property—with no wealth but their ships—no force but their crews—and no hope but from their sword, they swarmed upon the boisterous ocean, and plundered in every district they could approach. It is declared to have been a law or custom in the North, that one of the male children should be selected to remain at home to inherit the government. The rest were exiled to the ocean to wield their sceptre amid the turbulent waters. The consent of the northern societies entitled all men of royal descent—who assumed piracy as a profession—to enjoy the name of kings, though they possessed no territory. The sea-kings had the same honour, but they were only a portion of those pirates or vikingr who in the ninth century were covering the ocean. Not only the children of the kings, but every man of importance equipped ships, and roamed the seas to acquire property by force. Piracy was not only the most honourable occupation, and the best harvest of wealth—it was not only consecrated to public estimation by the illustrious who pursued it, but no one was esteemed noble—no one was respected, who did not return in the winter to his home with ships laden with booty.”
History teems with pictures of the ferocity by which their mode of warfare was distinguished; wherever they went they ravaged the country with fire and sword—and in the hour of victory they spared neither age nor sex.
The individual incursion that forms the subject of the following poem is purely imaginary. It is however perfectly certain that the coasts of Wales were frequently exposed to the ravages of these marauders, which affords, it is conceived, a sufficient historical basis for the frail poetical superstructure that has been erected upon it.
The setting sun’s last glimpse is on
Thy fairy depths—Morwynion!
Thy wilderness of breakers white—
Now dark, now eddying into light—
