After this the king gives him a ship laden with merchandise, and sends him to England, where he trades to great advantage. The King of England, hearing of his skill in "stonework", desires him to assist in building a new hall; but there was an English master also skilled in the craft, and, to see which was the abler, the king orders that each should build one side of the hall.
Haco's side progresses most skilfully and rapidly, and the jealous Englishman accuses him of using "such help as no good man should have". The king is persuaded, and a plot is laid for his destruction. The king sends him his glove as a token, bidding him take the whole charge of the work, and visit it every morning before sunrise. Meanwhile, the workmen are ordered to seize him when he comes, whatever form he may put on by aid of magic arts, and to burn him " to coals" in a bale of fire. But the messenger who brings the king's glove to Haco is a little man, and red-bearded, and he calls to mind the Danish king's first counsel. So he rides off during the night, and, toward daybreak, enters a solitary chapel, where an old priest is about to sing Mass. The second counsel occurs to him, and he stays to the end, after which he returns to the unfinished hall. In the meantime the English master has visited it, hoping to find his rival already burnt; but the workmen, thinking him to be Haco under an assumed form, seize and fling him into the flames.
Haco then appears, and finds that his remaining to the end of the Mass has saved him. He rises high in the English king's favour, who gives him four noble ships, well laden, with which he returns to Norway. There he enters his house during the night, and sees two heads on a pillow. He is about to kill both, but recollects the third "wise rede", and repeats the prayer, during which his wife awakes, and, recognising him, shows him his son, who had been born during his absence.
This story, according to the writer in N. and Q., "in its present form, is not probably older than the fourteenth century", and he adds that the escape of Haco recalls that of Fridolin in Schiller's "Gang nach dem Eisenhammer"—a tale of which many versions, Eastern as well as Western, are cited in the second volume of my Popular Tales and Fictions^ under the heading of "The Favourite who was Envied". Monkish tales often turn upon escapes from death in consequence of the intended victims of foul play stopping on the road to say their prayers.
It is interesting to find the hero of the Norse story being warned against a red-haired man. Mr. Nutt, in his excellent notes to Maclnnes' Folk and Hero Tales., gives references to the old popular notion that led-haired men were treacherous, if not actually in league with the
