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Updated: May 29, 2025
For distant and dim as their life in that older England may have seemed to us, the whole after-life of Englishmen was there. In its village-moots lay our Parliament; in the gleeman of its village-feasts our Chaucer and our Shakspere; in the pirate-bark stealing from creek to creek our Drakes and our Nelsons. Even the national temper was fully formed.
"Hear me," said the minstrel; "an ancient gleeman has said, that in a false quarrel there is no true valour, and the los or praise won therein, is, when balanced against honest fame, as valueless as a wreath formed out of copper, compared to a chaplet of pure gold; but I bid you not take me for thy warrant in this important question.
And Cumhal went on beating at the door, and presently he heard the lay brother's foot once more, and cried out at him, 'O cowardly and tyrannous race of friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit!
He was not, however, much to look at, with his coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist by a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the gleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork.
The stranger took up the lamp and walked to the farthest recess of the dungeon, where, concealed amongst the rude carvings with which the builders had ornamented the wall, was a rose carved in stone. The gleeman pressed it sharply, and a hidden door sprang open, revealing a winding staircase excavated in the solid wall.
"Alfgar," said the gleeman, "you will find a quiver of arrows and a long bow at the bottom of the boat behind you." Alfgar handed them to him. "The points are passing sharp, and the bow is in order; take your turn to row." Alfgar obeyed; he could not do otherwise, the gleeman's tone of command was so powerful, but he feared they would loss time by the change.
As he passed the gleeman, he gave him one stroke across the loins; the wretch fell shrieking. And then began a murder, grim and great. They fought with ale-cups, with knives, with benches: but, drunken and unarmed, they were hewn down like sheep. Fourteen Normans, says the chronicler, were in the hall when Hereward burst in. When the sun rose there were fourteen heads upon the gable.
"Thou art the gleeman who insulted Sweyn." "Nay, who told the brutal tyrant the truth." "And what doest thou here?" "I am come to deliver thee." "But how?" "Rise up, cast on your garments."
"What is it that you drink, then? Beer for the lads of the forest, mead for the gleeman, strong waters for the tinker, and wine for the rest. It is an old custom of the house, young sir. It has been the use at the 'Pied Merlin' this many a year back that the company should drink to the health of the last comer. Is it your pleasure to humor it?"
"Minstrel," cried the fierce king, "sing us some stirring song of the days of old; plenty of the fire of the old Vikings in it." A strange minstrel, a young gleeman, had been admitted that night one whose chain and robes bespoke him of the privileged class and he sang in a voice which thrilled all the revellers into awed silence.
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