Hauskuld

“ Just then Gunnar heard of the death of his father-in-law Hauskuld; a few nights after, Thorgerda, Thrain's wife, was delivered at Gritwater, and gave birth to a boy child. Then she sent a man to her mother, and bade her choose whether it should be called Glum or Hauskuld. She bade call it Hauskuld. So that name was given to the boy.
Gunnar and Hallgerda had two sons, the one's name was Hogni and the other's Grani. Hogni was a brave man of few words, distrustful and slow to believe, but truthful.
Now men ride to the horse-fight, and a very great crowd is gathered together there. ”

“ Skarphedinn spoke again: "Thou, Hauskuld, shalt have nothing to do with it, for thou wilt often be sent about alone without due heed; but I mean Sigmund for myself; methinks that is like a man; but Grim and Helgi, they shall try to slay Skiolld." ”

“ Hauskuld said, "This beast is no man's fetch, but Gunnar's of Lithend, and now methinks I see all about it. Up! let us ride to Hrutstede," And they did so. Hrut lay in his locked bed, and asks who have come there? Hauskuld tells who he is, and asked what guests might be there in the house?
"Only Huckster Hedinn is here," says Hrut.
"A broader man across the back, it will be, I fear," says
Hauskuld, "I guess here must have been Gunnar of Lithend." ”

“ Hauskuld greeted them well, and Hrut bade both Thorarin and his brothers good morning. After that they all began to talk, and Thorarin said, "I am come hither, Hauskuld, with my brother Glum on this errand, to ask for Hallgerda thy daughter, at the hand of my brother Glum. Thou must know that he is a man of worth." ”

“ Strange! were it not that human nature is herself in every age, that such forbearance and forgiveness as is shown by Njal and Hauskuld and Hall, should have shot up out of that social soil, so stained and steeped with the blood-shedding of revenge. Revenge was the great duty of Icelandic life, yet Njal is always ready to make up a quarrel, though he acknowledges the duty, when he refuses in his last moments to outlive his children, whom he feels himself unable to revenge. ”

“ There dwelt Runolf, the son of Wolf Aurpriest.
Flosi said to Runolf, "Here we shall have true stories as to the slaying of Hauskuld, the Priest of Whiteness. Thou art a truthful man, and hast got at the truth by asking, and I will trust to all that thou tellest me as to what was the cause of quarrel between them."
"There is no good in mincing the matter," said Runolf, "but we must say outright that he has been slain for less than no cause; and his death is a great grief to all men. No one thinks it so much a loss as Njal, his foster-father." ”

“ The last words of Hauskuld, when he was foully assassinated through the tale-bearing of Mord, were, "God help me and forgive you"; nor did the beauty of a Christian spirit ever shine out more brightly than in Hall, who, when his son Ljot, the flower of his flock, fell full of youth, and strength, and promise, in chance-medley at the battle on the Thingfield, at once for the sake of peace gave up the father's and the freeman's dearest rights, those of compensation and revenge, and allowed his son to fall unatoned in order that peace might be made. ”

“ Now I ask thee, Hall of the Side, and thee Runolf of the Dale, and thee Hjallti Skeggi's son, and thee Einar of Thvera, and thee Hafr the Wise, that I may be allowed to make an atonement for the slaying of Hauskuld on my son's behalf; and I wish that those men who are best fitted to do so shall utter the award. ”

“ They went in and found Mord sitting in the innermost part of the booth, and they bade him "Good-day." He rose to meet them, and took Hauskuld by the hand and made him sit down by his side, and Hrut sat next to Hauskuld. So after they had talked much of this and that, at last Hauskuld said, "I have a bargain to speak to thee about; Hrut wishes to become thy son-in-law, and buy thy daughter, and I, for my part, will not be sparing in the matter."
Mord answered, "I know that thou art a great chief, but thy brother is unknown to me."
"He is a better man than I," answered Hauskuld. ”

“ As he knew that resistance would be useless, the boy promptly and silently descended the cliff with his captors, and entered the boat, which was immediately pushed off and rowed along-shore.
“Now listen to me, Alric, son of Haldor,” said Hauskuld, seating himself beside his captive: “King Harald is not the tyrant you take him for; he is a good king, and anxious to do the best he can for Norway. Some mistaken men, like your father, compel him to take strong measures when he would fain take mild. ”

“ So quick and shifty in his manliness, that I would rather have his following than that of ten other men; but yet the man is unlucky-looking."
"I know," said Skarphedinn, "that thou speakest at me, but it does not go in the same way as to luck with me and thee. I have blame, indeed, from the slaying of Hauskuld, the Whiteness priest, as is fair and right; but both Thorkel foulmouth and Thorir Helgi's son spread abroad bad stories about thee, and that has tried thy temper very much." ”

“ Our friends of Horlingdal bestirred themselves, like others, in these varied avocations, and King Harald Fairhair, uprising from his winter lair in Drontheim like a giant refreshed, assembled his men, and prepared to carry out his political plans with a strong hand. But resolute men cannot always drive events before them as fast as they would wish. Summer was well advanced before the King was ready to take action.
There was a man of the Drontheim district named Hauskuld, who was noted for ferocity and wickedness. ”

“ Observe further, It is the misery of the servants of sin that they have many masters, one lust hurrying them one way, and another; pride commands one thing, covetousness another, and often a contrary. What vile slaves are sinners, while they conceit themselves free! the lusts that tempt them promise them liberty, but in yielding they become the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome of the same is he brought into bondage. ”

