a little while; and seldom, perhaps
never, had vikingism been in such flower as now. This man's name is Sven
in Swedish, Svend in German, and means boy or lad,--the English "swain."
It was at old "Father Bluetooth's funeral-ale" (drunken burial-feast),
that Svein, carousing with his Jomsburg chiefs and other choice spirits,
generally of the robber class, all risen into height of highest robber
enthusiasm, pledged the vow to one another; Svein that he would conquer
England (which, in a sense, he, after long struggling, did); and the
Jomsburgers that they would ruin and root out Hakon Jarl (which, as
we have just seen, they could by no means do), and other guests other
foolish things which proved equally unfeasible. Sea-robber volunteers
so especially abounding in that time, one perceives how easily the
Jomsburgers could recruit themselves, build or refit new robber fleets,
man them with the pick of crews, and steer for opulent, fruitful
England; where, under Ethelred the Unready, was such a field for
profitable enterprise as the viking public never had before or since.

An idle question sometimes rises on me,--idle enough, for it never can
be answered in the affirmative or the negative, Whether it was not these
same refitted Jomsburgers who appeared some while after this at Red Head
Point, on the shore of Angus, and sustained a new severe beating, in
what the Scotch still faintly remember as their "Battle of Loncarty"?
Beyond doubt a powerful Norse-pirate armament dropt anchor at the Red
Head, to the alarm of peaceable mortals, about that time. It was thought
and hoped to be on its way for England, but it visibly hung on for
several days, deliberating (as was thought) whether they would do this
poorer coast the honor to land on it before going farther. Did land, and
vigorously plunder and burn south-westward as far as Perth; laid siege
to Perth; but brought out King Kenneth on them, and produced that
"Battle of Loncarty" which still dwells in vague memory among the Scots.
Perhaps it might be the Jomsburgers; perhaps also not; for there were
many pirate associations, lasting not from century to century like the
Jomsburgers, but only for very limited periods, or from year to year;
indeed, it was mainly by such that the splendid thief-harvest of England
was reaped in this disastrous time. No Scottish chronicler gives the
least of exact date to their famed victory of Loncarty, only that it was
achieved by Kenneth III., which