stone, and my friends Ringwood, Rover, and Comely, caught and overcame it; lo! their mouths are yet bloody from the encounter.'

"Will nothing charm thy satiric tongue, Christina?' said the young huntsman; I would go to the sea in a midnight storm; I would go upon the first drift isle of ice, and take the polar bear by the beard; I would go to the summit of burning Hecla amid its wildest convulsions, and bring thee a bird broiled in lava for one kind word of thy lips-for one kind glance of thine eyes. There is little in all that but what I could do for myself,' said the maiden, with a smile; and when will you go down to the deep sea in a storm, Wilfred, and fish from the surge such a comely acquisition as this?' and she laid her hand upon my head, and thus addressed me: Look up, young mariner, it is thy misfortune that thou wert born in a strange, perhaps a Saxon land, and that thy hand is yet odorous with the touch of hemp and tar. For had I not vowed never to

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wed a Saxon born, or one who has gone down into the devouring sea to seek his subsistence in ships, I protest I see nothing frightful in an active form, and a pleasant look like thine. I'll warrant, this youth,' said she to Catrina, notwithstanding his meek and downcast eye, could sing us a pleasant song; the merrier the better; and hark ye, young man, if ye could cast something like courtship into it, it would taste on our lips like honey. Have ye never a ballad, man, where a knight with his three dogs comes to wooe the lady of a sodded sheal, with a portion of seven bear skins, and a bed of the down of the eider-duck?'

"Thus dragged unwillingly into notice, and desirous of acquitting myself with my best skill in minstrelsy, it was my fortune to be able to remember a lyric of no greater note than the old song of The Greyhounds Three;' and, such as it was, I chaunted it forth, in a tone between gravity and humour; even as the strain requires.'

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"Enough, enough,' cried the maiden, bursting out in uncontrollable laughter, till hill and glen reechoed; enough, enough; thy song shall give thee the head of the supper board, and the first claim to my hand in the dance. What! and has old Scotland, as well as our little wild isle, had its gallant wooer, with his grey hounds three? Happy land! to possess such an original will be the boast of thy children, and embalm the inimitable lyric which records him till woods cease to grow and greyhounds to run. But Johnstone of Dargavel, and thy greyhounds three, what art thou to Wilfred Thorold, and his three dogs-Ringwood, Rover, and Comely? Thou wert but a type, thou Caledonian gallant, of the wooer of little Iceland; Rover, Ringwood, and Comely, let me pat your heads; you are immortal, and will flourish in tale and rhyme, while there is smoke on Hecla, and snow on Snaefiels.' 'I vow,' said Wilfred, reddening in anger at those close and characteristic verses, and at the satirical comment of the young maiden; I vow these are rhymes made in open scorn of me, and sung on the sudden to make me be laughed at, and become ridiculous-were he not under your roof I would beat respect into his head with the staff of my hunting spear, else let my name be chaunted by beggars and ballad-makers, like him of Dargavel.' And he made a step towards me, as if resolved to fulfil his threat. Christina started up, snatching her distaff, which she levelled at his bosom with a smile of bitter scorn, and then dropping one knee till it nearly touched the floor, held up her hands in supplication, and said, O! valorous Wilfred, slayer of seals, and shooter of cormorants, forgive the idle song of a poor castaway mariner. Let not the hearts of

thee and thy three dogs burn in anger against him. His song is of ancient date, and we knew not that it typified thee, and that to warble it would move thy mood, and enchafe thy spirit. The youth is not of a martial turn; but even now I saved him from the stormy sea; forgive him, I entreat thee. But I see, by that clenched hand, and frowning brow, that ye breathe battle-Olave

Catrina-come and examine my chin, and I vow if ye can detect half a hair-nay, the symptom of approaching down, that I will for awhile forswear womanhood, and war with this man and his three dogs myself.' Nothing was to be gained by anger; so Wilfred, with a smile, sought to smooth his brow, and now and then eyeing Christina and me, with a sharp and jealous glance, he took his seat among us; and mirth, and laughter, and idle converse, prevailed by turns.

"In such converse and company, busied in the chase by day, and in drawing our nets by night, with dancing and with song, I passed the summer months among this simple and curious people. The indications which nature gives of an approaching period of more than common storm were frequent, and passed not unnoticed. The birds forsook our land in flocks; the flowers died earlier away; the mountain tops obtained a fresh accession of snow; the wild animals seemed more than commonly busied in preparing retreats for winter; the wild cat lined her bed deeper with down and feathers; the fox burrowed farther into the earth; and the mouse filled its nest with nuts and grain, and sheltered itself in the sunward side of the hill. Man profited by this lesson from nature. lined with triple fur, were prepared ; beds filled with the softest and most comfortable materials, for warmth

Mantles,

and repose, were made ready; the grain was carefully stored away; fat, to feed the perpetual lamp with its wick of rush, was treasured by; and fish from the flood, and flesh from the field, were amassed with a careful and ready diligence. Amid all this preparation, the sun contracted its daily circle; its light began to lessen upon our vales, and a red and horizontal beam was shed upon us over the illimitable expanse of waters.

