258 CHRONICLE or THE SAGA XIV. his third battle at Whitby*, and gained the victory, and burned the town. So says Emar : — " The ring of swords, the clash of shields^ Were loud in Whitby's peaceful fields; For here the king stirred up the strife, — Man against man, for death or life. O'er roof and tower, rose on high The red wrath-fire in the sky: House after house the red fiend burns; By blackened walls the poor man mourns." Thereafter he plundered wide around m England, where Stephen f was then the king. After this King Ey stein fought with some cavalry at Skarpa-sker. J So says Einar : — At Skarpa-sker the English horse Retire before the Norse king's force: The arrow-shower like snow-drift flew. And the shield-covered foemen slew." He fought next at Pilavik§, and gamed the vic- tory. So says Einar: — " At Pilavik the wild wolf feeds. Well furnished by the king's brave deeds: He poured upon the grass-green plain A red shower from the Perthmen || slain. On westward to the sea he urges. With fire and sword the country purges: Langtown^ he burns; the country rang, For sword on shield incessant clanfj:."
- Hvitaby — "Whitby. The king is stated to have gone south to
England from Hartlepool. The Saxonland appears to be distinguished from the kingdom of Northumberland, occupied by people of Danish descent under Danish law, and to be England proper in the saga. I Stephen reigned from 1136 to October 1154. Torfa^us, in Hist. Norv. pt. iii. lib. 9« c. 10., places this, the last of the predatory expedi- tions of the kings of the Northmen on the English coast, in 1 1 53. J Skarpa-sker — the steep rock — is apparently Scarborough castle, which answers to the name by its site. § Pilavik is not known, unless it be Welwick or Balivick, two places of which names are situated near the Spurn Head ; or it may be Filey Bay, south of Scarborough. II How men from Perth came to fight at Pilavik is not at all clear. % Langatun seems, from the scald's allusion to the Western sea, to be Langtown, near Carlisle; not a place in Lincolnshire near Boston, as Schoning supposes.
