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108
RINGSTED.
Chap. VIL
Dagmar is made to prophesy all sorts of evils, which
later occurred to the realm after the King’s second
marriage with Berengaria; but as the ballad was
composed for her, we may believe as much as we please on
the subject.
Christian humility was not the fashion of the day; for
when the dying Queen saw her attendants shedding
tears around her couch, she consoles them with the
following words:—
“ Let no man dare have fear for me ;
I have no bad thing done,
Save that I my small silken sleeves
Have laced upon a Sunday.”
A lucky woman was Queen Dagmar, who could say so
much for herself. A saying of this queen to a
messenger who brought tidings of the cessation of a bloody
war is still remembered:—“How beautiful are thy
feet which announce the glad tidings of peace I ” The
memory of Berengaria, on the other hand, is as much
execrated as that of her predecessor is revered. They
sleep side by side, and so great was the hatred of
the people, that, after death, they severed Berengaria’s
head from her body, and, when her coffin was opened, a
large round stone was found in its place on her shoulders.
She, too, was the first of the whole party whose body was
found enveloped in silk. But if Berengaria, or
Beng-jerd as she was called—the term is now synonymous
for a bad woman, as we ourselves derive an opprobrious
epithet from the name of the Conqueror’s mother—if
Berengaria was detested in her lifetime, the beauty of
her skeleton, the exquisite smallness of her hands and
feet, sent the whole of anatomical Denmark into a
frenzy of delight. Strange it is how in this traditionary
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