For soon thou art loathsome and unlovely to see:
From the crown of thy head shall the hair be lost;
Thy locks shall fall and lose their freshness;
25 No longer is it fair for the fingers to stroke.
III. POEMS FROM THE CHRONICLE
THE BATTLE OF BRUNNANBURG
[Critical edition: Sedgefield, The Battle of Maldon and Six Short Poems from the Saxon Chronicle, Boston, 1904, Belles Lettres Edition.
Translation: Tennyson; Pancoast and Spaeth, Early English Poems, p. 81.
Date: It appears in the Chronicle under the year 937.
Danes living north of the Humber conspired with their kinsmen in Ireland under the two Olafs, together with the Scottish king Constantine and the Strathclyde Britons under their king Eugenius, against Æthelstan, king of Wessex. The allies met in the south of Northumbria. Æthelstan encountered them at Brunnanburg and defeated them.