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646 WALDEMAR DAA AND HIS DAUGHTERS
high-born lady sitting among her women in the great hall turning the spinning-wheel: she played on the sounding lute, and sang to the sound, but not always old Danish melodies, but songs of a strange land. Here was life and hospitality : distinguished guests came from far and near, the music sounded, the goblets clashed, and I was not able to drown the noise,' said 'the Wind. ' Ostentation, and haughtiness, and splendour, and display, and rule were there, but the fear of the Lord was not there.
* And it was just on the evening of the first day of May,' the Wind continued. ' I came from the west, and had seen how the ships were being crushed by the waves, on the west coast of Jutland. I had hurried across the heath, and the wood-girt coast, and over the Island of Even, and now I drove over the Great Belt, groaning and sighing.
' Then I lay down to rest on the shore of Zealand, in the neighbourhood of the great house of Borreby, where the forest, the splendid oak forest, still rose.
' The young men-servants of the neighbourhood were collecting branches and brushwood under the oak trees ; the largest and driest they could find they carried into the village, and piled them up in a heap, and set them on fire ; and men and maids danced, singing in a circle round the blazing pile.
11 lay quite quiet,' continued the Wind ; ' but I quietly touched a branch, which had been brought by the handsomest of the men-servants, and the wood blazed up brightly, blazed up higher than all the rest; and now he was the chosen one, and bore the name of Street-goat, and might choose his Street-lamb first from among the maids ; and there was mirth and rejoicing, greater than there was in the rich mansion of Borreby.
' And the noble lady drove towards the mansion, with her three daughters, in a gilded carriage drawn by six horses. The daughters were young and fair—three charming blossoms, rose, lily, and pale hyacinth. The mother was a proud tulip, and never acknowledged the salutation of one of the men or maids who paused in their sport to do her honour : the gracious lady seemed a flower that was rather stiff in the stalk.
' Rose, lily, and pale hyacinth ; yes, I saw them all |
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