102
Marstig he builded a hold at Hjælm,
A hold with wall and tower;
The King in vain laid siege thereto
With all his royal power.
—My noble lord, the young Sir Marstig.
[2] Cannons (bösser) are first mentioned in the time of Valdemar Atterdag (1340-85), and were certainly not known when Hjælm was besieged by Erik Mœndved. Their mention here is a proof that the Long Ballad was put together some hundred years after the event.
IX
NIELS EBBESON
Niels Ebbeson was the man of his hour; and the hour was one of the blackest in Danish history. The worthless King Christopher was dead, his son Valdemar abroad, and the greedy Holstein nobles were scrambling for the choicest parts of the kingdom. One of these local tyrants, Count Gert, or Gerhardt, held Fyn and Jutland in pledge; and how the Jutlanders found deliverance is best told by a Franciscan chronicler, writing in 1385: