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Updated: May 29, 2025
And yet though the short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman, being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people.
The light was gradually growing stronger, and their chance of escape seemed feeble, when Alfgar saw before them a dense cloud of mist rolling round the eastern promontory, and uttered a cry of joy as it enfolded them. "The wind is east, keep it on your right cheek, and steer straight forward. I will take both oars," said the gleeman.
We may compare these statements of the universal presence of the wonder-working magician with those of the gleeman who recites the Anglo-Saxon metrical tale called the Traveller's Song. No doubt, lands the most distant can be shown to have a common property in many marvellous stories.
They embarked, and Alfgar steered, by the other's direction, straight down the stream, while he rowed for full an hour with remarkable strength and dexterity, so that they drew near the coast, and the cold air from the sea blew in Alfgar's face. Here the gleeman ceased rowing, and spoke to him in a low tone. "Do you see those dark figures ahead?" "I do."
This word has been another grievous stumbling block to the French and English translators of Boccaccio, who render it literally "courtier." The reader need hardly be reminded that the minstrel of the middle ages was commonly jester, gleeman and story-teller all in one and in these several capacities was allowed the utmost license of speech.
Eating and drinking were over, and the old gleeman, striking his harp, was beginning a song of harvest home, when in rushed the two young theows who had gone out with Alfgar and Bertric, with the startling intelligence that there was a band of Northmen lurking in the woods, who had seized their young lords, and were, they thought, bent on attacking the place.
Hardly knowing what he did, Alfgar obeyed, and when he stood face to face with the stranger, began to lose the uneasy impression that the being who addressed him was otherwise than mortal; for he saw by the light of the lamp that the gleeman bore all the attributes of a living man. "How came you here?"
Queen or Eorl's wife with a train of maidens bore ale-bowl or mead-bowl round the hall from the high settle of King or Ealdorman in the midst to the mead benches ranged around its walls, while the gleeman sang the hero-songs of his race. Dress and arms showed traces of a love of art and beauty, none the less real that it was rude and incomplete.
Through his sturdy helmet the noble fiddler smote the landgrave. Certes, he was grim enow! Then Sir Irnfried dealt the valiant gleeman such a blow that his coat of mail burst open and his breastplate was enveloped with a bright red flame. Yet the landgrave fell dead at the minstrel's hands. Hawart and Hagen, too, had come together. Wonders would he have seen, who beheld the fight.
"How like ye, O Normans, the Saxon gleeman?" said Leofwine, as he turned slowly, regained the detachment, and bade them heed carefully the orders they had received, viz., to avoid the direct charge of the Norman horse, but to take every occasion to harass and divert the stragglers; and then blithely singing a Saxon stave, as if inspired by Norman minstrelsy, he rode into the entrenchments.
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