“Beau Sire,” answered Gautier; “par Dex, Merci. But my head is grey and

my arm weak; and the little strength left me I would spend in smiting the

English at the head of my men.”

“Per la resplendar De,” cried William, frowning;--“do ye think, my proud

vavasours, to fail me in this great need?”

“Nay,” said Gautier; “but I have a great host of chevaliers and paid

soldiers, and without the old man at their head will they fight as well?”

“Then, approach thou, Tonstain le Blanc, son of Rou,” said William; “and

be thine the charge of a standard that shall wave ere nightfall over the

brows of thy--King!” A young knight, tall and strong as his Danish

ancestor, stept forth, and laid gripe on the banner.

Then William, now completely armed, save his helmet, sprang at one bound

on his steed. A shout of admiration rang from the Quens and knights.

“Saw ye ever such beau rei?” [266] said the Vicomte de Thouars.

The shout was caught by the lines, and echoed afar, wide, and deep

through the armament, as in all his singular majesty of brow and mien,

William rode forth: lifting his hand, the shout hushed, and thus he spoke

“loud as a trumpet with a silver sound.”

“Normans and soldiers, long renowned in the lips of men, and now hallowed

by the blessing of the Church!--I have not brought you over the wide seas

for my cause alone; what I gain, ye gain. If I take the land, you will

share it. Fight your best, and spare not; no retreat, and no quarter! I

am not come here for my cause alone, but to avenge our whole nation for

the felonies of yonder English. They butchered our kinsmen the Danes, on

the night of St. Brice; they murdered Alfred, the brother of their last

King, and decimated the Normans who were with him. Yonder they

stand,--malefactors that await their doom! and ye the doomsmen! Never,

even in a good cause, were yon English illustrious for warlike temper and

martial glory [267]. Remember how easily the Danes subdued them! Are ye

less than Danes, or I than Canute? By victory ye obtain vengeance,

glory, honours, lands, spoil,--aye, spoil beyond your wildest dreams. By

defeat,--yea, even but by loss of ground, ye are given up to the sword!

Escape there is not, for the ships are useless. Before you the foe,

behind you the ocean. Normans, remember the feats of your countrymen in

Sicily! Behold a Sicily more rich! Lordships and lands to the

living,--glory and salvation to those who die under the gonfanon of the

Church! On, to the cry of the Norman warrior; the cry before which have

fled so often the prowest Paladins of Burgundy and France--‘Notre Dame et

Dex aide!’” [268]

Meanwhile, no less vigilant, and in his own strategy no less skilful,

Harold had marshalled his men. He formed two divisions; those in front

of the entrenchments; those within it. At the first, the men of Kent, as

from time immemorial, claimed the honour of the van, under “the Pale

Charger,”--famous banner of Hengist. This force was drawn up in the form

of the Anglo-Danish wedge; the foremost lines in the triangle all in

heavy mail, armed with their great axes, and covered by their immense

shields. Behind these lines, in the interior of the wedge, were the

archers, protected by the front rows of the heavy armed; while the few

horsemen--few indeed compared with the Norman cavalry--were artfully

disposed where they could best harass and distract the formidable

chivalry with which they were instructed to skirmish, and not peril

actual encounter. Other bodies of the light armed; slingers, javelin

throwers, and archers, were planted in spots carefully selected,

according as they were protected by trees, bushwood, and dykes. The

Northumbrians (that is, all the warlike population, north the Humber,

including Yorkshire, Westmoreland, Cumberland, etc.), were, for their

present shame and future ruin, absent from that field, save, indeed, a

few who had joined Harold in his march to London. But there were the

mixed races of Hertfordshire and Essex, with the pure Saxons of Sussex

and Surrey, and a large body of the sturdy Anglo-Danes from Lincolnshire,

Ely and Norfolk. Men, too, there were, half of old British blood, from

Dorset, Somerset, and Gloucester. And all were marshalled according to

those touching and pathetic tactics which speak of a nation more

accustomed to defend than to aggrieve. To that field the head of each

family led his sons and kinsfolk; every ten families (or tything) were

united under their own chosen captain. Every ten of these tythings had,

again, some loftier chief, dear to the populace in peace; and so on the

holy circle spread from household, hamlet, town,--till, all combined, as

one county under one Earl, the warriors fought under the eyes of their

own kinsfolk, friends, neighbours, chosen chiefs! What wonder that they

were brave?

The second division comprised Harold’s house-carles, or bodyguard,--the

veterans especially attached to his family,--the companions of his

successful wars,--a select band of the martial East-Anglians,--the

soldiers supplied by London and Middlesex, and who, both in arms,

discipline, martial temper and athletic habits, ranked high among the

most stalwart of the troops, mixed, as their descent was, from the

warlike Dane and the sturdy Saxon. In this division, too, was comprised

the reserve. And it was all encompassed by the palisades and

breastworks, to which were but three sorties, whence the defenders might

sally, or through which at need the vanguard might secure a retreat. All

the heavy armed had mail and shields similar to the Normans, though

somewhat less heavy; the light armed had, some tunics of quilted linen,

some of hide; helmets of the last material, spears, javelins, swords, and

clubs. But the main arm of the host was in the great shield, and the

great axe wielded by men larger in stature and stronger of muscle than

the majority of the Normans, whose physical race had deteriorated partly

by inter-marriage with the more delicate Frank, partly by the haughty

disdain of foot exercise.

Mounting a swift and light steed, intended not for encounter (for it was

the custom of English kings to fight on foot, in token that where they

fought there was no retreat), but to bear the rider rapidly from line to

line [269], King Harold rode to the front of the vanguard;--his brothers

by his side. His head, like his great foe’s, was bare, nor could there

be a more striking contrast than that of the broad unwrinkled brow of the

Saxon, with his fair locks, the sign of royalty and freedom, parted and

falling over the collar of mail, the clear and steadfast eye of blue, the

cheek somewhat hollowed by kingly cares, but flushed now with manly

pride--the form stalwart and erect, but spare in its graceful symmetry,

and void of all that theatric pomp of bearing which was assumed by

William--no greater contrast could there be than that which the simple

earnest Hero-king presented, to the brow furrowed with harsh ire and

politic wile, the shaven hair of monastic affectation, the dark,

sparkling tiger eye, and the vast proportions that awed the gaze in the

port and form of the imperious Norman. Deep and loud and hearty as the

shout with which his armaments had welcomed William, was that which now

greeted the King of the English host: and clear and full, and practised

in the storm of popular assemblies, went his voice down the listening

lines.

“This day, O friends and Englishmen, sons of our common land--this day ye

fight for liberty. The Count of the Normans hath, I know, a mighty army;

I disguise not its strength. That army he hath collected together, by

promising to each man a share in the spoils of England. Already, in his

court and his camp, he hath parcelled out the lands of this kingdom; and

fierce are the robbers who fight for the hope of plunder! But he cannot

offer to his greatest chief boons nobler than those I offer to my meanest

freeman--liberty, and right, and law, in the soil of his fathers! Ye

have heard of the miseries endured in the old time under the Dane, but

they were slight indeed to those which ye may expect from the Norman.

The Dane was kindred to us in language and in law, and who now can tell

Saxon from Dane? But yon men would rule ye in a language ye know not, by

a law that claims the crown as the right of the sword, and divides the

land among the hirelings of an army. We baptized the Dane, and the

Church tamed his fierce soul into peace; but yon men make the Church

itself their ally, and march to carnage under the banner profaned to the

foulest of human wrongs! Outscourings of all nations, they come against

you: Ye fight as brothers under the eyes of your fathers and chosen

chiefs; ye fight for the women ye would save from the ravisher; ye fight

for the children ye would guard from eternal bondage; ye fight for the

altars which yon banner now darkens! Foreign priest is a tyrant as

ruthless and stern as ye shall find foreign baron and king! Let no man

dream of retreat; every inch of ground that ye yield is the soil of your

native land. For me, on this field I peril all. Think that mine eye is

upon you wherever ye are. If a line waver or shrink, ye shall hear in

the midst the voice of your King. Hold fast to your ranks, remember,

such amongst you as fought with me against Hardrada,--remember that it

was not till the Norsemen lost, by rash sallies, their serried array,

that our arms prevailed against them. Be warned by their fatal error,

break not the form of the battle; and I tell you on the faith of a

soldier who never yet hath left field without victory,--that ye cannot be

beaten. While I speak, the winds swell the sails of the Norse ships,

bearing home the corpse of Hardrada. Accomplish this day the last triumph

of England; add to these hills a new mount of the conquered dead! And

when, in far times and strange lands, scald and scop shall praise the

brave man for some valiant deed wrought in some holy cause, they shall

say, ‘He was brave as those who fought by the side of Harold, and swept

from the sward of England the hosts of the haughty Norman.’”

Scarcely had the rapturous hurrahs of the Saxons closed on this speech,

when full in sight, north-west of Hastings, came the first division of

the Invader.

Harold remained gazing at them, and not seeing the other sections in

movement, said to Gurth, “If these are all that they venture out, the day

is ours.”

“Look yonder!” said the sombre Haco, and he pointed to the long array

that now gleamed from the wood through which the Saxon kinsmen had passed

the night before; and scarcely were these cohorts in view, than lo! from

a third quarter advanced the glittering knighthood under the Duke. All

three divisions came on in simultaneous assault, two on either wing of

the Saxon vanguard, the third (the Norman) towards the entrenchments.

In the midst of the Duke’s cohort was the sacred gonfanon, and in front

of it and of the whole line, rode a strange warrior of gigantic height.

