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Updated: June 21, 2025
"Siward can give no niddering counsel to his King; to save the blood of his subjects is never a king's disgrace. Yield thou to mercy, Godwin to the law!" "Oh for the cowl and cell!" exclaimed the Prince, wringing his hands. "Oh Norman home, why did I leave thee?" He took the cross from his breast, contemplated it fixedly, prayed silently but with fervour, and his face again became tranquil.
"I know this," said Gudruda, "that I will not wed a man who is named 'Niddering' in the face of all and lifts no sword." Gudruda spoke thus, because she was mad with love and fear and shame, and she desired that Eric should stand face to face with Ospakar Blacktooth, for thus, alone, she might perhaps be rid of Ospakar. "Such words do not come well from gentle lips," said Björn.
"Call me what you will, silly sister," said the child, indifferently, "I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names." "Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very moustache curling with ire. "He who can be called niddering shall never be crowned king!"
Then he gave the spear in his hand to Skallagrim, and, gripping Whitefire's hilt, he burst the peace-strings, and tore it from the scabbard. Now the great sword shone on high like lightning leaping from a cloud, and as it shone men shouted, "Ospakar! Ospakar Niddering! Come, win back Whitefire from Eric's hand, or be for ever shamed!" Blacktooth could endure this no more.
Then she started and looked at me in the face wonderingly. She felt the steel. "Wilfrid," she whispered, "why do you wear mail under your tunic?" I told her plainly; otherwise it would have surely seemed that it was a niddering sort of habit of mine, and unworthy of a warrior in a king's friendly hall. And there was no laughter in her fair face as she heard, but fear for me.
And a broad pennon rose out of the sea of blood, and from the clouds came a pale hand, and it wrote on the pennon, 'Harold, the Accursed! Then said the stern shape by my side, 'Harold, fearest thou the dead men's bones? and its voice was as a trumpet that gives strength to the craven, and I answering, 'Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the bones of the dead!"
And a broad pennon rose out of the sea of blood, and from the clouds came a pale hand, and it wrote on the pennon, 'Harold, the Accursed! Then said the stern shape by my side, 'Harold, fearest thou the dead men's bones? and its voice was as a trumpet that gives strength to the craven, and I answering, 'Niddering, indeed, were Harold, to fear the bones of the dead!"
Would it indeed be possible, for instance, to convey a notion of the customs and manners of our Saxon forefathers without employing words so mixed up with their daily usages and modes of thinking as "weregeld" and "niddering"? Would any words from the modern vocabulary suggest the same idea, or embody the same meaning?
"Call me what you will, silly sister," said the child, indifferently, "I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names." "Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very moustache curling with ire. "He who can be called niddering shall never be crowned king!"
Now the swarthy brow of Blacktooth grew red with rage, and his breath came in great gasps. "Ho, men!" he cried, "drive this knave away. Strip his harness off him and whip him hence with rods." "Let but a man stir towards me and this spear flies through thy heart, Niddering," cried Eric. "Gudruda, what thinkest thou of thy lord?"
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