ies of apparition
invoked by the witch or wizard.--See SHARON TURNER on The Superstitions
of the Anglo-Saxons, b. ii. c. 14.

[95] Galdra, magic.

[96] Fylgia, tutelary divinity. See Note (H), at the end of the volume.

[97] Morthwyrtha, worshipper of the dead.

[98] It is a disputed question whether the saex of the earliest Saxon
invaders was a long or short curved weapon,--nay, whether it was curved
or straight; but the author sides with those who contend that it was a
short, crooked weapon, easily concealed by a cloak, and similar to those
depicted on the banner of the East Saxons.

[99] See Note (K), at the end of the volume.

[100] Saxon Chronicle, Florence Wigorn. Sir F. Palgrave says that the
title of Childe is equivalent to that of Atheling. With that remarkable
appreciation of evidence which generally makes him so invaluable as a
judicial authority where accounts are contradictory, Sir F. Palgrave
discards with silent contempt the absurd romance of Godwin's station of
herdsman, to which, upon such very fallacious and flimsy authorities,
Thierry and Sharon Turner have been betrayed into lending their
distinguished names.

[101] This first wife Thyra, was of very unpopular repute with the
Saxons. She was accused of sending young English persons as slaves into
Denmark, and is said to have been killed by lightning.

[102] It is just, however, to Godwin to say, that there is no proof of
his share in this barbarous transaction; the presumptions, on the
contrary, are in his favour; but the authorities are too contradictory,
and the whole event too obscure, to enable us unhesitatingly to confirm
the acquittal he received in his own age, and from his own national
tribunal.

[103] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

[104] William of Malmesbury.

[105] So Robert of Gloucester says pithily of William, "Kyng Wylliam was
to mild men debonnere ynou."--HEARNE, v. ii. p. 309.

[106] This kiss of peace was held singularly sacred by the Normans, and
all the more knightly races of the continent. Even the craftiest
dissimulator, designing fraud, and stratagem, and murder to a foe, would
not, to gain his ends, betray the pledge of the kiss of peace. When Henry
II. consented to meet Becket after his return from Rome, and promised to
remedy all of which his prelate complained, he struck prophetic dismay
into Becket's heart by evading the kiss of peace.

[107] SNORRO STURLESON's Heimskringla.--Laing's Translation,