shape into helmet and sword. All things seemed to favour the Church's
chosen one. Conan, Count of Bretagne, sent to claim the Duchy of
Normandy, as legitimate heir. A few days afterwards, Conan died,
poisoned (as had died his father before him) by the mouth of his horn
and the web of his gloves. And the new Count of Bretagne sent his
sons to take part against Harold.

All the armament mustered at the roadstead of St. Valery, at the mouth
of the Somme. But the winds were long hostile, and the rains fell in
torrents.




CHAPTER XI.


And now, while war thus hungered for England at the mouth of the
Somme, the last and most renowned of the sea-kings, Harold Hardrada,
entered his galley, the tallest and strongest of a fleet of three
hundred sail, that peopled the seas round Solundir. And a man named
Gyrdir, on board the King's ship, dreamed a dream [239]. He saw a
great witch-wife standing on an isle of the Sulen, with a fork in one
hand and a trough in the other [240]. He saw her pass over the whole
fleet;--by each of the three hundred ships he saw her; and a fowl sat
on the stern of each ship, and that fowl was a raven; and he heard the
witch-wife sing this song:

"From the East I allure him,
At the West I secure him;