Edward Parrott

“What sea-worn barks are those which throw

The light spray from each rushing prow?

Their frozen sails, the low, pale sun

Of Thule’s night has shone upon.”

ROOM for the Vikings! the sons of the creek, the bluff, stalwart rovers who love the salt sea with a consuming passion, and shout with glee as the waves foam beneath them and tempest roars about them. Mighty warriors are they, wild and untamed as the element they love, swift as the falcon, remorseless as the vulture, fierce as the wolf. From the shores of the Baltic they come, swarming out of their barren homelands, and descending with fire and sword upon all the coasts of Western Europe. Every champion amongst them ardently desires to be a Berserk, and thus to be regarded as the bravest of the brave, utterly contemptuous of death. These Berserks within sight of the foe are wont to lash themselves into a frenzy, so that they bite their shields and rush to the fray, wielding club or battle-axe with almost superhuman strength.

No Christian message of peace and brotherhood has touched their hearts; they still swear by the Asir, and still glory in their descent from the grim gods of their dark and hopeless creed. They lust for blood, and their fiercest loathing is reserved for them who have abandoned Odin and Thor for the mild faith of the “White Christ.” They shed with unholy joy the blood of priests; they glory in the plunder and the burning of churches. They are a scourge, not only to England, Scotland, and Ireland, but to the whole of Europe; and men pray in their churches, “From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us.”

Never in the whole history of the world have men “followed the sea” with such fearlessness and keen delight as these Vikings. The sea is their “swan road,” their “Viking path,” their “land of the keel,” their “glittering home.” Their ships are “deer of the surf” and “horses of the sea.” Frail barks they seem to us, small and not very seaworthy; but the men who man them are consummate sailors, and they make astounding voyages with nothing but a thin plank between them and destruction. The Orkneys know them; they have seen Hecla shoot out its fiery lava in remote Iceland; they have even trodden the icy shores of Greenland, far across the dreaded Western Ocean.

A Viking fleet is even now heading for our shores. Look at the long black ships, with their high prows curved in the semblance of a serpent. The sun glints on the bright shields which protect their bulwarks, on the mail which the warriors wear, and on the battle-axes and spears which they wield. The great sails flaunt painted devices—the eagle, the bear, the wolf, and the raven. Fierce are these creatures, but fiercer still the men who now come to harry these shores.

Yonder little village is happy and peaceful in the morning sunshine. The cosy farmhouses and the smiling fields with their rich promise of harvest tell the tale of comfort and contentment. Alas! the scene will change when these sea-wolves arrive. They will sail up the river-mouth, throw up stockaded earthworks to secure their retreat, and then begin the congenial work of pillage and slaughter. Men, women, and innocent babes will be slain, cattle will be driven off, and the smoke of burning roof-trees will darken the sky. Yonder minster, where the frightened monks are trembling before the altar, will be raided; its treasures, the gifts of generations of pious souls, will be seized; the gilded cross will be torn down and trampled upon, and blood-eagles will be carved on the backs of the hated priests. Then torch and flame will do their work; and the Vikings, having devastated the countryside like locusts, will retire to their ships glutted with blood and laden with booty.

Again and again they will return, bolder and bolder, and at length they will covet the fair land as their home. They will come in such force that they will reave half the land from the English, and then a Viking will rule the realm. Ay, and Englishmen will come to honour and love him. Then the Viking settlers will disappear, absorbed into the mass of the nation, and endowing the national character with a new strain of courage, daring, and adventure. But before that happy day dawns the land will run red with blood, many homes will be ruined, many patriotic hearts will break, and the star of England will seem to have set for ever.

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“Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,

The pious Alfred, king to Justice dear;

Lord of the harp and liberating spear,

Mirror of princes!”

Now, amidst the gloom, the greatest of all our kings appears. “England’s Darling,” and “Truth-Teller,” men called him in his lifetime, and these proud titles well attest the affection and esteem in which the men of his own age justly held him. Nor has his glory faded with the passing of centuries. The more his career is studied, the greater he grows and the brighter shines his peerless fame. His nature was a beautiful blend of courage and tenderness, perseverance and patience. He loved justice and mercy, and he lived and died for his people. Warrior, statesman, scholar, lawgiver, and true patriot, he stands for all time as the type and model of the perfect king. A thousand years have sped since his pure spirit departed, but still he is one of the greatest glories of our land. His life was one long struggle against fierce foes, against the darkness of ignorance, against the desolation of ruin and the cruel pangs of bodily pain, but he triumphed over all—

And now for his story, which writers have loved to dwell upon in every succeeding age. Born in royal Wantage, where his statue now stands, he was but three years of age when the Vikings made their first settlement in England. In that year a great army of Danes, with three hundred and fifty ships, swept up the Thames, sacked London and Canterbury, and put to flight an English army. Two years later, Alfred’s father, Ethelwulf, and his elder brother, Ethelbald, met them in battle, and after a stubborn fight won a great victory. Such a desperate struggle had not taken place in England for many years, and more than half the Danish army perished on the field. Another victory followed, and for a time the Danes were checked. So far, their coming had been but the low mutterings of the fierce storm which was soon to burst in all its fury. Alfred was cradled in an hour of terrible anxiety and ever-present danger.

