And harnessed as he ever is, wherever the need may be,
Our God above sustain him with His majesty!

Earlier than this it was the custom for soldiers to sing just before
fighting. Tacitus alludes to a kind of measured warcry of the
Germans, which they made more sonorous and terrific by shouting it into
the hollow of their shields. He calls it _barditus_ by mistake,
borrowing a term from the custom of the Gauls, who sang before battle
by proxy,--that is, their bards chanted the national songs. But Norse
and German soldiers loved to sing. King Harald Sigurdson composes
verses just before battle; so do the Skalds before the Battle of
Stiklestad, which was fatal to the great King Olaf. The soldiers learn
the verses and sing them with the Skalds. They also recollect older
songs,--the "Biarkamal," for instance, which Biarke made before he
fought.[5] These are all of the indomitable kind, and well charged
with threats of unlimited slaughter. The custom survived all the social
and religious changes of Europe. But the wild war-phrases which the
Germans shouted for mutual encouragement, and to derive, like the
Highlanders, an omen from the magnitude of the sound, became hymns:
they were sung in unison, with the ordinary monkish modulations of the
time. The most famous of these was written by Notker, a Benedictine of
St. Gall, about the year 900. It was translated by Luther in 1524,
and an English translation from Luther's German can be found in the
"Lyra Germanica," p. 237.

[Footnote 5: Laing's _Sea-Kings of Norway_, Vol. II. p. 312; Vol.
III. p. 90.]

William's minstrel, Taillefer, sang a song before the Battle of
Hastings: but the Normans loved the purely martial strain, and this