Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/239

 ages the islands have derived from being severed from Norway:

An old, forgotten custom is commemorated in the following proverb:

This refers to the custom of riding the scattald marches, on which occasion a boy got a flogging at each march stone to stimulate his memory.

The last of these old saws I will quote is one I heard many years ago from my friend, Mr. James S. Angus. It survives in the old Norse tongue, and is almost as old-fashioned in sentiment as it is in language, but it breathes the true Old Norse spirit and is full of the wisdom of our forefathers :

Or, as Dr. Jakobsen has rendered it: