Thorgunna

Some people went off in boats from the nest to trade with the vessel.

They found on board a Hebridean woman called Thorgunna, who, hinted the sailors, had treasures of female attire in her possession, the like of which had never been seen in Iceland.

Now when Thurida, the housewife at Frode River, heard this, she was all excitement to get a glimpse of these treasures, for she was a dashing, showy sort of a woman.

She rode out to the ship, and on meeting Thorgunna, asked her if she had really some first-rate lady's dresses.

Of course she had, was the answer, but she was not going to part with them to anyone.

Then might she see them, humbly asked Thurida.

On the whole, she was a bit disappointed.

Still, she would like to purchase, and she made a bid.

Melmoth the Wanderer, when he becomes the wooer of Imali, seems almost like a reincarnation of the demon lover.

The wandering ball of fire that illuminates the dusky recesses of so many Gothic abbeys is but another manifestation of the fate moon, which shines, foreboding death, after Thorgunna's funeral in the Icelandic saga.

The witchcraft and demonology that attracted Scott and Monk Lewis may be traced far beyond Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, 1685, Bovet's Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloister Opened, 1683, or Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, to Ulysses' invocation of the spirits of the dead, to the idols of Theocritus, and to the Hebrew narrative of Saul's visit to the cave of Endor.

There are incidents in The Gold Mass as horrid as any of those devised by the writers of Gothic romance.