The story of Osgood and Ailred, the childemaister (schoolmaster in the monastery), as related by Palgrave, and used in this romance, is recorded in a MS. of Waltham Abbey, and was written somewhere about fifty or sixty years after the event—say at the beginning of the twelfth century. These two monks followed Harold to the field, placed themselves so as to watch its results, offered ten marks for the body, obtained permission for the search, and could not recognise the mutilated corpse until Osgood sought and returned with Edith. In point of fact, according to this authority, it must have been two or three days after the battle before the discovery was made.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Sismondi's History of France, vol. iv. p. 484.
[2] "Men's blinded hopes, diseases, toil, and prayer, And winged troubles peopling daily air."
[3] Merely upon the obscure MS. of the Waltham Monastery; yet, such is the ignorance of popular criticism, that I have been as much attacked for the license I have taken with the legendary connection between Harold and Edith, as if that connection were a proven and authenticated fact! Again, the pure attachment to which, in the romance, the loves of Edith and Harold are confined, has been alleged to be a sort of moral anachronism,—a sentiment wholly modern; whereas, on the contrary, an attachment so pure was infinitely more common in that day than in this, and made one of the most striking characteristics of the eleventh century; indeed of all the earlier ages, in the Christian era, most subjected to monastic influences.
[4] Notes less immediately necessary to the context, or too long not to interfere with the current of the narrative, are thrown to the end of the work.
[5] There is a legend attached to my friend's house, that on certain nights in the year, Eric the Saxon winds his horn at the door, and, in forma spectri, serves his notice of ejectment.
[6] The "Edinburgh Review," No. CLXXIX. January, 1849. Art. I. "Correspondance inedite, de Mabillon et de Montfaucon, avec l'Italie." Par M. Valery. Paris, 1848.
[7] And long before the date of the travesty known to us, and most popular amongst our mediaeval ancestors, it might be shown that some rude notion of Homer's fable and personages had crept into the North.
[8] "The apartment in which the Anglo-Saxon women lived, was called Gynecium."—FOSBROOKE, vol. ii., p. 570.