HAKON JARL. 45 reign. Buchanan's narrative, carefully distilled from, all the ancient Scottish sources, is of admirable quality for style and otherwise ; quiet, brief, with perfect clearness, perfect credibility even, — except that semi- miraculous appendage of the Ploughmen, Hay and Sons, always hanging to the tail of it ; the grain of possible truth in which can now never be extracted by man's art ! * In brief, what we know is, fragments of ancient human bones and armour have occasionally been ploughed up in this locality, proof-positive of ancient fighting here ; and the fight fell out not long after Hakon*s beating of the Jomsburgers at the Cape of Stad. And in such dim glimmer of wavering twi- light, the question whether these of Loncarty were refitted Jomsburgers or not, must be left hanging. Loncarty is now the biggest bleachfield in Queen Victoria's dominions ; no village or hamlet there, only the huge bleaching-house and a beautiful field, some six or seven miles north-west of Perth, bordered by the beautiful Tay river on the one side, and by its beautiftd tributary Almond on the other ; a Loncarty
- G. Buchanan! Opera Omnia, i. 103-4 (Curante Ruddimano,
Edinburgi 1715).
