Hacked by the hostile broadswords. That were my worst disaster.
Alas! that there my kinsman, my dead lord, lies before me.
Then many of the sailor host Offa laid low in battle,
But all too soon the chieftain brave himself received his death-blow,
Redeeming thus the promise he to his lord had given,
“Either we twain to castle triumphant ride together
Safe to our homes, or elsewise we both in battle perish,
Sore wounded, life out-bleeding upon the field of slaughter”.
So lay the noble Offa all thegn-like by his master.
The poem both begins and ends abruptly, and is evidently a fragment, but we know from the Chronicle that the valour of Brihtnoth’s henchmen was vain to restore the battle, and that Maldon was a Northmen’s victory. The chief interest of the poem lies in the fact that it so vividly brings before us the devotion of the thegns to their “dear lord” (wine drihten), reminding us forcibly of the words of Tacitus concerning the ancestors of these men nine centuries before. “The man is disgraced for the rest of his life who leaves the battle-field having survived his chief. The chiefs fight for victory, the ‘companions’ for their chief.” Also, unfortunately, the poet reveals to us the existence of treachery and cowardice in the Saxon host. We shall soon come upon notorious instances of men who imitated the panic-breeding flight of the base Godric rather than the noble stand of Brihtnoth and his henchmen.