Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

by Henry William Herbert

Those forests of the olden day were rarely tangled or thicketlike, unless in marshy levels, where the alder, the willow, and other water-loving shrubs replaced the monarchs of the wild; or where, in craggy gullies, down which brawled impetuous the bright hill-streams, the yew, the holly, and the juniper, mixed with the silvery stems and quivering verdure of the birches, or the deeper hues of the broad-leaved witch-elms and hazels, formed dingles fit for fairy bowers.

For the most part, the huge bolls of the forest-trees stood far apart, in long sweeping aisles, as regular as if planted by the hand of man, allowing the grass to grow luxuriantly in the shade, nibbled, by the vast herds of red and fallow deer and roes, into the softest and most even sward that ever tempted the foot of high-born beauty.

And no more lovely sight can be imagined than those deep, verdant solitudes, at early morn, when the luxuriant feathery ferns, the broom and gorse blazing with their clusters of golden blossoms, the crimson-capped foxgloves, the sky-blue campanulas by the roadside, the clustering honeysuckles overrunning the stunt hawthorns, and vagrant briars and waving grasses were glittering far and near in their morning garniture of diamond dewdrops, with the long level rays of the new-risen sun streaming in yellow lustre down the glades, and casting great blue lines of shadow from every mossy trunk—no sight more lovely than the same scenes in the waning twilight, when the red western sky tinged the gnarled bolls with lurid crimson, and carpeted the earth with sheets of copper-colored light, while the skies above were darkened with the cerulean robes of night.

Nor was there lack of living sounds and sights to take away the sense of loneliness from the mind of the voyager in the green wilderness—the incessant songs of the thrush and blackbird, and whistle of the wood-robin, the mellow notes of the linnets, the willow warblers and the sedge birds in the watery brake, the harsh laugh of the green-headed woodpecker, and the hoarse cooing of the innumerable stock-doves, kept the air vocal during all the morning and evening hours; while the woods all resounded far and wide with the loud belling of the great stags, now in their lusty prime, calling their shy mates, or defying their lusty rivals, from morn to dewy eve.

And ever and anon, the wild cadences of the forest bugles, clearly winded in the distance, and the tuneful clamor of the deep-mouthed talbots, would tell of some jovial hunts-up.

Now it would be some gray-frocked hedge priest plodding his way alone on foot, or on his patient ass, who would return the passenger's benedicite with his smooth pax vobiscum; now it would be some green-kirtled forest lass who would drop her demure curtsey to the fair Norman lady, and shoot a sly glance from her hazel eyes at the handsome Norman pages. Here it would be a lord-abbot, or proud prior with his lay brothers, his refectioners and sumptners, his baggage-mules, and led Andalusian jennets, and as the poet sung,

"With many a cross-bearer before,

And many a spear behind,"

who would greet them fairly in some shady nook beside the sparkling brook or crystal well-head, and pray them of their courtesy to alight and share his poor convent fare, no less than the fattest haunch, the tenderest peacock, and the purest wine of Gascony, on the soft green sward.

There, it would be a knot of sun-burned Saxon woodmen, in their green frocks and buckram hose, with long bows in their hands, short swords and quivers at their sides, and bucklers of a span-breadth on their shoulders, men who had never acknowledged Norman king, nor bowed to Norman yoke, who would stand at gaze, marking the party, from the jaws of some bosky dingle, too proud to yield a foot, yet too few to attack; proving that to be well accompanied, in those days, in Sherwood, was a matter less of pomp than of sound policy. Anon, receiving notice of their approach from the repeated bugle-blasts of his verdurers, as they passed each successive mere or forest-station, a Norman knight or noble, in his garb of peace, would gallop down some winding wood-path, with his slender train scattering far behind him, to greet his brother in arms, and pray him to grace his tower by refreshing his company and resting his fair and gentle daughter for a few days or hours, within its precincts.