22
Now Bengerd lies in mirk and mould,
And every maid hath her crown of gold!
—Woe be on her then, Queen Bengerd!
VI, VII, VIII
THE KING-SLAYING IN FINDERUP
MARSK STIG AND HIS LADY
EXTRACT FROM THE LONG BALLAD OF MARSK STIG
These Ballads have been selected from a cycle dealing with the murder of King Erik Klipping (1259-86), and the subsequent disturbances. All through his reign he was at feud with his turbulent nobles; in 1282 they extorted his signature to a Constitution (Denmark’s Magna Carta) safeguarding the rights of the nobility and liberties of the people; then, since he proved faithless, they did him to death. The murder took place on the night of November 22, 1286; his corpse was found next morning, with fifty-six wounds, in a barn at Finderup, whither he had retired to sleep during a hunting expedition. The assassins escaped for a time, but their identity was suspected, and the young King Erik Mœndved (1286-1319) was determined to have justice. At the Parliament of Nyborg (1287) a grand jury was impanelled to try the late King’s principal adversaries; nine, mostly of one family, were found guilty and declared outlaws, the royal marshal, Stig Andersen, among them. They took refuge among the islands, whence they harried the coasts of Denmark; and the protection afforded them by Norway gave rise to a lengthy war.
The “King-Slaying” is the earliest of the Ballads on this subject. The innocence of the King’s page Rane was loudly maintained by his friends, who asserted that he, “naked and weaponless, warded his master,” but evidence was forthcoming that proved his treachery.
The Ballad next in date describes the outlaws’ departure from Denmark, and Stig’s resolve to build a castle at Hjælm. The third of the series tells of his ill-omened dream, and his wife’s attempt to explain it away—his ride to the royal castle, the Queen’s taunt that he wishes to usurp the crown, and his reply that such an ambition rather befits her paramour, Drost Ove. The young King declares him an outlaw; Stig threatens to keep his foot in Denmark, and begins the building of his castle, whose looming battlements scare the peasantry.
The fourth Ballad, “Marsk Stig and his Lady” (No. 7), was written after a lapse of time when the political motive for the Slaying had been forgotten, and replaced by one more romantic, based on a vague tradition. The King, in fact, appears as David, and Stig as Uriah the Hittite. The Ballad has therefore no claim to historical accuracy; moreover, it places the action throughout in Sjælland.
Latest of all comes “The Long Ballad of Marsk Stig,” which—after the fashion of the “Lytell Geste of Robin Hood”—unites all the other Ballads in a consecutive narrative, reproducing them mostly word for word, yet enriching them with its own characteristic touches. The King’s villainy is heightened by his promise to watch over Dame Ingeborg during her husband’s absence; “she shall suffer no more wrong than if thyself wert home.” Rane, the treacherous page, appears as sister’s son to the Dame, with whom he plots the King’s murder. After Stig’s defiance at the Thing, and before the Slaying, the Long Ballad inserts an episode peculiar to itself; the amorous King goes a-hunting with Rane, gets lost in the wood, and encounters an Elf-Maid, who, in riddling words, prophesies his imminent death.