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The respective armies and their leaders animated the courage of their warriors by battle-songs, till the horns were blown again; the armies once more slowly approached each other; the champions retired into their ranks, and the battle was renewed with a prodigious noise; spears waved in the air; pandana seed flew from the delicate hands of the female warriors, over the heads of their husbands, upon the enemy, but the armies never came near enough to be really engaged.
There were cries of the wounded now, mingled with battle-songs, and hoarse shouting for vengeance among those whose sons and brothers and sworn friends fell. Another cast of the spears, seaming the air between as the hosts closed in, and they fell on each other with their swords, shields upraised and gold-bronze sword-points darting beneath like the tongues of serpents.
These semi-mythological tales had been replaced by another cycle: the purely realistic epic, which had arisen during the struggles between the Christian west against the pagan north-east and the Mohammedan south, and which, originating in the short battle-songs narrating the exploits of the predecessors and help-mates of Charlemagne, had constituted itself into large narratives of which the "Song of Roland" represents artistic culmination.
Smudge fires burned in a wide circle about the house to repel the hungry mosquitos that, with high, monotonous battle-songs, stormed the smoky barrier between them and the inner circle of horses and oxen feeding from wagon-boxes.
In the wind that came sighing to her ears from the dark ravines of the terrible chebka, she seemed to hear battle-songs and groans of desert men who had fought and died ages ago, whose bones had crumbled under her feet, perhaps, and whose descendants had not changed one whit in religion, custom, or thought, or even in dress.
The world very properly claims that such a spirit as mine has it imposed upon it as public duty to take care of itself for the world's benefit, and preserve itself by every possible means. The sword of the poet is the word the song. I will attack my rival with Tyrtæan battle-songs; strike him to earth with sharp-pointed epigrams; hew him down with dithyrambics full of lover's fury.
Now the Carolingian tales, originally battle-songs, sung in camps and castles to mere soldiers, had at first possessed no female characters at all; and when gradually they were introduced, it was in the coarsest barrack or tap-room style.
Through the reign of Eadward the Elder it is copious, and a Mercian Chronicle is imbedded in it: it then dies down into a series of scant and jejune entries, broken however with grand battle-songs, till the reign of Æthelred when its fulness returns. Outside the Chronicle we encounter a great and valuable mass of historical material for the age of Ælfred and his successors.
Friedrich was born at Brandenburg on February 12, 1777, was educated by good parents at home, served in the Prussian army through disaster and success, took an enthusiastic part in the rising of his country against Napoleon, inditing as many battle-songs as Korner. When victory was achieved, he dedicated his sword in the church of Neunhausen where his estate lay.
Meanwhile, the Labonga were at the doors, chanting their battle-songs half a mile away, and shots were heard from the far pickets. If they had tried to rush the place then, all would have been over, but, luckily, that was never their way of fighting.
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