ACCORDING to a Scandinavian legend, a young Danish lady went wandering into a forest, where she suddenly, when turning out of one glade into another, came face to face with a bear, who seized her and forcibly violated her. The result was the birth of a child, with shaggy ears, to whom was given the name of Barn. He married, and had a son, Siward, who came on a piratical excursion to England, and became Viceroy Earl of Northumbria, and this identity of Siward, son of Barn, with Siward the Earl, has been generally accepted by modern chroniclers, which may be attributed to the great obscurity which hangs over the history of this period. The fact is, that this legend does not pertain to Earl Siward at all, but to another Siward—Siward-Barn—who lived half-a-century afterwards, and was son of the Danish Jarl—Barn. Following the instincts of his race, he sailed from Denmark with a fleet, and after ravaging the Orkneys and the coasts of Scotland and Northumbria, passed up the Thames, and presented himself at the Court of Edward the Confessor, whose favour he gained by entering his service. He was rewarded with lands in Cumberland and Westmoreland, and in Holderness, Yorkshire, one of his manors there being called Barns-town, now Barmston, near Bridlington. After the conquest, he joined in the northern insurrection against William I., and was one of the companions of Hereward the Wake in the Isle of Ely, where he was captured, sent a prisoner into Normandy, and there died. He never had anything to do with the Earldom of Northumbria, which was held during his time by Tosti, Morkere, and Waltheof, the son of Earl Siward.

Having disposed of this myth, it becomes us to give, as far as can be ascertained, the true ancestry of Siward. When the Saxon heptarchy, or octarchy, became consolidated into one kingdom, the realm of Northumbria, extending from the Humber to the Tweed, and sometimes to the Forth, which was the last to submit, was peopled by a brave and warlike people, sensitively tenacious of their independence, and of so turbulent a character, that it became necessary to place over them a Viceroy Earl of great vigour, determination, and military ability, to give it the semblance of semi-independence, but at the same time to be ready on the spot to nip incipient rebellion when in the bud. Such a Governor was found in Oswulf, son of Ealdred, Lord of Bamborough, who was nominated to the office by King Athelstane. He was succeeded by Waltheof, the Elder, who was followed by his son Ughtred, from whom the holders of not less than seven peerages claim descent. By Ælgifu, daughter of King Ethelred II., he had issue—Eadulf, Gospatric, and Ældred. Ældred succeeded as Earl of Bernicia, on the death of his uncle, Eadulf I., Earl of Northumbria; and Siward, who was his son, appears to have been appointed, at the same time, Deputy-Earl of Deira.

He was born towards the end of the tenth century, was a giant in stature, of Herculean strength, and of great courage, which he displayed on many a field of battle. His life, indeed, appears to have been spent more in the battlefield than in the peaceful pursuits of government, the administration of justice, or the superintendence of his Yorkshire manors, of which Malton was the chief, granted to him for his military services, and it presents a succession of romantic episodes, in which the sword played the principal part.

Ældred, his father, died in 1038, and was succeeded in Bernicia by his brother, Eadulf II. Siward, however, claimed it as his hereditary right; and so matters remained until 1041, when Eadulf incurred the displeasure of King Hathacnut. This was the opportunity Siward had been longing for, and he hastened up to the King's Court, where, by his representations, he embittered the mind of the King still further against his uncle, and in the sequel was either ordered or permitted to put him to death. This was precisely what he wanted, and, without the least scruple of conscience or regard to kinship when his own aggrandisement was at issue, he proceeded to Bernicia and murdered his uncle in cold blood, assuming at the same time the government, and thus becoming Earl of Northumbria in its integrity.

In the same year, 1041, the people of Worcester rose in insurrection against an unpopular tax, and the three great Earls, Siward of Northumbria, Leofric of Mercia, and Godwine of Kent, were directed to march thither to suppress it. This was done chiefly at the instigation of Ælfric, Archbishop of York, who had caused their Bishop, Lyfric, to be deprived, and himself appointed in his room, to hold the see in commendam with York, but whom the clergy of Worcester refused to recognise. The Earls had no difficulty in suppressing the revolt—indeed the rebels scarcely made any stand against them; but, with great barbarity, they slaughtered the people, plundered their habitations, burnt the city, and compelled them to accept Ælfric as their Bishop.

