the hill-crest adown on the Hunding abode; And forsooth ’twas the fire wavering all o’er the roof of old, And all in the garth and about it lay the bodies of the bold; And bound to a rope amidmost were the women fair and young, And youths and little children, like the fish on a withy strung As they lie on the grass for the angler before the beginning of night.  Then the rush of the wrath within me for a while nigh blinded my sight; Yet about the cowering war-thralls, short dark-faced men I saw, Men clad in iron armour, this way and that way draw, As warriors after the battle are ever wont to do.  Then I knew them for the foemen and their deeds to be I knew, And I gathered the reins together to ride down the hill amain, To die with a good stroke stricken and slay ere I was slain.  When lo, on the bent before me rose the head of a brown-faced man, Well helmed and iron-shielded, who some Welsh speech began And a short sword brandished against me; then my sight cleared and I saw Five others armed in likewise up hill and toward me draw, And I shook the spear and sped it and clattering on his shield He fell and rolled o’er smitten toward the garth and the Fell-folk’s field.

“But my heart changed with his falling and the speeding of my stroke, And I turned my horse; for within me the love of life awoke, And I spurred, nor heeded the hill-side, but o’er rough and smooth I rode Till I heard no chase behind me; then I drew rein and abode.  And down in a dell was I gotten with a thorn-brake in its throat, And heard but the plover’s whistle and the blackbird’s broken note ’Mid the thorns; when lo! from a thorn-twig away the blackbird swept, And out from the brake and towards me a naked man there crept, And straight I rode up towards him, and knew his face for one I had seen in the hall of the Hundings ere its happy days were done.  I asked him his tale, but he bade me forthright to bear him away; So I took him up behind me, and we rode till late in the day, Toward the cover of the wild-wood, and as swiftly as we might.  But when yet aloof was the thicket and it now was moonless night, We stayed perforce for a little, and he told me all the tale:  How the aliens came against them, and they fought without avail Till the Roof o’er their heads was burning and they burst forth on the foe, And were hewn down there together; nor yet was the slaughter slow.  But some they saved for thralldom, yea, e’en of the fighting men, Or to quell them with pains; so they stripped them; and this man espying just then Some chance, I mind not whatwise, from the garth fled out and away.

   “Now many a thing noteworthy of these aliens did he say,
   But this I bid you hearken, lest I wear the time for nought,
   That still upon the Markmen and the Mark they set their thought;
   For they questioned this man and others through a go-between in words
   Of us, and our lands and our chattels, and the number of our swords;
   Of the way and the wild-wood passes and the winter and his ways. 
   Now look to see them shortly; for worn are fifteen days
   Since in the garth of the Hundings I saw them dight for war,
   And a hardy folk and ready and a swift-foot host they are.”