" [Footnote: Laing's Heimskringla.]
And after that things waxed even worse and worse, for sixty years and
more; all through the reigns of the two Williams, and of Henry Beauclerc,
and of Stephen; till men saw visions and portents, and thought that the
foul fiend was broken loose on earth. And they whispered oftener and
oftener that the soul of Hereward haunted the Bruneswald, where he loved
to hunt the dun deer and the roe. And in the Bruneswald, when Henry of
Poitou was made abbot, [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1127.] men
saw--let no man think lightly of the marvel which we are about to relate,
for it was well known all over the country--upon the Sunday, when men
sing, "Exsurge quare, O Domine," many hunters hunting, black, and tall,
and loathly, and their hounds were black and ugly with wide eyes, and they
rode on black horses and black bucks. And they saw them in the very
deer-park of the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods to Stamford;
and the monks heard the blasts of the horns which they blew in the night.
Men of truth kept watch upon them, and said that there might be well about
twenty or thirty horn-blowers. This was seen and heard all that Lent until
Easter, and the Norman monks of Peterborough said how it was Hereward,
doomed to wander forever with Apollyon and all his crew, because he had
stolen the riches of the Golden Borough: but the poor folk knew better,
and said that the mighty outlaw was rejoicing in the chase, blowing his
horn for Englishmen to rise against the French; and therefore it was that
he was seen first on "Arise, O Lord" Sunday.
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