ive strangely desires death by fire. A captive king is exposed,
chained to wild beasts, thrown into a serpent-pit, wherein Ragnar is
given the fate of the elder Gunnar in the Eddic Lays, Atlakvida. The
king is treated with great respect by his people, he is finely clad, and
his commands are carried out, however abhorrent or absurd, as long as
they do not upset customary or statute law. The king has slaves in
his household, men and women, besides his guard of housecarles and his
bearsark champions. A king's daughter has thirty slaves with her, and
the footmaiden existed exactly as in the stories of the Wicked Waiting
Maid. He is not to be awakened in his slumbers (cf. St. Olaf's Life,
where the naming of King Magnus is the result of adherence to this
etiquette). A champion weds the king's leman.

His thanes are created by the delivery of a sword, which the king
bolds by the blade and the thane takes by the hilt. (English earls were
created by the girding with a sword. "Taking treasure, and weapons
and horses, and feasting in a hall with the king" is synonymous with
thane-hood or gesith-ship in "Beowulf's Lay"). A king's thanes must
avenge him if he falls, and owe him allegiance. (This was paid in the
old English monarchies by kneeling and laying the head down at the
lord's knee.)

The trick by which the Mock-king, or King of the Beggars (parallel to
our Boy-bishop, and perhaps to that enigmatic churls' King of the "O. E.
Chronicle", s.a. 1017, Eadwiceorla-kyning) gets allegiance paid to
him, and so secures himself in his attack on the real king, is cleverly
devised. The king, besides being a counsel giver himself, and speaking
the law, has "counsellors", old and wise men, "sapientes" (like the
0. E. Thyle). The aged warrior counsellor, as Starcad here and Master
Hildebrand in the "Nibelungenlied", is one type of these persons,
another is the false counsellor, as Woden in guise of Bruni, another
the braggart, as Hunferth in "Beowulf's Lay". At "moots" where laws
are made, kings and regents chosen, cases judged, resolutions taken of
national importance, there are discussions, as in that armed most the
host.

The king has, beside his estates up and down the country, sometimes
(like Hrothgar with his palace Heorot in "Beowulf's Lay") a great fort
and treasure house, as Eormenric, whose palace may well have really
existed. There is often a primitive and negroid character about
dwellings of formidable personages, heads plac