assurance that he should be the first man to whom intelligence of the battle should be communicated. One day the chief saw, as he thought, jarl Sigurd approaching at the head of a troop of horse. He instantly mounted, rode forward, met the jarl, embraced, and, in the view of several followers, afterwards disappeared with the jarl behind an eminence: neither, adds the legend, was again seen in this world. The other story has called forth the splendid effusion of Grey:—Darrod, a native of Caithness, saw twelve horsemen ride towards a hill, and immediately enter it. Hastening to the place, and looking through a small aperture, he perceived twelve gigantic women weaving and singing; the woof and the song no less supernatural than the singers.[8] This event, which is placed in the year 1014, illustrates the mental condition of the people, who, if they had outwardly embraced Christianity, were still pagans in superstition. Of the Shetland Isles, during this period, we know nothing. They formed, as we have observed, a portion of the government of the Orkney jarls; and so did the Hebrides. But the connection between the governors and the governed must have been lax, and subject to frequent interruption. The Hebrides were frequently ravaged,—now by Norwegians, now by Danes, now by fierce adventurers from all parts of the north. The condition of Iona, the hallowed abode of St. Columba’s disciples, was mournful. In 793 the monastery was laid in ashes, and most of the inmates massacred; again in 797 and 801. In 805 sixty-eight more of the monks suffered the same fate. From that period to the year 875 the barbarian ravages were frequent. To escape destruction, the monks fled; and when the pirates were defeated, returned to the same hallowed spot, to quench the still smoking ruins, and to rebuild the house of their saint. After 875 the depredations of the northern rovers were much less frequent. We read, indeed, of no massacre until 985, when the abbot and fifteen of his monks obtained the martyr’s crown. This seems to have been the last disaster of the kind. Christianity, in a degree far greater than the governments of Norway and the Orkneys, was destroying the spirit of piracy. In 1093, as we shall hereafter have occasion to relate, the Western Isles, like Man and the Orkneys, were subdued by Magnus of Norway, and annexed to his crown.[9]