Il6 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



sonal contest with the Devil, his neighbors threw him into 

 a pond to determine whether he was, in fact, a wizard or 

 not; and when Ailmer of Malmesbury, having invested 

 himself with a pair of wings, jumped from a steeple and 

 broke his legs, they ascribed his failure to evil influences 

 with which he had paltered, and not, as he insisted, to his 

 having forgotten to put on a tail behind. 1 



In none of the chronicles of Saxon England, nor in the 

 old legendary poems of the north, can any definite sign 

 of acquaintance with magnetic polarity be recognized. 

 While the Normans undertook long excursions, the ordi- 

 nary voyage made by them was merely between points on 

 the narrow seas where the pilots were seldom out of sight 

 of land, and in waters which had been navigated for cen- 

 turies and wherein all the peculiarities of coasts and cur- 

 rents were intimately known. During the loth and nth 

 centuries, however, the forays of the Normans, originally 

 confined to the lands bordering on the sea, were extended 

 into the heart of Europe. They ruined France, placed 

 her monarchs under tribute, and occupied and named one 

 of the fairest portions of the Prankish territory. There, 

 having embraced Christianity, they began pilgrimages to 

 Italy and the Holy Land, with all the fervor of new-made 

 converts. Their acceptance of the new faith does not 

 seem to have extended as far as the doctrine of loving one's 

 neighbors; and any behavior on the part of the latter to- 

 ward the pious pilgrim on the basis of such a presumption 

 speedily converted the meek wayfarer into an astonishingly 

 skilful manipulator of axe and sword. Their pilgrimages, 

 therefore, were not easily distinguishable from invasions, 

 and aroused resentment, and finally wars, especially with 

 the Greeks and Saracens of Southern Italy, one result of 

 which was the conquest of Apulia, and the transfer to 

 Norman control of the flourishing and opulent Amalfi, a 



1 Wright, T.: An Essay on the State of Literature, etc., under the 

 Anglo-Saxons. London, 1839. 64-69. 

 William of Malmesbury (Scriptores Post Bedam), 92. 



