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Updated: June 13, 2025
Finally, he was something more: he was what not one of the great Latin poets was, a Christian; that is, in his latter days, when he began to feel the vanity of all human pursuits, when his nerves began to be unstrung, his hair to fall off, and his teeth to drop out, and he then composed sacred pieces entitling him to rank with we were going to say Caedmon; had we done so we should have done wrong; no uninspired poet ever handled sacred subjects like the grand Saxon Skald but which entitle him to be called a great religious poet, inferior to none but the protege of Hilda.
As soon as the bard had descended the mound the Skald from the northern lands took his place, greeted by cries of welcome from a hundred thousand throats. He touched his harp, and in the perfect silence was heard the strains of the mermaid's song, and through it the pleasant ripple of summer waters on the pebbly beach.
The action passes in the first half of the Thirteenth Century. Present: Skule; Jatgeir the Skald, an Icelander; Paul Flida, a nobleman. King Skule You come to my wish, Skald! Jatgeir I overheard some townsfolk at my lodging talking darkly of King Skule Let that wait. Tell me, Skald, you who have fared far abroad in strange lands have you ever seen a woman love another's child?
She turned round to him, and asked him some questions about the Skald, and so, getting into conversation with him, managed to turn her shoulder to her suitor. On the other side of him sat Lady Rosina de Courcy, to whom, as being an old woman and an old maid, he felt very little inclined to be courteous. She said a word, asking him whether he did not think the weather was treacherous.
Thord Kolbeinson dwelt at Hitness in those days, and a good skald he was; at that time was there great enmity betwixt him and Biorn; and Biorn was but half loth, though Grettir wrought some ill on Thord's men or his goods.
He read on, heart and soul and mind absorbed in the marvels of the eastern skald; the stories told in the streets of Cairo, amidst gorgeous costumes, and camels, and white-veiled women, vibrating here in the heart of a Scotch boy, in the darkest corner of a mud cottage, at the foot of a hill of cold-loving pines, with a barefooted girl and a baby for his companions.
After praising Dafydd as the Welsh Ovid and Horace and Martial, he says: "Finally, he was something more; he was what not one of the great Latin poets was, a Christian; that is, in his latter days, when he began to feel the vanity of all human pursuits, when his nerves began to be unstrung, his hair to fall off, and his teeth to drop out, and he then composed sacred pieces entitling him to rank with we were going to say Caedmon had we done so we should have done wrong; no uninspired poet ever handled sacred subjects like the grand Saxon Skald but which entitle him to be called a great religious poet, inferior to none but the protege of Hilda."
King Skule Who gave you the gift of sorrow, Jatgeir? Jatgeir She whom I loved. King Skule She died, then? Jatgeir No, she deceived me. King Skule And then you became a skald? Jatgeir Ay, then I became a skald. Jatgeir Not the gift of doubt; else would you not question so. King Skule What gift do I need? Jatgeir My lord, you are a king.
It is true that the masterful figure of Bishop Nicholas is enigmatic enough to have stalked out of one of Hugo's lyrical melodramas, but to counterbalance this there is a pithy wisdom in the talk of the Skald which one would seek in vain in the French romanticist drama.
The child was a boy, of rather weakly aspect; no important person present, except Sigvat, the King's Icelandic Skald, who happened to be still awake; and the Bishop of Norway, who, I suppose, had been sent for in hurry. "What is to be done?" said the Bishop: "here is an infant in pressing need of baptism; and we know not what the name is: go, Sigvat, awaken the King, and ask."
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