e fortunes of his country were lost and
overthrown, put all his royal wealth on shipboard and drowned it in the
sea, so as to enrich the waves rather than his enemy. Yet it had been
better to forestall the goodwill of his adversaries with gifts of money
than to begrudge the profit of it to the service of mankind. After this,
when Frode sent ambassadors to ask for the hand of his daughter, he
answered, that he must take heed not to be spoiled by his thriving
fortunes, or to turn his triumph into haughtiness; but let him rather
bethink him to spare the conquered, and in this their abject estate to
respect their former bright condition; let him learn to honour their
past fortune in their present pitiable lot. Therefore, said Handwan, he
must mind that he did not rob of his empire the man with whom he sought
alliance, nor bespatter her with the filth of ignobleness whom he
desired to honour with marriage: else he would tarnish the honour of the
union with covetousness. The courtliness of this saying not only won him
his conqueror for son-in-law, but saved the freedom of his realm.

Meantime Thorhild, wife of Hunding, King of the Swedes, possessed with
a boundless hatred for her stepsons Ragnar and Thorwald, and fain to
entangle them in divers perils, at last made them the king's shepherds.
But Swanhwid, daughter of Hadding, wished to arrest by woman's wit the
ruin of natures so noble; and taking her sisters to serve as retinue,
journeyed to Sweden. Seeing the said youths beset with sundry prodigies
while busy watching at night over their flocks, she forbade her sisters,
who desired to dismount, in a poem of the following strain:

"Monsters I behold taking swift leaps and flinging themselves over the
night places. The demon is at war, and the unholy throng, devoted to the
mischievous fray, battles in the mid-thoroughfare. Prodigies of aspect
grim to behold pass by, and suffer no mortal to enter this country.
The ranks galloping in headlong career through the void bid us stay our
advance in this spot; they warn us to turn our rein and hold off from
the accursed fields, they forbid us to approach the country beyond. A
scowling horde of ghosts draws near, and scurries furiously through the
wind, bellowing drearily to the stars. Fauns join Satyrs, and the throng
of Pans mingles with the Spectres and battles with fierce visage. The
Swart ones meet the Woodland Spirits, and the pestilent phantoms strive
to share the path with the