And as he rode, the warrior sang:

“Chaunting loud the lusty strain

Of Roland and of Charlemain,

And the dead, who, deathless all,

Fell at famous Roncesval.” [270]

And the knights, no longer singing hymn and litany, swelled, hoarse

through their helmets, the martial chorus. This warrior, in front of the

Duke and the horsemen, seemed beside himself with the joy of battle. As

he rode, and as he chaunted, he threw up his sword in the air like a

gleeman, catching it nimbly as it fell [271], and flourishing it wildly,

till, as if unable to restrain his fierce exhilaration, he fairly put

spurs to his horse, and, dashing forward to the very front of a

detachment of Saxon riders, shouted:

“A Taillefer! a Taillefer!” and by voice and gesture challenged forth

some one to single combat.

A fiery young thegn who knew the Romance tongue, started forth and

crossed swords with the poet; but by what seemed rather a juggler’s

sleight of hand than a knight’s fair fence, Taillefer, again throwing up

and catching his sword with incredible rapidity, shore the unhappy Saxon

from the helm to the chine, and riding over his corpse, shouting and

laughing, he again renewed his challenge. A second rode forth and shared

the same fate. The rest of the English horsemen stared at each other

aghast; the shouting, singing, juggling giant seemed to them not knight,

but demon; and that single incident, preliminary to all other battle, in

sight of the whole field, might have sufficed to damp the ardour of the

English, had not Leofwine, who had been despatched by the King with a

message to the entrenchments, come in front of the detachment; and, his

gay spirit roused and stung by the insolence of the Norman, and the

evident dismay of the Saxon riders, without thought of his graver duties,

he spurred his light half-mailed steed to the Norman giant; and, not even

drawing his sword, but with his spear raised over his head, and his form

covered by his shield, he cried in Romance tongue, “Go and chaunt to the

foul fiend, O croaking minstrel!” Taillefer rushed forward, his sword

shivered on the Saxon shield, and in the same moment he fell a corpse

under the hoofs of his steed, transfixed by the Saxon spear.

A cry of woe, in which even William (who, proud of his poet’s

achievements, had pressed to the foremost line to see this new encounter)

joined his deep voice, wailed through the Norman ranks; while Leofwine

rode deliberately towards them, halted a moment, and then flung his spear

in the midst with so deadly an aim, that a young knight, within two of

William, reeled on his saddle, groaned, and fell.

“How like ye, O Normans, the Saxon gleeman?” said Leofwine, as he turned

slowly, regained the detachment, and bade them heed carefully the orders

they had received, viz., to avoid the direct charge of the Norman horse,

but to take every occasion to harass and divert the stragglers; and then

blithely singing a Saxon stave, as if inspired by Norman minstrelsy, he

rode into the entrenchments.

CHAPTER VIII.

The two brethren of Waltham, Osgood and Ailred, had arrived a little

after daybreak at the spot in which, about half a mile, to the rear of

Harold’s palisades, the beasts of burden that had borne the heavy arms,

missiles, luggage, and forage of the Saxon march, were placed in and

about the fenced yards of a farm. And many human beings, of both sexes

and various ranks, were there assembled, some in breathless expectation,

some in careless talk, some in fervent prayer.

The master of the farm, his sons, and the able-bodied ceorls in his

employ, had joined the forces of the King, under Gurth, as Earl of the

county [272]. But many aged theowes, past military service, and young

children, grouped around: the first, stolid and indifferent--the last,

prattling, curious, lively, gay. There, too, were the wives of some of

the soldiers, who, as common in Saxon expeditions, had followed their

husbands to the field; and there, too, were the ladies of many a Hlaford

in the neighbouring district, who, no less true to their mates than the

wives of humbler men, were drawn by their English hearts to the fatal

spot. A small wooden chapel, half decayed, stood a little behind, with

its doors wide open, a sanctuary in case of need; and the interior was

thronged with kneeling suppliants.

The two monks joined, with pious gladness, some of their sacred calling,

who were leaning over the low wall, and straining their eyes towards the

bristling field. A little apart from them, and from all, stood a female;

the hood drawn over her face, silent in her unknown thoughts.

By and by, as the march of the Norman multitude sounded hollow, and the

trumps, and the fifes, and the shouts, rolled on through the air, in many

a stormy peal,--the two abbots in the Saxon camp, with their attendant

monks, came riding towards the farm from the entrenchments.

The groups gathered round these new comers in haste and eagerness.

“The battle hath begun,” said the Abbot of Hide, gravely. “Pray God for

England, for never was its people in peril so great from man.”

The female started and shuddered at those words.

“And the King, the King,” she cried, in a sudden and thrilling voice;

“where is he?--the King?”

“Daughter,” said the abbot, “the King’s post is by his standard; but I

left him in the van of his troops. Where he may be now I know not.

Wherever the foe presses sorest.”

Then dismounting, the abbots entered the yard, to be accosted instantly

by all the wives, who deemed, poor souls, that the holy men must,

throughout all the field, have seen their lords; for each felt as if

God’s world hung but on the single life in which each pale trembler

lived.

With all their faults of ignorance and superstition, the Saxon churchmen

loved their flocks; and the good abbots gave what comfort was in their

power, and then passed into the chapel, where all who could find room

followed them.

The war now raged.

The two divisions of the invading army that included the auxiliaries had

sought in vain to surround the English vanguard, and take it in the rear:

that noble phalanx had no rear. Deepest and strongest at the base of the

triangle, everywhere front opposed the foe; shields formed a rampart

against the dart--spears a palisade against the horse. While that

vanguard maintained its ground, William could not pierce to the

entrenchments, the strength of which, however, he was enabled to

perceive. He now changed his tactics, joined his knighthood to the other

sections, threw his hosts rapidly into many wings, and leaving broad

spaces between his archers--who continued their fiery hail--ordered his

heavy-armed foot to advance on all sides upon the wedge, and break its

ranks for the awaiting charge of his horse.

Harold, still in the centre of the vanguard, amidst the men of Kent,

continued to animate them all with voice and hand; and, as the Normans

now closed in, he flung himself from his steed, and strode on foot, with

his mighty battle-axe, to the spot where the rush was dreadest.

Now came the shock--the fight hand-to-hand: spear and lance were thrown

aside, axe and sword rose and shore. But before the close-serried lines

of the English, with their physical strength and veteran practice in

their own special arm, the Norman foot were mowed as by the scythe. In

vain, in the intervals, thundered the repeated charges of the fiery

knights; in vain, throughout all, came the shaft and the bolt.

Animated by the presence of their King fighting amongst them as a simple

soldier, but with his eye ever quick to foresee, his voice ever prompt to

warn, the men of Kent swerved not a foot from their indomitable ranks.

The Norman infantry wavered and gave way; on, step by step, still

unbroken in array, pressed the English. And their cry, “Out! out! Holy

Crosse!” rose high above the flagging sound of “Ha Rou! Ha Rou!--Notre

Dame!”

“Per la resplendar De,” cried William. “Our soldiers are but women in

the garb of Normans. Ho, spears to the rescue! With me to the charge,

Sires D’Aumale and De Littain--with me, gallant Bruse, and De Mortain;

with me, De Graville and Grantmesnil--Dex aide! Notre Dame.” And heading

his prowest knights, William came, as a thunderbolt, on the bills and

shields. Harold, who scarce a minute before had been in a remoter rank,

was already at the brunt of that charge. At his word down knelt the

foremost line, leaving nought but their shields and their spear-points

against the horse. While behind them, the axe in both hands, bent

forward the soldiery in the second rank, to smite and to crush. And,

from the core of the wedge, poured the shafts of the archers. Down

rolled in the dust half the charge of those knights. Bruse reeled on his

saddle; the dread right hand of D’Aumale fell lopped by the axe; De

Graville, hurled from his horse, rolled at the feet of Harold; and

William, borne by his great steed and his colossal strength into the

third rank--there dealt, right and left, the fierce strokes of his iron

club, till he felt his horse sinking under him--and had scarcely time to

back from the foe--scarcely time to get beyond reach of their weapons,

ere the Spanish destrier, frightfully gashed through its strong mail,

fell dead on the plain. His knights swept round him. Twenty barons

leapt from selle to yield him their chargers. He chose the one nearest

to hand, sprang to foot and to stirrup, and rode back to his lines.

Meanwhile De Graville’s casque, its strings broken by the shock, had

fallen off, and as Harold was about to strike, he recognised his guest.

Holding up his hand to keep off the press of his men, the generous King

said briefly: “Rise and retreat!--no time on this field for captor and

captive. He whom thou hast called recreant knight, has been Saxon host.

Thou hast fought by his side, thou shalt not die by his hand!--Go.”

Not a word spoke De Graville; but his dark eye dwelt one minute with

mingled pity and reverence on the King; then rising, he turned away; and

slowly, as if he disdained to fly, strode back over the corpses of his

countrymen.

“Stay, all hands!” cried the King to his archers; “yon man hath tasted

our salt, and done us good service of old. He hath paid his weregeld.”

Not a shaft was discharged.

Meanwhile, the Norman infantry, who had been before recoiling, no sooner

saw their Duke (whom they recognised by his steed and equipment) fall on

the ground, than, setting up a shout--“The Duke is dead!” they fairly

turned round, and fled fast in disorder.

