Now over the colossal stone oxen hung the bells of the Cathedral.  On Christmas Eve the ringers, according to the old custom, ascended to their gallery to ring in the birth of the Babe Divine.  At the moment of midnight the master ringer gave the word, and the great bells began to swing in joyful sequence.  Down below in the crowded church lay the image of the new-born Child on the cold straw, and at His haloed head stood the images of the ox and the ass.  Far out across the snow-roofed city, far away over the white glistening country rang the glad music of the tower.  People who went to their doors to listen cried in astonishment:  “Hark! what strange music is that?  It sounds as if the lowing of cattle were mingled with the chimes of the bells.”  In truth it was so.  And in every byre the oxen and the kine answered the strange sweet cadences with their lowing, and the great stone oxen lowed back to their kin of the meadow through the deep notes of the joy-peal.

In the fulness of time the Prince Bishop Evrard died and was buried as he had willed, with his face humbly turned to the earth; and to this day the weather-wasted figure of the little girl looks down on him from her niche, and the slab over his grave serves as a stepping-stone to pious feet.

Taken by permission of E.P.  Dutton and Company from “A Child’s Book of Saints,” by William Canton, Everyman’s Library.

EARL SIGURD’S CHRISTMAS EVE

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

Earl Sigurd, he rides o’er the foam-crested brine,
  And he heeds not the billowy brawl,
For he yearns to behold gentle Swanwhite, the maid
  Who abides in Sir Burislav’s hall.

“Earl Sigurd, the viking, he comes, he is near! 
  Earl Sigurd, the scourge of the sea;
Among the wild rovers who dwell on the deep,
  There is none that is dreaded as he.

“Oh, hie ye, ye maidens, and hide where ye can,
  Ere the clang of his war-ax ye hear,
For the wolf of the woods has more pity than he,
  And his heart is as grim as his spear.”

Thus rang the dread tidings, from castle to hut,
  Through the length of Sir Burislav’s land,
As they spied the red pennon unfurled to the breeze,
  And the galleys that steered for the strand.

But with menacing brow, looming high in his prow
  Stood Earl Sigurd, and fair to behold
Was his bright, yellow hair, as it waved in the air,
  ’Neath the glittering helmet of gold.

“Up, my comrades, and stand with your broadswords in hand,
  For the war is great Odin’s delight;
And the Thunderer proud, how he laughs in his cloud
  When the Norsemen prepare for the fight!”

And the light galleys bore the fierce crew to the shore,
  And naught good did their coming forebode,
And a wail rose on high to the storm-riven sky
  As to Burislav’s castle they strode.