H2 Idylls of the Field. 



sunset sky, in thick weather not seldom altogether lost 

 in haze, has been in its time a very nursery of sea- 

 rovers, a stronghold for the pirates of a thousand 

 years. 



Hardy Norsemen anchored here their dark-ribbed 

 keels — perhaps even gave the isle its very name. No 

 runes remain to tell their story, but the plough and 

 the spade have brought to light relics of old frays 

 which may be memorials of their time. 



Forty years ago some labourers, in digging the 

 foundation for a wall, laid bare a slab of granite. Be- 

 neath it, in a rude chamber framed of blocks of stone, 

 lay a gigantic skeleton, that measured more than eight 

 feet in length. No weapons had been buried with the 

 dead, no ornaments even were discovered, beyond 

 some scraps of bronze and a few beads of pale blue 

 glass. Other skeletons lay near, some arranged with 

 care, others in a mingled mass, as if many bodies had 

 been huddled into a common grave. 



Scattered over the island are abundant traces of its 

 old inhabitants — faint signs of ancient tillage, shape- 

 less heaps of stone. The cliffs are pierced with caves 

 and galleries, to which the finger of tradition points as 

 holding still the gold of the buccaneers. 



Of the convicts, who under sentence of banishment 

 to Virginia were landed here by Benson in the middle 

 of last century and set to labour on the island, little 

 trace remains beyond rude walls of unhewn stone. 



But, from end to end of the island, the bracken 



