“Twenty years ago, of course, I could have thrashed him as easily as—; but now I am getting old and shaky, and the man has been a great help in need. Six kings of these parts has he killed for me, who drove off my cattle, and stopped my tin works, and plundered my monks’ cells too, which is worse, while I was away sailing the seas; and he is a right good fellow at heart, though he be a little rough. So be friends with him as long as you stay here, and if I can do you a service I will.”
They went in to their morning meal, at which Hereward resolved to keep the peace which he longed to break, and therefore, as was to be expected, broke.
For during the meal the fair lady, with no worse intention, perhaps, than that of teasing her tyrant, fell to open praises of Hereward’s fair face and golden hair; and being insulted therefore by the Ironhook, retaliated by observations about his personal appearance, which were more common in the eleventh century than they happily are now. He, to comfort himself, drank deep of the French wine which had just been brought and broached, and then went out into the court-yard, where, in the midst of his admiring fellow-ruffians, he enacted a scene as ludicrous as it was pitiable. All the childish vanity of the savage boiled over. He strutted, he shouted, he tossed about his huge limbs, he called for a harper, and challenged all around to dance, sing, leap, fight, do anything against him: meeting with nothing but admiring silence, he danced himself out of breath, and then began boasting once more of his fights, his cruelties, his butcheries, his impossible escapes and victories; till at last, as luck would have it, he espied Hereward, and poured out a stream of abuse against Englishmen and English courage.
“Englishmen,” he said, “were naught. Had he not slain three of them himself with one blow?”
“Of your mouth, I suppose,” quoth Hereward, who saw that the quarrel must come, and was glad to have it done and over.
“Of my mouth?” roared Ironhook; “of my sword, man!”
“Of your mouth,” said Hereward. “Of your brain were they begotten, of the breath of your mouth they were born, and by the breath of your mouth you can slay them again as often as you choose.”
The joke, as it has been handed down to us by the old chroniclers, seems clumsy enough; but it sent the princess, say they, into shrieks of laughter.
“Were it not that my Lord Alef was here,” shouted Ironhook, “I would kill you out of hand.”
“Promise to fight fair, and do your worst. The more fairly you fight, the more honor you will win,” said Hereward.