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93 Läsebok. N:o 77 — 78.
torious in battle, the Raven stretched bis wing and seemed to
Hy ; and that when they were defeated, he would droop. He
had good reason to droop, now, if he could have done
anything half so sensible; for, King Alfred joined the
Devonshire men; made a camp with them on a piece of firm ground
in the midst of a bog in Somersetshire; and prepared for
a great attempt for vengeance on the Danes,and the
deliverance of his oppressed people.
But, first, as it was important to know how numerous
these pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified,
King-Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself as a
glee-man or minstrel, and went with his harp to the Danish camp.
He played and sang in the very tent of Guthrum the Danish
leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused. While
he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was
watchful of their tents, their arms, their discipline, everything
that he desired to know. And right soon did this great king
entertain them to a different tune; for, summoning all his
true followers to meet him at an appointed place, where they
received him with joyful shouts and tears, as the monarch
whom many of them had given up for lost or dead, he put
himself at their head, marched on the Danish camp, defeated
the Danes with great slaughter, and besieged them for
fourteen days, to prevent their escape. But, being as merciful
as he was good and brave, he then, instead of killing them,
proposed peace: on condition that they should altogether
depart from that Western part of England, and settle in the
East; and that Guthrum should become a Christian, in
remembrance of the Divine religion which now taught his
conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so
often injured him. This, Guthrum did. At his baptism,
king Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an
honourable chief who well deserved that clemency; for, ever
afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes
under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned
no more, but worked like honest men. They ploughed, and
sowed, and reaped, and lead good honest English lives. And
I hope the children of those Danes played, many a time,
with Saxon children in the sunny fields; and that Danish
young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them;
and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish
cottages often went in for shelter until morning; and that
Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of
King Alfred the Great.
All the Danes were not like these under Guthrum, for,
after some years, more of them came over, in the old
plundering and burning way — among them a fierce pirate of
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