Harold | Page 7

now, in
order to have heard of Ulysses. The writer in the Athenaeum is
acquainted with Homeric personages, but who on earth would ever
presume to assert that he is acquainted with Homer?
Some doubt has been thrown upon my accuracy in ascribing to the
Anglo- Saxon the enjoyments of certain luxuries (gold and silver
plate--the use of glass, etc.), which were extremely rare in an age much
more recent. There is no ground for that doubt; nor is there a single
article of such luxury named in the text, for the mention of which I
have not ample authority.
I have indeed devoted to this work a degree of research which, if
unusual to romance, I cannot consider superfluous when illustrating an
age so remote, and events unparalleled in their influence over the
destinies of England. Nor am I without the hope, that what the
romance-reader at first regards as a defect, he may ultimately
acknowledge as a merit;--forgiving me that strain on his attention by
which alone I could leave distinct in his memory the action and the
actors in that solemn tragedy which closed on the field of Hastings,
over the corpse of the Last Saxon King.

CONTENTS
BOOK FIRST
The Norman Visitor, the Saxon King, and the Danish Prophetess
BOOK SECOND

Lanfranc the Scholar
BOOK THIRD
The House of Godwin
BOOK FOURTH
The Heathen Altar and the Saxon Church
BOOK FIFTH
Death and Love
BOOK SIXTH
Ambition
BOOK SEVENTH
The Welch King
BOOK EIGHTH
Fate
BOOK NINTH
The Bones of the Dead
BOOK TENTH
The Sacrifice on the Altar
BOOK ELEVENTH
The Norman Schemer, and the Norwegian Sea-king
BOOK TWELFTH

The Battle of Hastings

HAROLD, THE LAST OF THE SAXON KINGS
by Edward Bulwer Lytton

BOOK I.
THE NORMAN VISITOR, THE SAXON KING, AND THE DANISH
PROPHETESS.
CHAPTER I.
Merry was the month of May in the year of our Lord 1052. Few were
the boys, and few the lasses, who overslept themselves on the first of
that buxom month. Long ere the dawn, the crowds had sought mead
and woodland, to cut poles and wreathe flowers. Many a mead then lay
fair and green beyond the village of Charing, and behind the isle of
Thorney, (amidst the brakes and briars of which were then rising fast
and fair the Hall and Abbey of Westminster;) many a wood lay dark in
the starlight, along the higher ground that sloped from the dank Strand,
with its numerous canals or dykes;--and on either side of the great road
into Kent:--flutes and horns sounded far and near through the green
places, and laughter and song, and the crash of breaking boughs.
As the dawn came grey up the east, arch and blooming faces bowed
down to bathe in the May dew. Patient oxen stood dozing by the
hedge-rows, all fragrant with blossoms, till the gay spoilers of the May
came forth from the woods with lusty poles, followed by girls with laps
full of flowers, which they had caught asleep. The poles were pranked
with nosegays, and a chaplet was hung round the horns of every ox.
Then towards daybreak, the processions streamed back into the city,
through all its gates; boys with their May-gads (peeled willow wands
twined with cowslips) going before; and clear through the lively din of
the horns and flutes, and amidst the moving grove of branches, choral

voices, singing some early Saxon stave, precursor of the later song--
"We have brought the summer home."
Often in the good old days before the Monk-king reigned, kings and
ealdermen had thus gone forth a-maying; but these merriments,
savouring of heathenesse, that good prince misliked: nevertheless the
song was as blithe, and the boughs were as green, as if king and
ealderman had walked in the train.
On the great Kent road, the fairest meads for the cowslip, and the
greenest woods for the bough, surrounded a large building that once
had belonged to some voluptuous Roman, now all defaced and
despoiled; but the boys and the lasses shunned those demesnes; and
even in their mirth, as they passed homeward along the road, and saw
near the ruined walls, and timbered outbuildings, grey Druid stones
(that spoke of an age before either Saxon or Roman invader) gleaming
through the dawn-- the song was hushed--the very youngest crossed
themselves; and the elder, in solemn whispers, suggested the precaution
of changing the song into a psalm. For in that old building dwelt Hilda,
of famous and dark repute; Hilda, who, despite all law and canon, was
still believed to practise the dismal arts of the Wicca and Morthwyrtha
(the witch and worshipper of the dead). But once out of sight of those
fearful precincts, the psalm was forgotten, and again broke, loud, clear,
and silvery, the joyous chorus.
So,