Well, sir! I was Mr. Metcalfe's guide in '60, and that reverend father objected to my repeatedYhko!' so I was obliged to change my note, and adopt Prrmp!' which has become a second nature to me; I could not shake it off now!"

·

Many of our English country horse-calls may be recognized in this Ultima Thule. The "Bok-a-ooff!" of Nottingham, or "Bok'n-waay!" of Yorkshire, East Riding, are forms of the Scandinavian Bug-af, bend aside; the same verb, ath buga, to curve, is preserved in our word bucket, literally a curved receptacle. So, also, the common shout "Gee! Gee uup! Tzch!" are forms of Gá-walk; and the Northumbrian Heck! is the Icelandic Hoegr! (pronounced Haikir).

Jón carried a baby's weaning-bottle in his pocket, and constantly replenished it with water: he could not get on without a drop of something, and when fire-water was unattainable, he contented himself with imbibing ordinary water from this artificial mother.

I soon experienced the advantage of having an active fellow like Jón with me; he drove the horses with spirit, and kept them all day at a trot or canter. Grímr's perverse, "Now we shall go slow," said invariably, when I urged the horses out of a walk, was now unregarded; we trotted in spite of him. Grímr had picked up a dingy theological acquaintance at Akureyri, a spare young man, who looked as though he had recently emerged from a dust-bin. His hat was wondrously tall and very shabby; his long coat-tails flapped against his calves; his waistcoat-black, too—was buttoned to the chin; his sombre inexpressibles, with leather seat, were very old, and seemed to have been worn by successive generations. He rode his own pony, and joined Grímr for the purpose of accompanying us over the next mountain ridge, so as to hear all the Grimsey story, and the last news from the capital. As the river at the head of the fjord was low, we crossed its seven mouths with ease; all but the theological candidate, whose horse, falling into a quicksand, flung its rider on his tall hat, which was thereby effectually flattened.

With unruffled gravity, the budding divine picked himself up, and shook the great hat into shape; then, solemnly presenting his coat-tails to Grímr, asked him, with his head over his shoulder, to wring the water out of them. This Grímr did with equal gravity.

Jón was a long way ahead, scrambling up the scaur (skarth is the Icelandic name for a mountain pass: it is cognate with scaur), and we had to trot after him, in order to catch him up.

After a good pull up the steep mountain side, we got among the clouds, which gathered over all the high lands, as they rolled up the fjord. They parted once at the top, and we obtained a glorious vision of river, dale, and ridge on ridge of snow and rock; then the clouds closed over the scene, and we had to make the best of our way through them, until we descended into the Fnjoská dale, through which whirls a swift deep river.

My Indian-rubber stockings were worn through, so that in crossing rivers I was obliged to brave the cold, and pull off shoes and stockings; but on reaching the further bank, my feet became so numbed, that I was often unable to stand. Travellers in Iceland should be provided with fisherman's boots.

We rode through a forest, the finest in Iceland, some of the trees being quite twenty feet high. The fresh green of the birch, the fragrance and rustle of leaves, were most exhilarating, and we cantered, singing, over the light sandy soil, without drawing rein, till we reached Háls, where a new church was in course of erection.

The priest received us kindly, and gave us coffee and thin pancakes of native wild corn, powdered with cinnamon, and eaten cold. His pretty daughter was greeted affectionately by my guide, as an old acquaintance. The fellow has friends everywhere! and the Grimsey grievance was gone through in detail, notwithstanding all my entreaties that it might be cut short, as we had a long journey before us.

At last the story is done, and we gallop through the Ljósavatn skarth, till we reach the "Light water" lake, whose

pale flood is full of undissolved snows, brought down from the white-crested mountains on either side. Seven Northern divers on it! Ducks, grebes, mergansers, in scores; a white gerfalcon watches us from yon pile of stone, a bowshot off. The Icelandic raven flits around us, and runs among the stones in a bold contemptuous manner, flinging us a disdainful croak when we pelt it. No bird is more common in Iceland than the raven (both Corvus corax and Corvus leucophaeus); it throngs all wild and desolate spots, and lays its five or six greenish speckled eggs among the mountain gorges and clefts, early in March, a month earlier than other birds. It feeds on anything which it can digest, worms, which abound in the morasses, whortle-berries, eggs, fish, insects, carrion-even dung. It is a source of terror to the young of the sandpiper and plover; it perches on the backs of the sheep, and fills its crop with the ticks abounding in the long wool; it hovers round the breeding-places of the eider-duck, waiting to tap the eggs, and in winter it flutters about the byres, to seize on any refuse which may be flung from the doors. The raven is regarded with much the same superstitious feeling in Iceland as elsewhere.