The fortune of the day was now well-nigh turned in favour of the Saxons;

and the confusion of the Normans, as the cry of “The Duke is dead!”

reached, and circled round, the host, would have been irrecoverable, had

Harold possessed a cavalry fit to press the advantage gained, or had not

William himself rushed into the midst of the fugitives, throwing his

helmet back on his neck, showing his face, all animated with fierce

valour and disdainful wrath, while he cried aloud:

“I live, ye varlets! Behold the face of a chief who never yet forgave

coward! Ay, tremble more at me than at yon English, doomed and accursed

as they be! Ye Normans, ye! I blush for you!” and striking the foremost

in the retreat with the flat of his sword, chiding, stimulating,

threatening, promising in a breath, he succeeded in staying the flight,

reforming the lines, and dispelling the general panic. Then, as he

joined his own chosen knights, and surveyed the field, he beheld an

opening which the advanced position of the Saxon vanguard had left, and

by which his knights might gain the entrenchments. He mused a moment,

his face still bare, and brightening, as he mused. Looking round him, he

saw Mallet de Graville, who had remounted, and said, shortly:

“Pardex, dear knight, we thought you already with St. Michael!--joy, that

you live yet to be an English earl. Look you, ride to Fitzosborne with

the signal-word, ‘Li Hardiz passent avant!’ Off, and quick.”

De Graville bowed, and darted across the plain.

“Now, my Quens and chevaliers,” said William, gaily, as he closed his

helmet, and took from his squire another spear; “now, I shall give ye the

day’s great pastime. Pass the word, Sire de Tancarville, to every

horseman--‘Charge!--to the Standard!’”

The word passed, the steeds bounded, and the whole force of William’s

knighthood, scouring the plain to the rear of the Saxon vanguard, made

for the entrenchments.

At that sight, Harold, divining the object, and seeing this new and more

urgent demand on his presence, halted the battalions over which he had

presided, and, yielding the command to Leofwine, once more briefly but

strenuously enjoined the troops to heed well their leaders, and on no

account to break the wedge, in the form of which lay their whole

strength, both against the cavalry and the greater number of the foe.

Then mounting his horse, and attended only by Haco, he spurred across the

plain, in the opposite direction to that taken by the Normans. In doing

so, he was forced to make a considerable circuit towards the rear of the

entrenchment, and the farm, with its watchful groups, came in sight. He

distinguished the garbs of the women, and Haco said to him,--

“There wait the wives, to welcome the living victors.”

“Or search their lords among the dead!” answered Harold. “Who, Haco, if

we fall, will search for us?”

As the word left his lips, he saw, under a lonely thorn-tree, and scarce

out of bowshot from the entrenchments, a woman seated. The King looked

hard at the bended, hooded form.

“Poor wretch!” he murmured, “her heart is in the battle!” And he shouted

aloud, “Farther off! farther off?--the war rushes hitherward!”

At the sound of that voice the woman rose, stretched her arms, and sprang

forward. But the Saxon chiefs had already turned their faces towards the

neighbouring ingress into the ramparts, and beheld not her movement,

while the tramp of rushing chargers, the shout and the roar of clashing

war, drowned the wail of her feeble cry:

“I have heard him again, again!” murmured the woman, “God be praised!”

and she re-seated herself quietly under the lonely thorn.

As Harold and Haco sprang to their feet within the entrenchments, the

shout of “the King--the King!--Holy Crosse!” came in time to rally the

force at the farther end, now undergoing the full storm of the Norman

chivalry.

The willow ramparts were already rent and hewed beneath the hoofs of

horses and the clash of swords; and the sharp points on the frontals of

the Norman destriers were already gleaming within the entrenchments, when

Harold arrived at the brunt of action. The tide was then turned; not one

of those rash riders left the entrenchments they had gained; steel and

horse alike went down beneath the ponderous battle-axes; and William,

again foiled and baffled, drew off his cavalry with the reluctant

conviction that those breastworks, so manned, were not to be won by

horse. Slowly the knights retreated down the slope of the hillock, and

the English, animated by that sight, would have left their stronghold to

pursue, but for the warning cry of Harold. The interval in the strife

thus gained was promptly and vigorously employed in repairing the

palisades. And this done, Harold, turning to Haco, and the thegns round

him, said joyously:

“By Heaven’s help we shall yet win this day. And know you not that it is

my fortunate day--the day on which, hitherto, all hath prospered with me,

in peace and in war--the day of my birth?”

“Of your birth!” echoed Haco in surprise. “Ay--did you not know it?”

“Nay!--strange!--it is also the birthday of Duke William! What would

astrologers say to the meeting of such stars?” [273]

Harold’s cheek paled, but his helmet concealed the paleness:--his arm

drooped. The strange dream of his youth again came distinct before him,

as it had come in the hall of the Norman at the sight of the ghastly

relics;--again he saw the shadowy hand from the cloud--again heard the

voice murmuring: “Lo, the star that shone on the birth of the victor;”

again he heard the words of Hilda interpreting the dream--again the

chaunt which the dead or the fiend had poured from the rigid lips of the

Vala. It boomed on his ear; hollow as a death bell it knelled through

the roar of battle--

“Never

Crown and brow shall Force dissever,

Till the dead men, unforgiving,

Loose the war-steeds on the living;

Till a sun whose race is ending

Sees the rival stars contending,

Where the dead men, unforgiving,

Wheel their war-steeds round the living!”

Faded the vision, and died the chaunt, as a breath that dims, and

vanishes from, the mirror of steel. The breath was gone--the firm steel

was bright once more; and suddenly the King was recalled to the sense of

the present hour, by shouts and cries, in which the yell of Norman

triumph predominated, at the further end of the field. The signal words

to Fitzosborne had conveyed to that chief the order for the mock charge

on the Saxon vanguard, to be followed by the feigned flight; and so

artfully had this stratagem been practised, that despite all the solemn

orders of Harold, despite even the warning cry of Leofwine, who, rash and

gay-hearted though he was, had yet a captain’s skill--the bold English,

their blood heated by long contest and seeming victory, could not resist

pursuit. They rushed forward impetuously, breaking the order of their

hitherto indomitable phalanx, and the more eagerly because the Normans

had unwittingly taken their way towards a part of the ground concealing

dykes and ditches, into which the English trusted to precipitate the foe.

It was as William’s knights retreated from the breastworks that this

fatal error was committed: and pointing toward the disordered Saxons with

a wild laugh of revengeful joy, William set spurs to his horse, and,

followed by all his chivalry, joined the cavalry of Poitou and Boulogne

in their swoop upon the scattered array. Already the Norman infantry had

turned round--already the horses, that lay in ambush amongst the

brushwood near the dykes, had thundered forth. The whole of the late

impregnable vanguard was broken up, divided corps from corps,--hemmed in;

horse after horse charging to the rear, to the front, to the flank, to

the right, to the left.

Gurth, with the men of Surrey and Sussex, had alone kept their ground,

but they were now compelled to advance to the aid of their scattered

comrades; and coming up in close order, they not only awhile stayed the

slaughter, but again half turned the day. Knowing the country

thoroughly, Gurth lured the foe into the ditches concealed within a

hundred yards of their own ambush, and there the havoc of the foreigners

was so great, that the hollows are said to have been literally made level

with the plain by their corpses. Yet this combat, however fierce, and

however skill might seek to repair the former error, could not be long

maintained against such disparity of numbers. And meanwhile, the whole

of the division under Geoffroi Martel, and his co-captains, had by a

fresh order of William’s occupied the space between the entrenchments and

the more distant engagement; thus when Harold looked up, he saw the foot

of the hillocks so lined with steel, as to render it hopeless that he

himself could win to the aid of his vanguard. He set his teeth firmly,

looked on, and only by gesture and smothered exclamations showed his

emotions of hope and fear. At length he cried:

“Gallant Gurth! brave Leofwine, look to their pennons; right, right; well

fought, sturdy Vebba! Ha! they are moving this way. The wedge cleaves

on--it cuts its path through the heart of the foe.” And indeed, the

chiefs now drawing off the shattered remains of their countrymen, still

disunited, but still each section shaping itself wedge-like,--on came the

English, with their shields over their head, through the tempest of

missiles, against the rush of the steeds, here and there, through the

plains, up the slopes, towards the entrenchment, in the teeth of the

formidable array of Martel, and harassed behind by hosts that seemed

numberless. The King could restrain himself no longer. He selected five

hundred of his bravest and most practised veterans, yet comparatively

fresh, and commanding the rest to stay firm, descended the hills, and

charged unexpectedly into the rear of the mingled Normans and Bretons.

This sortie, well-timed though desperate, served to cover and favour the

retreat of the straggling Saxons. Many, indeed, were cut off, but Gurth,

Leofwine, and Vebba hewed the way for their followers to the side of

Harold, and entered the entrenchments, close followed by the nearer foe,

who were again repulsed amidst the shouts of the English.

But, alas! small indeed the band thus saved, and hopeless the thought

that the small detachments of English still surviving and scattered over

the plain, would ever win to their aid.

Yet in those scattered remnants were, perhaps, almost the only men who,

availing themselves of their acquaintance with the country, and

despairing of victory, escaped by flight from the Field of SANGUELAC.

Nevertheless, within the entrenchments not a man had lost heart; the day

was already far advanced, no impression had been yet made on the

outworks, the position seemed as impregnable as a fortress of stone; and,

truth to say, even the bravest Normans were disheartened, when they

looked to that eminence which had foiled the charge of William himself.