Almost the first incident which his biographer recounts is the pretty story of how his mother sought to encourage her sons to learn to read. Showing the lads a beautifully-illuminated volume of English verse, and reading aloud some of its contents, she promised the volume to the first of them who could read it for himself. Fired by the desire to possess the volume, and also to learn something more of its wondrous pages, Alfred sought out a tutor, and ere long was able to claim it as his own. The love of letters, thus early demonstrated, grew with the years. In his later and more peaceful days he surrounded himself with scholars, and loved their company and converse better than aught else. Asser, the Welsh monk, who was his devoted friend, tells us that as “Alfred advanced through the years of infancy and youth, he appeared more comely in person than his brothers, and his countenance, speech, and manners were more pleasing than theirs. His noble birth and noble nature implanted in him from his cradle a love of wisdom above all things.”

In his twentieth year Alfred married a noble Mercian lady named Mercill. Meanwhile, the Danes, growing bolder and bolder, had become a grievous peril to the land. In the year of Alfred’s marriage they marched on York, and capturing it, pushed into Mercia and wintered at Nottingham. In the twenty-second year of Alfred’s life they triumphed over Edmund, King of the East Angles. Him they dragged forth and bound to a tree. Then with fiendish glee they shot arrows into his limbs, and at length, unable to break his proud and confident spirit, they struck off his devoted head. They parted his realm amongst themselves, and placed their chief, Guthrum, on his throne.

Next year King Ethelred and Alfred were overcome by the Danes at Reading. Roused by grief and shame at the loss of this battle, the English mustered in force and advanced against their foes at Ashdown. While Ethelred remained in his tent at prayer, Alfred led his men to the fight, and “with the rush of a wild boar,” charged up the slopes on which the Danes had stationed themselves. Long and fierce was the fray, but at nightfall victory rested with the English.

Their joy was short-lived; a fortnight later the Danes were again victorious, and soon another Viking army from across the sea joined them. In the same year died Ethelred of his wounds, and Alfred was crowned king of a realm which was little more than a name. A month later his small army was overcome, and black indeed was the outlook. “Let no one be surprised,” says Asser, “that the English had but a small number of men, for they had been all but worn out by eight battles in this self-same year; in the which there died one king, nine chieftains, and innumerable troops of soldiers.”

Two years of desperate fighting followed, and the Danes were victorious almost everywhere. At length Alfred was forced to withdraw with the little band which still followed him to the marshes of Somersetshire. Here, in the midst of a vast morass where the Tone and the Parret join their waters, lay a low lift of ground some two acres in extent, girded in by almost impassable fen-lands. This was the island of Athelney, and here Alfred threw up a fort, and waited and longed for happier days. It was about this time that the fugitive king, flying from his foes, entered the hut of a cowherd and begged for shelter. In the hut occurred that incident which is so familiar to every reader of English history. Asser tells the story, and doubtless he had it from Alfred’s own lips. It happened that on a certain day the wife of the cowherd prepared to bake her bread. The king, sitting near the hearth, was making ready his bows and arrows and other warlike implements, when the rough countrywoman beheld her loaves burning at the fire. She ran forward and hastily removed them, scolding the king for his inattention and carelessness:—

“The unlucky woman,” continues Asser, “little thought that she was addressing the King Alfred.” We can readily imagine the momentary anger of the king as he heard the shrill clamour of the angry housewife, and the good-natured smile that almost immediately followed when he recognized the justice of the reproof. Legend, which has been very busy with this period of eclipse in Alfred’s career, tells us that he persuaded his host to study, and that in after and happier years the cowherd held high office in the Church.

Though apparently at his last extremity, Alfred did not abandon the struggle. Scarcely a day passed but he sallied forth at the head of his little band, to assail such forces of the enemy as approached his neighbourhood. In this guerilla warfare, amidst the swamps whose secret paths were quite unknown to the stranger, Alfred schooled himself in the arts of surprise, rapid onset, and equally rapid retreat. Patriotic Englishmen joined him in his fastness, and day by day his forces grew.

At length the dark night passed away, and the dawn of a new day began to flash the horizon. The hour of deliverance had arrived.