Which signifies:

Hrafn sitr á hárri staung

Hildar mark á taki;
Ei þess verðr æfin laung,
Sem undir byr því þaki.

Raven croaks on gable tree;

Watch! Death is onward creeping:
Short the life of him will be

Who 'neath this roof lies sleeping.*

The ravens are said to hold formal wardmotes in autumn, and to appoint captains and watchers in their respective districts.

It is curious to find in Iceland a version of a world-wide receipt. The natives tell one, that there is a stone of such

* Cf. also Tháttr Hrómundar halta, chap. 5.

wondrous power that the that the possessor can walk invisible, can, at a wish, provide himself with as much stockfish and cornbrandy as he may desire, can raise the dead, cure disease, and break bolts and bars. In order to obtain this prize, one must hardboil one of the green eggs in a raven's nest, then secrete one's self till the mother bird, finding one of her eggs without prospect of being hatched, flies off and brings a black pebble in her beak, with which she touches the boiled egg, and restores it to its former condition. At this moment, she must be shot, and the stone be secured. Albertus Magnus gives a similar receipt in his De Mirab. Mundi (ed. Argent. 1601, page 225). "If you wish to burst chains, go into the wood, and look out for a magpie's nest, where there are young; climb the tree and choke the mouth of the nest with anything you like. As soon as she sees you do this, she flies off for a plant which she lays on the stoppage; this bursts, and the plant falls to the ground under the tree, where you must have a cloth spread for receiving it." The same story is told in the Talmud, but there, the moorhen takes the place of raven or magpie. According to the Rabbinical story, Schamir is a worm which preserves the stone of Wisdom: Benaiah son of Jehoiada having found a moorhen's nest, laid a plate of glass over the poults. The mother-bird fetched Schamir and snapped the glass.

According to another version-"Solomon went to his fountain, where he found the dæmon Sackar, whom he had captured by a ruse, and chained down. Solomon pressed his ring to the chains, and Sackar uttered a cry so shrill that the earth quaked.

"Quoth Solomon, Fear not, I shall restore you to liberty, if you will tell me how to burrow noiselessly after minerals and metals.'

"I know not how to do so,' answered the Jin; but the raven can tell you; place over her eggs a sheet of crystal, and shall see how the mother will break it.'

you

"Solomon did so, and the mother brought a stone, and shattered the crystal.

"Whence got you that stone?' asked Solomon.

"It is the stone Samur,' answered the raven. 'It comes from a desert in the uttermost east.' So the monarch sent some giants to follow the raven, and bring him a suitable number of stones."

*

The same stone reappears in several household tales, and is mentioned in the thirty-ninth story of the Gesta Romanorum. Up the mountains are low birch bushes, and a line of blue smoke, from among them, showed that charcoal-burners were at work,—a farce surely, burning these twigs for charcoal.

"Now we shall go slow!" called Grímr from behind; but Jón regardlessly cracked his whip, and we spun along. A pitch-black rock at the end of the lake, scooped into by the stream, and continually crumbling away, was surmounted, and we rode through moss and fen to the Skjalfanda fljót, or Flood of quivering waves. A mile up the river is Gótha-foss, a noble waterfall, bearing a striking resemblance to Niagara, in miniature. It is a horse-shoe, and has its Goat island, to which it is possible to wade; and then a quaint peep of the landscape is obtained through a watery arch, spouted from a hollow, into which one arm of the river pours. Below the falls, the grotesqueness of the rocks, and their ironblack colour, add wildness to a scene, in itself, very impressive.

* I wish that I had space to give the origin of some of our popular superstitions and nursery tales, and to show what assistance is afforded by Icelandic literature in the clearing up the difficulties with which they are surrounded. I can only instance one :

"Jack and Jill went up a hill

To fetch a pail of water;

Jack fell down, and broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after."

These two children are mentioned in the Younger Edda, under the names of Hjúki and Bil (which have become, in course of time, Jack and Jill), as fetching water from the well Byrgir in the bucket Soeg, on the pole Simul. These children were taken up into heaven to follow the moon. Hjúki signifies "the quickening," Bil" the failing;" and their attendance on the moon simply means that the moon becomes full and wanes. By the bucket of water I presume is signified the effect of the orb on the weather.