Beorn

“ Beorn's appearance here will excite no surprise. He will say that having nought in particular to occupy him he had ridden north to be at the wedding, and finding that he was too late, would at any rate ride back with the king. With him and me and Osgod ever on the watch, methinks there will be little fear of a surprise; and it is by surprise only that they can succeed, for Harold himself is a match for any four or five ordinary men if he has but time to draw his sword. ”

“ Maybe he was ten years older than Halfden.
There were five or six other men, seemingly of rank, and on horseback also, behind him, but they wore no armour, and were in hunting gear only, and again there were footmen, leading hounds like the great one that stood by Raud and me. And two men there were who led between them Beorn, holding him lest he should fall, either from weakness or terror, close to the jarl.
So I stood before Ingvar the Jarl, and wondered how things would go, and what Beorn had said, though I had no fear of him. ”

“ As soon as Beorn was half-way up Wulf began to follow him, saying to Osgod and the men, "Keep the same distance apart. Do not let more than two be on the ladder at once whatever happens inside, if it were to break it would be fatal to us all." As soon as he gained the top Wulf threw himself down by the side of Beorn, and lay there watching the men on the other walls and on the summit of the castle. Osgod and four men had joined them when Wulf noticed a sudden stir and heard a shout. ”

“ Beorn said. "It would never do to risk her giving an alarm, and though she looks feeble she might be able to get down to Porthwyn."
"We will tie her securely, Beorn; we can't hurt the poor old creature. Her sons are no doubt out with the Welsh bands hunting for us; but they will return here sooner or later, so that no harm will come to her."
By his orders Osgod securely bound the old woman with a rope he found in the hut, and then leaving her they went outside and called upon the men to close in. Eight of the goats were killed, and were then cut up and divided among the men. ”

“ You have been away, and there is more than you know at the bottom of the matter. The king offered Lodbrok lands if he would bide with us and be his man, and these he refused, gently enough, saying that he had broad lands of his own, and that he would not turn Christian, as the king wished, for the sake of gain. He would only leave the worship of his own gods for better reasons. Now Beorn covets those lands, and has hoped to gain them. ”

“ Harold, when he learnt the particulars of the capture and defence of Porthwyn, expressed his approval in the warmest terms.
"You have performed the greatest and most important feat of the war, Wulf," he said. "Yes, it is right that you should give every credit Beorn for his share in the matter; but I know you both well, and am assured that Beorn would never have conceived and carried out the attack, and that had he done so successfully, he and his men would all have been slain by Llewellyn that night. Beorn is a good youth; he is brave and kind-hearted ”

“ I can see now the close line of shields, the helmet covered faces above them, and the terrible axes rising and falling, cleaving through helmet and hauberk as if they had been pasteboard. It may well-nigh be said that we have no wounded, for each man struck fell in his track as if smitten by lightning. Can you add more, thanes?"
Beorn shook his head.
"It is like a dream," Wulf said. "We never moved through the long day. At times there was a short lull, and then each man was fighting as best he could. ”

“ As soon as they entered the fortress Harold and the thanes were all consigned to dungeons, but the count, learning that the two lads had been Harold's pages, said they should wait on himself. "And see," he said to them, "that your service is good, if you do not wish to dangle over the moat at the end of a rope."
"It is a shame that such a man should be a nobleman," Beorn exclaimed indignantly to Wulf, as he saw that the soldiers were placing chains upon Harold before they led him away. ”

“ Beorn said. "Your force is double mine. For the present I will undertake the defence of the rear walls if you will take the front. Of course till an attack actually commences it will not be necessary to keep more than a strong guard on duty."
"Certainly not," Wulf agreed. "The danger will be far greater at night than by day, and we must give the men as much rest as possible. ”

“ Beorn nodded. "That is true enough, Wulf, and it is therefore clear that a good many years must pass before you can properly fill the post of chief chamberlain to the army. For myself, I shall be well content to do what fighting is required, and to leave all these matters in your hands." ”

“ Beorn said, "but would it not be prudent to send off at once to Gurth, to let him know that though we are masters of the castle at present, we may in a few hours be surrounded by a swarm of angry Welshmen?"
"That certainly is most desirable," Wulf agreed. "The question is, who are we to send? It would be a terribly dangerous enterprise. Even now there are a score of men from the village watching our movements from the wood above. At any rate we must wait until nightfall." ”

“ Beorn laughed, "you had best study the matter, and then ask the earl to appoint you to take charge of the arrangements when he takes the field."
"One could hardly have a more useful office," Wulf said earnestly; "but it would need a man of experience and of high rank and position, for our Saxon thanes are not accustomed to discipline as are these Norman barons, and only one of great authority could induce them to observe regulations and carry out any plan in due order." ”

“ Three or four were struck, the rest, seeing that all hope was gone, rapidly gathered in a body at the head of the staircase leading from the wall.
"They are going to run down," Beorn exclaimed, and leaning over the parapet shouted to the Saxons in the courtyard below to stand on their guard.
A minute later the Welsh rushed down, each intent on killing at least one foe before he died. The Saxons' weapons and discipline were, however, too much for them; but they fought until the last, not one of them throwing down his weapon or asking for quarter.
"They are brave men. ”

“ Grein ‘bearn.’ Heyne takes dyrne langað beorn to mean “the hero secretly longeth” (he makes beorn nom., whereas langian is an impers. verb and takes an accus. of the person) . Thorpe and Grein render: “a secret longing burnt.” Neither rendering is free from objection. Beorn is an unexampled form of the pret. of beornan (Sievers § 386, N. 2) . But on the other hand, I can find no example of dyrne used as an adv.; fæst agrees with langað much better than with beorn, even if the latter could be nom. ”

