hold him up on a beam put beneath him, so that, when weariness made them take their hands from the burden, they might be as good as guilty of the young man’s death, and by their own fault exonerate the king from an unnatural murder.  He also pretended that, unless the accused were punished, he would plot against his father’s life.  The adulteress Swanhild, he said, ought to suffer a shameful end, trampled under the hoofs of beasts.

The king yielded to Bikk; and, when his son was to be hanged, he made the bystanders hold him up by means of a plank, that he might not be choked.  Thus his throat was only a little squeezed, the knot was harmless, and it was but a punishment in show.  But the king had the queen tied very tight on the ground, and delivered her to be crushed under the hoofs of horses.  The story goes that she was so beautiful, that even the beasts shrank from mangling limbs so lovely with their filthy feet.  The king, divining that this proclaimed the innocence of his wife, began to repent of his error, and hastened to release the slandered lady.  But meantime Bikk rushed up, declaring that when she was on her back she held off the beasts by awful charms, and could only be crushed if she lay on her face; for he knew that her beauty saved her.  When the body of the queen was placed in this manner, the herd of beasts was driven upon it, and trod it down deep with their multitude of feet.  Such was the end of Swanhild.

Meantime, the favourite dog of Broder came creeping to the king making a sort of moan, and seemed to bewail its master’s punishment; and his hawk, when it was brought in, began to pluck out its breast-feathers with its beak.  The king took its nakedness as an omen of his bereavement, to frustrate which he quickly sent men to take his son down from the noose:  for he divined by the featherless bird that he would be childless unless he took good heed.  Thus Broder was freed from death, and Bikk, fearing he would pay the penalty of an informer, went and told the men of the Hellespont that Swanhild had been abominably slain by her husband.  When they set sail to avenge their sister, he came back to Jarmerik, and told him that the Hellespontines were preparing war.

The king thought that it would be safer to fight with walls than in the field, and retreated into the stronghold which he had built.  To stand the siege, he filled its inner parts with stores, and its battlements with men-at-arms.  Targets and shields flashing with gold were hung round and adorned the topmost circle of the building.

It happened that the Hellespontines, before sharing their booty, accused a great band of their men of embezzling, and put them to death.  Having now destroyed so large a part of their forces by internecine slaughter, they thought that their strength was not equal to storming the palace, and consulted a sorceress named Gudrun.  She brought it to pass that the defenders of the king’s side were suddenly blinded