The other incident also concerns Thorstein, the brave young Icelander who had accompanied Sigurd to Ireland. He was only twenty years of age, and as fearless as he was brave. When flight broke out through all the host of the foreigners, Thorstein, with a few others, took their stand by the side of Tomar’s Wood, refusing to fly. At last, seeing that hope was past, all turned to follow with the rout save Thorstein only. He stood still to tie his shoe-string. An Irish leader, coming up at the moment, asked him why he had not run with the others. “Because I am an Icelander,” said Thorstein, “and were I to run ever so fast I could not get home to-night.” The Irish leader was so struck by the young warrior’s coolness and courage that he set him at liberty. Thorstein remained for some time in the household of the Irish King, when all his fellows returned home, and he was well beloved in Ireland. All through the North flew the tidings of Brian’s battle, and the Norsemen felt that it was one of the most severe checks sustained by them in Western Europe. On the evening of the battle a strange portent happened in Caithness. A Norseman was walking out late at night alone. He saw before him a bower, which he had never seen before, and twelve women riding, two and two, toward it. They passed into the bower and disappeared from sight. Curious to know what had become of the women, he went up to the bower, and looked in through a narrow slit that served for a window. Horrible was the sight he saw. The women were seated in the bower, weaving at a loom. But when he looked he saw that skulls of men served as the weights, and that the web and weft were the entrails of dead men. The loom was made of spears, and swords were the shuttles, and as the weird women wove, blood dripped from the loom upon the floor. They sang this song as the shuttles sped, softly as though they keened the slain:-- THE “DARRADAR-LIOD”, OR “LAY OF THE DARTS.” “See! warp is stretched For warrior’s fall, Lo! weft in loom ’Tis wet with blood; Now fight foreboding, ’Neath friends’ swift fingers, Our grey woof waxeth With war’s alarms; Blood-red the warp, Corpse-blue the weft. The woof is y-woven With entrails of men, The warp is hard-weighted With heads of the slain; Spears blood-besprinkled For spindles we use, Sharp steel-edged the loom Arrow-headed our reels, With swords for our shuttles This war-woof we work: So weave we, weird sisters, Our war-winning woof. Now War-winner walketh To weave in her turn, Now Sword-swinger steppeth, Now Swift-stroke, now Storm; When the shuttle is speeding How spear-heads shall flash! Shields crash, and helm-biter On bucklers bite hard! Now mount we our horses, Now bare we our brands, Now haste we, swift-riding, Far, far from these lands.”