"Mayest thou win a wife who is but a faint reflection of Thora.
"Bury me here, where mingles the roar of the forest and the sea.
"Farewell my dear son. Dame Harthild's curse thou hast turned for me into a blessing."
The blackbird ceased singing in the bush. And as the sun sank, one warm full flood of his rays streamed full upon that mighty face.
When now my dear father was dead, whom I myself had slain, I wept bitterly, and lay all night by the side of the dead.
And when the sun again arose I considered what I should now do.
At first I thought I would drive the flock to the monastery, which lay some six stages distant, and relate all to the monks, and confess how I had, all unwittingly, slain my own father; and beg for absolution for myself, and for a Christian grave for my dear father.
But I bethought me that the monks would not bury my father with Christian honours, since he had died a heathen. And neither would they allow me to burn him, after the custom of the heathen people, because the heathen gods would thus be brought much into remembrance. And they would certainly throw him, unhonoured, into the sea, as they had already done to a heathen from Zealand.
So I resolved to be silent about it all, and not to betray my dear dead father to the priests.
And thus could I neither confess the death blow, nor receive counsel respecting my guiltless crime.
And from thence was the beginning of my freeing my mind from the monks and their creed.
And I knew, quite near, of a cavern, which was known only to me, for it had a very small entrance, and I had only discovered it because I had followed a stone marten which had slipped into it. A fallen block of stone concealed the entrance, and I found many ashes and remnants of bones within the spacious cavern, which opened towards the sea. In early days, no doubt, the heathen Scots had burnt their dead here. Thither I carried, not without much difficulty, my dear dead father, and set him upright in the cavern, his face turned towards the sea. The roots of the oaks and ashes which waved above the cavern, penetrated through the stone downwards almost to his head. Above him roared the forest, before him roared the sea. There did I place my dear father, and rolled the stone again to the entrance.