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Updated: June 26, 2025
And ever since I was a child, listening to the songs of the gleemen, had I thought that some day I, too, would make a name for myself on the seas, as my forefathers had made theirs, so that my deeds should be sung also. Yet that longing had cooled of late, as the flying people from Mercia had found their way now and then to us with tales of Danish cruelties.
All was profusion, not to say waste, but the poor had a good time afterwards. And when the desire of eating and drinking was satisfied, the harpers and gleemen began; and first the chief harper, with hoary beard, sang his solo: Sometimes in the night watch, Half seen in the gloaming, Come visions advancing, advancing, retreating All into the darkness.
Gleemen had sung, harpers had harped, but the excitement culminated when Siward, a Northumbrian noble, who was a great musician, and skilful in improvisation, did not disdain, like the royal Alfred, to take the harp and pour forth an extemporary ode of great beauty, whereupon the whole multitude rose to their feet and waved their wine cups in the air, in ardent appreciation of the patriotic sentiments he had uttered, and the beauty of the music and poetry.
He dragged K back and apologised to the aggrieved colonists, explaining by a pious fraud that he was K 's father and so responsible for bringing him out that evening. Our gleemen now stepped into the breach with "Ye Banks and Braes," and we left the station amid cheers.
But I miss here what king and knight hold as the salt of the feast and the perfume to the wine: the lay of the minstrel. Beshrew me, but both Saxon and Norman are of kindred stock, and love to hear in hall and bower the deeds of their northern fathers. Crave I therefore from your gleemen, or harpers, some song of the olden time!"
Not only the gleemen sang, but the harp went round, and all who could did so. Well do the Lindsey folk sing, after their own manner, three men at a time, in a gladsome way, with well-matched voices, and that for just long enough to be pleasant.
"But that day a something vexed him, that was clear to old and young: Thrice his Grace had yawned at table, when his favorite gleemen sung, Once the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her tongue. "'Something ails my gracious master, cried the Keeper of the Seal. 'Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served at dinner, or the veal? 'Psha! exclaimed the angry monarch.
Here should come the gleemen and jonglers, the minstrels, the mountebanks, the party-colored gipsies, the dark-eyed, nut-brown Zigeunerinnen; then a troop of peasants chanting Rhine-songs, and leading in their ox-drawn carts the peach-cheeked girls from the vine-lands.
Yet he was skilful, though not as his brother. Then at night was the fire of pine logs high heaped, and we feasted while the scalds, as they call their gleemen, sang the deeds of the heroes of old.
There were begging friars in cowl and frock, and beggars, not friars, with crutch and bowl; there were gleemen and tumbling women, solid tradesfolk going out to the country farms they loved, troops of 'prentices on their way to practice with the bow or cudgel, and parties of gaily-coloured nobles, knights, squires, and burgesses, coming, like their own party, to the meeting of Parliament.
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