“ To atone for the murder of Beorn, Sweyn went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on the return journey he died on the 29th of September 1052, meeting his death, according to one account, at the hands of the Saracens. ”

“ Whereupon Beorn concluded, that he would not for their relationship betray him. He therefore took three companions with him, and they rode to Bosham, where his (63) ships lay, as though they should proceed to Sandwich; but they suddenly bound him, and led him to the ships, and went thence with him to Dartmouth, where they ordered him to be slain and buried deep. He was afterwards found, and Harold his cousin fetched him thence, and led him to Winchester, to the old minster, where he buried him with King Knute, his uncle. Then the king and all the army proclaimed Sweyne an outlaw. ”

“ I was able to return the service several times, but had the Welsh been imps they could not have been more active or more fierce. There must be a hundred lying slain along here or in the courtyard. I do not wonder that Oswald's men were all killed by them, though after our previous fights I held them in but small respect."
"It is a different thing, Osgod," Beorn said. "In the field we have always had the advantage from our order and our discipline; but here it was man against man. We had the advantage of position and they of numbers ”

“ By the maternal side also Lord Byron had to pride himself on a line of ancestry as illustrious as any that Scotland can boast,—his mother, who was one of the Gordons of Gight, having been a descendant of that Sir William Gordon who was the third son of the Earl of Huntley, by the daughter of James I.
After the eventful period of the Civil Wars, when so many individuals of the house of Byron distinguished themselves,—there having been no less than seven brothers of that family on the field at Edgehill,—the celebrity of the name appears to have died away for near a century. ”

“ In 1784 Lady Conyers died, and Captain Byron returned to England, a widower, over head and ears in debt, and in search of an heiress.
It was a rhyme in Aberdeenshire —
"When the heron leaves the tree,
The laird of Gight shall landless be."
Tradition has it that, at the marriage of Catherine Gordon with "mad Jack Byron," the heronry at Gight passed over to Kelly or Haddo, the property of the Earl of Aberdeen. "The land itself will not be long in following," said his lordship, and so it proved. ”

“ However, go she would, with her beloved Henry, and on reaching Pau she at once set to work to make herself happy, and to be beloved by the people. She began by studying the patois and worked at it so diligently that she was herself astounded at the progress she made.
"The newly-married pair," says an old historian, "deliberated how to put Béarn in a better condition from that in which they found it. This land, good and fertile by nature, was in a poor state, uncultivated and sterile through the negligence of the inhabitants. ”

“ The Duke replenished his glass, hoping the spell might work yet. . . . Perhaps, had Byron not been a dandy—but ah, had he not been in his soul a dandy there would have been no Byron worth mentioning. And it was because he guarded not his dandyism against this and that irrelevant passion, sexual or political, that he cut so annoyingly incomplete a figure. He was absurd in his politics, vulgar in his loves. Only in himself, at the times when he stood haughtily aloof, was he impressive. Nature, fashioning him, had fashioned also a pedestal for him to stand and brood on, to pose and sing on. ”

“ By birth and training a man of the people, he was yet an aristocrat to the finger-tips, and Byron would have called him brother, though one trembles to think what he would have called Byron. First and last, he was an artist, and it is by reason of his technical mastery that he most of all outstands. Whether in prose or in verse, he compasses a broken rhythm that is as the very rhythm of life itself, and a cadence that catches you by the throat, as a terrier catches a rat, and wrings from you the last drop of pity and awe. ”

“ All the nobles of the country assemble; and, amongst them, the old "grim baron," Loup Bergund d'Artiguelouve, and his family. Minstrels sing, music sounds, and honours and compliments pour upon the favoured knight; and even his rivals, to judge by their joyous countenances, have only pleasure in their hearts. The Prince of Béarn, and his brilliant court, enter their decorated pavilion amidst the shouts of the assembled guests; the people are admitted to view the jousts; and Raymond advances to the foot of the throne, and receives a paternal embrace from the courteous Gaston Phoebus. ”

“ Swanton Belloc:—"It was in the autumn of the year 1816 that I met Lord Byron at the theatre of the Scala, at Milan, in the box of the Bremen Minister. I was struck with Lord Byron's eyes at the time when he was listening to a sestetto in Mayer's opera of "Elena." I never in my life saw any thing more beautiful or more expressive. Even now, when I think of the expression which a great painter should give to genius, I always have before me that magnificent head. I had a moment of enthusiasm." ”

“ One of the first objects, indeed, that met the eyes of these two distinguished travellers, on their approaching the coast of Attica, was Lord Byron, disporting in his favourite element under the rocks of Cape Colonna. They were afterwards made acquainted with each other by Lord Sligo; and it was in the course, I believe, of their first interview, at his table, that Lady Hester, with that lively eloquence for which she is so remarkable, took the poet briskly to task for the depreciating opinion, which, as she understood, he entertained of all female intellect. ”

“ His reverend friend, Mr. Becher, finding him one day unusually dejected, endeavoured to cheer and rouse him, by representing, in their brightest colours, all the various advantages with which Providence had endowed him,—and, among the greatest, that of "a mind which placed him above the rest of mankind."—"Ah, my dear friend," said Byron, mournfully,—"if this (laying his hand on his forehead) places me above the rest of mankind, that (pointing to his foot) places me far, far below them." ”

“ I looked at the individual for a moment, who smiled and smirked to himself applause, and then I turned my eyes upon the hearse proceeding slowly up the almost endless street. This man, this Byron, had for many years past been the demigod of England, and his verses the daily food of those who read, from the peer to the draper’s assistant; all were admirers, or rather worshippers, of Byron, and all doated on his verses; and then I thought of those who, with genius as high as his, or higher, had lived and died neglected. ”