We hewed with our swords! Full fifty times have I, the harbinger of war, fought bloody fights; no king, methought, should ever pass me by. It was the pastime of my boyish days to tinge my spear with blood! The immortal Anses[9] will call me to their company; no dread shall e’er disgrace my death. I willingly depart! See, the bright maids sent from the hall of Woden, Lord of Hosts, invite me home! There, happy on my high raised seat among the Anses, I’ll quaff the mellow ale. The moments of my life are fled, but laughing will I die! Chapter III The Call for Help It seemed, toward the close of the ninth century, that England would gradually pass into the power of the Danes and cease to be an independent country. They had established themselves not only in Northumbria, but in East Anglia and parts of Mercia. We have to think of England at this period not as one united kingdom, but as a number of separate principalities, ruled by different kings. The most powerful of these principalities was Mercia, which occupied the whole central district of England, from Lincolnshire in the north to Oxford and Buckingham in the south, and west to the borders of Wales. It was governed by a king named Burhred, who found great difficulty in holding his own against incursions from the Welsh on the one hand and from the Danes of Northumbria on the other.[10] In the south the kingdom of Wessex was coming into prominence. During the reigns of Alfred and his brother, Edward the Elder, Wessex not only held back the Danes from their tide of progress, but gave its kings to the larger part of England. The kingdom of Wessex extended from Sussex in the east to Devon in the west, and included our present counties of Hants, Dorset, Somerset, Berks, and Wilts. It was from this small district that the saviour of England was to come, who, by his courage, perseverance, and wisdom, broke the power of the Danes and kept them back from the conquest of the whole country, which at one time seemed so probable. This saviour of England was Alfred the Great. We know the history of Alfred intimately, for it was written for us during the King’s lifetime by his teacher and friend, Asser, who tells us that he came to Alfred “out of the furthest coasts of western Britain.” He was Bishop of St David’s, in South Wales. The account of his coming at Alfred’s request to give him instruction and to act as his reader must be told in his own interesting words. He tells us that at the command of the King, who had sent in many directions, even as far as Gaul, for men of sound knowledge to give him and his sons and people instruction, he had come from his western home through many intervening provinces, and arrived at last in Sussex, the country of the Saxons.