The Duke, in the recent melee, had received more than one wound, his

third horse that day had been slain under him. The slaughter among the

knights and nobles had been immense, for they had exposed their persons

with the most desperate valour. And William, after surveying the rout of

nearly one half of the English army, heard everywhere, to his wrath and

his shame, murmurs of discontent and dismay at the prospect of scaling

the heights, in which the gallant remnant had found their refuge. At

this critical juncture, Odo of Bayeux, who had hitherto remained in the

rear [274], with the crowds of monks that accompanied the armament, rode

into the full field, where all the hosts were reforming their lines. He

was in complete mail, but a white surplice was drawn over the steel, his

head was bare, and in his right hand he bore the crozier. A formidable

club swung by a leathern noose from his wrist, to be used only for

self-defence: the canons forbade the priest to strike merely in assault.

Behind the milk-white steed of Odo came the whole body of reserve, fresh

and unbreathed, free from the terrors of their comrades, and stung into

proud wrath at the delay of the Norman conquest.

“How now--how now!” cried the prelate; “do ye flag? do ye falter when the

sheaves are down, and ye have but to gather up the harvest? How now,

sons of the Church! warriors of the Cross! avengers of the Saints!

Desert your Count, if ye please; but shrink not back from a Lord mightier

than man. Lo, I come forth, to ride side by side with my brother,

bareheaded, the crozier in my hand. He who fails his liege is but a

coward--he who fails the Church is apostate!”

The fierce shout of the reserve closed this harangue, and the words of

the prelate, as well as the physical aid he brought to back them,

renerved the army. And now the whole of William’s mighty host, covering

the field, till its lines seemed to blend with the grey horizon, came on

serried, steadied, orderly--to all sides of the entrenchment. Aware of

the inutility of his horse, till the breastworks were cleared, William

placed in the van all his heavy armed foot, spearmen, and archers, to

open the way through the palisades, the sorties from which had now been

carefully closed.

As they came up the hills, Harold turned to Haco and said: “Where is thy

battle-axe?”

“Harold,” answered Haco, with more than his usual tone of sombre sadness,

“I desire now to be thy shield-bearer, for thou must use thine axe with

both hands while the day lasts, and thy shield is useless. Wherefore

thou strike, and I will shield thee.”

“Thou lovest me, then, son of Sweyn; I have sometimes doubted it.”

“I love thee as the best part of my life, and with thy life ceases mine:

it is my heart that my shield guards when it covers the breast of

Harold.”

“I would bid thee live, poor youth,” whispered Harold; “but what were

life if this day were lost? Happy, then, will be those who die!”

Scarce had the words left his lips ere he sprang to the breastworks, and

with a sudden sweep of his axe, down dropped a helm that peered above

them. But helm after helm succeeds. Now they come on, swarm upon swarm,

as wolves on a traveller, as bears round a bark. Countless, amidst their

carnage, on they come! The arrows of the Norman blacken the air: with

deadly precision, to each arm, each limb, each front exposed above the

bulwarks whirrs the shaft. They clamber the palisades, the foremost fall

dead under the Saxon axe; new thousands rush on: vain is the might of

Harold, vain had been a Harold’s might in every Saxon there! The first

row of breastworks is forced--it is trampled, hewed, crushed down,

cumbered with the dead. “Ha Rou! Ha Rou! Notre Dame! Notre Dame!” sounds

joyous and shrill, the chargers snort and leap, and charge into the

circle. High wheels in air the great mace of William; bright by the

slaughterers flashes the crozier of the Church.

“On, Normans!--Earldom and land!” cries the Duke.

“On, Sons of the Church! Salvation and heaven!” shouts the voice of Odo.

The first breastwork down--the Saxons yielding inch by inch, foot by

foot, are pressed, crushed back, into the second enclosure. The same

rush, and swarm, and fight, and cry, and roar:--The second enclosure

gives way. And now in the centre of the third--lo, before the eyes of

the Normans, towers proudly aloft, and shines in the rays of the

westering sun, broidered with gold, and, blazing with mystic gems, the

standard of England’s King! And there, are gathered the reserve of the

English host; there, the heroes who had never yet known defeat--unwearied

they by the battle--vigorous, high-hearted still; and round them the

breastworks were thicker, and stronger, and higher, and fastened by

chains to pillars of wood and staves of iron, with the waggons and carts

of the baggage, and piled logs of timber-barricades at which even William

paused aghast, and Odo stifled an exclamation that became not a priestly

lip.

Before that standard, in the front of the men, stood Gurth, and Leofwine,

and Haco, and Harold, the last leaning for rest upon his axe, for he was

sorely wounded in many places, and the blood oozed through the links of

his mail.

Live, Harold; live yet, and Saxon England shall not die!

The English archers had at no time been numerous; most of them had served

with the vanguard, and the shafts of those within the ramparts were

spent; so that the foe had time to pause and to breathe. The Norman

arrows meanwhile flew fast and thick, but William noted to his grief that

they struck against the tall breastworks and barricades, and so failed in

the slaughter they should inflict.

He mused a moment, and sent one of his knights to call to him three of

the chiefs of the archers. They were soon at the side of his destrier.

“See ye not, maladroits,” said the Duke, “that your shafts and bolts fall

harmless on those ozier walls? Shoot in the air; let the arrow fall

perpendicular on those within--fall as the vengeance of the saints

falls--direct from heaven! Give me thy bow, Archer,--thus.” He drew the

bow as he sate on his steed, the arrow flashed up, and descended in the

heart of the reserve, within a few feet of the standard.

“So; that standard be your mark,” said the Duke, giving back the bow.

The archers withdrew. The order circulated through their bands, and in a

few moments more down came the iron rain. It took the English host as by

surprise, piercing hide cap, and even iron helm; and in the very surprise

that made them instinctively look up--death came.

A dull groan as from many hearts boomed from the entrenchments on the

Norman ear.

“Now,” said William, “they must either use their shields to guard their

heads--and their axes are useless--or while they smite with the axe they

fall by the shaft. On now to the ramparts. I see my crown already

resting on yonder standard!”

Yet despite all, the English bear up; the thickness of the palisades, the

comparative smallness of the last enclosure, more easily therefore manned

and maintained by the small force of the survivors, defy other weapons

than those of the bow. Every Norman who attempts to scale the breastwork

is slain on the instant, and his body cast forth under the hoofs of the

baffled steeds. The sun sinks near and nearer towards the red horizon.

“Courage!” cries the voice of Harold, “hold but till nightfall, and ye

are saved. Courage and freedom!”

“Harold and Holy Crosse!” is the answer.

Still foiled, William again resolves to hazard his fatal stratagem. He

marked that quarter of the enclosure which was most remote from the chief

point of attack--most remote from the provident watch of Harold, whose

cheering voice, ever and anon, he recognised amidst the hurtling clamour.

In this quarter the palisades were the weakest, and the ground the least

elevated; but it was guarded by men on whose skill with axe and shield

Harold placed the firmest reliance--the Anglo-Danes of his old

East-Anglian earldom. Thither, then, the Duke advanced a chosen column

of his heavy-armed foot, tutored especially by himself in the rehearsals

of his favourite ruse, and accompanied by a band of archers; while at the

same time, he himself, with his brother Odo, headed a considerable

company of knights under the son of the great Roger de Beaumont, to gain

the contiguous level heights on which now stretches the little town of

“Battle;” there to watch and to aid the manoeuvre. The foot column

advanced to the appointed spot, and after a short, close, and terrible

conflict, succeeded in making a wide breach in the breastworks. But that

temporary success only animates yet more the exertions of the beleaguered

defenders, and swarming round the breach, and pouring through it, line

after line of the foe drop beneath their axes. The column of the

heavy-armed Normans fall back down the slopes--they give way--they turn

in disorder--they retreat--they fly; but the archers stand firm, midway

on the descent--those archers seem an easy prey to the English--the

temptation is irresistible. Long galled, and harassed, and maddened by

the shafts, the Anglo-Danes rushed forth at the heels of the Norman

swordsmen, and sweeping down to exterminate the archers, the breach that

they leave gapes wide.

“Forward,” cries William, and he gallops towards the breach.

“Forward,” cries Odo, “I see the hands of the holy saints in the air!

Forward! it is the Dead that wheel our war-steeds round the living!”

On rush the Norman knights. But Harold is already in the breach,

rallying around him hearts eager to replace the shattered breastworks.

“Close shields! Hold fast!” shouts his kingly voice. Before him were

the steeds of Bruse and Grantmesnil. At his breast their spears:--Haco

holds over the breast the shield. Swinging aloft with both hands his

axe, the spear of Grantmesnil is shivered in twain by the King’s stroke.

Cloven to the skull rolls the steed of Bruse. Knight and steed roll on

the bloody sward.

But a blow from the sword of De Lacy has broken down the guardian shield

of Haco. The son of Sweyn is stricken to his knee. With lifted blades

and whirling maces the Norman knights charge through the breach.

“Look up, look up, and guard thy head,” cries the fatal voice of Haco to

the King.

At that cry the King raises his flashing eyes. Why halts his stride? Why

drops the axe from his hand? As he raised his head, down came the

hissing death-shaft. It smote the lifted face; it crushed into the

dauntless eyeball. He reeled, he staggered, he fell back several yards,

at the foot of his gorgeous standard. With desperate hand he broke the

head of the shaft, and left the barb, quivering in the anguish. Gurth

knelt over him.

“Fight on,” gasped the King, “conceal my death! Holy Crosse! England to

the rescue! woe-woe!”

Rallying himself a moment, he sprang to his feet, clenched his right

hand, and fell once more,--a corpse.

At the same moment a simultaneous rush of horsemen towards the standard

bore back a line of Saxons, and covered the body of the King with heaps

of the slain.

His helmet cloven in two, his face all streaming with blood, but still

calm in its ghastly hues, amidst the foremost of those slain, fell the

fated Haco. He fell with his head on the breast of Harold, kissed the

bloody cheek with bloody lips, groaned, and died.

