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Updated: May 3, 2025
At length, as the old chronicler tells us "on a certain day, his mother was shewing him and his brothers a Saxon book of poetry, which she held in her hand, and said, 'Whichever of you shall the soonest learn this volume, shall have it for his own." Thus stimulated, Alfred bent himself to the task with all that steady ardor which so strongly characterized him in after-life, and easily won the prize from his tardy competitors.
Remember my words, Devenham, when our chronicler dips his pen into the ink and writes of our government, our foreign policy, at least, will be judged by our position in the far East. Exactly what that will be depends upon Prince Maiyo. With a renewal of our treaty we could go to the country tomorrow.
"Beni soit le Seigneur en toutes choses!" says Pigord the chronicler who tells the story. Of the impression that the Paris of Philip Augustus made on a provincial visitor, we were able, fortunately, to give some account.
Certainly not the chronicler; for he tells how Hereward got back by the Isle of Somersham. Which is all but impossible, for Somersham is in Huntingdonshire, many a mile on the opposite side of Ely Isle.
After the banquet came dancing, vaulting, tumbling; together with the "forces of Hercules, which gave great delight to the strangers," after which the company separated until evensong. Then again, "great was the feast," says the chronicler, a mighty supper following hard upon the gigantic dinner.
"For in good sooth," writes a chronicler of the time on a half-brick and a couple of paving-stones which have survived to this day, "it did indeed begin to appear as though our beloved monarch, the son of the sun and the nephew of the moon, had been handed the bitter fruit of the citron." The quaint old idiom is almost untranslatable, but one sees what he means.
For the history of this little abode of good fellowship I was referred to a tallow-chandler's widow opposite, who had been born and brought up on the spot, and was looked up to as the indisputable chronicler of the neighborhood.
Now let the ancient chronicler speak: "A gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another bearing a tablecloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after kneeling again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first; at last come two nobles, richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife, who, after prostrating themselves three times in the most graceful manner, approach and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the King had been present."
Sometimes we find a mound which seems to proclaim its position, but memory is silent, and the people of England, if the story of the chronicler be true, have to be grateful to Henry II, who set himself to work to root up and destroy very many of these adulterine castles which were the abodes of tyranny and oppression.
Hugh's life and ministrations must be taken with a grain of salt. The authorities differ considerably, and it is impossible to clap a date to some of the saint's way-marks without first slapping in the face some venerable chronicler, or some thought-worn modern historian.
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