"To me, who had never been accustomed to behold this gradual. diminishing of the comfort of sunshine, who had never seen the sun set with out the perfect assurance that he would return at morn, this sight was impressive and mournful. In vain Christina assured me, that the absence of the sun for a time would be recompensed by dancing and by song, and nocturnal excursions on the wastes of frozen snow, in quest of the bears from the Polar shores, who, wafted over on fields of ice, invaded the land, and braved the force and the arms of man. Even by her side, or with a spear in my hand, while in pursuit of food, have I halted and gazed on the beautiful luminary, whose journey, contracted almost to a span, or at most a stride, was marked upon the ocean and sky. On others, something of the same depression was visible; the talk of the old men became more solemn; they collected in groups, and summed up the time which would elapse ere the sun's return. I saw them smooth their grey hairs with their hands, and gaze upon the bright descending orb, and then look towards the churchyard, with its long ridges, where their ancestors lay each under his flat and inscribed stone. Day after day we assembled and looked; the sun at last only raised half an orb, brilliant as fused gold, and, shooting along the ocean, a sharp and frosty beam struck the hills at half height, and, slowly receding, left, for many minutes after he became invisible, a red and wavering glow on the mountain of Snaelfiels. I saw the old and the young turn their faces away and retire to their homes, nor lift again their looks from the ground.

"Come,' said Christina to me, if you wish to live with us, you must learn to reverence our supersti

tions; turn your eyes away from yon departing sun, nor look at him again if you desire to behold his beams relumining once more the summit of Snaelfiels, and gleaming on the grey roofs of Oddo. It is a belief of long descent,' said the maiden as we walked homeward, with our eyes cast to the ground, that those who look on the sun's departure will never see his return. Let us not seek to be wiser than our fathers in matters where wisdom only helps to remove a poe tical impression, and takes the stamp from our fancy of many a wild and mystical thing. Beliefs that delude our minds, and debase our thoughts, we should employ the light of reason and of the gospel to dissipate; but beliefs which impress us more strongly with the majesty of heaven, with the dignity of invisible things, which give us dark and mysterious glimpses of a higher order of beings, and show us the skirts and the mists of another world, I hold it unseemly and unwise to remove.' As we passed the threshold, we heard, from cottage and hill, an universal song of sorrow pouring forth; it seemed to be full of the forebodings of age, and to murmur, as the stream of rude melody flowed overhead, as if the frost and snow had already descended, and the monsters of the great deep had left their frozen domain, to molest the abodes of men.

"The maiden took down a small harp; and as she adjusted and tuned the strings, there was an awe and a silence like that inspired by domestic devotion. Let us sing,' said Christina, the song of Snorro, the bard; the song at which Haco Swayne laid aside the spear which he had reddened on the Dane. It is not a song for smiles; it is an ancient strain of dool and sadness. Tradition says that the people were gathered together, blessing the sun, while he was descending into the southern ocean, during the season of snow. Their favourite bard, who was as their prophet and their priest, also came suddenly among them, with his harpstrings rent, and his hair dishevelled, and warned them, in a wild, and yet remembered strain, of the approaching desolation of the land, from the first and most disastrous eruption of Mount Hecla. During the sing

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"The maiden, concluding her song, laid aside her harp, and retired to her devotions. A chill rough wind came over the Greenland sea; the snow flakes fell thick and fast, and a mantle of frozen snow, deep and dazzling, and equal to the weight of an active hunter, covered mountain and vale, and the habitations of men, in the first forty-eight hours of darkness. All that was visible, for months, was the radiance of the moon, and stars, and streamers; and the currents of dark smoke from the house tops, curling on the wind, or staining the white and trackless waste. All that was heard was the din of the dancer's heel, the sound of the minstrel's song, and the hymn, prolonged and holy, ascending from the domestic circle round the glowing hearth. A ruder sound sometimes greeted our ears-the moan of the storm, the chafing of the sea waves on cliff and headland, the sharp and melancholy cry of the polar bear, as he roamed hungering for food over the desert waste, and smelled in the wind the abodes of men—and not unfrequently his groans in the deathpang under the huntsman's spear. At last, the wind waxed softer and milder, the stars and streamers became dimmer, the sea-fowls began

to move their wings, conscious of coming day, and the wild animals of the waste turned to a faint gleam of livelier light, which, ascending from the ocean, tinged half a quarter of heaven. At length the light gathered strength-a brighter and broader beam shot into the sky, and glowed along the waters, the red edge of the returning sun fairly rose above the wave, and a sharp and level beam glimmered on cliff and promontory, and glowed redder still midway down the steep and shaggy mountain of Snaefiels, with its head, stooped over the ocean, and its top sparkling with icicles, and white with eternal and untrodden snow. Man, and bird, and beast, welcomed the sun with a shout and a hail-the poet's song-the song of the bird, and the scarcely less melodious cry of the household dog, softened into music by delight and joy, gave greeting to a luminary, which, without a profane or idolatrous feeling, obtains the reverence, and something like adoration, of the people of Iceland. Peace be with them :- a bark from my native land wafted me away, half unwillingly, from a land which I was fortuned never to behold again."

NALLA.