Inspired by despair with superhuman strength, Gurth, striding over the

corpses of his kinsmen, opposed himself singly to the knights; and the

entire strength of the English remnant, coming round him at the menaced

danger to the standard, once more drove off the assailants.

But now all the enclosure was filled with the foe, the whole space seemed

gay, in the darkening air, with banderols and banners. High, through

all, rose the club of the Conqueror; high, through all, shone the crozier

of the Churchman. Not one Englishman fled; all now centering round the

standard, they fell, slaughtering if slaughtered. Man by man, under the

charmed banner, fell the lithsmen of Hilda. Then died the faithful

Sexwolf. Then died the gallant Godrith, redeeming, by the death of many

a Norman, his young fantastic love of the Norman manners. Then died,

last of such of the Kent-men as had won retreat from their scattered

vanguard into the circle of closing slaughter, the English-hearted Vebba.

Even still in that age, when the Teuton had yet in his veins the blood of

Odin, the demi-god,--even still one man could delay the might of numbers.

Through the crowd, the Normans beheld with admiring awe,--here, in the

front of their horse, a single warrior, before whose axe spear shivered,

helm drooped;--there, close by the standard, standing breast-high among

the slain, one still more formidable, and even amidst ruin unvanquished.

The first fell at length under the mace of Roger de Montgommeri. So,

unknown to the Norman poet (who hath preserved in his verse the deeds but

not the name), fell, laughing in death, young Leofwine! Still by the

enchanted standard towers the other; still the enchanted standard waves

aloft, with its brave ensign of the solitary “Fighting Man” girded by the

gems that had flashed in the crown of Odin.

“Thine be the honour of lowering that haughty flag,” cried William,

turning to one of his favourite and most famous knights, Robert de

Tessin.

Overjoyed, the knight rushed forth, to fall by the axe of that stubborn

defender.

“Sorcery,” cried Fitzosborne, “sorcery. This is no man, but fiend.”

“Spare him, spare the brave,” cried in a breath Bruse, D’Aincourt, and De

Graville.

William turned round in wrath at the cry of mercy, and spurring over all

the corpses, with the sacred banner borne by Tonstain close behind him,

so that it shadowed his helmet,--he came to the foot of the standard, and

for one moment there was single battle between the Knight-Duke and the

Saxon hero. Nor, even then, conquered by the Norman sword, but exhausted

by a hundred wounds, that brave chief fell [275], and the falchion vainly

pierced him, falling. So, last man at the standard, died Gurth.

The sun had set, the first star was in heaven, the “Fighting Man” was

laid low, and on that spot where now, all forlorn and shattered, amidst

stagnant water, stands the altar-stone of Battle Abbey, rose the

glittering dragon that surmounted the consecrated banner of the Norman

victor.

CHAPTER IX.

Close by his banner, amidst the piles of the dead, William the Conqueror

pitched his pavilion, and sate at meat. And over all the plain, far and

near, torches were moving like meteors on a marsh; for the Duke had

permitted the Saxon women to search for the bodies of their lords. And

as he sate, and talked, and laughed, there entered the tent two humble

monks: their lowly mien, their dejected faces, their homely serge, in

mournful contrast to the joy and the splendour of the Victory-Feast.

They came to the Conqueror, and knelt.

“Rise up, sons of the Church,” said William, mildly, “for sons of the

Church are we! Deem not that we shall invade the rights of the religion

which we have come to avenge. Nay, on this spot we have already sworn to

build an abbey that shall be the proudest in the land, and where masses

shall be sung evermore for the repose of the brave Normans who fell in

this field, and for mine and my consort’s soul.”

“Doubtless,” said Odo, sneering, “the holy men have heard already of this

pious intent, and come to pray for cells in the future abbey.”

“Not so,” said Osgood, mournfully, and in barbarous Norman; “we have our

own beloved convent at Waltham, endowed by the prince whom thine arms

have defeated. We come to ask but to bury in our sacred cloisters the

corpse of him so lately King over all England--our benefactor, Harold.”

The Duke’s brow fell.

“And see,” said Ailred, eagerly, as he drew out a leathern pouch, “we

have brought with us all the gold that our poor crypts contained, for we

misdoubted this day,” and he poured out the glittering pieces at the

Conqueror’s feet.

“No!” said William, fiercely, “we take no gold for a traitor’s body; no,

not if Githa, the usurper’s mother, offered us its weight in the shining

metal; unburied be the Accursed of the Church, and let the birds of prey

feed their young with his carcase!”

Two murmurs, distinct in tone and in meaning, were heard in that

assembly: the one of approval from fierce mercenaries, insolent with

triumph; the other of generous discontent and indignant amaze, from the

large majority of Norman nobles.

But William’s brow was still dark, and his eye still stern; for his

policy confirmed his passions; and it was only by stigmatising, as

dishonoured and accursed, the memory and cause of the dead King, that he

could justify the sweeping spoliation of those who had fought against

himself, and confiscate the lands to which his own Quens and warriors

looked for their reward.

The murmurs had just died into a thrilling hush, when a woman, who had

followed the monks unperceived and unheeded, passed with a swift and

noiseless step to the Duke’s foot-stool; and, without bending knee to the

ground, said, in a voice which, though low, was heard by all:

“Norman, in the name of the women of England, I tell thee that thou

darest not do this wrong to the hero who died in defence of their hearths

and their children!”

Before she spoke she had thrown back her hood; her hair dishevelled, fell

over her shoulders, glittering like gold, in the blaze of the

banquet-lights; and that wondrous beauty, without parallel amidst the

dames of England, shone like the vision of an accusing angel, on the eyes

of the startled Duke, and the breathless knights. But twice in her life

Edith beheld that awful man. Once, when roused from her reverie of

innocent love by the holiday pomp of his trumps and banners, the

childlike maid stood at the foot of the grassy knoll; and once again,

when in the hour of his triumph, and amidst the wrecks of England on the

field of Sanguelac, with a soul surviving the crushed and broken heart,

the faith of the lofty woman defended the Hero Dead.

There, with knee unbent, and form unquailing, with marble cheek, and

haughty eye, she faced the Conqueror; and, as she ceased, his noble

barons broke into bold applause.

“Who art thou?” said William, if not daunted at least amazed. “Methinks I

have seen thy face before; thou art not Harold’s wife or sister?”

“Dread lord,” said Osgood; “she was the betrothed of Harold; but, as

within the degrees of kin, the Church forbade their union, and they

obeyed the Church.”

Out from the banquet-throng stepped Mallet de Graville. “O my liege,”

said he “thou hast promised me lands and earldom; instead of these gifts

undeserved, bestow on me the right to bury and to honour the remains of

Harold; today I took from him my life, let me give all I can in return--a

grave!”

William paused, but the sentiment of the assembly, so clearly pronounced,

and, it may be, his own better nature, which, ere polluted by plotting

craft, and hardened by despotic ire, was magnanimous and heroic, moved

and won him. “Lady,” said he, gently, “thou appealest not in vain to

Norman knighthood: thy rebuke was just; and I repent me of a hasty

impulse. Mallet de Graville, thy prayer is granted; to thy choice be

consigned the place of burial, to thy care the funeral rites of him whose

soul hath passed out of human judgment.”

The feast was over; William the Conqueror slept on his couch, and round

him slumbered his Norman knights, dreaming of baronies to come; and still

the torches moved dismally to and fro the waste of death, and through the

hush of night was heard near and far the wail of women.

Accompanied by the brothers of Waltham, and attended by link-bearers,

Mallet de Graville was yet engaged in the search for the royal dead--and

the search was vain. Deeper and stiller, the autumnal moon rose to its

melancholy noon, and lent its ghastly aid to the glare of the redder

lights. But, on leaving the pavilion, they had missed Edith; she had

gone from them alone, and was lost in that dreadful wilderness. And

Ailred said despondingly:

“Perchance we may already have seen the corpse we search for, and not

recognised it; for the face may be mutilated with wounds. And therefore

it is that Saxon wives and mothers haunt our battle-fields, discovering

those they search by signs not known without the household.” [276]

“Ay,” said the Norman, “I comprehend thee, by the letter or device, in

which, according to your customs, your warriors impress on their own

forms some token of affection, or some fancied charm against ill.”

“It is so,” answered the monk; “wherefore I grieve that we have lost the

guidance of the maid.”

While thus conversing, they had retraced their steps, almost in despair,

towards the Duke’s pavilion.

“See,” said De Graville, “how near yon lonely woman hath come to the tent

of the Duke--yea, to the foot of the holy gonfanon, which supplanted ‘the

Fighting Man!’ pardex, my heart bleeds to see her striving to lift up the

heavy dead!”

The monks neared the spot, and Osgood exclaimed in a voice almost joyful:

“It is Edith the Fair! This way, the torches! hither, quick!”

The corpses had been flung in irreverent haste from either side of the

gonfanon, to make room for the banner of the conquest, and the pavilion

of the feast. Huddled together, they lay in that holy bed. And the woman

silently, and by the help of no light save the moon, was intent on her

search. She waved her hand impatiently as they approached, as if jealous

of the dead; but as she had not sought, so neither did she oppose, their

aid. Moaning low to herself, she desisted from her task, and knelt

watching them, and shaking her head mournfully, as they removed helm

after helm, and lowered the torches upon stern and livid brows. At

length the lights fell red and full on the ghastly face of Haco--proud

and sad as in life.

De Graville uttered an exclamation: “The King’s nephew: be sure the King

is near!”

A shudder went over the woman’s form, and the moaning ceased.

