of a spear in the middle of the hall.  As the messengers proceeded with their story Huitzeck and Sigurd dropped their game and listened to what was said with great attention, Ivar put various questions and Biorn leant on the spear he was polishing.  But when the messengers came to the death of the chief, and told his expiring words that the young bears would gnarl their tusks (literally grunt) if they knew their parent’s fate, Biorn grasped the handle of his spear so tight with emotion that the marks of his fingers remained on it, and when the tale was finished dashed it in pieces, Huitzeck compressed a chessman he had taken so with his fingers that the blood started from each whilst Sigurd Snakeseye paring his nails with a knife was so wrapped up in attention that he cut himself to the bone without feeling it.

All authorities down to the end of the Eighteenth century, ascribe the first knowledge of chess in England, to the time of the reign of William the Conqueror, or to that of the return of the first Crusaders, some adding not earlier than 1100 A.D., H. T. Buckle the author and historian who was foremost in skill among chess amateurs, in his references to the game, satisfied apparently with the evidence of Canute’s partiality for it, (1017 to 1035) thought it probable that it was familiarly known in England a century or so before that monarch’s reign.  Sir Frederick Madden writing from 1828 to 1832 at the outset of his highly interesting communications to the Asiatic Society, at first inclined to the Crusaders theory, but upon further investigation later in his articles he arrived at the conclusion that chess might have been known among us in Athelstan’s reign from 925 to 941, and Professor Forbes writing from 1854 to 1860 concurred in that view.  Both of these authorities after quoting old chess incidents and anecdotes of Pepin’s and Charlemagne’s times with other references to chess in France, Germany, and Scandinavia, then pass on to chess in England, and after asserting the probability that the Saxons most likely received chess from their neighbours the Danes then fix apparently somewhat inconsistently so late as the Tenth century for it.  They assert that the tradition of the game having been brought from the North certainly existed, and is mentioned by Gaimar who wrote about the year 1150, when speaking of the mission of Edelwolth from King Edgar to the castle of Earl Orgar, in Devonshire to verify the reports of his daughter Elstreuth’s beauty.  When he arrived at the mansion,

          “Orgar juout a un esches,
          Un gin k’il aprist des Daneis,
          Od lui juout Elstruat lu bele,
          Sus ciel n’ont donc tele damesele.”

          “Orgar was playing at the chess,
          A game he had learnt of the Danes,
          With him played the fair Elstrueth,
          A fairer maiden was not under heaven.”

Edgar reigned from 958 to 975, English history referring to this incident among the amours of Edgar, make no mention of the Earl of Devonshire and his daughter being found playing chess together.  Hume says Elfrida was daughter and heir of Olgar Earl of Devonshire and though she had been educated in the country, and had never appeared at court, she had filled all England with the reputation of her beauty.