o
have been simply a great, big-hearted, overgrown boy in the whole
affair. All claims of his having had an eye on the throne of Northumbria
fade away under the delightful ingenuousness of his attitude as
expressed in these letters.

"I should of thought," he writes in 821 to his sister, "that anyone who
was not cock-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk
bear-foot through that eel-grass from the beech up to the bath-house
without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this
AM. Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had
seen him. He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope. Hey I yelled
at him all the way, do you think you are trying to walk a tide-rope?
Well say maybe that didn't make him sore."

Shortly after this letter was written, Wiglaf ascended the throne of
Mercia, his father having disappeared Saturday night without trace. A
peasant[3] some years after said that he met the old king walking along
a road near what is now the Scottish border, telling people that he was
carrying a letter of greeting from the Mayor of Pontygn to the Mayor of
Langoscgirh. Others say that he fell into the sea off the coast of Wales
and became what is now known as King's Rocks. This last has never been
authenticated.

At any rate, the son, on ascending the throne, became king. His first
official act was to order dinner. "A nice, juicy steak," he is said to
have called for,[4] "French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee." It is
probable that he really said "a coff of cuppee," however, as he was a
wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.

We are now thrown into the maelstrom of contradictory historical data,
some of which credits Wiglaf with being the greatest ruler Mercia ever
had and some of which indicates that he was nothing but a royal bum. It
is not the purpose of this biography to try to settle the dispute. All
we know for a fact is that he was a very human man who had faults like
the rest of us and that shortly after becoming king he disappears from
view.

His reign began at 4 P.M. one Wednesday (no, Thursday) afternoon and
early the next morning Mercia was overrun by the West-Saxons. It is
probable that King Wiglaf was sold for old silver to help pay expenses.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lebody. _Witnesses of the Proximity of Wiglaf to Offa._ II. 265

[2] Rouguet. _Famous Questions in History._ III. 467

[3] _Peasant Tales and Fun-maki