THE
STORY AND SONG OF
BLACK RODERICK


By
Dora Sigerson



1906




This is the story of Black Earl Roderick, the story and the song of his
pride and of his humbling; of the bitterness of his heart, and of the love
that came to it at last; of his threatened destruction, and the strange
and wonderful way of his salvation.

So shall I begin and tell.

He left his gray castle at the dawn of the morning, and with many a knight
to bear him company rode, not eager and swift, like a prince who went to
find a treasure, but steady and slow, as we should go to meet sorrow. Not
one of the hundred men who followed dared to lilt a lay or fling a
laughing jest from his mouth. All rode silent among their gay trappings,
for so saith a song:

_It was the Black Earl Roderick