CHAPTER II.
HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR.
Of Hereward's doings for the next few months naught is known. He may very
likely have joined Siward in the Scotch war. He may have looked,
wondering, for the first time in his life, upon the bones of the old
world, where they rise at Dunkeld out of the lowlands of the Tay; and have
trembled lest the black crags of Birnam should topple on his head with all
their pines. He may have marched down from that famous leaguer with the
Gospatricks and Dolfins, and the rest of the kindred of Crinan (abthane or
abbot,--let antiquaries decide),--of Dunkeld, and of Duncan, and of
Siward, and of the outraged Sibilla. He may have helped himself to bring
Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, "on the day of the Seven Sleepers," and heard
Siward, when his son Asbiorn's corpse was carried into camp, [Footnote:
Shakespeare makes young Siward his son. He, too, was slain in the battle:
but he was Siward's nephew.] ask only, "Has he all his wounds in front?"
He may have seen old Siward, after Macbeth's defeat (not death, as
Shakespeare relates the story), go back to Northumbria "with such booty as
no man had obtained before,"--a proof, if the fact be fact, that the
Scotch lowlands were not, in the eleventh century, the poor and barbarous
country which some have reported them to have been.
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