’Twas brick-dust!
With such prodigious force did they hurl their national weapon (shamrock is the pretty name of it in the Gael) against our shields, that, where it did not go through, it was reduced to powder.
We stood a long while, stunned, blinded, bewildered; suffering heavily, doing nothing in reply. At last there was a slight lull in the storm of missiles; for as they had each brought over but a peck of ammunition, in their corduroys, the more impetuous among them were beginning to run short; and it was then that our sturdy ancestor showed the stuff he was made of. Assuming command (for Horsa, with Alfred Hvaecere by his side, lay insensible upon the grass), “Men,” cried he, “why do we stand here? Remember Quintilius Varus and his legions! To your axes! to your axes!” And the whole line staggered forward, with Ethelbert well in front and bearing down upon Maginnis. (The same,—though his mother would scarcely have known him, with that blue-black bulge in his forehead.) And it is mainly from an observation that Maginnis made at this juncture that I am inclined to give in my adhesion to the hypothesis of the later historians, who claim that these men were not Scots.
“Erin go bragh!” cried the undaunted chieftain, reaching down into his trousers for a reserve brick,—an heirloom,—black, glistening, hard as flint, mother of wakes—
“Thor smash thee!” cried the Hvaecere; and tossing away his shield, he lifted aloft, in both hands, his mighty axe. It trembled in the air, ready to descend.
Too late,—for the brick of Maginnis landed square between the hero’s eyes,—and you and I had to be descended from the younger brother.
25.
The Whackers, therefore, are not ancestors that one needs blush to own.[[1]] But I have not meant to boast. Else had I been unworthy of them. They were Anglo-Saxon; and when I have said that, I have said that they had a certain sturdy love of truth, for which this race is conspicuous. And so this book may be absurd, or even wicked, nay, worst of all, dull; but one thing you may rely upon. Every word in it will be true.
| [1] | I sometimes wonder how some people can plume themselves on their descent, though able to trace it back only to the Norman Conquest. J. B. W. |