Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 2.djvu/360

 oxo CHRONICLE OF THE • If I Zi 00 SAGA VII. " Tapers up there, (Which Christ holds dear,) By day and night The altar light : Olaf did so., And all men know In heaven he From sin sits free. " And crowds do come, The deaf and dumb, Cripple and blind, Sick of all kind, Cured to be On bended knee; And off the ground Rise whole and sound. " To Olaf pray To eke thy day, To save thy land From spoiler's hand. God's man is he To deal to thee Good crops and peace; Let not prayer cease. f< Book-prayers prevail, If, nail for nail*, Thou tellest on, Forgetting none." Thorarin Loftunge was himself with King Swend, and heard these great testimonials of King Olaf 's holi- ness, that people, by the heavenly power, could hear a sound over his holy remains as if bells were ringing, and that candles were lighted of themselves upon the altar as by a heavenly fire. But when Thorarin says that a multitude of lame, and blind, and other sick, who came to the holy Olaf, went back cured, he means nothing more than that there were a vast many per- sons who at the beginning of King Olaf 's miraculous Aundveigis-sulor, with nails called Reigin-naglar — the gods' nails — either for ornament, or, as Schoning suggests, to assist the people in reckoning weeks, months, festivals, and in reckoning or keeping tale of prayers repeated, and to recall them to memory, in the same way as beads are used still by the common people in Catholic countries for the same purpose.
 * Before the entrance of the temples or churches were posts called