all the water had been sucked
in, out and up it came pouring again, in huge mountains, and upon them
the Frenchman's ships, to his intense astonishment, reappeared out of the
bottomless pit; into one of which he jumped; being, like a true
Frenchman, thoroughly master of the situation; and got safe home to tell
Paul the deacon. It is not quite the explanation of the tides which one
would have wished for: but if a French nobleman of high rank will swear
that he saw it with his own eyes, what can Paul do, in common courtesy,
but believe him?

Paul has observed, too, which is a fact, that there is a small tide in
his own Adriatic; and suggests modestly that there may be a similar hole
in the bottom of that sea, only a little one, the tide being very little.
After which, 'his praelibatis,' he will return, he says, to his story.
And so he goes back to the famous Langbard Saga, the old story, which he
has turned out of living Teutonic verse into dead Latin prose, and calls
De Woden et Frea quaedam ridicula fabula; but can't help for the life of
him telling it, apologizing all the time. How the Winils (his own folk)
went out to fight the Wendels, many more than them in number; and how
Gambara, the Alruna-wife, cried to Freia the goddess, and Freia told her
that whichsoever of the two armies first greeted Woden at the sunrise
should win. But the Winils are far away on the war-road, and there is no
time to send to them. So Freia bids her take the Winil women, and dress
them as warriors, and plait their tresses over their lips for beards, and
cry to Woden; and Woden admires their long beards, and thinks them such
valiant 'war-beasts,' that he grants them the victory.

Then Freia tells him how he has been taken in, and the old god laughs
till the clouds rattle again, and the Winils are called Langbardr ever
after.

But then comes in the antiquary, and says that the etymology is
worthless, and that Langbardr means long axes--(bard=an axe)--a word
which we keep in halbert, a hall-axe, or guard's pole-axe; and perhaps
the antiquary is right.

But again comes in a very learned man, Dr. Latham {162}, and more than
hints that the name is derived from the Lange Borde, the long meadows by
the side of the Elbe: and so a good story crumbles to pieces, and

'All charms do fly
Beneath the touch of cold philosophy.'

Then follows another story, possibly from another saga. How by reason of
a great famine they had to leave Sc