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 a.s.sailants.
But now all the enclosure was filled with the foe, the whole s.p.a.ce 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 s.e.xwolf. Then died the gallant G.o.drith, 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-G.o.d,--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 ma.s.ses 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 mis...o...b..ed 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 a.s.sembly: the one of approval from fierce mercenaries, insolent with triumph; the other of generous discontent and indignant amaze, from the large majority of Norman n.o.bles.
But William"s brow was still dark, and his eye still stern; for his policy confirmed his pa.s.sions; 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, pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.sy 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sembly, so clearly p.r.o.nounced, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sed to the Norman"s sway."
And Mallet de Graville a.s.sented 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 n.o.bility, after the Conquest, being excluded from the royal chases, pet.i.tioned 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 G.o.d. 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 n.o.ble--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 mult.i.tude 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 a.s.sisted 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 n.o.ble 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle. 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sage in which he implies that he trusts his defence not to his army but his people--makes it probable that G.o.dwin dictated the answer; and, indeed, Edward himself could not have couched it, either in Saxon or Danish. But the King is equally ent.i.tled 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 circ.u.mstance" which invest the Age of Chivalry is borrowed from these companions of princes, and blazoners of n.o.ble 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 G.o.dwin 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 superst.i.tion 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 Nors.e.m.e.n.
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 s.e.x when properly treated. Mr. Grenville Pigott, in his popular work, ent.i.tled "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 G.o.dwin.
Sharon Turner quotes from the Knytlinga Saga what he calls "an explanation of G.o.dwin"s career or parentage, which no other doc.u.ment 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, G.o.dwin, 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 G.o.dwin"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 G.o.dwin"s father was Childe of Suss.e.x (Florence calls him minister or thegn of Suss.e.x [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. | G.o.dwin.
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 G.o.dwin"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 Suss.e.x, 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 G.o.dwin, his son, espoused his cause; and that G.o.dwin, subsequently presented to Canute as a young n.o.ble 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).