36
He burst the door with rage and wrath,
He bore his mother forth from the bath.
37
He bore her out where the blossoms blow,
But she was dead ere first cock-crow.
—By my troth; King Valdemar he wooed them both.
III, IV, V
THE DAGMAR BALLADS
QUEEN BENGERD
Valdemar II (1202-41) has been strangely dealt with by the Ballads. They are silent alike as to the warlike exploits which won him the name of Sejr, the Victorious, and the administrative reforms commemorated in his other title of Legifer. His crusade against the heathen Esthonians—even the miraculous gift of the Dannebrog, the national standard blazoned in the armorial bearings of the conquered city Reval—left popular imagination unmoved. It seized, however, on the images of his two Queens, ascribing to the one all that was liked, to the other all that was loathed, in the King’s treatment of his subjects.