So, Gundred my son's daughter, thou hast been to London town; and thou hast seen this new Queen Edith, whom men in the French tongue call Maulde; and she is the fairest lady who ever in all the world sat beside king in high-seat; the most gracious, the meekest, the freest-handed, the most ruthful! Edith, quoth the child? Long ago there was an Edith.... Well, daughter, a queen once spoke to thy grandfather, and he to her; and a mighty wonder marked their meeting, which will be remembered while time shall last. Young folk love tales, and the old are fain to the telling of tales. Sit down by my feet, and hear how once upon a day Edith came to her Well yonder by the highway. I have witnessed frost and snow, storm and lightning, pest and famine, in my nigh-on-eighty years; I have known drought and burning also, but never such drought as befell us in the year One Thousand Sixty and Five. This was a great year in its beginnings: a marvellous year for the apple-bloom; we had carried two crops of hay before July was out; the wheat-ears were so heavy that they leant together as they grew, like unto folk in a crowd that swoon, and even the barley would scarcely bestir itself at the coming of a welcome wind. Oh, the heat of that summer! We had three showers in all between April and the end of August, and they but soft and slender. The earth cracked in places into gaps full many a foot wide; the grass was no more green, but the colour of the baked earth in which it had root: small weeds died, and the moss withered on stock and stone; half a day was the life of a brier-rose. Rabbits, hares, and some birds starved all about us; the field-mice were a scourge to us at the first, but later even they and the hedgehogs gave up the breath of life. The brooks dwindled and ceased to flow but in a trickle: many an age-old spring sent forth water no more. The morning dews were heavy, but soon gone; and the earth could drink them in no farther than a hen may scratch. Though we dug dew-ponds, the little moisture they gathered was not worth our toil. We cut the corn in haste, for the wild fowl rifled it day and night. Many an one that laboured did the sun strike dizzy. One man and one boy were slain by the heat-stroke, and some tottered from the fields to work no more that year. With those that remained, it was mug to mouth ten times in the hour! My cider was gone within the first three days; and then my goodly beer must follow! And in the second week in August they sent from Ledbury to tell me that Edith the Lady, King Edward's wife, would pass near by my dwelling as she went to visit her brother, Harold Godwinson the Earl, at Hereford, and begged that I in charity would give her refreshment upon her wayfaring.