Locksley thereupon sets up a willow wand, six feet long and as thick as a man’s thumb.  Hubert is forced to decline the honor of taking part in such a trial of archery skill, but his rival easily splits the wand at a distance of three hundred feet and carries off the prize.

“Even Prince John, in admiration of Locksley’s skill, lost for an instant his dislike to his person.  ‘These twenty nobles,’ he said, ’which, with the bugle, thou hast fairly won, are thine own; we will make them fifty, if thou wilt take livery and service with us as a yeoman of our bodyguard, and be near to our person.  For never did so strong a hand bend a bow, or so true an eye direct a shaft.’” [Footnote:  Ivanhoe, Vol. 1, chap.  XIII.]

Locksley, however, declares that it is impossible for him to enter the Prince’s service, generously shares his prize with the worthy Hubert, and retires once more to his beloved haunts among the lights and shadows of the good greenwood.

LEGENDS OF CHARLEMAGNE

INTRODUCTION

Those who have investigated the origin of the romantic fables relating to Charlemagne and his peers are of opinion that the deeds of Charles Martel, and perhaps of other Charleses, have been blended in popular tradition with those properly belonging to Charlemagne.  It was indeed a most momentous era; and if our readers will have patience, before entering on the perusal of the fabulous annals which we are about to lay before them, to take a rapid survey of the real history of the times, they will find it hardly less romantic than the tales of the poets.

In the century beginning from the year 600, the countries bordering upon the native land of our Saviour, to the east and south, had not yet received his religion.  Arabia was the seat of an idolatrous religion resembling that of the ancient Persians, who worshipped the sun, moon, and stars.  In Mecca, in the year 571, Mahomet was born, and here, at the age of forty, he proclaimed himself the prophet of God, in dignity as superior to Christ as Christ had been to Moses.  Having obtained by slow degrees a considerable number of disciples, he resorted to arms to diffuse his religion.  The energy and zeal of his followers, aided by the weakness of the neighboring nations, enabled him and his successors to spread the sway of Arabia and the religion of Mahomet over the countries to the east as far as the Indus, northward over Persia and Asia Minor, westward over Egypt and the southern shores of the Mediterranean, and thence over the principal portion of Spain.  All this was done within one hundred years from the Hegira, or flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, which happened in the year 622, and is the era from which Mahometans reckon time, as we do from the birth of Christ.

From Spain the way was open for the Saracens (so the followers of Mahomet were called) into France, the conquest of which, if achieved, would have been followed very probably by that of all the rest of Europe, and would have resulted in the banishment of Christianity from the earth.  For Christianity was not at that day universally professed, even by those nations which we now regard as foremost in civilization.  Great part of Germany, Britain, Denmark, and Russia were still pagan or barbarous.