Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/205

 HAKON THE OLD AT LARGS. 195 fighting in various parts, — tacitly including Largs, no doubt, which was the last of these misfortunes to him. *In the battle here he lost 15,000 men, say the Scots, we 5,000 ' ! Divide these numbers by ten, and the excellently brief and lucid Scottish summary by Buchanan may be taken as the approximately true and exact.* Date of the battle is a.d. 1263. To this day, on a little plain to the south of the village, now town, of Largs, in Ayrshire, there are seen stone cairns and monumental heaps, and, until within a century ago, one huge, solitary, upright stone ; still mutely testifying to a battle there, — altogether clearly, to this battle of King Hakon's; who by the Norse records, too, was in these neigh- bourhoods at that same date, and evidently in an aggressive, high kind of humour. For * while his sounding, banners waving. "All to the left of me is mine and Norway's," exclaimed Hakon in his o 2
 * ships and army were doubling the Mull of Cantire,
 * he had his own boat set on wheels, and therein,
 * splendidly enough, had himself dra^vn across the
 * Promontory at a flatter part,' no doubt with horns
 * Btichanani Hist., i. 130.