I still seem to see it,the huge grim thing;many of the others were large,strikingly so,and appeared fully to justify the old man's conclusion that their owners must have been strange fellows;but,compared with this mighty mass of bone,they looked small and diminutive like those of pigmies;it must have belonged to a giant,one of those red-haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are told in the ancient chronicles of the north,and whose grave-hills,when ransacked,occasionally reveal secrets which fill the minds of puny moderns with astonishment and awe.
Reader,have you ever pored days and nights over the pages of Snorro?-probably not,for he wrote in a language which few of the present day understand,and few would be tempted to read him tamed down by Latin dragomans.A brave old book is that of Snorro,containing the histories and adventures of old northern kings and champions,who seemed to have been quite different men,if we may judge from the feats which they performed,from those of these days;one of the best of his histories is that which describes the life of Harald Haardraade,who,after manifold adventures by land and sea,now a pirate,now a mercenary of the Greek emperor,became king of Norway,and eventually perished at the battle of Stamford Bridge,whilst engaged in a gallant onslaught upon England.Now,Ihave often thought that the old Kemp,whose mouldering skull in the Golgotha of Hythe my brother and myself could scarcely lift,must have resembled in one respect at least this Harald,whom Snorro describes as a great and wise ruler and a determined leader,dangerous in battle,of fair presence and measuring in height just FIVE ELLS,neither more nor less.
I never forgot the Daneman's skull;like the apparition of the viper in the sandy lane,it dwelt in the mind of the boy,affording copious food for the exercise of imagination.From that moment with the name of Dane were associated strange ideas of strength,daring,and superhuman stature;and an undefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the Danish race began to pervade me;and if,long after,when I became a student I devoted myself with peculiar zest to Danish lore and the acquirement of the old Norse tongue and its dialects,I can only explain the matter by the early impression received at Hythe from the tale of the old sexton,beneath the pent-house,and the sight of the Danish skull.
And thus we went on straying from place to place,at Hythe to-day,and perhaps within a week looking out from our hostel-window upon the streets of old Winchester,our motions ever in accordance with the 'route'of the regiment,so habituated to change of scene that it had become almost necessary to our existence.Pleasant were these days of my early boyhood;and a melancholy pleasure steals over me as I recall them.Those were stirring times of which I am speaking,and there was much passing around me calculated to captivate the imagination.The dreadful struggle which so long convulsed Europe,and in which England bore so prominent a part,was then at its hottest;we were at war,and determination and enthusiasm shone in every face;man,woman,and child were eager to fight the Frank,the hereditary,but,thank God,never dreaded enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race.'Love your country and beat the French,and then never mind what happens,'was the cry of entire England.Oh,those were days of power,gallant days,bustling days,worth the bravest days of chivalry at least;tall battalions of native warriors were marching through the land;there was the glitter of the bayonet and the gleam of the sabre;the shrill squeak of the fife and loud rattling of the drum were heard in the streets of country towns,and the loyal shouts of the inhabitants greeted the soldiery on their arrival,or cheered them at their departure.And now let us leave the upland,and descend to the sea-bord;there is a sight for you upon the billows!A dozen men-of-war are gliding majestically out of port,their long buntings streaming from the top-gallant masts,calling on the skulking Frenchman to come forth from his bights and bays;and what looms upon us yonder from the fog-bank in the east?a gallant frigate towing behind her the long low hull of a crippled privateer,which but three short days ago had left Dieppe to skim the sea,and whose crew of ferocious hearts are now cursing their imprudence in an English hold.Stirring times those,which I love to recall,for they were days of gallantry and enthusiasm,and were moreover the days of my boyhood.
