336 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 51. 



The whole of the Kongs-sJmgg-sio is well worthy 

 of being translated into English. It may, indeerl, 

 in many respects, be considered as the most re- 

 markable work of the old northerns. 



Edward Charlton. 



Newcastle-on-Tyne, Oct. 7. 1850. 



If F. Q. will look into Halfdan Einersen's edi- 

 tion of Koiig.i-skugg-sio, Sortie, 1768, the first time 

 it was printed, he will find in the editor's prelimi- 

 nary remarks all that is known of the date and 

 origin of the work. The author is unknown, but 

 that he was a Northman and lived in Nummedal, 

 in Norway, and wrote somewhere between 1140 

 and 1270, or, according to Finsen, about 1154; 

 and that he had in his youth been a courtier, and 

 afterwards a royal councillor, we infer from the 

 internal evidence the work itself affords us. 

 Kongs-sliugg-sio, or the royal mirror, deserves to 

 be better known, on account of the lively picture 

 it gives us of the manners and customs of the 

 Nortli in tlie twelfth century ; the state of the arts 

 and the amount of science known to the educated. 

 It abounds in sound morals, and its author might 

 have sate at the feet of Adam Smith for the ortho- 

 doxy of his political economy. He is not entirely 

 free from the credulity of his age; and his account 

 of Ireland will match anything to be found in Sir 

 John Mandeville. Here we are told of an island 

 on which nothing rots, of another on wIiIlIi nothing 

 dies, of another on one-half of which devils alone 

 reside, of wonderful monsters and animals, and of 

 miracles the strangest ever wrought. He invents 

 nothing. What he relates of Ireland he .states to 

 have found in books, or to have derived from 

 hearsay. The following extract must therefore be 

 taken as a specimen of L-ish Folk-lore in the twelfth 

 centui-y : — 



" There is also one thing, lie says, that will seem 

 wonderful, and it happened in the town which is called 

 Kloena [Cloyne]. In that town there is a church 

 which is dedicated to the memory of a holy man called 

 Kiranus. And there it happened one Sunday, as the 

 people were at prayers and heard mass, that there de- 

 scended gently from the air an anchor, as if it had been 

 cast from a ship, for there was a cable to it, and the 

 fluke of the anchor caught in the arch of the church- 

 door, and all the people went out of church, and won- 

 dered, and looked up into the air after the cable. There 

 they saw a ship floating above the cable, and men on 

 board; and next they saw a man leap overboard, and 

 dive down to the anchor to free it. He appeared, 

 from the motions he made with both hands and feet, like 

 a man swimming in the sea. And when he reached 

 the anchor, he endeavoured to loosen it, when the 

 people ran forwards to seize the man. But the church 

 in which the anchor stuck fast had a bishop's chair in 

 it. The bishop was present on this occasion, and for- 

 bade the people to hold the man, and said that he 

 might be drowned just as if in water. And imme- 

 diately he was set free he hastened up to the ship, and 



when he was on board, they hauled up the cable and 

 disappeared from men's sight ; but the anchor has 

 since laid in the church as a testimony of this." 



Corkscrew. 



GOLD IN CALIFORNTA. 



(Vol. ii., p. 132.) 



E. N.W. refers to Shelvocke's voyage of 1719, 

 in which reference is made to the abundance of 

 gold in the soil of California. In Hakluyt's Voy- 

 ages, printed in 1599 — ICOO, will be found much 

 earlier notices on this subject. California was 

 first discovered in the time of the Great Marquis, 

 as Cortes was usually called. There are accounts 

 of these early expeditions by Francisco Vasquez 

 Coronada, Ferdinando Alarchon, Father Marco de 

 Nicja, and Francisco de UUoa, who visited the 

 country in 1539 and 1540. It is stated by Hakluyt 

 that they were as fiir to the north as the 37th de- 

 gree of latitude, which would be about one degree 

 south of St- Francisco. I am inclined, however, 

 to believe from the narrations themselves tliat the 

 Spanish early discoveries did not extend much 

 beyond the 34th decree of latitude, being little 

 higher than the Peninsular or Lower California. 

 In all these accounts, however, distinct mention 

 is made of abundance of gold. In one of them it 

 is stated that the natives used plates of gold to 

 scrape the perspiration off their bodies! 



The most curious and distinct account, however, 

 is that given in " The famous voyage of Sir Francis 

 Da-ake into the South Sea,&c. in 1577," which will 

 be found in the third volume of Hakluyt, page 730., 

 et seq. I am tempted to make some extracts from 

 this, and the more so because a very feasible claim 

 might be based upon the transaction in favour of 

 our Sovereign Lady the Queen. At page 737. I 

 find : 



" The 5th day of June (1579) being in iS degrees 

 wards the pole Arctike, we found the ayre so colde, 

 that our men being grievously pinched with the same, 

 complained of the extremitie thereof, and the further 

 we went, the more the colde increased upon us. Where- 

 upon we thought it best for that time to seeke the 

 land, and did so, finding it not mountainous, but low 

 plaine land, till we came within thirty degrees toward 

 the line. In which height it pleased God to send us 

 mto a faire and good baye, with a good winde to eater 

 the same. In this baye wee anchored." 



A glance at the map will show that " in this 

 baye " is now situated tbe famous city of San 

 Francisco. 



Their doings in the bay are then narrated, and 

 from page 738. I extract the following : — 



" AVhen they [the natives with their king] had sa- 

 tisfied themselves [with dancing, &c.] they made signes 

 to our General [Drake] to sit downe, to whom the 

 king and divers others made several orations, or rather 

 supplications, that hee would take their province or 



