“And I again say nay,” quoth the Lord of Brunn. “I tell ye again, that ye shall have safe escort to the edge of the fens, and that not a hair of your head shall be injured—provided only ye do not insult homely honest folk by calling them foul names, or by otherwise treating them discourteously, for if ye offend in that way the Saxon blood may boil up and cause my orders to be forgotten. So now go!—and if I cannot say Fare ye well for aye, I say May ye fare well as far as Stamford, and until we meet on a fair field, where thou and I, Sir Ivo, may prove which is the better man or the better knight.” As the two Normans walked off the ground, they looked so crestfallen and woe-begone that the Ladie Alftrude quite pitied them, and chided her maid Mildred for so loudly laughing at them and pointing the finger of scorn at them. But others wanted this chiding as much as Mildred, seeing that every Saxon maid and every Saxon matron present were laughing and tittering at Geoffroy Taille-Bois’ unlucky wooing, and his damp and dismal case. The marriage feast in the hall was sumptuous and most joyous. It was enlivened and lengthened by tricks of jugglery and legerdemain, by the recitation of tales, legends, and romances, and by lays sung to musical instruments, for although the notice given had been so short, many jugglers and menestrels had hurried to Ey from different parts of the fen country. In nearly all the rest of broad England the art of the Saxon menestrel was now held in scorn; and the menestrel himself was oppressed and persecuted, for his tales and songs all went to remind the Saxon people of their past history, of their heroes and native saints, and of their past independence. But this persecution had driven many towards the eastern coasts, and thus it was that the fen country and the Camp of Refuge as much abounded with Saxon menestrels as with dispossessed Saxon monks. Of those that flocked in troops to the manor-house at Ey, to sing at the marriage feast, it may be judged whether they did not exert their best skill on so solemn an occasion! Loudly and nobly did they sing Athelstane’s Song of Victory,[148] which related how Athelstane the King, the Lord of Earls, the rewarder of heroes, and his brother Edmund of the ancient race, triumphed over the foe at Brunanburg,[149] cleaving their shields and hewing their banners; how these royal brothers[150] were ever ready to take the field to defend the land and their homes and hearths against every invader and robber; how they had made the Northmen sail back in their nailed ships, on the roaring sea, over the deep water, after strewing the English shore with their dead, that were left behind to be devoured by the sallow kite, the swarth raven, the hoary vulture, the swift eagle, the greedy goshawk, and that grey beast the wolf of the weald. And as the menestrel sang, the drinking-horn, capacious as became the hospitality of that old Saxon house, was handed quickly round by page