For last autumn I was in Suffolk at the good town of
Dunwich, and thither came the keels from Iceland, and on them were
some men of Iceland, and many a tale they had on their tongues; and
with these men I foregathered, for I am in sooth a gatherer of tales,
and this that is now at my tongue's end is one of them."
So such a tale I told them, long familiar to me; but as I told it the
words seemed to quicken and grow, so that I knew not the sound of my
own voice, and they ran almost into rhyme and measure as I told it;
and when I had done there was silence awhile, till one man spake, but
not loudly:
"Yea, in that land was the summer short and the winter long; but men
lived both summer and winter; and if the trees grew ill and the corn
throve not, yet did the plant called man thrive and do well. God send
us such men even here."
"Nay," said another, "such men have been and will be, and belike are
not far from this same door even now."
"Yea," said a third, "hearken a stave of Robin Hood; maybe that shall
hasten the coming of one I wot of." And he fell to singing in a clear
voice, for he was a young man, and to a sweet wild melody, one of
those ballads which in an incomplete and degraded form you have read
perhaps.
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