The Danes had established themselves in a strongly fortified camp at Chippenham, in Wiltshire. The hill which they occupied is still pointed out, and from the neighbouring plain it still appears rugged, abrupt, and difficult of ascent. The English forces were too few to venture on an unpremeditated attack; therefore Alfred arrayed himself as a wandering minstrel, and, harp in hand, approached the enemy’s outposts. The scald would be right welcome, for the Danes ever loved a song, and camp life was dull. Alfred sang and played to the Danes, and was led even to the tent of Guthrum, the chief. As he struck the chords and trolled the lay, his keen eyes were busy photographing the defences of the camp on the sensitive plate of his memory. Dismissed with praise and gifts from the Danish entrenchments, he hastened to his island retreat, and there matured his plan of attack. The naked sword and the war-arrow were borne by loyal hands through the length and breadth of the south-western counties, and soon all was ready for the fateful battle.

Alfred drew up his forces on the plain, and Guthrum marshalled his men in front, with Bratton Hill, crowned by its strong encampment, as a secure retreat in the rear. Massing his men in a close shield-wall, the English king gave the signal for battle. His soldiers rushed on the enemy; they broke the Danish ranks, and a fierce hand-to-hand fight raged on the plain. Furious was the mÊlÉe of sweeping sword, crashing battle-axe, and sharp javelin, and slowly the Danes began to gain ground, when a storm of arrows suddenly fell upon them, followed by an impetuous charge of English spearmen. The Danes were swept to earth; and through the island ranks ran the inspiring rumour that a renowned English saint had joined the fray, and that angelic hosts were fighting for the stricken land. The English had fought stoutly before; now they were irresistible. The Danes fell before their onslaught like corn before the reaper’s sickle. All was over; the shattered remnant of the Vikings turned and fled to their hill-top camp, leaving the field strewn with their dead and dying.

Then Alfred girdled the hill with his forces, and for fourteen days closely besieged the Danes. Hunger, cold, fear, and despair gradually undermined the resolution of the besieged, and every day Alfred’s triumphant army was swelled by new recruits. On the fourteenth day Guthrum yielded, and humbly sued for peace. “They engaged to give the king as many hostages as he pleased, and to receive none from him in return—in which manner they had never before made peace with any one.”

“The king took pity on them, and received from them hostages, as many as he would. Thereupon the Danes swore that they would straightway leave the kingdom, and their king, Guthrum, promised to embrace Christianity and receive baptism.” Alfred himself was Guthrum’s sponsor at the ceremony, “receiving him as a son by adoption, and raising him up from the holy font of baptism. After this he remained twelve days with the king, who, together with all his companions, gave him rich gifts.”

In the year 879 the Danes left Chippenham, and after a time retired into East Anglia and settled down quietly in the Danelaw, according to the solemn treaty which the two kings had made. Again and again Viking fleets assailed Alfred, but he was more than a match for them. He no longer awaited their onsets, but built ships stronger and swifter than those of his foes, and thus was enabled to meet them on their own element. Alfred built the first English navy, and inaugurated that policy of naval defence which Britons of every succeeding age have recognized as the wisest and best. The foe who threatens our island shores must be met and vanquished on the encircling sea.

Right nobly did Alfred bestir himself during the few years of life remaining to him. He restored the towns, he founded monasteries, he gathered learned men about him, and laboured to build up England anew. Studious from his early years, he endeavoured to enrich his own mind and to encourage his people to learn the arts of reading and writing. Into the homely language understanded of the people he translated the best and most useful works of the Latin writers of his time, and founded schools, that the sons of his nobles might not grow up unlettered as their fathers. He gave the best of his attention to the four greatest things of national life—law, justice, religion, and education. He collected and studied the old laws of the nation: what was good he retained, what was bad he rejected. Never was king more eager to advance learning and make new discoveries. He sent embassies to the remotest parts of the then known world, and our earliest accounts of Arctic exploration are from his pen.

Method and order were the rule of his life. One portion of his income he allotted to his warriors and attendants; another to the buildings which his architects from beyond the seas erected for him; a third for the relief of foreigners; and the remainder for the Church, the schools, and the poor. His time, too, was methodically bestowed on good works. Eight hours each day were devoted to rest and refreshment; another eight hours to affairs of state; the remaining eight hours to study and religious exercises. To enable him rightly to apportion the time which he deemed so precious, he fashioned wax candles, six of which, burned in succession, marked the lapse of twenty-four hours. To guard against the irregularities caused by draughts, he enclosed his candles in lanterns of thin, transparent horn. Thus he measured his time, zealous that the golden sands should not run out unheeded, and that no day should pass without its tale of duty done, opportunities seized, and benefits conferred.

And now we must bid farewell to this peerless king. A thousand summers have come and gone since his countrymen bore him to his tomb, deeming that the light of their land had been extinguished. They loved and honoured him, and we revere his memory as that of probably the most perfect character in history. He remains as the mirror of monarchs in which they may perceive the elements of true majesty, and an inspiring example to all of triumphant devotion, fortitude, and faith.