Germans. The splendour of the nuptial pageant was very striking, and is even in our times frequently sung in ballads about the streets: where while this renowned lady was being conducted to the ship, all the nobility of England were crowding around and contributing to her charges whatever was contained in the general purse, or royal treasury. Proceeding in this manner to her husband, she cherished for a long time the conjugal tie; at length being accused of adultery, she opposed in single combat to her accuser, a man of gigantic size, a young lad of her brother's[1] establishment, whom she had brought from England, while her other attendants held back in cowardly apprehension. When, therefore, they engaged, the impeacher, through the miraculous interposition of God, was worsted, by being ham-strung. Gunhilda, exulting at her unexpected success, renounced the marriage contract with her husband; nor could she be induced either by threats or by endearments again to share his bed: but taking the veil of a nun, she calmly grew old in the service of God.
This emperor possessed many and great virtues; and nearly surpassed in military skill all his predecessors: so much so, that he subdued the Vindelici and the Leutici,[2] and the other nations bordering on the Suevi, who alone, even to the present day, lust after pagan superstitions: for the Saracens and Turks worship God the Creator, looking upon Mahomet not as God, but as his prophet. But the Vindelici worship fortune, and putting her idol in the most eminent situation, they place a horn in her right hand, filled with that beverage, made of honey and water, which by a Greek term we call "hydromel." St. Jerome proves, in his eighteenth book on Isaiah, that the Egyptians and almost all the eastern nations do the same. Wherefore on the last day of November, sitting round in a circle, they all taste it; and if they find the horn full, they applaud with loud clamours: because in the ensuing year, plenty with her
- ↑ It seems to mean a page, or personal attendant: some MSS. read "alumnus stumi;" apparently the keeper of her starling. There appears to have been a sort of romance on this subject. The youth is said to have been a dwarf, and therefore named Mimicon: his gigantic adversary was Roddingar. V. Matt. West, and Joh. Brompton.
- ↑ These people inhabited the country on and near the southern coast of the Baltic.
