HENGIST AND MEY. BY W. MICKLE. In ancient days, when Arthur reigned, The ladies loved so dear. His sister, Mey, the fairest maid Of all the virgin train, Won every heart at Arthur's court; In vain they loved, in vain they vowed; The abbess saw- the abbess knew, And urged her to explain : "O name the gentle youth to me, And his consent I'll gain." Long urged, long tried, fair Mey replied, "His name how can I say? An angel from the fields above Has 'rapt my heart away. "But once, alas! and never more, One evening, by the sounding shore, “His eyes to mine the love confest, "But when he heard my brother's horn, Fast to his ships he fled; Yet, while I sleep, his graceful form "Sometimes, all clad in armour bright, He shakes a warlike lance; And now, in courtly garments dight, "His hair, as black as raven's wing; "His limbs, his arms, his stature shaped By nature's finest hand; His sparkling eyes declare him born To love, and to command." The live-long year, fair Mey bemoaned But when the balmy spring returned, All round by pleasant Humber side, And to Sir Elmer's castle gates The spearmen came in view. N Fair blushed the morn, when Mey looked o'er The castle walls so sheen; And lo! the warlike Saxon youth There Hengist, Offa's eldest son, His locks, as black as raven's wing, And soon, the lovely form of Mey Oh, thou for whom I dared the seas, Oh! by that cross that veils thy breast, "For thee, I'll quit my father's throne; Beneath the timorous virgin blush, 'T was now the hour of morning prayer, And Elmer heard King Arthur's horn, The pearly tears from Mey's bright eyes, Like April dew-drops fell, When, with a parting, dear embrace, The cross with sparkling diamonds bright, Now, with five hundred bowmen true, Full forty thousand Saxon spears And with their shouts and clang of arms The distant valleys fill. Old Offa, dressed in Odin's garb,* And Hengist, like the warlike Thor, Before the horsemen rode. * Odin, the celebrated head of the Northern Mythology, was probably, at some very early period, a conqueror or monarch, whom the zeal of his subjects deified after death. According to the opinions of those who assign to him the highest antiquity, he existed in the first Scythian empire,-Seven Hundred, or perhaps One Thousand years B.C. Others suppose him to have been the person who led the Asiatic Scythians (now Tartarians, Siberians, &c.) into Europe, when they conquered Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, &c.)-about Five Hundred years B.C. In answer to this, it has again been urged, that it was only the name and worship of Odin which they brought with them, and under whose banners they marched to conquest. To one or other, however, of these dates must be referred the era of the first and real Odin, unless he had, as a fourth party thinks, only an allegorical existence. He was styled the God of War, and was held to be the Supreme Deity, by a people who placed their principal and almost their only virtues in conquest and slaughter. Hence, in conformity with this, their Mythology and ideas of a future state, were amongst the worst corruptions of the primitive truths With dreadful rage the combat burns, To stop its course young Hengist flew, And soon his eyes the well known cross The slighted lover swelled his breast, On his imagined rival's front, The foe gave way;—the princely youth With heedless rage pursued, Till trembling in his cloven helm Sir Elmer's javelin stood. that the annals of the world have presented. They had none of those romantic beauties which were thickly strewn throughout the systems of Greece and Rome; nor of those occasional instances of fidelity of principle which shone through their veiling tissue of fantastic absurdity. A second Odin is said to have appeared about the year 70, B. C.—a warrior and priest, who assumed the name and some of the properties of his prototype, and obtained the sovereignty of Scandinavia, where he established a new code, which, like Mahomet, he confirmed by pretended communications with Heaven. Thor, an early Northern monarch (of whom an ancient statue or idol is preserved in the cathedral of Upsal), was styled the offspring of Odin; in the same manner as Romulus was called the son of Mars, and was also deified. From Odin (corruptly called Woden), Thor, and Freya (a female deity), were derived the ancient Northern names of three days in the week, introduced into England by the Saxons, before their conversion to Christianity; viz., Wodensday, Thorsday, and Fryday.-ED. |