The following year Hathacnut died, and was succeeded by Eadwarde the Confessor, more fitted for the cowl than the crown, when the three Earls, the mightiest subjects of the realm, divided the administration of the kingdom amongst themselves; Siward at this time held likewise the Earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton, which were severed from Northumbria at his death.

In 1051, Count Eustace of Boulogne, on his return from a visit to King Eadwarde, treated the people of Dover with great insolence, who fell upon him and his followers, and gave them a deservedly severe chastisement. Eustace demanded redress from the King, who commanded Earl Godwine to punish the Dover people, who, finding that Eustace had been the aggressor, asked that they might be heard in their defence, to which the King would not listen; then Godwine assumed a higher tone, and demanded the surrender of the Count to answer for his insolence. This enraged the King, who summoned Siward and Leofric to render assistance against the hostile designs of Godwine. They came to Gloucester, where a compromise was effected; but at a subsequent gemÔt, held in London, Godwine and his family were banished.

The most creditable military effort of the many in which his sword had been drawn, and that which redounded the most to his glory, was the last of his life. In 1054, he was sent by King Eadwarde in command of an expedition into Scotland against the usurper, Macbeth, in favour of the young Prince, Malcolm Canmore, son of the murdered King Duncan. He was now the father of two sons by his first wife—Æthelfleda—Osbert, now approaching manhood, and Waltheof, a boy, some years younger. The former he took with him to Scotland, to initiate him in the then deemed glorious art of war; and a brave young fellow he proved himself to be, a worthy scion of the old stock. Siward attacked Scotland by land and sea, met the usurper and defeated him in a pitched battle, after which he caused Malcolm to be proclaimed King. It is sometimes stated that Macbeth was slain in the battle, which was not the case, as he escaped and held out for three years, maintaining a desultory series of fights with Malcolm, but was eventually slain in 1057. His son Osbert fell in the battle, fighting bravely, and when the news was brought to him, he eagerly inquired if his wounds were in front, and when told they were, said that he could not but rejoice, such a death being worthy of one sprung from his loins.

Shakspeare, not always true to history, in his tragedy of "Macbeth" thus gives the death of "Young Siward," as he calls Osbert:—He meets with Macbeth on the field, and, after some bandying of words, they fight, and Macbeth falls, after which Osbert rushes into the thick of the fight, and falls himself. When Siward is told that all his son's wounds are in front, he exclaims—

Prince Malcolm observes—

To which Siward replies—

Henry of Huntingdon, speaking of Siward's death, says—"And so he passed away, as he believed, to Valhalla, to rejoin the great warriors of his race who had gone before," seeming to intimate, founded on the misconception of his identity with the Viking Siward-Barn, that he died in the old Scandinavian faith of Woden, which was not true, as he lived and died a Christian, such as Christians were then. He is supposed to have founded a church in York, dedicated to St. Olaf, the martyred King of Norway, and connected with it a fraternity of monks, the name of which, in the reign of William II., was changed into that of St. Mary the Virgin, and eventually became the famous and wealthy abbey of after-times, with a mitred abbot. The ruins may now be seen in the grounds of the Museum.

He ruled his province with great firmness and some severity, necessary in his endeavours to curb the savage propensities of the people, and to establish a system of order and good government, and was bountiful to the Church, as some atonement, perhaps, for the crimes by which he rose to his high position.

Shortly after his return from his Scottish expedition, he was stricken with dysentery, which rapidly grew worse, and he lay in his vice-regal mansion at York without hope of recovery. When he felt his last moments approaching he suddenly started up from his couch and exclaimed, "Let me not die the death of a cow! If it be not my fate to die gloriously on the field of battle, as my brave boy, Osbert, has done, with all his wounds in front, at least let me die in the guise of a warrior. Don me my harness, place the helmet on my head, and gird my sword on my thigh. It were a shame and disgrace that I, who have faced death in so many fields, should die ignominiously in bed. Bring forth my battle-axe and shield, and place them by my side, that the ghosts of my warlike ancestry, who are looking down upon me now, may see me pass away from earth to join them in their everlasting home, with the semblance of the great warrior that I have been." And thus, seated on a chair, clothed in his armour, and supported in an upright posture by his attendants, he gave up the ghost, and was buried in his church of St. Olaf.

His son, Waltheof, being too young for the government of so important a province, it was given to Tosti, son of Earl Godwine, and brother of Harold, the future King; whilst Waltheof succeeded to the Earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton, and eventually to that of Northumbria.