They unhelmed another corpse; and the monks and the knight, after one

glance, turned away sickened and awe-stricken at the sight: for the face

was all defeatured and mangled with wounds; and nought could they

recognise save the ravaged majesty of what had been man. But at the

sight of that face a wild shriek broke from Edith’s heart.

She started to her feet--put aside the monks with a wild and angry

gesture, and bending over the face, sought with her long hair to wipe

from it the clotted blood; then with convulsive fingers, she strove to

loosen the buckler of the breast-mail. The knight knelt to assist her.

“No, no,” she gasped out. “He is mine--mine now!”

Her hands bled as the mail gave way to her efforts; the tunic beneath was

all dabbled with blood. She rent the folds, and on the breast, just

above the silenced heart, were punctured in the old Saxon letters; the

word “EDITH;” and just below, in characters more fresh, the word

“ENGLAND.”

“See, see!” she cried in piercing accents; and, clasping the dead in her

arms, she kissed the lips, and called aloud, in words of the tenderest

endearments, as if she addressed the living. All there knew then that

the search was ended; all knew that the eyes of love had recognised the

dead.

“Wed, wed,” murmured the betrothed; “wed at last! O Harold, Harold! the

words of the Vala were true--and Heaven is kind!” and laying her head

gently on the breast of the dead, she smiled and died.

At the east end of the choir in the Abbey of Waltham, was long shown the

tomb of the Last Saxon King, inscribed with the touching words--“Harold

Infelix.” But not under that stone, according to the chronicler who

should best know the truth [277], mouldered the dust of him in whose

grave was buried an epoch in human annals.

“Let his corpse,” said William the Norman, “let his corpse guard the

coasts, which his life madly defended. Let the seas wail his dirge, and

girdle his grave; and his spirit protect the land which hath passed to

the Norman’s sway.”

And Mallet de Graville assented to the word of his chief, for his

knightly heart turned into honour the latent taunt; and well he knew,

that Harold could have chosen no burial spot so worthy his English spirit

and his Roman end.

The tomb at Waltham would have excluded the faithful ashes of the

betrothed, whose heart had broken on the bosom she had found; more gentle

was the grave in the temple of heaven, and hallowed by the bridal

death-dirge of the everlasting sea.

So, in that sentiment of poetry and love, which made half the religion of

a Norman knight, Mallet de Graville suffered death to unite those whom

life had divided. In the holy burial-ground that encircled a small Saxon

chapel, on the shore, and near the spot on which William had leapt to

land, one grave received the betrothed; and the tomb of Waltham only

honoured an empty name. [278]

Eight centuries have rolled away, and where is the Norman now? or where

is not the Saxon? The little urn that sufficed for the mighty lord [279]

is despoiled of his very dust; but the tombless shade of the kingly

freeman still guards the coasts, and rests upon the seas. In many a

noiseless field, with Thoughts for Armies, your relics, O Saxon Heroes,

have won back the victory from the bones of the Norman saints; and

whenever, with fairer fates, Freedom opposes Force, and Justice,

redeeming the old defeat, smites down the armed Frauds that would

consecrate the wrong,--smile, O soul of our Saxon Harold, smile,

appeased, on the Saxon’s land!

NOTES

NOTE (A)

There are various accounts in the Chroniclers as to the stature of

William the First; some represent him as a giant, others as of just or

middle height. Considering the vulgar inclination to attribute to a

hero’s stature the qualities of the mind (and putting out of all question

the arguments that rest on the pretended size of the disburied bones--for

which the authorities are really less respectable than those on which we

are called upon to believe that the skeleton of the mythical Gawaine

measured eight feet), we prefer that supposition, as to the physical

proportions, which is most in harmony with the usual laws of Nature. It

is rare, indeed, that a great intellect is found in the form of a giant.

NOTE (B)

Game Laws before the Conquest.

Under the Saxon kings a man might, it is true, hunt in his own grounds,

but that was a privilege that could benefit few but thegns; and over

cultivated ground or shire-land there was not the same sport to be found

as in the vast wastes called forest-land, and which mainly belonged to

the kings.

Edward declares, in a law recorded in a volume of the Exchequer, “I will

that all men do abstain from hunting in my woods, and that my will shall

be obeyed under penalty of life.” [280]

Edgar, the darling monarch of the monks, and, indeed, one of the most

popular of the Anglo-Saxon kings, was so rigorous in his forest-laws that

the thegns murmured as well as the lower husbandmen, who had been

accustomed to use the woods for pasturage and boscage. Canute’s

forest-laws were meant as a liberal concession to public feeling on the

subject; they are more definite than Edgar’s, but terribly stringent; if

a freeman killed one of the king’s deer, or struck his forester, he lost

his freedom and became a penal serf (white theowe)--that is, he ranked

with felons. Nevertheless, Canute allowed bishops, abbots, and thegns to

hunt in his woods--a privilege restored by Henry III. The nobility,

after the Conquest, being excluded from the royal chases, petitioned to

enclose parks, as early even as the reign of William I.; and by the time

of his son, Henry I., parks became so common as to be at once a ridicule

and a grievance.

NOTE (C)

Belin’s Gate.

Verstegan combats the Welsh antiquaries who would appropriate this gate

to the British deity Bal or Beli; and says, if so, it would not have been

called by a name half Saxon, half British, gate (geat) being Saxon; but

rather Belinsport than Belinsgate. This is no very strong argument; for,

in the Norman time, many compound words were half Norman, half Saxon.

But, in truth, Belin was a Teuton deity, whose worship pervaded all Gaul;

and the Saxons might either have continued, therefore, the name they

found, or given it themselves from their own god. I am not inclined,

however, to contend that any deity, Saxon or British, gave the name, or

that Billing is not, after all, the right orthography. Billing, like all

words ending in ing, has something very Danish in its sound; and the name

is quite as likely to have been given by the Danes as by the Saxons.

NOTE (D)

The question whether or not real vineyards were grown, or real wine made

from them, in England has been a very vexed question among the

antiquaries. But it is scarcely possible to read Pegge’s dispute with

Daines Barrington in the Archaeologia without deciding both questions in

the affirmative.--See Archaeol. vol. iii. p. 53. An engraving of the

Saxon wine-press is given in STRUTT’s Horda.

Vineyards fell into disuse, either by treaty with France, or Gascony

falling into the hands of the English. But vineyards were cultivated by

private gentlemen as late as 1621. Our first wines from Bordeaux--the

true country of Bacchus--appear to have been imported about 1154, by the

marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine.

NOTE (E)

Lanfranc, the first Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lanfranc was, in all respects, one of the most remarkable men of the

eleventh century. He was born in Pavia, about 1105. His family was

noble--his father ranked amongst the magistrature of Pavia, the Lombard

capital. From his earliest youth he gave himself up, with all a

scholar’s zeal, to the liberal arts, and the special knowledge of law,

civil and ecclesiastical. He studied at Cologne, and afterwards taught

and practised law in his own country. “While yet extremely young,” says

one of the lively chroniclers, “he triumphed over the ablest advocates,

and the torrents of his eloquence confounded the subtlest rhetorician.”

His decisions were received as authorities by the Italian jurisconsults

and tribunals. His mind, to judge both by his history and his peculiar

reputation (for probably few, if any, students of our day can pretend to

more than a partial or superficial acquaintance with his writings), was

one that delighted in subtleties and casuistical refinements; but a sense

too large and commanding for those studies which amuse but never satisfy

the higher intellect, became disgusted betimes with mere legal

dialectics. Those grand and absorbing mysteries connected with the

Christian faith and the Roman Church (grand and absorbing in proportion

as their premises are taken by religious belief as mathematical axioms

already proven) seized hold of his imagination, and tasked to the depth

his inquisitive reason. The Chronicle of Knyghton cites an interesting

anecdote of his life at this, its important, crisis. He had retired to a

solitary spot, beside the Seine, to meditate on the mysterious essence of

the Trinity, when he saw a boy ladling out the waters of the river that

ran before him into a little well. His curiosity arrested, he asked

“what the boy proposed to do?” The boy replied, “To empty yon deep into

this well.” “That canst thou never do,” said the scholar. “Nor canst

thou,” answered the boy, “exhaust the deep on which thou dost meditate

into the well of thy reason.” Therewith the speaker vanished, and

Lanfranc, resigning the hope to achieve the mighty mystery, threw himself

at once into the arms of faith, and took his refuge in the monastery of

Bec.

The tale may be a legend, but not an idle one. Perhaps he related it

himself as a parable, and by the fiction explained the process of thought

that decided his career. In the prime of his manhood, about 1042, when

he was thirty-seven years old, and in the zenith of his scholarly fame,

he professed. The Convent of Bee had been lately founded, under Herluin,

the first abbot; there Lanfranc opened a school, which became one of the

most famous throughout the west of Europe. Indeed, under the Lombard’s

influence, the then obscure Convent of Bee, to which the solitude of the

site and the poverty of the endowment allured his choice, grew the

Academe of the age. “It was,” says Oderic, in his charming chronicle,

“it was under such a master that the Normans received their first notions

of literature; from that school emerged the multitude of eloquent

philosophers who adorned alike divinity and science. From France,

Gascony, Bretagne, Flanders, scholars thronged to receive his lessons.”

