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164
VESTERVIG.
Chap. XL.
“Hear, oli, my king! lord and master mine. Will
you give my brother Prince Boris little Kirsten to
wife ? ” “ That shall never be ! Liden Kirsten, she is
a noble maid, and Boris but a stable-boy. Never
will I give my dear sister to a horse-thief! ” *
Sofie now meditates revenge in her heart.
Vai-demar leaves, with his warriors, to fight against the
heathen of Rugen, and Sofie, in conjunction with
the “ horse-thief,” rules the land. Sofie says to
her squires twain, “ Bid Prince Boris come here to
meand she orders him to betray little Kirsten.
Boris refuses : “ Never will I do so great a sin ! ” for
he says it will cost him his life. Three months
elapse-Again Sofie reproaches her brother, and finally
wounds his vanity by ordering him to “ cast the
Runes,” as he possessed of himself no power over Liden
Kirsten.
The expression of “ casting the Runes ” requires some
explanation. In early times there existed a
supersti-.tion, that if an apple, inscribed with certain Runic
characters, were cast so as to hit the breast of a maiden,
she at once became powerless to resist the attractions
dimir of Halicz, and half-sister (somehow) to King Knud V.; a queen
of very bad reputation, concerning whose ill deeds—murderings,
burnings, poisonings of fair damsels both high and low—there are some
twenty ballads extant. She lies buried in Ringsted church.
* Why Valdemar calls Boris “stable-boy” is a mystery not yet
unravelled, and not likely to be ; maybe, like many members of our own
aristocracy, he dressed himself more like a jockey than a gentleman:
and as for the term “ horse-thief,” we can only suppose him to have
been on “ the turf,” and up to a thing or two—an occasional robbery—
nothing more. Boris was son of Prince Henrik Skatelar (the lame),
the history of whose wife, the Princess Ingeborg, I have before
mentioned. He founded the convent of Tvis; and was much too near to
the disputed succession for King Valdemar to look on him witli a
pleasant eye.
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