will carry the red-hot ploughshares or do any
reasonable ordeal in testimony of these facts. I am King Sigurd's
veritable half-brother: what will King Sigurd think it fair to do with
me?" Sigurd clearly seems to have believed the man to be speaking truth;
and indeed nobody to have doubted but he was. Sigurd said, "Honorable
sustenance shalt thou have from me here. But, under pain of extirpation,
swear that, neither in my time, nor in that of my young son Magnus,
wilt thou ever claim any share in this Government." Gylle swore; and
punctually kept his promise during Sigurd's reign. But during Magnus's,
he conspicuously broke it; and, in result, through many reigns, and
during three or four generations afterwards, produced unspeakable
contentions, massacrings, confusions in the country he had adopted.
There are reckoned, from the time of Sigurd's death (A.D. 1130), about a
hundred years of civil war: no king allowed to distinguish himself by a
solid reign of well-doing, or by any continuing reign at all,--sometimes
as many as four kings simultaneously fighting;--and in Norway, from sire
to son, nothing but sanguinary anarchy, disaster and bewilderment;
a Country sinking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. Of all which
frightful misery and discord Irish Gylle, styled afterwards King
Harald Gylle, was, by ill destiny and otherwise, the visible origin: an
illegitimate Irish Haarfagr who proved to be his own destruction, and
that of the Haarfagr kindred altogether!

Sigurd himself seems always to have rather favored Gylle, who was a
cheerful, shrewd, patient, witty, and effective fellow; and had at first
much quizzing to endure, from the younger kind, on account of his Irish
way of speaking Norse, and for other reasons. One evening, for example,
while the drink was going round, Gylle mentioned that the Irish had a
wonderful talent of swift running and that there were among them people
who could keep up with the swiftest horse. At which, especially from
young Magnus, there were peals of laughter; and a declaration from the
latter that Gylle and he would have it tried to-morrow morning! Gylle in
vain urged that he had not himself professed to be so swift a runner
as to keep up with the Prince's horses; but only that there were men in
Ireland who could. Magnus was positive; and, early next morning, Gylle
had to be on the ground; and the race, naturally under heavy bet,
actually went off. Gylle started parallel to Magnus's stirru