And the brave Scyld's triumph o'er his foes.

Then because there are Scyldings present, and because brave men
revere their ancestors, the gleeman tells a beautiful legend of how
King Scyld came and went: how he arrived as a little child, in a
war-galley that no man sailed, asleep amid jewels and weapons; and
how, when his life ended at the call of Wyrd or Fate, they placed
him against the mast of a ship, with treasures heaped around him
and a golden banner above his head, gave ship and cargo to the
winds, and sent their chief nobly back to the deep whence he came.

So with picturesque words the gleeman thrills his hearers with a
vivid picture of a Viking's sea-burial. It thrills us now, when the
Vikings are no more, and when no other picture can be drawn by an
eyewitness of that splendid pagan rite.

[Sidenote: THE STORY OF HEOROT]

One of Scyld's descendants was King Hrothgar (Roger) who built the
hall Heorot, where the king and his men used to gather nightly to
feast, and to listen to the songs of scop or gleeman. [Footnote:
Like Agamemnon and the Greek chieftains, every Saxon leader had his
gleeman or minstrel, and had also his own poet, his scop or
"shaper," whose duty it was to shape a glorious deed into more
glorious verse. So did our pagan ancestors build their monuments
out of songs that should live in the hearts of men when granite or
earth mound had crumbled away.] "There was joy of heroes," but in
one night the joy was changed to mourning. Out on the lonely fens
dwelt the jotun (giant or monster) Grendel, who heard the sound of
men's mirth and quickly made an end of it. One night, as the thanes