[281]

At first, as superficially stated in the tale, Lanfranc had taken part

against the marriage of William with Matilda of Flanders--a marriage

clearly contrary to the formal canons of the Roman Church, and was

banished by the fiery Duke; though William’s displeasure gave way at “the

decent joke” (jocus decens), recorded in the text. At Rome, however, his

influence, arguments, and eloquence were all enlisted on the side of

William: and it was to the scholar of Pavia that the great Norman owed

the ultimate sanction of his marriage, and the repeal of the interdict

that excommunicated his realm. [282]

At Rome he assisted in the council held 1059 (the year wherein the ban of

the Church was finally and formally taken from Normandy), at which the

famous Berenger, Archdeacon of Angers (against whom he had waged a

polemical controversy that did more than all else to secure his repute at

the Pontifical Court), abjured “his heresies” as to the Real Presence in

the sacrament of the Eucharist.

In 1062, or 1063, Duke William, against the Lombard’s own will (for

Lanfranc genuinely loved the liberty of letters more than vulgar power),

raised him to the abbacy of St. Stephen of Caen. From that time, his

ascendancy over his haughty lord was absolute. The contemporary

historian (William of Poitiers), says that “William respected him as a

father, venerated him as a preceptor, and cherished him as a brother or

son.” He confided to him his own designs; and committed to him the

entire superintendence of the ecclesiastical orders throughout Normandy.

Eminent no less for his practical genius in affairs, than for his rare

piety and theological learning, Lanfranc attained indeed to the true

ideal of the Scholar; to whom, of all men, nothing that is human should

be foreign; whose closet is but a hermit’s cell, unless it is the

microcosm that embraces the mart and the forum; who by the reflective

part of his nature seizes the higher region of philosophy--by the

energetic, is attracted to the central focus of action. For scholarship

is but the parent of ideas; and ideas are the parents of action.

After the conquest, as prelate of Canterbury, Lanfranc became the second

man in the kingdom--happy, perhaps, for England had he been the first;

for all the anecdotes recorded of him show a deep and genuine sympathy

with the oppressed population. But William the King of the English

escaped from the control which Lanfranc had imposed on the Duke of the

Normans. The scholar had strengthened the aspirer; he could only

imperfectly influence the conqueror.

Lanfranc was not, it is true, a faultless character. He was a priest, a

lawyer, and a man of the world--three characters hard to amalgamate into

perfection, especially in the eleventh century. But he stands in

gigantic and brilliant contrast to the rest of our priesthood in his own

day, both in the superiority of his virtues, and in his exemption from

the ordinary vices. He regarded the cruelties of Odo of Bayeux with

detestation, opposed him with firmness, and ultimately, to the joy of all

England, ruined his power. He gave a great impetus to learning; he set a

high example to his monks, in his freedom from the mercenary sins of

their order; he laid the foundations of a powerful and splendid church,

which, only because it failed in future Lanfrancs, failed in effecting

the civilisation of which he designed it to be the instrument. He

refused to crown William Rufus, until that king had sworn to govern

according to law and to right; and died, though a Norman usurper,

honoured and beloved by the Saxon people.

Scholar, and morning star of light in the dark age of force and fraud, it

is easier to praise thy life, than to track through the length of

centuries all the measureless and invisible benefits which the life of

one scholar bequeaths to the world--in the souls it awakens--in the

thoughts it suggests! [283]

NOTE (F)

Edward the Confessor’s reply to Magnus of Denmark who claimed his Crown.

On rare occasions Edward was not without touches of a brave kingly

nature.

Snorro Sturleson gives us a noble and spirited reply of the Confessor to

Magnus, who, as heir of Canute, claimed the English crown; it concludes

thus:--“Now, he (Hardicanute) died, and then it was the resolution of all

the people of the country to take me, for the king here in England. So

long as I had no kingly title I served my superiors in all respects, like

those who had no claims by birth to land or kingdom. Now, however, I

have received the kingly title, and am consecrated king; I have

established my royal dignity and authority, as my father before me; and

while I live I will not renounce my title. If King Magnus comes here

with an army, I will gather no army against him; but he shall only get

the opportunity of taking England when he has taken my life. Tell him

these words of mine.” If we may consider this reply to be authentic, it

is significant, as proof that Edward rests his title on the resolution of

the people to take him for king; and counts as nothing, in comparison,

his hereditary claims. This, together with the general tone of the

reply, particularly the passage in which he implies that he trusts his

defence not to his army but his people--makes it probable that Godwin

dictated the answer; and, indeed, Edward himself could not have couched

it, either in Saxon or Danish. But the King is equally entitled to the

credit of it, whether he composed it, or whether he merely approved and

sanctioned its gallant tone and its princely sentiment.

NOTE (G)

Heralds.

So much of the “pride, pomp, and circumstance” which invest the Age of

Chivalry is borrowed from these companions of princes, and blazoners of

noble deeds, that it may interest the reader, if I set briefly before him

what our best antiquaries have said as to their first appearance in our

own history.

Camden (somewhat, I fear, too rashly) says, that “their reputation,

honour, and name began in the time of Charlemagne.” The first mention of

heralds in England occurs in the reign of Edward III., a reign in which

Chivalry was at its dazzling zenith. Whitlock says, “that some derive

the name of Herald from Hereauld,” a Saxon word (old soldier, or old

master), “because anciently they were chosen from veteran soldiers.”

Joseph Holland says, “I find that Malcolm, King of Scots, sent a herald

unto William the Conqueror, to treat of a peace, when both armies were in

order of battle.” Agard affirms, that “at the conquest there was no

practice of heraldry;” and observes truly, “that the Conqueror used a

monk for his messenger to King Harold.”

To this I may add, that monks or priests also fulfil the office of

heralds in the old French and Norman Chronicles. Thus Charles the Simple

sends an archbishop to treat with Rolfganger; Louis the Debonnair sends

to Mormon, chief of the Bretons, “a sage and prudent abbot.” But in the

Saxon times, the nuncius (a word still used in heraldic Latin) was in the

regular service both of the King and the great Earls. The Saxon name for

such a messenger was bode, and when employed in hostile negotiations, he

was styled warbode. The messengers between Godwin and the King would

seem, by the general sense of the chronicles, to have been certain thegns

acting as mediators.

NOTE (H)

The Fylgia, or Tutelary Spirit.

This lovely superstition in the Scandinavian belief is the more

remarkable because it does not appear in the creed of the Germanic

Teutons, and is closely allied with the good angel, or guardian genius,

of the Persians. It forms, therefore, one of the arguments that favour

the Asiatic origin of the Norsemen.

The Fylgia (following, or attendant, spirit) was always represented as a

female. Her influence was not uniformly favourable, though such was its

general characteristic. She was capable of revenge if neglected, but had

the devotion of her sex when properly treated. Mr. Grenville Pigott, in

his popular work, entitled “A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology,” relates

an interesting legend with respect to one of these supernatural ladies:

A Scandinavian warrior, Halfred Vandraedakald, having embraced

Christianity, and being attacked by a disease which he thought mortal,

was naturally anxious that a spirit who had accompanied him through his

pagan career should not attend him into that other world, where her

society might involve him in disagreeable consequences. The persevering

Fylgia, however; in the shape of a fair maiden, walked on the waves of

the sea after her viking’s ship. She came thus in sight of all the crew;

and Halfred, recognising his Fylgia, told her point blank that their

connection was at an end for ever. The forsaken Fylgia had a high spirit

of her own, and she then asked Thorold “if he would take her.” Thorold

ungallantly refused; but Halfred the younger said, “Maiden, I will take

thee.” [284]

In the various Norse Saga there are many anecdotes of these spirits, who

are always charming, because, with their less earthly attributes, they

always blend something of the woman. The poetry embodied in their

existence is of a softer and more humane character than that common with

the stern and vast demons of the Scandinavian mythology.

NOTE (I)

The Origin of Earl Godwin.

Sharon Turner quotes from the Knytlinga Saga what he calls “an

explanation of Godwin’s career or parentage, which no other document

affords;” viz.--“that Ulf, a Danish chief, after the battle of Skorstein,

between Canute and Edmund Ironsides, pursued the English fugitives into a

wood, lost his way, met, on the morning, a Saxon youth driving cattle to

their pasture, asked him to direct him in safety to Canute’s ships, and

offered him the bribe of a gold ring for his guidance; the young herdsman

refused the bribe, but sheltered the Dane in the cottage of his father

(who is represented as a mere peasant), and conducted him the next

morning to the Danish camp; previously to which, the youth’s father

represented to Ulf, that his son, Godwin, could never, after aiding a

Dane to escape, rest in safety with his countrymen, and besought him to

befriend his son’s fortunes with Canute.” The Dane promised, and kept

his word; hence Godwin’s rise. Thierry, in his “History of the Norman

Conquest,” tells the same story, on the authority of Torfaeus, Hist. Rer.

Norweg. Now I need not say to any scholar in our early history, that the

Norse Chronicles, abounding with romance and legend, are never to be

received as authorities counter to our own records, though occasionally

valuable to supply omissions in the latter; and, unfortunately for this

pretty story, we have against it the direct statements of the very best

authorities we possess, viz. The Saxon Chronicle and Florence Of

Worcester. The Saxon Chronicle expressly tells us that Godwin’s father

was Childe of Sussex (Florence calls him minister or thegn of Sussex

[285]), and that Wolnoth was nephew to Edric, the all-powerful Earl or

Duke of Mercia. Florence confirms this statement, and gives the

pedigree, which may be deduced as follows:

________________________________

| |

Edric married Egelric,

Edgith, daughter of surnamed Leofwine

King Ethelred II. |

Egelmar,

|

Wolnoth.

|

Godwin.

