“The roof let make of tiling red;
Of stone thou build the wall;”
and then he whispers in her ear:
“Hear thou, my Lady Inge,
Of women thou art the flower;
An’ thou bearest to me a son so bold,
Set on the church a tower.”
Should the child be a girl, he tells her to build only a spire, for “modesty beseemeth a woman.” Well for Sir Asker that he did not live in our day of clamoring suffragists. He would have “views” without doubt. But no such things troubled him while he battled in foreign lands all summer. It was autumn when he returned and saw from afar the swell behind which lay Fjenneslev and home. Impatiently he spurred his horse to the brow of the hill, for no news had come of Lady Inge those many months. The bard tells us what he saw there:
“It was the good Sir Asker Ryg;
Right merrily laughed he,