They sailed homeward over sunny seas, until they came to the shore where the royal lover awaited his bride, impatiently scanning the horizon for the gilded dragon’s head of the ship that bore her. The minstrel sings of the great wedding that was held in the old city of Ribe.[8] The gray old cathedral in which they knelt together still stands; but of Valdemar’s strong castle only a grass-grown hill is left. It was the privilege of a bride in those days to ask a gift of her husband on the morning after the wedding, and have it granted without question. Two boons did Dagmar crave,
“right early in the morning, long before it was day”:
one, that the plow-tax might be forgiven the peasant, and that those who for rising against it had been laid in irons be set free; the other, that the prison door of Bishop Valdemar be opened. Bishop Valdemar was the arch-enemy of the King. The first request he granted; but the other he refused for cause:
An’ he comes out, Bishop Valdemar,
Widow he makes you this year.
And he did his worst; for in the end the King yielded to Dagmar’s prayers, and much mischief came of it.
Seven years the good queen lived. Seven centuries have not dimmed the memory of them, or of her. The King was away in a distant part of the country when they sent to him in haste with the message that the queen was dying. The ballad tells of his fears as he sees Dagmar’s page coming, and they proved only too true.
The king his checker-board shut in haste,
The dice they rattled and rung.
Forbid it God, who dwells in heaven,