ntered the house at night and seized warriors to devour them, who might
be seen gliding over the sea, with the carcase of the wolf dripping blood
from their giant jaws; and there was the more serene, classical, and
awful vala, or sibyl, who, honoured by chiefs and revered by nations,
foretold the future, and advised the deeds of heroes. Of these last, the
Norse chronicles tell us much. They were often of rank and wealth, they
were accompanied by trains of handmaids and servants--kings led them
(when their counsel was sought) to the place of honour in the hall, and
their heads were sacred, as those of ministers to the gods.

This last state in the grisly realm of the Wig-laer (wizard-lore) was the
one naturally appertaining to the high rank, and the soul, lofty though
blind and perverted, of the daughter of warrior-kings. All practice of
the art to which now for long years she had devoted herself, that touched
upon the humble destinies of the vulgar, the child of Odin [23] haughtily
disdained. Her reveries were upon the fate of kings and kingdoms; she
aspired to save or to rear the dynasties which should rule the races yet
unborn. In youth proud and ambitious,--common faults with her
countrywomen,--on her entrance into the darker world, she carried with
her the prejudices and passions that she had known in that coloured by
the external sun.

All her human affections were centred in her grandchild Edith, the last
of a race royal on either side. Her researches into the future had
assured her, that the life and death of this fair child were entwined
with the fates of a king, and the same oracles had intimated a mysterious
and inseparable connection between her own shattered house and the
flourishing one of Earl Godwin, the spouse of her kinswoman Githa: so
that with this great family she was as intimately bound by the links of
superstition as by the ties of blood. The eldest born of Godwin, Sweyn,
had been at first especially her care and her favourite; and he, of more
poetic temperament than his brothers, had willingly submitted to her
influence. But of all the brethren, as will be seen hereafter, the
career of Sweyn had been most noxious and ill-omened; and at that moment,
while the rest of the house carried with it into exile the deep and
indignant sympathy of England, no man said of Sweyn, "God bless him!"

But as the second son, Harold, had grown from childhood into youth, Hilda
had singled him out with a pref