This story about Rolf, a youth and son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, who lives in early Christian Iceland during the days when the Icelandic society was transforming from the old Norse religion to Christianity. At the urging of his wife, Hiarandi does an unprecedented thing and lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher value than the saving of life. However, the life that is saved that night causes his own death and eventually, the unjust outlawing of his son Rolf. Rolf loses first his father, then his property, and finally his freedom to a scheming neighbour. Then he is outlawed from Iceland at the Althing (Council) and travels abroad, meeting with shipwreck, enslavement, Viking berserkers, and many other dangers and adventures. All the while, Rolf searches for a way to prove his father was killed unjustly and win back his own property and freedom. Even more difficult, Rolf must end the cycle of enmity, vengeance, and pride that hangs like a curse over his family Rolf's response to the injustice done to him creates a suspenseful, thought-provoking and page-turning tale which is difficult to put down. ============ KEYWORDS/TAGS: Rolf and the Viking’s Bow, Norse, Archery, , abroad, Althing, Asdis, ashore, atonement, baresarks, beacon, beserkers, blood, bow, Broadfirth, carline, chapmen, cliffs, cloak, Cragness, crags, Earl, Einar, evil, father, Fellstead, Flosi, Frodi, Gisli, gold, Grani, Grettir, Hallmund, Hallvard, Hawksness, heart, Helga, Hiarandi, home, Iceland, judges, Kari, Kiartan, kinsman, Kolbein, money, mound, neighbours, Ondott, Orkney, Outlaw, outlawry, Priest, Quarter, Rolf, Scots, sea, shepherd, shield, ship, shipmaster, shoot, smithy, smote, Snorri, son, storehouse, storm, strength, Sweyn, sword, Thorfinn, thrall, Thurid, Tongue, travel, Vemund, vengeance, viking, warship, weapons, whittle, winter, witnesses, wounds

WELSH RAREBIT TALES contains 15 very short stories. In explaining how these tales came to be, the author tells that he was a member of a "certain literary club" which held irregular meetings. Each member would read his latest work since the previous meeting. The others would comment and critique the work, which created "much mutual benefit" to all. At one such meeting, it seems that the members had "run short of first-class plots" so they decided to attempt an experiment, and sat down to a dinner of: 1 Large Portion Welsh Rarebit, 1 Broiled Live Lobster, 1 Piece Home Made Mince Pie, 1 Portion Cucumber Salad. The following meeting of the club had to be postponed "on account of illness of fourteen of the members," but at the next, "the accompanying tales were related." He notes also that "By unanimous sentence of the other fourteen members, and as a punishment for having been the originator of the scheme, mine was chosen as the unlucky name under which the Tales should appear" and hence, Welsh Rarebit Tales came into being. All these tales are very different. There is a mix of science fiction, horror, dark crime and all reveal something about the nature of the characters. Some are sad, some are downright pathetic, but for the most part, in combination they make for fun reading. The 15 tales in this collection are: The Man Who Made a Man In the Lower Passage The Fool and His Joke The Man and the Beast At the End of the Road The Space Annihilator A Question of Honor The Wine of Pantanelli The Strangest Freak The False Prophet A Study in Psychology The Painted Lady and the Boy The Palace of Sin The Man Who Was Not Afraid The Story the Doctor Told ===================== KEYWORDS/TAGS: Welsh, rarebit, tales, short stories, eclectic, literary club, science fiction, horror, dark crime, sin, vice, sex, fun reading, The Man Who Made a Man, Lower Passage, Fool, Joke, Beast, End of the Road, Space, Annihilator, Question of Honor, Wine, Pantanelli, Strange, Freak, False Prophet, Study, Psychology, Painted Lady, Boy, Palace of Sin, Afraid, courage, fear, Doctor

Rolf is the only son of Hiarandi the Unlucky. Most of his father's ill luck springs from the fact that he is compassionate and that his neighbor, Einar, covets his land and his spacious hall. The wicked Einar manages to get Hiarandi ensnared in legal difficulties and he is sentenced to spend a year within a bow-shot of his own hall. Not content, Einar sends his henchmen to trick Hiarandi into venturing beyond this perimeter where he will be fair game for slaughter. Hiarandi is killed, but in the process, young Rolf also kills one of Einar's henchmen. Now Rolf is made an outlaw and is forced to flee from Iceland until his sentence is complete. But Rolf will not be content until he can prove that his father was killed within a bowshot of his home--and thus make Einar subject to the law.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Hispanic Monarchy was one of the largest and most diverse political communities known in history. At its apogee, it stretched from the Castilian plateau to the high peaks of the Andes; from the cosmopolitan cities of Seville, Naples, or Mexico City to Santa Fe and San Francisco; from Brussels to Buenos Aires and from Milan to Manila. During those centuries, Spain left its imprint across vast continents and distant oceans contributing in no minor way to the emergence of our globalised era. This was true not only in an economic sense-the Hispano-American silver peso transported across the Atlantic and the Pacific by the Spanish fleets was arguably the first global currency, thus facilitating the creation of a world economic system-but intellectually and artistically as well. The most extraordinary cultural exchanges took place in practically every corner of the Hispanic world, no matter how distant from the metropolis. At various times a descendant of the Aztec nobility was translating a Baroque play into Nahuatl to the delight of an Amerindian and mixed audience in the market of Tlatelolco; an Andalusian Dominican priest was writing the first Western grammar of the Chinese language in Fuzhou, a Chinese city that enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Spanish Philippines; a Franciscan friar was composing a piece of polyphonic music with lyrics in Quechua to be played in a church decorated with Moorish-style ceilings in a Peruvian valley; or a multi-ethnic team of Amerindian and Spanish naturalists was describing in Latin, Spanish and local vernacular languages thousands of medicinal plants, animals and minerals previously unknown to the West. And, most probably, at the same time that one of those exchanges were happening, the members of the School of Salamanca were laying the foundations of modern international law or formulating some of the first modern theories of price, value and money, Cervantes was writing Don Quixote, Velázquez was painting Las Meninas, or Goya was exposing both the dark and bright sides of the European Enlightenment. Actually, whenever we contemplate the galleries devoted to Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo or Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid; when we visit the National Palace in Mexico City, a mission in California, a Jesuit church in Rome or the Intramuros quarter in Manila; or when we hear Spanish being spoken in a myriad of accents in the streets of San Francisco, New Orleans or Manhattan we are experiencing some of the past and present fruits of an always vibrant and still expanding cultural community. As the reader can infer by now, this book is about how Spain and the larger Hispanic world have contributed to world history and in particular to the history of civilisation, not only at the zenith of the Hispanic Monarchy but throughout a much longer span of time.

This is the fully revised and expanded second edition of English - One Tongue, Many Voices, a book by three internationally distinguished English language scholars who tell the fascinating, improbable saga of English in time and space. Chapters trace the history of the language from its obscure beginnings over 1500 years ago as a collection of dialects spoken by marauding, illiterate tribes. They show how the geographical spread of the language in its increasing diversity has made English into an international language of unprecedented range and variety. The authors examine the present state of English as a global language and the problems, pressures and uncertainties of its future, online and offline. They argue that, in spite of the amazing variety and plurality of English, it remains a single language.

This turn-of-the-century novel by Allen French is in the style and tradition of the great Icelandic sagas and is set in the time just after Iceland had become Christian.

Rolf, a young bowman in eleventh-century Iceland, faces many dangers as he tries to bring to justice the men responsible for his father's death.