And if modern evidence were necessary it might be found in the fact that while Gaelic MSS. of the Viking age are to be found in almost every other country of Europe, there is not one to be gleaned in the lands whence the Norsemen came. From which circumstance it may be inferred that they set so little value upon these literary acquisitions that they took no care to preserve them, or even to carry them away to their own territory. When the tide of invasion had well nigh spent itself, Ireland, once so rich in native literature, was found to be so depleted that King Brian Boru had to send delegates abroad, “to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean,” as the records affirm, so scarce had they ultimately become. Yet even in their roving days the strenuous Norsemen had rare _eddas_ and _sagas_ of their own, to which they were passionately devoted. These were not then written down, but recited orally, like the Celtic tales, till they found a literary embodiment in MS. books. It was only towards the middle of the last century that their wonderful national sagas burst upon Europe, and thrilled and surprised the learned quite as much as if they had felt a whiff of the old Viking breath upon them. Prior to that time historians were largely dependent upon the English, Irish, and Frankish chronicles for their knowledge of this northern race and their deeds of spoliation, but since the discovery in Iceland of the literary remains of their immediate descendants, quite a fresh light has been cast upon their disposition and habits. And we recognise that they were not quite the demons and fiends the monkish scribes believed them to be. It is clear that, having suffered so much from the hardy invader the latter had the tendency to exaggerate his ferocity. For example, the author of the _Wars of the Gael with the Gaill_: “In a word, although there were an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting brazen tongues in each head, and a hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices for each tongue, they could not recount nor narrate nor enumerate nor tell what all the Gael suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble, of hardship and of injury and of oppression in every house from these valiant, wrathful, foreign, purely pagan people.” In every war and conquest there are dreadful happenings, and the Viking was not troubled with sentiment or too much conscience in his proceedings. He was rough and ready—like his trade, as we should say—as he needed to be in that age if he meant to be master or even to get a living. Great upheavals, we must remember, were taking place in his mother country and driving him from his home.