"Hi! old Wolf's head," he shouted, "thou mountain of flesh, thou! Arwald, or whatever thy name is; how long am I to sit here and have my head twisted off my shoulders by this lubberly thrall? Send that head-cutting knave down this way, and let me get away from here."
As Arwald paid no attention, Beornwulf began again.
"I say, thou round knave, thou, dost thou not hear?" and he proceeded to string together a collection of epithets considerably more apposite than elegant, which so enraged Arwald that to stop his abuse he told the executioner to go to him next, but Beornwulf had one more idea. He called out—
"By Woden's beard, I am not going to have my fair hair touched by a base knave; let one of thy eorls come here and hold my hair."
He had beautiful curly, long, fair hair, and took great care of it; and since great respect was paid to appearance even in those rough times, and the hair, curiously enough, in all savage tribes and races, is always the object of great solicitude, although no other attention is paid to the person, he was allowed to have his wish. One of the eorls sitting by Arwald said he would do as the merry knave wanted, and stepped up to Beornwulf. He took his position behind him, grasping firmly the thick, bushy, curly locks. The other two prisoners moved a little more to the left, so as to allow room for the executioner to have full play for his axe; and the headsman prepared to perform his horrid office. Beornwulf watched him very steadily, the proper distance was measured, the executioner told him to sit very steady. "For," he said, "thou art a fine young man, and I would be sorry to spoil thy beauty;" to which Beornwulf replied, "Thank thee, poor knave; but it would take a good deal to spoil thine." Which retort so enraged the executioner, who was a snub-nosed, blear-eyed, red-haired man, and therefore felt the truth of the remark, that he swung back his axe, poised it, and then struck with all his force. There was a sharp cutting sound, a shrill cry, and a shout of astonishment from the crowd, while a loud mocking laugh rang out from—whom? Could it be the dead man? The crowd strained to look. There was no doubt about it. There was Beornwulf roaring with laughter; but instead of his head being on the ground, it was still on his shoulders; but something was on the ground. What was it? The crowd looked at the eorl. What was the matter with him? He was holding up his arms. But what had happened to them? Where were his hands? And then the trick dawned upon every one. And there were loud shouts of applause at Beornwulf's cleverness, for this was just such a joke as those rude, barbarous men could understand; and they shouted and screamed, and roared with laughter.
"Why, Loki, the mischief lover, was nothing to him." "Let him go free." "He ought to live," were heard on all sides. And even Arwald laughed, so that the tears ran down his face as the splendid joke dawned upon him.
And this is what had happened. When the executioner struck his stroke, Beornwulf, who had been carefully watching him, ducked his head with all his might, and with a sudden jerk. The eorl, whose hands were firmly twisted in his luxuriant hair, was naturally pulled down; the executioner could not stop his blow, even if he had had time to notice the stratagem, and the wretched eorl received the full force of the sweeping cut, with the result that both his hands were shorn off at the wrists.[1]
[1] The greater part of the above account of these executions is taken from Mallet's "Northern Antiquities," where the execution of the Jomsberg Rovers is extracted from various Scandinavian sources. I have inserted them here to give a really true picture of the wild, fierce, brave manners of that rude epoch. The episode of the Jomsberg Rovers is more than 200 years subsequent to the events here narrated.
The exquisiteness of this stratagem consisted not only in the mortification of the executioner, and the momentary saving of Beornwulf's life, but, above all in the disabling of one more of Beornwulf's enemies, for so it would count, according to all the received ideas; and thus at a moment, the most supreme in the life of a man, Beornwulf had contrived to add one more to the number of victims he would have for his own particular portion when he arrived in Valhalla, and his renown for wit would be very great.
But the executioner was furious at the trick that had been played upon him: he paid no heed to the shouts of the crowd, and, uttering a savage cry, he rushed upon Beornwulf. Some of the bystanders shouted to Beornwulf, to warn him of his danger, but it seemed nothing could save him, for the man was upon him: when, quick as lightning, Beornwulf flung himself prostrate upon the ground at the feet of his would-be murderer. The man heavy, blundering, and blinded by passion, fell over him, severing the cord with his axe as he fell; and instantly Beornwulf rose to his feet, seized the axe out of his hand, and dealt him a swinging death-blow.