BATTLE OF BRUNANBURH.

Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having sworn alle. giance to Athelstan, allied himself with the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunanburh in the year 937.

I.

1 ATHELSTAN King,

Lord among Earls,

Bracelet-bestower and

Baron of Barons,

He with his brother,

Edmund Atheling,

1 I have more or less availed myself of my son's prose translation of this poem in the Contemporary Review (November 1876).

Gaining a lifelong

Glory in battle,

Slew with the sword-edge

There by Brunanburh,

Brake the shield-wall,

Hew'd the lindenwood,1

Hack'd the battleshield,

Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

II.

Theirs was a greatness

Got from their Grandsires

Theirs that so often in

Strife with their enemies

Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their

homes.

1 Shields of lindenwood.

III.

Bow'd the spoiler,

Bent the Scotsman,

Fell the shipcrews

Doom'd to the death.

All the field with blood of the fighters

Flow'd, from when first the great

Sun-star of morningtide,

Lamp of the Lord God

Lord everlasting,

Glode over earth till the glorious creature

Sunk to his setting.

IV.

There lay many a man

Marr'd by the javelin,

Men of the Northland

Shot over shield.

There was the Scotsman

Weary of war.

V.

We the West-Saxons,

Long as the daylight

Lasted, in companies

Troubled the track of the host that we hated,

Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grind

stone,

Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us.

VI.

Mighty the Mercian,

Hard was his hand-play,