"We struck with our swords! oh! if the sons of Aslauga but knew of my danger, they would draw their bright blades and rush to my rescue. How the venomous snakes now bite me. But the mother of my children is true; I gained her that they might have brave hearts. The staff of Vithris will soon stick in Ella's heart. How the anger of my sons will swell when they know how their father was conquered. In the palace of my heart the envenomed vipers dwell.
"We struck with our swords! in fifty and one combats have I fought, and summoned my people by my warning-spear-messenger. There will be found few kings more famous than I. From my youth I loved to grasp the red spear. But the goddess invites me home from the hall of spoils; Odin has sent for me. The hours of my life are gliding away, and, laughing, I will die."
The tidings of the terrible death of Ragnar were not long in travelling to the rocky coast of Norway; in every creek, and bay, and harbour, it resounded, and wherever a sea-king breathed around the Baltic, he swore on his bracelet of gold to revenge the death of the renowned chieftain; all petty expeditions were laid aside; Dane, Swede, and Norwegian, united like one man; and eight kings, and twenty jarls, or petty chieftains, all joined in the enterprise, at the head of which Ingwar and Hubba, the two sons of Ragnar, were placed; all the relations and friends of Ragnar, no matter how remote, swelled the force that had congregated to revenge his death.
Although this mighty fleet was directed towards Northumbria, by some chance it passed the coast, and came to anchor on the shores of East Anglia. No one in England was apprized of its approach. Ethelred had not been long seated on the throne of Wessex, and Northumbria was still shaken by internal revolutions; for Osbert, who had been expelled by Ella from the Deiri, was now making preparations to regain the kingdom. The Danes did not, however, commence hostilities so soon as they landed, but quietly overawing the country by their mighty force, they took up their winter quarters within their intrenchments, and moored their vessels along the shore. They demanded a supply of horses; the king of East Anglia furnished them; he intruded not upon their encampment, neither did they molest him. The rest of the Saxon states looked calmly on, trusting that the tempest would burst where it had gathered, and that they should escape the terrible storm; but they were doomed to be disappointed. With the first warm days of Spring, the whole Danish host was in motion; such an army had never before overrun the British island. The sons of Ragnar strode sullenly onward at its head. They halted not until they reached York, the metropolis of the Deira; they swept through the city in their devastating march, leaving sorrow, and slaughter, and death, to mark their footsteps; destroying all before them as they passed, until they reached the banks of the Tyne. Osbert and Ella had by this time become united, and began to advance at the head of a large army, which numbered amongst its commanders eight earls. The Danes had again fallen back upon York, and near the outskirts of that city were first attacked by the Northumbrians. The assault was so sudden that the pagans were compelled to fly into the city for shelter. Flushed with this temporary victory, the Saxons began to pull down the city walls, and once within its streets, the Danes then rose up, and fell upon the Northumbrians, whom they cut down with terrible slaughter—nearly the whole of the Saxon army perished. Ella fell alive into their hands, and horribly did the sons of Ragnar revenge their father's death. All the tortures which cruelty could devise, they inflicted upon him. So decisive was the victory, that Northumbria never again became a Saxon kingdom, but was ruled over with an iron hand by one of the sons of Ragnar. The work of vengeance could go no further; they had put the king to a lingering and agonizing death, and having desolated his kingdom, one of the sons of the terrible sea-king, whose spirit they had appeased, sat down upon the vacant throne, and, from the Tyne unto the Humber, reigned the undisputed sovereign. Thus was the death of Ragnar revenged. Having once taken possession of the kingdom, the Danes began to fortify York, and to strengthen the principal towns in the neighbourhood. From Northumberland to the shores of the Humber they strengthened their great mustering ground, and made it a rallying point for all the sea-kings who had courage enough to brave the perils of the Baltic, and venture their lives, like the sons of Ragnar, for a kingdom. All who had aided in revenging the death of Ragnar, now invited their kindred and followers over to England. They came in shoals, until Northumbria was filled like an overstocked hive that awaits a favourable opportunity to swarm.
That deep buzzing was soon heard which denoted that they were ready to swarm, for there was now no longer room for so many. The dark cloud passed with a humming sound through the Deiri, along the pleasant valley of the Trent, through the wild forest of Sherwood, whose old oaks then stood in all their primitive grandeur, until they saw before them the walls of Nottingham rising high above their rocky foundation. The inhabitants fled into the surrounding forest, or hurried over the Trent into the adjoining county of Lincolnshire, where Burrhed, the king of Mercia, resided. Alarmed by the rumour of such an host, the Mercian king sent into Wessex for assistance; and Ethelred, joined by his brother Alfred, who was now slowly rising, like a star on the rim of the horizon, hastened with their united armies to assist the Mercian king. But the Danes were too strongly entrenched within the walls of Nottingham to be driven out by the combined forces of Mercia and Wessex. The Saxons, well aware of the strength of these fortifications, were compelled to encamp without the walls, for the tall rocky barriers on which the castle yet stands, and the precipitous and cavernous heights which still look down upon the river Lene, formed strong natural barriers from which the Danish sentinels could look down with triumph, and defy the assembled host that lay encamped at their feet. After some delay, a treaty was entered into between the contending armies, and the Danes agreed to fall back upon York; the river Idel, which is so narrow that the points of two long lances would meet, if held by a tall chieftain on either shore, was the slender barrier that divided the opposing nations; a roe-buck from a rising summit could readily overleap it, and in an hundred places it was fordable. Ethelred and his brother Alfred, (who had now numbered about nineteen years,) led back their army into Wessex, and allowed the Danes to pursue their way quietly into Deiri. This forbearance is greatly censured by the early historians, but we must bear in mind that Alfred was not yet king, and that Ethelred but came up as an ally on the side of Mercia. He who was destined to become the greatest sovereign that ever sat upon the English throne, was at this period one of the most daring followers of the chase, for, although he was from childhood a martyr to a painful disease, yet where the antlered monarch of the forest led the way, there was Alfred to be seen foremost amongst the hunters. Young as he was, he had already married a Mercian lady, called Ealswitha, and some portion of Wessex was allotted to him, probably such as had been held by his father Ethelwulph, when the subjects rebelled on account of his step-mother Judith. Slightly as we have passed by this frail fair lady, Alfred was greatly indebted to her; she first tempted him to read when he was only twelve years of age; but for her he might, like his brothers, have remained in ignorance. She first pointed out the path which guided him to the literature of Rome; he had trod the streets of the "eternal city," and his wise laws tell us the use he made of his learning.
We are compelled to drag the great king bit by bit before our readers, lest we should startle them by his too sudden appearance; for he seems to rise above the age in which he lived with an unnatural majesty—there is no relief near to where he stands, no neighbouring summit which he might descend that would seem to lessen his giant form in its shadow;—bold and bare and giant-like his god-imaged figure heaves up, and with its mighty shadow eclipses the very sunset which, though ever sinking, leaves not in gloom the bright form that makes the "darkness visible" by which it is surrounded.
[CHAPTER XX.]
RAVAGES OF THE DANES—DEATH OF ETHELRED.
"We look in vain for those old ruins now,
For the green grass waves o'er that ample floor,
And where the altar stood rank nettles grow;
None mourned its fall more than the neighbouring poor,
They passed its ruins sighing, day by day,
And missed the beadsman in his hood of gray,
Who never bade the hungry turn away."—The Old Abbey.