Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 2.djvu/305

 KINGS OF NORWAY. 297 acquainted, and showed her the lad. The queen said saga vn. she knew no remedy for it. " Go," said she, " to King Olaf, he is the best physician here ; and beg him to lay his hands on thy lad, and bring him my words if he will not otherwise do it." She did as the queen told her ; and when she found the king she says to him that her son is dangerously ill of a boil in his neck, and begs him to lay his hand on the boil. The king tells her he is not a physician, and bids her go to where there were physicians. She replies, that the queen had told her to come to him; " and told me to add the request from her, that you would use the remedy you understood, and she said that thou art the best physician here in the town." Then the king took the lad, laid his hands upon his neck, and felt the boil for a long time, until the boy made a very wry face. Then the king took a piece of bread, laid it in the figure of the cross upon the palm of his hand, and put it into the boy's mouth. He swallowed it down, and from that time all the soreness left his neck, and in a few days he was quite well, to the great joy of his mother and all his relations. Then first came Olaf into the repute of having as much healing power in his hands* as is ascribed to men who have been gifted by nature with healing by the touch ; and afterwards, when his miracles were universally acknow- ledged, this also was considered one of his miracles. It happened one Sunday that the king sat in his Chapter high seat at the dinner table, and had fallen into such Ki " laf deep thought that he did not observe how time went. burns the wood In one hand he had a knife, and in the other a piece shavings on of fir-wood from which he cut splinters from time to ^ £* time. The table-servant stood before him with a bowl Sabbath in his hands ; and seeing what the king was about, and the time of Charles I. or later, any way connected with this royal saint's gift of healing by the touch ?
 * Is the touching for the king's evil, which was continued clown to