it a ritt with the teeth of a reddingkame. O, to see the sock, and the heel, and the sole-clout of a real steady Scottish pleugh, with a chield like a Sampson between the stilts, laying a weight on them would keep down a mountain ; twa stately owsen, and as many broad-breasted horse in the traces, going through soil and till, and leaving a fur in the ground would carry off water like a causeyed siever! They that have seen a sight like that, have seen something to crack about in another sort, than those unhappy auld-warld stories of war and slaughter, of which the land has seen even but too mickle, for a' your singing and soughing awa' in praise of such bloodthirsty doings, Master Claud Halcro." "It is a heresy," said the animated little poet, bridling and drawing himself up, as if the whole defence of the Orcadian Archipelago rested on his single arm-" It is a heresy so much as to name one's native country, if a man is not prepared when and how to defend himself-ay, and to annoy another. The time has been, that if we made not good ale and aquavitæ, we knew well enough where to find that which was ready made to our hand; but now the descendants of Seakings and Champions, and Berserkars, are become as incapable of using their swords, as if they were so many women. Ye may praise them for a strong pull on an oar, or a sure foot on a skerry; but what else could glorious John himself say of ye, my good Hialtlanders, that any man would listen to ?" Spoken like an angel, most noble poet,” said Cleveland, who, during an interval of the dance, stood near the party in which this conversation was held. "The old champions you talked to us about yesternight, were the men to make a harp ring-gallant fellows, that were friends to the sea, and enemies to all that sailed on it. Their ships, I suppose, were clumsy enough; but if it is true that they went upon the account as far as the Levant, I scarce believe that ever better fellows unloosed a top-sail." "Ay," replied Halcro, "there you spoke them right. In those days no man could call their life and means of living their own, unless they dwelt twenty miles out of sight of the blue sea. Why, they had public prayers put up in every church in Europe, for deliverance from the ire of the Normans. In France and England, ay and in Scotland too, for as high as they hold their heads now-a-days, there was not a bay or a haven, but it was freer to our forefathers than to the poor devils of natives; and now we cannot, forsooth, so much as grow our own barley without Scots help -(here he darted a sarcastic glance at the factor)-I would I saw the time we were to measure arms with them again." "Spoken like a hero once again," said Cleve land. "Ah!" continued the little bard, "I would it were possible to see our barks, once the waterdragons of the world, swimming with the black raven standard waving at the topmast, and their decks glimmering with arms, instead of being heaped up with stock-fish-winning with our fearless hands what the niggard soil deniespaying back all old scorn and modern injury— reaping where we never sowed, and felling what we never planted-living and laughing through the world, and smiling when we were summoned to quit it." So spoke Claud Halcro, in no serious, or at least most certainly in no sober mood, his brain (never the most stable) whizzing under the influence of fifty well-remembered sagas, besides five bumpers of usquebaugh and brandy; and Cleveland, between jest and earnest, clapped him on the shoulder, and again repeated, "Spoke like a hero." "Spoke like a fool, I think," said Magnus Troil, whose attention had been also attracted by the vehemence of the little bard-" where would you cruize upon, or against whom ?-we are all subjects of one realm, I trow, and I would have you to remember, that your voyage may bring up at Execution-dock.-I like not the Scots-no |