pointing the finger of scorn at them. But others wanted this chiding as much as Mildred, seeing that every Saxon maid and every Saxon matron present were laughing and tittering at Geoffroy Taille-Bois' unlucky wooing, and his damp and dismal case.

The marriage feast in the hall was sumptuous and most joyous. It was enlivened and lengthened by tricks of jugglery and legerdemain, by the recitation of tales, legends, and romances, and by lays sung to musical instruments; for although the notice given had been so short, many jugglers and menestrels had hurried to Ey from different parts of the fen country. In nearly all the rest of broad England the art of the Saxon menestrel was now held in scorn; and the menestrel himself was oppressed and persecuted, for his tales and songs all went to remind the Saxon people of their past history, of their heroes and native saints, and of their past independence. But this persecution had driven many towards the eastern coasts, and thus it was that the fen country and the Camp of Refuge as much abounded with Saxon menestrels as with dispossessed Saxon monks. Of those that flocked in troops to the manor-house at Ey, to sing at the marriage feast, it may be judged whether they did not exert their best skill on so solemn an occasion! Loudly and nobly did they sing Athelstane's Song of Victory, which related how Athelstane the King, the Lord of Earls, the rewarder of heroes, and his brother Edmund of the ancient race, triumphed over the foe at Brunanburg, cleaving their shields and hewing their banners; how these royal brothers were ever ready to take the field to defend the land and their homes and hearths against every invader and

robber; how they had made the Northmen sail back in their nailed ships, on the roaring sea, over the deep water, after strewing the English shore with their dead, that were left behind to be devoured by the sallow kite, the swarth raven, the hoary vulture, the swift eagle, the greedy goshawk, and that grey beast the wolf of the weald. And as the menestrel sang, the drinking-horn, capacious as became the hospitality of that old Saxon house, was handed quickly round by page and waiting-man, who carried great vessels in their hands, and filled the dark horn right up to its silver rim with mead, or wine, or pigment, every time that they presented the horn to gentle or simple.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW LORD HEREWARD AND HIS LADIE LIVED AT EY.

EVEN when the marriage festival was over it was a happy and a merry life that which they led in the good Saxon manor-house, and discreet and orderly withal. It being the wolf-month of the year (Januarius), when the days are still short and the nights long, Hereward and the Ladie Alftrude, together with the whole household, rose long before it was daylight. Before attending to any household or other duties, prayers were said in the hall by Alefric, the good mass-priest, all the servants of the house and all the indwelling serfs being present thereat. Some short time after prayers the first of the four meals of the day was served by torch or candle-light, and the lord and lady broke their fast; and when they had finished the meal the door of the house was thrown open, and the poor from the neighbouring township, or the wanderers that had no home, were admitted into the house, and the lord and lady with their own hands distributed food among them, and while they distributed it the mass-priest blessed the meat and said a prayer. And this being over they went forth at early dawn to the little church on the hill behind the linden-grove and there heard mass. The ladie then went home to attend unto

domestic concerns, and the lord went forth with his hawks and proper attendants to hawk by the river, or he took forth his hounds (of that famous breed of English dogs which hath been famed in all times, and as well for war as for hunting, and which hath been so much coveted by foreign nations that already it beginneth to disappear from this land), and he called together the free men of the vicinage that loved the sport, and such of the serfs as were best practised in it, and went well armed with venabula or hunting-spears into the fens and covers to hunt the hart and hind, or the wild goat, or the wild bull of the fens, or the wild boar, or the grey wolf, which was not yet extinct in these parts of England.

[It was a good law of King Canute, which said that every free man in England might hunt in his own woods and grounds, and hunt as much as he list, provided only he interfered not with the royal parks and demesnes. But the Norman princes, not content with spreading their parks all over the country, and with seizing upon the lands of the church and the poor to make them great huntinggrounds and deer-parks, established cruel laws therewith, so that whosoever slew a hart or a hind should be deprived of his eyesight; and Duke William forbade men to kill the hart or the boar, and, as our Saxon chronicler saith, he loved the tall deer as if he were their father; and likewise he decreed that none should kill so much as a hare, and at this the rich men bemoaned and the poor men shuddered. Old England will not be England until these unSaxon laws be entirely gone from us!]

From this good sport Lord Hereward returned to the house about an hour before the sun reached the

meridian, and then was served the abundant dinner in the hall; and the not stinted dinner in the kitchen for the churls and serfs followed the dinner in the hall. If the weather was fine, the lady as well as the lord went out in the afternoon to hawk, or to fish, or to see the pleasant and profitable sport of their expert fenners who snared the wild fowl, or took the animals of the chace by means of fovea or deep pitfalls which they cunningly dug in the ground in the likeliest places, and still more cunningly concealed by laying across them sticks, and twigs, and moss, and turf. As the sun set they returned again to the house and sang in concert with all the household the Ave Maria, or they went into the little church and heard the full service of Vespers. Upon these duties of religion there followed a slight merenda or afternoon's drinking, or refection between dinner and supper; and then Elfric or some other skilful wight made music in the hall by playing upon the harp and singing; or Alefricus, that learned clerk, brought down a book and read in it, or the freedmen and elders of the township gathered round the cheerful hearth with the lord and ladie, and related tales and legends of the old times, or took counsel with Hereward as to the future. If a Saxon gleeman came that way he was ever welcome; and these evening hours were often made to pass away the more pleasantly by the arrival of such a stranger, who, mayhap, could sing a new song, or tell an unheard tale, or give some little intelligence of what was passing in the upland country and in the world beyond the fens. No Saxon chief of fame ever stinted the bard; and whether he went south or north, east or west, the menestrel found every hall open to him, and had but to speak his