r was no other than he) passes his hands over
Barth, and gives him good luck, and sets a book upon his shoulders;
and he saw far and wide over many lands, and over all Ireland, and he
was baptized, and became a holy hermit and a bishop in Ireland. Such
is the Norse story of Barth, to whom the first Cathedral in Dornoch
was said to have been dedicated. It is far more prettily told in the
Saga.

But St. Barr of Dornoch, in all probability, belongs to the sixth
century,[34] not to the tenth, and was a Pict or Irishman, not a
Norseman. He was never Bishop of Caithness, so far as records tell.
His Fair, like those of other Pictish Saints elsewhere in Cat, is
still celebrated, and is held at Dornoch.

The battle of Clontarf, fought on Good Friday, the 23rd of April 1014,
outside Dublin, between the young heathen king of Dublin, Sigtrigg
Silkbeard, and the aged Christian king, Brian Borumha, was,
notwithstanding Norse representations to the contrary, a decisive
victory for the Irish over the Norse, and for Christianity against
Odinism. Sigurd, Jarl of Orkney, though nominally a Christian, fought
on the heathen side, and fell bearing his Raven banner, and the old
king, Brian, was killed in the hour of his people's victory.

Sigurd's death is the subject of a strange legend, and the occasion
of a weird poem, _The Darratha-Liod_[35] said to have been sung in
Caithness for the first time on the day of Sigurd's death.

The legend is given in the _Niala_[36] as follows:--"On Friday it
happened in Caithness that a man called Dorruthr went out of his house
and saw that twelve men together rode to a certain bower, where they
all disappeared. He went to the bower, and looked in through a window,
and saw that within there were women, who had set up a web. They sang
the poem, calling on the listener, Dorruthr, to learn the song, and
to tell it to others. When the song was over, they tore down the web,
each one retaining what she held in her hand of it. And now Dorruthr
went away from the window and returned home, while they mounted their
horses, riding six to the north and six to the south. A similar vision
appeared to Brand, the son of Gneisti, in the Faroes. At Swinefell in
Iceland blood fell on the cope of a priest on Good Friday, so that he
had to take it off. At Thvatta a priest saw on Good Friday deep sea
before the altar and many terrible wonders therein, and for long he
was unable to sing the Hours."[37]

This strange legend