and permitted if they had seen this explicit statement. It has
never been suggested by any writer that the Romans ever left an
inkling or taste for intellectual pastimes in Britain. The name
of Agricola or that of any other Roman is not associated with
any tradition or story of the game, even Aristotle and Alexander
the Great and Indian Porus (names we find in Eastern accounts)
are names not so familiar in speculatory traditions as to chess,
though less remote, than that of Thoth the Egyptian Mercury who
Plato says invented chess "Hermes" (Asiatic M.S.) or the more
frequently mentioned Moses, and the Kings of Babylon with their
philosophers. The favoured notion that chess (first) came into
Europe through the Arabs in Spain about 710 to 715 A.D. may yet
prove ill matured and require modification, and for English first
knowledge of the game, we may on inferential and presumptive
evidence prefer the contemporary period of Offa, Egbert and
Alcuin when Charlemagne, the Greek Emperors and the Khalifs
of the East so much practised and patronized the game, rather
than the conquest or Crusaders theory of origin among us, which
is also beside inconsistent with incidents related in the earlier
reigns of Athelstan, Edgar and Canute, and moreover is not
based upon any direct testimony whatever.

In proof of the ancient use of chess among the Scandinavians.
In the Sages of Ragnar Lodbrog printed in Bioiners collection,
and in an ancient account of the Danish invasion of Northumberland
in the Ninth century entitled Nordymbra, it is stated that
after the death of Ragnar, messengers were sent to his sons in
Denmark by King Alla to communicate the intelligence and to
mark their behaviour when they received it. They were thus
occupied, Sigurd Snakeseye played at chess with Huitzeck the