Thus this “old peasant,” as the North Chronicles call Wolnoth, as,

according to our most unquestionable authorities, a thegn of one of the

most important divisions in England, and a member of the most powerful

family in the kingdom! Now, if our Saxon authorities needed any aid from

probabilities, it is scarcely worth asking, which is the more probable,

that the son of a Saxon herdsman should in a few years rise to such power

as to marry the sister of the royal Danish Conqueror--or that that honour

should be conferred on the most able member of a house already allied to

Saxon royalty, and which evidently retained its power after the fall of

its head, the treacherous Edric Streone! Even after the Conquest, one of

Streone’s nephews, Edricus Sylvaticus, is mentioned (Simon. Dunelm.) as

“a very powerful thegn.” Upon the whole, the account given of Godwin’s

rise in the text of the work appears the most correct that conjectures,

based on our scanty historical information, will allow.

In 1009 A.D., Wolnoth, the Childe or Thegn of Sussex, defeats the fleets

of Ethelred, under his uncle Brightric, and goes therefore into

rebellion. Thus when, in 1014 (five years afterwards), Canute is chosen

king by all the fleet, it is probable that Wolnoth and Godwin, his son,

espoused his cause; and that Godwin, subsequently presented to Canute as

a young noble of great promise, was favoured by that sagacious king, and

ultimately honoured with the hand, first of his sister, secondly of his

niece, as a mode of conciliating the Saxon thegns.

NOTE (K)

The want of Fortresses in England.

The Saxons were sad destroyers. They destroyed the strongholds which the

Briton had received from the Roman, and built very few others. Thus the

land was left open to the Danes. Alfred, sensible of this defect,

repaired the walls of London and other cities, and urgently recommended

his nobles and prelates to build fortresses, but could not persuade them.

His great-souled daughter, Elfleda, was the only imitator of his example.

She built eight castles in three years. [286]

It was thus that in a country, in which the general features do not allow

of protracted warfare, the inhabitants were always at the hazard of a

single pitched battle. Subsequent to the Conquest, in the reign of John,

it was, in truth, the strong castle of Dover, on the siege of which

Prince Louis lost so much time, that saved the realm of England from

passing to a French dynasty: and as, in later periods, strongholds fell

again into decay, so it is remarkable to observe how easily the country

was overrun after any signal victory of one of the contending parties.

In this truth, the Wars of the Roses abound with much instruction. The

handful of foreign mercenaries with which Henry VII. won his

crown,--though the real heir, the Earl of Warwick (granting Edward IV.’s

children to be illegitimate, which they clearly were according to the

rites of the Church), had never lost his claim, by the defeat of Richard

at Bosworth;--the march of the Pretender to Derby,--the dismay it spread

throughout England,--and the certainty of his conquest had he

proceeded;--the easy victory of William III. at a time when certainly the

bulk of the nation was opposed to his cause;--are all facts pregnant with

warnings, to which we are as blind as we were in the days of Alfred.

NOTE (L)

The Ruins of Penmaen-mawr.

In Camden’s Britannia there is an account of the remarkable relics

assigned, in the text, to the last refuge of Gryffyth ap Llewellyn, taken

from a manuscript by Sir John Wynne in the time of Charles I. In this

account are minutely described, “ruinous walls of an exceeding strong

fortification, compassed with a treble wall, and, within each wall, the

foundations of at least one hundred towers, about six yards in diameter

within the walls. This castle seems (while it stood) impregnable; there

being no way to offer any assault on it, the hill being so very high,

steep, and rocky, and the walls of such strength,--the way or entrance

into it ascending with many turnings, so that one hundred men might

defend themselves against a whole legion; and yet it should seem that

there were lodgings within those walls for twenty thousand men.

“By the tradition we receive from our ancestors, this was the strongest

refuge, or place of defence, that the ancient Britons had in all Snowdon;

moreover, the greatness of the work shows that it was a princely

fortification, strengthened by nature and workmanship.” [287]

But in the year 1771, Governor Pownall ascended Penmaen-mawr, inspected

these remains, and published his account in the Archaeologia, vol. iii.

p. 303, with a sketch both of the mount and the walls at the summit. The

Governor is of opinion that it never was a fortification. He thinks that

the inward inclosure contained a carn (or arch-Druid’s sepulchre), that

there is not room for any lodgment, that the walls are not of a kind

which can form a cover, and give at the same time the advantage of

fighting from them. In short, that the place was one of the Druids’

consecrated high places of worship. He adds, however, that “Mr. Pennant

has gone twice over it, intends to make an actual survey, and anticipates

much from that great antiquary’s knowledge and accuracy.”

We turn next to Mr. Pennant, and we find him giving a flat contradiction

to the Governor. “I have more than once,” [288] says he, “visited this

noted rock, to view the fortifications described by the editor of Camden,

from some notes of that sensible old baronet, Sir John Wynne, of Gwidir,

and have found his account very just.

“The fronts of three, if not four walls, presented themselves very

distinctly one above the other. I measured the height of one wall, which

was at the time nine feet, the thickness seven feet and a half.” (Now,

Governor Pownall also measured the walls, agrees pretty well with Pennant

as to their width, but makes them only five feet high.) “Between these

walls, in all parts, were innumerable small buildings, mostly circular.

These had been much higher, as is evident from the fall of stones which

lie scattered at their bottoms, and probably had once the form of towers,

as Sir John asserts. Their diameter is, in general, from twelve to

eighteen feet (ample room here for lodgement); the walls were in certain

places intersected with others equally strong. This stronghold of the

Britons is exactly of the same kind with those on Carn Madryn, Carn

Boduan, and Tre’r Caer.”

“This was most judiciously chosen to cover the passage into Anglesey, and

the remoter part of their country; and must, from its vast strength, have

been invulnerable, except by famine; being inaccessible by its natural

steepness towards the sea, and on the parts fortified in the manner

described.” So far, Pennant versus Pownall! “Who shall decide when

doctors disagree?” The opinion of both these antiquarians is liable to

demur. Governor Pownall might probably be a better judge of military

defences than Pennant; but he evidently forms his notions of defence with

imperfect knowledge of the forts, which would have amply sufficed for the

warfare of the ancient Britons; and moreover, he was one of those led

astray by Bryant’s crotchets as to “High places,” etc. What appears most

probable is, that the place was both carn and fort; that the strength of

the place, and the convenience of stones, suggested the surrounding the

narrow area of the central sepulchre with walls, intended for refuge and

defence. As to the circular buildings, which seem to have puzzled these

antiquaries, it is strange that they appear to have overlooked the

accounts which serve best to explain them. Strabo says that “the houses

of the Britons were round, with a high pointed covering--,” Caesar says

that they were only lighted by the door; in the Antonine Column they are

represented as circular, with an arched entrance, single or double. They

were always small, and seem to have contained but a single room. These

circular buildings were not, therefore, necessarily Druidical cells, as

has been supposed; nor perhaps actual towers, as contended for by Sir

John Wynne; but habitations, after the usual fashion of British houses,

for the inmates or garrison of the enclosure. Taking into account the

tradition of the spot mentioned by Sir John Wynne, and other traditions

still existing, which mark, in the immediate neighbourhood, the scenes of

legendary battles, it is hoped that the reader will accept the

description in the text as suggesting, amidst conflicting authorities,

the most probable supposition of the nature and character of these very

interesting remains in the eleventh century [289], and during the most

memorable invasion of Wales (under Harold), which occurred between the

time of Geraint, or Arthur, and that of Henry II.

NOTE (M)

The Idol Bel.

Mons. Johanneau considers that Bel, or Belinus, is derived from the

Greek, a surname of Apollo, and means the archer; from Belos, a dart or

arrow. [290]

I own I think this among the spurious conceits of the learned, suggested

by the vague affinities of name. But it is quite as likely, (if there be

anything in the conjecture,) that the Celt taught the Greek, as that the

Greek taught the Celt.

There are some very interesting questions, however, for scholars to

discuss--viz. 1st, When did the Celts first introduce idols? 2d, Can we

believe the classical authorities that assure us that the Druids

originally admitted no idol worship? If so, we find the chief idols of

the Druids cited by Lucan; and they therefore acquired them long before

Lucan’s time. From whom would they acquire them? Not from the Romans;

for the Roman gods are not the least similar to the Celtic, when the last

are fairly examined. Nor from the Teutons, from whose deities those of

the Celt equally differ. Have we not given too much faith to the classic

writers, who assert the original simplicity of the Druid worship? And

will not their popular idols be found to be as ancient as the remotest

traces of the Celtic existence? Would not the Cimmerii have transported

them from the period of their first traditional immigration from the

East? and is not their Bel identical with the Babylonian deity?

NOTE (N)

Unguents used by Witches.

Lord Bacon, speaking of the ointments used by the witches, supposes that

they really did produce illusions by stopping the vapours and sending

them to the head. It seems that all witches who attended the sabbat used

these unguents, and there is something very remarkable in the concurrence

of their testimonies as to the scenes they declared themselves to have

witnessed, not in the body, which they left behind, but as present in the

soul; as if the same anointments and preparatives produced dreams nearly

similar in kind. To the believers in mesmerism I may add, that few are

aware of the extraordinary degree to which somnambulism appears to be

heightened by certain chemical aids; and the disbelievers in that agency,

who have yet tried the experiments of some of those now neglected drugs

to which the medical art of the Middle Ages attached peculiar virtues,

will not be inclined to dispute the powerful and, as it were, systematic

effect which certain drugs produce on the imagination of patients with

excitable and nervous temperaments.

NOTE (O)

Hilda’s Adjurations.

I.

“By the Urdar fount dwelling,

Day by day from the rill,

The Nornas besprinkle

The Ash Ygg-drasill.”