Arthurian romances; Romances -- Translations into English
So they voyaged on the sea even so long, that they came between
England and Normandy; they veered their luffs, and came toward land,
so that they came full surely to Dartmouth at Totnes; with much bliss
they approached to the land. So soon as they came on land, the folk
they slew; the churls they drove off, that tilled the earth there; the
knights they hung, that defended the land, all the good wives they
sticked with knives; all the maidens they killed with murder; and all
the learned men (clerics) they laid on embers. All the domestics (or
baser sort) they killed with clubs; they felled the castles, the land
they ravaged; the churches they consumed--grief was among the
folk!--the sucking children they drowned in the water. The cattle that
they took, all they slaughtered; to their inns they carried it, and
boiled it and roasted; all they it took, that they came nigh. All day
they sung of Arthur the king, and said that they had won homes, that
they should hold in their power; and there they would dwell winter and
summer. And if Arthur were so keen, that he would come to fight with
Childric, the strong and the rich, they would of his back make a
bridge, and take all the bones of the noble king, and tie them
together with golden ties, and lay them in the hall door, where each
man should go forth, to the worship of Childric, the strong and the
rich! This was all their game, for Arthur the king's shame; but all it
happened in otherwise, soon thereafter; their boast and their game
befell to themselves to shame; and so doth well everywhere the man
that so acteth.
Childric the kaiser won all that he looked on with eyes; he took
Somerset, and he took Dorset, and in Devonshire the folk all
destroyed, and Wiltshire with hostility he greeted, he took all the
lands unto the sea strand. Then at the last, then caused he horns and
trumpets to be blown, and his host to be assembled, and forth he would
march, and Bath all besiege, and eke Bristol about berow. This was
their threat, ere they to Bath came. To Bath came the kaiser, and
belay the castle there; and the men within bravely began; they mounted
upon the stone walls, well weaponed over all, and defended the place
against Childric the strong. There lay the kaiser, and Colgrim his
companion, and Baldulf his brother, and many another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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