land-moss, requested some medical advice,
supposing from my fondness for plants that
I must be a physician. In this 1 was sorry
to be obliged to undeceive him, and, indeed,
I could only do it with great difficulty. He
wished me much to examine his hip, which
had been some years ago dislocated, and had
healed very awkwardly for want of surgical
assistance. A wound, also, which he received
at the same period, had ulcerated,
and he had been able to procure no application
since that time twelvemonth, when, as
he said, a gentleman, with a star upon his
breast, gave him a plaister. He was travelling
to the Geysers, but who he was he
Could not tell. When I at length assured
him that it was not in my power to render
him any service, his wife’s diseases were
enumerated, and I was entreated to examine
her sores. On my declining this, he resolved
to turn physician himself, and begged
me to give him some rum to bathe his wife’s
breast: to this I consented; but, after having
applied a portion of it to that purpose, he
drank the rest, without being at all aware of
its strength, which, however, had no other
effect than the very ludicrous one of causing
this clerical blacksmith with his lame hip to
dance, in the most ridiculous manner, in the
front of the house. The scene afforded a great
source of merriment to all his family, except
his old wife, who was very desirous of getting
him to bed, while he was no less anxious
that she should join him in the dance.
The wife, however, at length gained the victory,
and he retired in great good humour *.
* I should be extremely sorry, if, by this little anecdote,
I am supposed to intimate that drinking is a
common vice among the Icelanders. I have every reason
to think very much the contrary. Indeed, this very circumstance
is a convincing proof how unaccustomed the
priest of Middalr was to spirituous liquors : otherwise,
the small quantity he drank, which could not at any
rate have exceeded a wine-glass full, would not have
elated his spirits so much. At Reikevig, it is true, drunkenness,
and almost every other vice, have been introduced
by the Danes, but they are confined solely to the
town, and principally to the Danes themselves. I do
not recollect, during the whole of my stay in the island,
that I saw half a dozen natives much in liquor, and
those were all in Reikevig. Their morals are extremely
correct. It is not without the most thorough contempt
for the author of such a falsehood, that I read the following
passage, extracted from Anderson s History of Iceland:
“ These people know very little of God, or his will;
for the value of two marks, or sixteen-pence, they will
perjure themselves even to the prejudice of their nearest