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animated by that of Religion. Regner, who was a celebrated Warrior, Poet and Pirate, reigned in Denmark about the beginning of the ninth century: after a long series of maritime expeditions into the most distant countries, his fortune at length failed him in England. Taken prisoner in battle by his adversary Ella, who was king of a part of that island, he perished by the bite of serpents, with which they had filled the dungeon he was confined in. He left behind him several sons, who revenged this horrible death, as Regner himself had foretold in the following verses. There is some reason, however, to conjecture that this prince did not compose more than one or two stanzas of this Poem, and that the rest were added, after his death, by the Bard, whose function it was, according to the custom of those times, to add to the funeral splendor, by singing verses to the praise of the deceased. Be that as it may, this Ode is found in several Icelandic Chronicles, and its versification, language and stile, leave us no room to doubt of its antiquity. Wormius has given us the text in Runic Characters, accompanied with a Latin Version, and large notes in his Lituratura Runica. Vid. p. 197. It is also met with in M. Biorners’s collection. Out of the twenty-nine strophes, of which it
