"The Pirate," exhibited the Wizard's skill in weaving the old and the new together, the old being the traditions of the Shetlands, full of the ancestral beliefs in Old Norse things, the new being the life in those islands in a recent century. This is a stirring story, that comes into our consideration because of its Scandinavian antiquities. Again we find the Latin treasuries of Bartholinus, Torfæus, Perinskjöld and Olaus Magnus in evidence, though here, too, mention is made of "Haco," and Tryggvason and "Harfager." With a background of island scenery, with which Scott became familiar during a light-house inspector's voyage made in 1814, this story is a picture full of vivid colors and characters. In Norna of the Fitful Head, he has created a mysterious personage in whose mouth "Runic rhymes" are the only proper speech. She stills the tempest with them, and "The Song of the Tempest" is a strong apostrophe, though it is neither Runic nor rhymed. She preludes her life-story with verses that are rhymed but not Runic, and she sings incantations in the same wise. This _Reimkennar_ is an echo of the _Völuspá_, and is the only kind of Norse woman that the time of Scott could imagine. Claud Halcro, the poet, is fond of rhyming the only kind of Norseman known to his time, and in his "Song of Harold Harfager" we hear the echoes of Gray's odes. Scott's reading was wide in all ancient lore, and he never missed a chance to introduce an odd custom if it would make an interesting scene in his story. So here we have the "Sword Dance" (celebrated by Olaus Magnus, though I have never read of it in Old Norse), the "Questioning of the Sibyl" (like that in Gray's "Descent of Odin"), the "Capture and Sharing of the Whale," and the "Promise of Odin." In most of the natives there are turns of speech that recall the Norse ancestry of the Shetlanders. In Scott, then, we see the lengthening out of the influence of the antiquarians who wrote of a dead past in a dead language. The time was at hand when that past was to live again, painted in the living words of living men. III. FROM THE SOURCES THEMSELVES. In the preceding section we noted the achievements of English scholarship and genius working under great disadvantages. Gray and Scott may have had a smattering of Icelandic, but Latin translations were necessary to reveal the meaning of what few Old Norse texts were available to them. This paucity of material, more than the ignorance of the language, was responsible for the slow progress in popularizing the remarkable literature of the North. Scaldic and Eddie poems comprised all that was known to English readers of that literature, and in them the superhuman rather than the human elements were predominant.