Rein-Deer in Caithness in the \2th century. 51 



precise justice to his original authority, it would have been 

 impossible for any author of the present day to suppose that 

 for the rein-deer we ought to read the red-deer. The passage 

 is as follows : " That var sithr Jarla nasr hvert sumar at fara 

 yfer a Katanes oc thar upp a merkr at veida rauddyri edr 

 hre'ina ,-" which Jonaeus renders after the following manner : 

 " Solebant Comites quavis fere sestate in Katenesum transire 

 ibique in desertis/l'ra,? rubras et rangiferos venari." 



We thus find, that instead of the Jarls of Orkney com- 

 ing over to Caithness to kill the rein-deer and the roe, (Ca- 

 prea) asTorfgeus would have us i - ead, the animals actually enu- 

 merated were the rein-deer and the red-deer, (rauddyri,) each 

 being supposed to exist at the same time in the north of the 

 Caledonian Highlands. 



The date of the period when Ronald and Harold, the two 

 Jarls of Orkney alluded to, visited Caithness to hunt, has 

 been assigned by Jonaaus to the year 1159 ; and as the Skalds, 

 who have commemorated the event in their verses, were gene- 

 rally accurate in their description of the objects of the chace, 

 no suspicion on this score can be rationally entertained. Their 

 historical verses were often composed during the lives of the 

 heroes whose feats they recorded, and sung at public feasts; 

 and it would have been as derogatory to their Skaldship to 

 make the Jarls of Orkney kill rein-deer in Caithness, sup- 

 posing that no animals of the kind had then and there existed, 

 as for a modern bard to celebrate a tiger hunt among the red- 

 deer haunts of Atholl. 



But the question of the degree of confidence to be attached to 

 this curious passage of the Orkneyinga Saga, may be best con- 

 signed to the critic who has shown himself familiar with the cir- 

 cumstances under which the Skalds composed their historical 

 verses, and with their mode of composition. Jonams, in a note 

 which he has written in his index vocum upon the word Hreinn, 

 (animal quod vulgo rangifer vocatur,) after several illustrations 

 of its etymology, adds, " Quod maximi momenti est, evincit lo- 

 cus citatus fuissc tempore isto in Scotia Renones. Nee proprii 

 semper Grbnlandis et Lapponibus fuerunt, etenim Islandia 

 seculo xij, teste jure Island. Ecclesiastico Thorlaco-Kettil- 

 liano Cap. xxxi. eos habuit. Exstirpati tamen sunt incolarum 



