promptly and easily performed, and the royal wish was gratified. So much was he captivated with the beautiful Snæfrida, that for years, though he visited, he forgot his country, capital, his subjects, his throne, his very existence. Four sons were the issue of this connection,—Sigurd, Halfdan, Gudred, Rognevald. She then died; but her corpse preserved the same spotless white as when living. Corruption could not take hold of it. During three whole years he sat by the corpse, thinking that every moment life would revisit it; and his subjects deeply bewailed his infatuation. To dissolve the spell was the work of Thorleif the Wise, one of his jarls. The corpse was removed from the bed on which it lay, when suddenly the most offensive odour was emitted by it. It was hastily borne to the funeral pile: serpents, and lizards, and toads, and every species of venomous reptile continued to issue from it; yet the king did not regain his sound mind until the corpse was consumed. Ashamed of his weakness, he resumed his royal duties, and at once became the pride of his people. Magic drinks, we need scarcely observe, are of perpetual occurrence in the annals of the ancient north. Saxo alludes to many; but none surely was ever so potent as this,—none before or since, in the wildest dreams of fancy, could preserve the empire of love for three years after the death of its object.[178] This fable has been noticed that the reader may be prepared for the dissensions which soon took place among the sons of Harald. The four whom Snæfrida had borne him he learned to detest, through hatred of the mother; and at length he dismissed them from his palace, with the resolution to see them no more. After some time, however, one of them, Gudred, went to Hiodulf, the jarl, who was in great power, and besought him to procure him an interview with the king. Both proceeded to the royal palace, which they reached late in the evening, and they sat on the benches outside the doors unknown to everybody. Harald happened to be walking on the pavement in the court-yard—probably to enjoy the nightly breeze—and his eyes carelessly wandered over the seats. But the two strangers attracted his notice, and he asked the elder what had brought him there? Uncovering his head, Hiodulf was immediately recognised and welcomed. The veteran now pleaded for the exiled sons. He observed that if the mother’s race was bad, the father’s was not; and that the excellency of the one might more than counter-balance the evil of the other. The king was persuaded; Gudred was received into the palace; the three brothers were sent into the provinces and occupied in military exercises, in which they excelled other men.[179] [Sidenote: 869 to 900.]