These misfortunes were attributed by the depressed people to the bad government of the murdered king; and the feelings they then indulged are plainly indicated in the ballad which, a few months after the king's death, blended mournfully with the blithe spring song of the birds, and in which the new fortress was described as a monster who had risen from the sea, with horns like towers. Therein it was sadly sung:-- "The peasant he goes out o'er the field, And there he sows his corn: Help us, our Father in heaven high, Now Hielm has got the horn! "God pity us poor peasants gray, That Glipping e'er did reign: Alas, that he was ever born To be the peasants' bane!" This ballad the stern marsk himself heard a young peasant-girl singing, one fair morning in the beginning of May, while, mounted on his war-steed, he was surveying with pride the strong defences, to which a few peasants and prisoners of war were still engaged in dragging the last stones. One of the strongest workmen on the walls was a stalwart old man, in a worn-out leathern harness, who, notwithstanding the presence of the marsk, had sat quietly down on an angle of the wall, his arms crossed, and regarded the proud general with a wild, disdainful look. The peasant-girl, carrying bandages in her hand, advanced leisurely along a footpath, beyond the wall. Her song seemed to surprise the marsk. The old prisoner on the wall also listened attentively. The girl first sang aloud, at some distance:-- "They were full seven score men and seven Upon the muir who met: The king is slain--how rede we now? And where now shall we get? "The king is slain, and lies a corse-- The peace we've broken down; Here we can neither bide nor bigg In field or burrow-town. "But we will on to Scanderborg, And bid the queen good-day, And ask the lady how she doth Before we farther gae. "She may forget how she would mock, And all our words deride: The fire is now in the mocker's house, And she the stour maun bide." Marsk Stig started. He heard his own words to the conspirators, at the council on the heath immediately after the king's murder, and something of what had passed between the queen and him at Scanderborg. The peasant-girl drew nearer, and sang, with a loud voice, what had been preserved in the ballad of the words of the queen and the young king:-- "Welcome, Marsk Stig, thou self-made king! Now shalt thou have thy due; This night of blood, should King Erik live, Full dearly shalt thou rue.