At that Godrich shook with wrath.  Up he sprang and began to beat Havelok without mercy.

    “And said, ’Unless thou her take,
    That I well ween thee to make,
    I shall hangen thee full high
    Or I shall thrusten out thine eye.’”

Then seeing that there was no help for it, and that he must either be wedded or hanged, Havelok consented to marry Goldboru.  So the Princess was brought, “the fairest woman under the moon.”  And she, sore afraid at the anger and threats of Godrich, durst not do aught to oppose the wedding.  So were they “espoused fair and well” by the Archbishop of York, and Havelok took his bride home to Grimsby.

You may be sure that Havelok, who was so strong and yet so gentle, was kind to his beautiful young wife.  But Goldboru was unhappy, for she could not forget the disgrace that had come upon her.  She could not forget that she was a princess, and that she had been forced to wed a low-born kitchen knave.  But one night, as she lay in bed weeping, an angel appeared to her and bade her sorrow no more, for it was no scullion that she had wed, but a king’s son.  So Goldboru was comforted.

And of all that afterward befell Havelok and Goldboru, of how they went to Denmark and overcame the traitor there, and received the kingdom; and of how they returned again to England, and of how Godrich was punished, you must read for yourselves in the book of Havelok the Dane.  But this one thing more I will tell you, that Havelok and Goldboru lived happily together until they died.  They loved each other so tenderly that they were never angry with each other.  They had fifteen children, and all the sons became kings and all the daughters became queens.

I should like to tell you many more of these early English metrical romances.  I should like to tell you of Guy of Warwick, of King Horn, of William and the Werewolf, and of many others.  But, indeed, if I told all the stories I should like to tell this book would have no end.  So we must leave them and pass on.

BOOKS TO READ

The Story of Havelok the Dane, rendered into later English by Emily Hickey.  The Lay of Havelok the Dane, edited by W. W. Skeat in the original English.

Chapter XVIII ABOUT SOME SONG STORIES

BESIDES the metrical romances, we may date another kind of story from this time.  I mean the ballads.

Ballad was an old French word spelt balade.  It really means a dance-song.  For ballads were at first written to be sung to dances—­slow, shuffling, balancing dances such as one may still see in out-of-the-way places in Brittany.

These ballads often had a chorus or refrain in which every one joined.  But by degrees the refrain was dropped and the dancing too.  Now we think of a ballad as a simple story told in verse.  Sometimes it is merry, but more often it is sad.