[9] "The red cock crew" is the expression used
in the old Norwegian Fagas for incendiary fire.
That same night Lage Ulfson Kvaerk slew a
black ram, and thanked Asathor for his deliverance;
and the Saga tells that while he was
sprinkling the blood on the altar, the thundering
god himself appeared to him, and wilder he
looked than the fiercest wild Turk. Rams, said
he, were every-day fare; they could redeem no
promise. Brynhild, his daughter, was the
reward Asathor demanded. Lage prayed and
besought him to ask for something else. He
would gladly give him one of his sons; for he
had three sons, but only one daughter. Asathor
was immovable; but so long Lage continued to
beg, that at last he consented to come back in a
year, when Lage perchance would be better
reconciled to the thought of Brynhild's loss.
In the mean time King Olaf built a church to
Christ the White on the headland at the river,
where it stands until this day. Every evening,
when the huge bell rumbled between the mountains,
the parishioners thought they heard heavy,
half-choked sighs over in the rocks at Kvaerk;
and on Sunday mornings, when the clear-voiced
chimes called them to high-mass, a suppressed
moan would mingle with the sound of the bells,
and die away with the last echo. Lage Ulfson
was not the man to be afraid; yet the church-
bells many a time drove the blood from his cheeks;
for he also heard the moan from the mountain.
The year went, and Asathor returned.
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