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قراءة كتاب For The White Christ: A Story of the Days of Charlemagne
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For The White Christ: A Story of the Days of Charlemagne
FOR THE WHITE CHRIST
FOR THE
WHITE CHRIST
A Story
of
The Days of Charlemagne
BY
Robert Ames Bennet
Having Pictures and Designs by
Troy & Margaret West Kinney
Chicago
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1905
Copyright,
By A. C. McClurg & Co.
1905
Published March 18, 1905
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
All rights reserved
The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A.
To the Memory
of
My Mother
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
All the chapter headings of this story are taken from lays which were sung by harpers and skalds before the high-seats of heathen Norse chiefs and in the halls of the Anglo-Saxon kings, while England was yet a heptarchy and the name of Mohammed but little known to men even on the shores of the far-distant Bosphorus.
In most instances the selections are from Magnusson and Morris's beautiful translations of "The Volsunga Saga, and Certain Songs from the Elder Edda." The spirited lines from "Beowulf," "Maldon," "Finnesburh," and "Andreas" were found in Gummerle's "Germanic Origins." The translation of "Brunanburh" is by Tennyson.
Apology is due for occasional alterations and elisions, all of which will readily be detected by students of the wonderful poetic fragments which have come down to us from our Norse and Teutonic forefathers.
R. A. B.
Denver, January 1, 1905.
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Bend lower, king's daughter--little vala with eyes like dewy violets!'" . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
"White to the lips, the young sea-king turned to his enemy"
"'Love!' she cried, half hissing the word. 'You speak of love,--you, the heathen outlander!'"
"'Go, Olvir!' muttered the king, thickly; 'go--before I forget that I once loved you'"
FOR THE WHITE CHRIST
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
Early of an April morning of the year 778, a broad-beamed Frisian trade-ship was drifting with the ebb-tide down the Seine estuary. Wrapped about by the morning vapors, the deeply laden little craft floated on the stream like a dreamship. The mists shut out all view of sky and land and sea. From the quarter-deck, the two men beside the steer-oar could scarcely see across the open cargo-heaped waist to where, gathered silently about the mast, a dozen or so drowsy sailors stood waiting for the morning breeze.
The remainder of the crew lay sprawled upon the casks and bales of merchandise, side by side with a score of Frankish warriors. All alike were heavy with drunken slumber. The shipmaster, a squat red-haired man of great girth, regarded the overcome wassailers with an