Sharp and keen,
Grows in the mene.
The King cannot ride it, no more can the Queen."
"No more can the Queen…. I must mind me to tell my mother that in two years and a little more her son will be lying dead and cold. How sister Eadburh will storm at what must follow—the fall of our proud house!… Heart's dearest, the sun is high in heaven. Why do ye not awake, my lord? Do ye not hear the lark singing? Ethelbert, there is blood all about thy hair—it is like a crown, Ethelbert!"
Babbling thus and laughing, she was torn away: nor did she ever recover her reason, though she lived thereafter thirty years.
Earl Sweyn the Nithing
Being the Chronicle of Winifred Ebba's daughter
In the first year of King Hardicanute, on the sixth-and-twentieth day of May, feast of blessed Augustine, Algive, only child of Aldred, sometime thane of Berrington, became by oath-plight nun of the Order of blessed Benedict, before the altar of the Abbey-church of Leominster, lately builded and begun by Leofric the good Earl. By this means grew the hoard of the same holy house the richer by the half of her goods. The other half, and her land at Berrington eke, Athelstane her uncle kept for himself.
On the self-same day, and in the self-same abbey-church, did I, Winifred Ebba's daughter, whose father had been freed churl of the father's father of this Algive, make also mine awful vows to serve God after St. Benedict's law. Algive Aldred's daughter had then fifteen years, and I six more than she: all the days of our lives had we played together, and I watched over her. And for that I had ever longed, since I could mind me, for the religious life, I was glad in that hour: and my kindred chode not too greatly, for that I willed to tread the path whereon wended our old thane's daughter. But for Lady Algive was her oath-plight the spring of many and bitter woes.