“ By the help of this magic, we may extract the sting of guilt from every known sin; and, if we have but wit enough, may be as wicked as we please with a safe conscience. 239
If the features of this corrupt casuistry have not been overcharged; or, indeed, if there be any such thing in the world as a corrupt casuistry, it may concern us to reflect, that this pest of society could not have arisen but from a contempt of the Apostle’s rule, of being simple concerning evil. ”

“ If such a mode of action were allowable, and every one were at liberty to take revenge, to return evil for evil, injury for injury, harm for harm, what would become of natural, civil, and religious law and order? And if all the laws of nature, of the world, of your own reason cried out to you: You are allowed and commanded to take vengeance on those who have done you harm, yet there is another who tells you quite the contrary, and whose law and will must be preferred to those of the whole world, namely, your God, who is almighty, and the supreme and sovereign Lord. ”

“ Is it not among the great that the most shocking debauchery even refines upon the common crimes; that dissipations become an art; and that, in order to prevent those disgusts inseparable from licentiousness, resources are sought in guilt against guilt itself? What indulgence, then, can you promise yourselves on the part of religion? If the most righteous be responsible for the whole law, should the greatest sinners be discharged from it? ”

“ Cloud, want of morals is not atoned for by good breeding or good manners. The hideousness of vice, the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank, the pride of favour, and the shame of venality do not wear here that delicate veil, that gloss of virtue, which, in other Courts, lessens the deformity of corruption and the scandal of depravity. Duplicity and hypocrisy are here very common indeed, more so than dissimulation anywhere else; but barefaced knaves and impostors must always make indifferent courtiers. ”

“ Thou hast consulted, not safety, but shame, to thy house, by cutting off many people, v. 10. Note, An estate raised by iniquity is a scandal to a family. Those that cut off, or undermine, others, to make room for themselves, that impoverish others to enrich themselves, do but consult shame to their houses, and fasten upon them a mark of infamy. Yet that is not the worst of it: " Thou hast sinned against thy own soul, hast brought that under guilt and wrath, and endangered that." Note, Those that do wrong to their neighbour do a much greater wrong to their own souls. ”

“ You have betrayed the trust of a faithful friend. You have abused his generous hospitality, and violated the sanctity of his household.
You have permitted your own degenerate and selfish desires and passions to override every principle of Equity, Justice and Right.
To accomplish an ignoble purpose you have employed all your little knowledge of our noble science in conscious and deliberate violation of a most sacred and binding obligation ”

“ The Middle Ages knew nothing of all those ideas which have rendered our sentiment of justice timid and hesitating: doubts to the criminal's responsibility; the conviction that society is, to a certain extent, the accomplice of the individual; the desire to reform instead of inflicting pain; and, we may even add, the fear of judicial errors. Or rather these ideas were implied, unconsciously, in the very strong and direct feeling of pity and of forgiveness which alternated with extreme severity. ”

“ And was it true, that whatever hand had a blood-stain on it,—or had poured out poison,—or strangled a babe at its birth,—or clutched a grandsire’s throat, he sleeping, and robbed him of his few last breaths,—had now the right to offer itself in fellowship with their two hands? Too certainly, that right existed. It is a terrible thought, that an individual wrong-doing melts into the great mass of human crime, and makes us, who dreamed only of our own little separate sin,—makes us guilty of the whole. ”

“ It is a riddle which I leave to the reader to solve, that a princess of unblemished private life, of studious habits, and of not only a serious, but even a positively religious turn of mind—in short, in every way a noble pattern for one of the most corrupt courts Europe has ever seen—should, in a work aiming to inculcate morality, and abundantly furnished with direct religious exhortation, have inserted, not one, but a score of the most repulsive pictures of vice, drawn from the impure scandal of that court. ”

“ But, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. ”

“ Such is the manner in which the virtue that is now hidden through humility shall be brought to light.
Now, my dear brethren, if justice requires this, is it not still more imperatively demanded by justice that misinterpreted, persecuted, and calumniated virtue should be defended and publicly vindicated? What is more foolhardy, and at the same time more common in the world, than the vice of calumny and detraction? To sneer at, criticise, find fault with, and misinterpret the actions of others, and to spread false tales about one's neighbor is nowadays a privileged and public trade. ”

“ Justice should prosecute the unjust everywhere and to the end. Reparation and retribution have to be extreme, and assume the character of revenge. In this exaggerated need of justice, primitive barbarism, pagan at bottom, blends with the Christian conception of society. The Church, on the one hand, had inculcated gentleness and clemency, and tried, in that way, to soften judicial morals. On the other hand, in adding to the primitive need of retribution the horror of sin, it had, to a certain extent, stimulated the sentiment of justice. ”

“ Nothing is more remarkable than the various deceptions by which guilt conceals itself from the perpetrator's conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the splendor of its garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who act over an extensive sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this way; they commit wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale, that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual; but in our procession we find them linked in detestable conjunction with the meanest criminals whose deeds have the vulgarity of petty details. ”

“ Is that the sin that deserved such a long and cruel penance? Was that the fault that had to be atoned for by such fasting, watching, scourging, and shedding your own blood? Oh, if so, wo to me! wo to all poor sinners! What ought I not to do, then, to atone for my many and grievous sins! Ah, quickly, Bernard, give me thy garb of penance, thy iron girdle, the rods and scourges with which thou didst arm thy hands. All the torments of the martyrs are not enough to atone for my sins if thy faults had to be punished so severely. And hadst thou not in thy youth done penance enough for them? ”

“ And this picture included in it the double effect of guilt transmitted through a whole race from its head and father, and of the personal sins of each individual of the race: which, moreover, had a tendency to be perpetually heightened by the social nature of man—that part of his original condition which, as it would have supported his highest good in the state of innocence, so came to make his corruption intense and more complicated in the state of fall. ”