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Updated: May 21, 2025
A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again while he chaunted the song of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall.
As he walked, he sang, or rather chaunted to a monotonous strain, the following: "Way-gee-mar-kin is dead, is dead, I know who killed him. I guess it was I I guess it was I." All the village was aroused. Everybody flew in pursuit of the murderer, but he evaded them, and escaped to a place of safety.
"Harold," answered Hilda, "thou didst hear at the close of thy dream, the music of the hymns that are chaunted at the crowning of a king, and a crowned king shalt thou be; yet fearful foes shall assail thee foreshown in the shapes of a lion and raven, that came in menace over the bloodred sea.
Indeed, if we realise in the least what this hymn must have meant, shouted in the processions of Flagellants, chaunted in the Pacts of Peace after internecine town wars; above all, perhaps, muttered in the cell of the friar, in the den of the weaver; if we sum up, however inadequately, the state of things whence it arose, and whence it helped to deliver us, we may think that the greatest music is scarcely reverent enough to accompany these poor blundering rhymes.
Then followed the body of the clergy in copes of white and gold, with eyes downcast as they chaunted in loud nasal tones from books in their hands; next came the Canons of the Cathedral in fine old festal vestments reserved for such occasions and with mitres on their heads, for Amalfi clings to the ancient ecclesiastical privileges that were granted in distant days when Florence and Venice were little more than villages.
At 10 o'clock, the prisoner was removed from the prison, and during his progress to the scaffold, though the hue of death was on his face, and he trembled in every joint with fear, he chaunted with a powerful voice an appropriate service from the Catholic ritual.
As he rode, and as he chaunted, he threw up his sword in the air like a gleeman, catching it nimbly as it fell , and flourishing it wildly, till, as if unable to restrain his fierce exhilaration, he fairly put spurs to his horse, and, dashing forward to the very front of a detachment of Saxon riders, shouted: "A Taillefer! a Taillefer!" and by voice and gesture challenged forth some one to single combat.
Give us to eat," I said, and the old man pointed to a hole in the side of the hut. I thrust in my hand and found bread, dark coloured and coarse, but amazingly sweet and strengthening, and a lump of fat bacon. We divided it without a word, and ate like famished dogs. And all the time the old man chaunted "Blight him!" with fervour, and drank every now and then from the bottle.
And seven days he walked through it, on a path which few can tell; for those who have trodden it like least to speak of it, and those who go there again in dreams are glad enough when they awake; till he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last he found the three Gray Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea, nodding upon a white log of drift-wood, beneath the cold white winter moon; and they chaunted a low song together, 'Why the old times were better than the new.
She threw more frankincense upon the chafing-dish, until the room was full of smoke, and then chaunted: "Turshoon, turyo-shoon come down, come down. "Be present, ye servants of these names. "Remove the veil, and be correct."
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