the fields, became, during the next two centuries, Wilhelmus
Conquaestor, the man famous to England, and momentous at this day, not
to England alone, but to all speakers of the English tongue, now
spread from side to side of the world in a wonderful degree. Tancred
of Hauteville and his Italian Normans, though important too, in Italy,
are not worth naming in comparison. This is a feracious earth, and
the grain of mustard-seed will grow to miraculous extent in some
cases.

Harald's chief helper, counsellor, and lieutenant was the
above-mentioned Jarl Rognwald of More, who had the honor to cut
Harald's dreadful head of hair. This Rognwald was father of
Turf-Einar, who first invented peat in the Orkneys, finding the wood
all gone there; and is remembered to this day. Einar, being come to
these islands by King Harald's permission, to see what he could do in
them,--islands inhabited by what miscellany of Picts, Scots, Norse
squatters we do not know,--found the indispensable fuel all wasted.
Turf-Einar too may be regarded as a benefactor to his kind. He was,
it appears, a bastard; and got no coddling from his father, who
disliked him, partly perhaps, because "he was ugly and blind of an
eye,"--got no flattering even on his conquest of the Orkneys and
invention of peat. Here is the parting speech his father made to him
on fitting him out with a "long-ship" (ship of war, "dragon-ship,"
ancient seventy-four), and sending him forth to make a living for
himself in the world: "It were best if thou never camest back, for I
have small hope that thy people will have honor by thee; thy mother's
kin throughout is slavish."

Harald Haarfagr had a good many sons and daughters; the daughters he
married mostly to jarls of due merit who were loyal to him; with the