Stigand

“ A man of Stigand's type could be depended upon to see that if William's success was inevitable, an early submission would be better than a late one. If Stigand went over to William at Wallingford, it is a clear commentary on the helplessness of the party of resistance in London.
From Wallingford William continued his leisurely march, leaving a trail of devastation behind him through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire, where he turned south towards London. But the city was now convinced of the impossibility of resistance and was ready to yield to the inevitable. ”

“ It was a fixed maxim in this reign, as well as in some of the subsequent, that no native of the island should ever be advanced to any dignity, ecclesiastical, civil, or military [k] The king, therefore, upon Stigand's deposition, promoted Lanfranc, a Milanese monk, celebrated for his learning and piety, to the vacant see. This prelate was rigid in defending the prerogatives of his station; and after a long process before the pope, he obliged Thomas, a Norman monk, who had been appointed to the see of York, to acknowledge the primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. ”

“ REMIGIUS (d. 1092) , bishop of Lincoln, was in 1066 almoner of Fécamp, and contributed one ship with twenty knights for the invasion of England by the Normans. He took part in the expedition, and was present at the battle of Hastings. In the following year he received the bishopric of Dorchester, according to later scandal as the price of his aid to the Conqueror. Remigius was consecrated by Stigand, then archbishop of Canterbury; according to his own account, he was unaware of the uncanonical character of Stigand's position (Profession ap. Gir. Cambr. vii. 151) . ”

“ Some of these Norman chroniclers tell an absurd story of Harold's seizing the crown from the hand of the bishop, and putting it himself on his head. The Bayeux Tapestry, which is William's most connected apology for his claim, shows no such violence; but Harold is represented as crowned very peaceably. With more art, (as I have observed elsewhere,) the Tapestry represents Stigand as crowning him instead of Alred; Stigand being at that time under the Pope's interdict. ”

“ The next day she went out to herd her cattle, and Stigandi comes that day to meet her. She greeted him well, and offers to look through (the hair of) his head. He laid his head down on her knee, and soon went to sleep. ”

“ ‘I thought you did,’ said the Mouse. ‘—I proceed. “Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable—“’
‘Found what?’ said the Duck.
‘Found it,’ the Mouse replied rather crossly: ‘of course you know what “it” means.’
‘I know what “it” means well enough, when I find a thing,’ said the Duck: ‘it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?’
The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, ‘ ”

“ So Omari gathered up the bags of money and the clothes and left that woman, and mounted his donkey and rode away.
He had only just left when the husband of that woman in the house returned home. He noticed that his wife was very joyful, so he asked her, "My wife, why are you so glad to-day?"
She said to him, "A man has just been here who has come from the next world, and he has met my father there in great trouble. So I have given him a thousand dollars and clothes to take to my father. That is why I am so happy ”

“ When this youth heard the talk of the town, he came to his wife and said, "There is a man who will give a hundred dollars to any one who will sleep on the opposite side one night. I will go and sleep there." [Pg 2]
His wife said to him, "Do not go, my husband, the lion will eat you."
He said, "Let me go, for if Allah loves me I will not die, and by this means we will get the wherewithal to buy some food."
Then she said to him, "Go. May Allah preserve you."
So that youth, when evening fell, took a canoe and paddled over to Manda, and there lay down on the shore. ”

“ He said to himself, "This must be the Nunda," so he shot his arrows and shot and shot till he had used all his three hundred arrows and the rhino fell dead.
Then he cut off a leg and set out for home, carrying it with him. When he got near the house he sung, "This is Nunda, this is Nunda who kills people."
And his mother, looking out from the upper storey, sang, "My child, that is not Nunda who kills people."
When he came into the house she said, "My son, that is not Nunda; it is a rhino." ”

“ His wife said, "But, my husband, we have no food and no money in the house. What are we to do if you do not go and work?"
He answered, "Never mind. God is able to feed the birds when they are hungry, and so He is able to feed me."
So he stopped there in bed. Now a neighbour of his had a vision that night that in a [Pg 54] certain cave was a great treasure stored. He wanted to go and search for it, and when he heard that the woodcutter was not going to work that day he thought that he would borrow his donkey to bring back the wealth, if his vision came true. ”

“ She replied, "Men came who had dreamed a dream that we should have a beautiful male child of great good fortune, and as the sacrifice of a black ox was necessary to bring it true, I gave ours to them."
Omari then said to his wife, "You are a fool. Now I am going out to search for as great a [Pg 74] fool as you are. If I cannot find any one who is your equal in folly, I shall leave you; you will cease to be my wife."
So Omari took his donkey and rode away till he came to the house of a certain rich man, and this house had a verandah beneath it. ”

“ When the youth went to the bathroom they got up and seized on the skin and tried to drag it into the pit, but it was too heavy for them. So they exerted all their strength, till at last they managed to drag it into the pit. After that they set fire to the wood and the oil.
When its owner in the bathroom heard the skin crackling he ran in and said to Mizi, "What have you done, taking away my clothes to put in the fire?" Then he fell down, and did not regain consciousness till three o'clock next day, for that youth did not know the world outside of his skin. ”

“ The lion frightens these people, so they run swiftly away, saying, "To-day Segu has done evil; every day he shows us honey, and to-day he comes to show us a lion."
That is all. [Pg 111]
XVII
LILA AND FILA
THERE were once upon a time two poor children, one was called Lila and one was called Fila, and they were great friends.
Fila said one day to Lila, "Our mothers are poor; what can we do for a living, my friend? We have no money with which to repay them for the kindness they have shown towards us. ”

“ I never have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be blessed as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.
But poor Stickeen, the wee, hairy, sleekit beastie, think of him! ”

“ Heaven would surely count one enough for a lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by thousands of crevasses, but they were common ones. The joy of deliverance burned in us like fire, and we ran without fatigue, every muscle with immense rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen flew across everything in his way, and not till dark did he settle into his normal fox-like trot. At last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and we soon felt the solid rock beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came weakness. Danger had vanished, and so had our strength. ”

“ When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and wailing as if in the bitterness of death. Could this be the silent, philosophic Stickeen? I shouted encouragement, telling him the bridge was not so bad as it looked, that I had left it flat and safe for his feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was afraid to try. Strange so small an animal should be capable of such big, wise fears. ”

“ The Sitka chief replied:--
“You may well say let us stop fighting, when you have had the best of it. You have killed ten more of my tribe than we have killed of yours. Give us ten Stickeen men to balance our blood-account; then, and not till then, will we make peace and go home.”
“Very well,” replied the Stickeen chief, “you know my rank. You know that I am worth ten common men and more. Take me and make peace.”
This noble offer was promptly accepted; the Stickeen chief stepped forward and was shot down in sight of the fighting bands. ”

“ I had simply to grope my way from crevasse to crevasse, holding a general direction by the ice-structure, which was not to be seen everywhere, and partly by the wind. Again and again I was put to my mettle, but Stickeen followed easily, his nerve apparently growing more unflinching as the danger increased. So it always is with mountaineers when hard beset. Running hard and jumping, holding every minute of the remaining daylight, poor as it was, precious, we doggedly persevered and tried to hope that every difficult crevasse we overcame would prove to be the last of its kind. ”

“ Before San Francisco was a city she sent her bidarkas to take the sea-otter from under the very noses of the Padres in their missions. Here the civilization of the East met the progress of the West, the Orient and the Occident met here and met without bloodshed. Sitka, with her wealth of fisheries in the waters at her doors, with her wealth of mineral in the ledges at her back, with the wealth of forest on the mountain slopes around her, is in the same latitude as Edinburgh, Scotland. The time is coming when she will have population, and wealth; beauty she already has. ”

“ Yet thou sittest sadly on thy horse, the roses are scattered from thy shield. Ah! if the daughter of the King of England knew, she would take it very ill of thee that thou hast allowed so simple a man to wound thee.” Saith Zibrid: “I would not count it an honour, if I allowed a worse man than myself to take me.” Saith Stilfrid: “Please God, thou hast to find that I am as good a man as thyself, and I will be thy match in all things, save that roses do not fall in showers from me; know that Stilfrid will spoil all that.” ”

“ I said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm, "now don't, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now? You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, get a good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can't carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will kill you." ”

“ Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could have made no landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of Yosemite, sink sheer into deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on the north side for the first sign of an opening fiord or harbor, all of us anxious except Stickeen, who dozed in peace or gazed dreamily at the tremendous precipices when he heard us talking about them. At length we made the joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet now called "Taylor Bay," and about five o'clock reached the head of it and encamped in a spruce grove near the front of a large glacier. ”

“ It is a link to connect the Sitka of the past, the Novo Arkangelsk of the great Russian American Company in the romantic days of the fur trade when it was the center of the vast domain of Russian America and gathered to its magazines the pelts of sea-otter and fox, with the Sitka of today with its fisheries and mines. The old landmarks are fast disappearing, scarce a year passes without some monument passing away, and even their location will soon be forgotten unless some record is made for those who do not know where they stood. ”

“ Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved and allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to be let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of his hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. ”

“ OLAVUS. [To MONS] Do you know what is meant by "enough," Mons Nilsson?
MONS. Oh, well, everybody knows that.
OLAVUS. [To Stig] As we now know what is meant by "enough," I ask you, Master Stig Larsson, if anybody perished from hunger during the last famine?
STIG. Man doth not live by bread only....
OLAVUS. There you spoke a true word, Master Stig, but....
A rap on the door is heard. MASTER OLAVUS opens. The same MESSENGER appears, whispers to him, and leaves again.
OLAVUS. The King requests Nils Söderby to meet him at Saint Jorghen's Gildhall. ”

“ When Stickeen was only a round ball of silky fur as big as one's fist, he was given as a wedding present to my bride, two years before this voyage. I carried him in my overcoat pocket to and from the steamer as we sailed from Sitka to Wrangell. Soon after we arrived a solemn delegation of Stickeen Indians came to call on the bride; but as soon as they saw the puppy they were solemn no longer. His gravely humorous antics [Pg 132] were irresistible. It was Moses who named him Stickeen after their tribe—an exceptional honor. ”

“ Sigvat the poet often expressed himself in conversation as Earl Ragnvald's great friend, and often spoke of him to King Olaf; and he offered to the king to travel to Earl Ragnvald's and spy after the Swedish kings doings, and to attempt, if possible, to get the settlement of the agreement. The king thought well of this plan; for he oft, and with pleasure, spoke to his confidential friends about Ingegerd, the king's daughter. Early in winter (A.D. 1019) Sigvat the skald, with two companions, left Sarpsborg, and proceeded eastwards over the moors to Gautland. ”