Ealswitha, daughter of Ethelred the muckle, a Mercian nobleman, and alderman of the Gainas (in Lincolnshire). The earnestness with which, in his Boëthius, he dwells on conjugal affection, shows this union was a source of supreme happiness. The Wicking, Ragnar Lodbrok, disturbed the peace of many a region of Europe, but Ella, of Northumberland overcame him and made him prisoner. Ella, in barbarous resentment, doomed this brave, bold brute to perish in lingering pain by the stings of venomous snakes in a dungeon. "His Quida, or death song," says Sharon Turner, "has been venerated and celebrated for its genius and antiquity." Some say it was his own, some say his wife's, who was a famous scalld or poetess. It is one of the most ancient poems of the north; expresses exactly the manners of the times, and, compared with other histories and traditions that have been preserved about him, it will be found to contain the most simple, probable, and consistent incidents. As his death-the approach of which it intimates-was the cause of that disastrous invasion which shook Elfred from his throne, it merits attention. The Quida sings of Ragnar's onslaughts on various countries from the north, the Baltic, to Flanders and England; it gives a view of one of the most dreadful states of society in which our species have ever lived. He gloats over the imagery of death and human slaughter, and compares the pleasures of war to social festivity, and the destruction of youthful happiness he extols as rivalling the sweetest hours of life. "Was it not like the hour when my bright bride I seated by me on the couch?" What must have been the characters of such people? In the bold invasion of England he boasts of the death of the Anglo-Saxon Walthiofr. We hewed with our swords- Round the horses of the Isle-rocks, At the English promontory; We sailed to the battle Six days before the hosts fell; We chanted the mass of the spears With the uprising sun; Destiny was with our swords, Walthiofr fell in the tumult. Battles in Perth and the Orkneys are sung; at the Hebrides; in Ireland; at the Isle of Skye and the Bay of Ila on the Scotch coast are triumphantly sung; and then the Isle of Anglesey. After two stanzas of eulogy on battles, he begins to sing of his disastrous change of fortune: It seems to me from experience That we follow the decrees of fate; Few escape the dooms of the natal goddesses. The end of my life would come, When I stream'd the blood in slaughter, And urged my planks o'er the lakes; Hugely feasted we beasts of prey Along the bays of Scotland. He cheers his spirit as the adders sting with the remembrance of his children, anticipating their fierce revenge for his sufferings. Here would for me all the sons of Aslauga The bright brands of Hilda awake, If they knew but the danger of our encounter, What a number of snakes Full of venom strike me! I gained a true mother for my children, He grows weak as he sings; he feels coming death, yet feels a gleam of pleasure in the hope of vengeance which his children shall inflict. It flows to mine inheritance; Grim dangers surround me from adders, The vipers dwell in the hall of my heart— Of Vitris stand in Ella's breast. My sons must swell in rage That their father has thus been conquered, Forsake their repose for revenge? Recalling his own exploits gives a momentary impulse of new vigour, and the number shows the ferocious activity of his sea-king life: Fifty and one times have I Call'd the people to the appointed battles By the warning-spear messenger. Little believe I, that of men There will be any King, more fainous than ourself. When young I grasped and reddened my spear. The Esir must invite us, I will die without a groan! As the fatal moment nears, he rouses himself to expire with those marks of exultation which it was the boast of this fierce race to exhibit.` We desire this end The Disir goddesses bear me home As from the hall of him joying in spoils, From Odin, sent to me. Glad shall I with the Asæ Drink ale in my lofty seat. The hours of my life glide away But laughing I will die! The hero that arose with ability equal to meet and change the crisis which these new habits of the Scandinavians were bringing on Europe, was Elfred-the-Great, grandson of Egbert. A month after Elfred's accession, the Danes attacked his troops at Wilton, in his absence, with such superiority of force that all the valour of patriotism could not prevent a defeat. This was the ninth battle fought this year in Wessex beside Elfred's, and several of his ealdormen's and theigns' excursions without number. Wearied himself, and the country exhausted, Ælfred made peace with his enemies, and they quitted his dominions. Peace with such people was a dangerous truce, and the rest of England was in their power. They came to London, threatened Mercia; Burrhed twice negociated with them, then disgracefully quitted his throne and went to Rome, where he soon died. They destroyed the monastery at Repton and Croyland Abbey, imposing on the latter a tax of £1,000. When the Danish power declined, Ælfred associated Mercia with Wessex, to which it ever after remained attached. How must all this terrible fighting and bloodshed have palled on the aspiring soul of the thoughtful king? He became heartsick and out of patience with his fate; he longed for peace; he longed for a fellow-feeling with him in his higher aims, his higher aspirations. No wonder he became impatient with these brutal contentious surroundings; impatient with his ignorant nobles and fellows; no wonder he gave vent to hasty and impatient judgments, and grew out of sympathy with all about him under such hopelessly depressing scenes. "The intellectual disparity between himself and his people," says Sharon Turner, "was indeed great, and when men begin to acquire knowledge above the level generally attained by their contemporaries, they sometimes increase insensibly a haughty self-opinion and craving fondness for their favourite pursuits, with an irritable impatience of every interruption. This hurtful temper, which disappears as the judgment matures, may have grown up in Ælfred on his first eager acquisition of knowledge; and such feelings could only be exasperated when the duties of his office called him from his studies and meditations into a world of barbarians, who despised books and bookmen, with whom his mind could have no point of contact, whose ignorance provoked his contempt, and whose habits, perhaps, excited his abhorrence. Beginning to meditate, in his private hours, on the illustrious ancients whom he had heard of, his mind aspired to be assimilated to theirs, and could only loathe the rude, martial, and ignorant savages who filled his court, claimed his time, and oppressed his kingdom. Dependent and noble were alike fierce, uninstructed and gross." "How could his emerging mind compare the exalted characters and depictured civilization of Greece and Rome, or the sweet virtues inculcated by Christianity, without an indignation, impatience and misanthropy which call for our compassion rather than our reproach?" "How could he have imbibed an ardent intellectual taste with an increasing love of the great, the beautiful, and the good, without being affected by the melancholy contrast between his studies and experience? Everyone who has struggled into knowledge and refinement amidst the impediments of uncongenial connections and occupations, will have felt in his own experience something of that temper of mind which, in circumstances somewhat analogous, seems at first to have actuated Elfred." In the early years of his reign, amid his struggles and cares, his ardent desire for right between man and man forced the young king at times into impatience with the conduct of even peers and others in authority. No wonder he fell into disfavour with his nobles and representatives, for, whenever they failed in judgment or duty, they were treated with such strict im |