Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/169

 MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 159 my life," answered Sigvat ; " King's orders are rigor- ous on that point." " But if the child die unbaptised," said the Bishop shuddering ; too certain, he and every- body, where the child would go in that case ! "I will myself give him a name," said Sigvat, with a desperate concentration of all his faculties ; " he shall be name- sake of the greatest of mankind, — imperial Carolus Magnus ; let us call the infant Magnus ! " King Olaf, on the morrow, asked rather sharply how Sigvat had dared take such a liberty ; but excused Sigvat, seeing what the perilous alternative was. And Magnus, by such accident, this boy was called; and he, not another, is the prime origin and introducer of that name Magnus, which occurs rather frequently, not among the Norman Kings only, but by and by among the Danish and Swedish; and, among the Scandi- navian populations, appears to be rather frequent to this day. Magnus, a youth of great spirit, whose own, and standing at his beck, all Norway now was, immediately smote home on Denmark; desirous naturally of vengeance for what it had done to Norway, and the sacred kindred of Magnus. Denmark, its great Knut