It is interesting to note, as Gummere points out, that the barbaric custom of exposing infants "lies at the foundation of the most exquisite myths--Lohengrin the swan-knight, Arthur the forest foundling, and that mystic child who in the prelude of our national epic, _Beowulf_, drifts in his boat, a child of destiny, to the shores of a kingless land." Grimm quotes from a Danish ballad, where a mother puts her babe in a chest, lays with it consecrated salt and candles, and goes to the waterside: "Thither she goes along the strand And pushes the chest so far from land, Casts the chest so far from shore: 'To Christ the Mighty I give thee o'er; To the mighty Christ I surrender thee, For thou hast no longer a mother in me.'" The custom of exposing illegitimate offspring shows a retrogression from the standards of rugged chastity which were characteristic of the earlier period of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain. In those times, as we have seen, the German women were models of virtue; the slightest departure from morality was viewed with horror and visited with severe punishment. If the one guilty of misconduct were married, she was shorn of her hair, the greatest degradation to which she could be subjected, and then driven naked from her husband's house, her own relatives giving their countenance and aid to the husband in thus banishing her. She was expelled from the village, and not allowed to return. At a later date, such a woman, married or unmarried, was made to strangle herself with her own hands; her refusal to do so availed nothing, as the women of the neighborhood stripped off her garments to the waist, and then with knives, whips, and stones hunted her from village to village until death mercifully relieved her from further torture. In spite of such harsh penalties, the moral standard could not be maintained at a high level. It is more than likely that its decline was due in part to the women whom the Northmen brought with them. When they touched the shores of Britain, it was often after piratical voyages that had taken them to the coasts of France, Spain, Italy, and even Africa. When this was the case, they were always accompanied by large numbers of female slaves from these countries. Then, too, the greater part of the British women were reduced to slavery by the new masters of the country, and none of these were treated with the consideration for their sex that was accorded the German women. The repute of the women of the Anglo-Saxons remained unimpaired, excepting as to particular classes and particular times; the women not of Anglo-Saxon origin were, perforce, the chief offenders against morality.