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402
FRODSBORG.
Chap. XXVI.
Frode may have been very good at home in
Denmark, but he committed terrible ravages in England,
and mercilessly thrashed the wild Irish of his day.
When he died, so great was the grief in Denmark, they
could not elect a successor; but later they came to the
determination that he who composed the best epitaph
to liis memory should be considered the person most fit
to succeed him. Here was a pretty state of things—a
kingdom going for a song. The bards and the Skalds
from all parts tried their talents, and, after much
argument, the prize—Denmark and her dependencies—was
adjudged to the poet Hiarne. Frode the Good was laid
under the hill on which we now stand—Frode-høi it is
called—a heap of stones raised to his memory. The
epitaph composed by Hiarne, inscribed on them in
Runic characters, runs as follows :—
The Danes carried the body three years round the land,
King Frode the peaceful and the good ;
So willingly would have seen both woman and man
That he longer should have reigned over the land.
There lies buried the warrior, so strong.
By Værebro these stones are seen.
Under open Heaven, in the wild field,
There repose the lord’s bones.
The stones exist no longer. They were removed some
two hundred years since to repair the bridge of Værebro,
concerning whose erection there hangs a story:—All
well-educated people are aware that, when the devil
does talk in Denmark, he never speaks anything but
German, and that very bad German too. It appears, in
early times, just after the Reformation, the Lutheran
priests were in the habit of keeping pet devils
confined in a box to aid them in their arduous duties. No
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