Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/348

270 which the Tamar makes a great loop—at one time assuredly a very strong camp; then it became a gentleman's place, now it is a ruin.

Ethelwald felt uneasy. He told his wife the story of the deception he had practised, which shows how soft and incapable of dealing with women he was. Then he went on to ask of her the impossible—to disguise her beauty. As if any woman would do that!

But when Elfrida knew the story she also ruffled up, not a little, and made a point of dressing herself in her most costly array, braiding her lovely hair with jewels, and washing her pretty face in milk and eau de—elder-flowers. Edgar became madly enamoured, and to boot furious with the man who had deceived him.

As they were together one day hunting, and were alone, the king smote Ethelwald with a javelin so that he died, and he took Elfrida to be his wife; and to expiate his peccadillo, erected a convent in the Harewood forest.

Edgar died in 975, and he was but thirty-two years old when he died.

Now, is there any truth in this story?

The tale comes to us from Geoffrey Gaimar and from William of Malmesbury, and their accounts do not quite tally, for Gaimar makes the king send off the obnoxious husband to the wars, to fall by the hand of the rebels in Yorkshire, and this looks like a cooking-up of the story of David and Uriah. On the other hand, William of Malmesbury's tale smells somewhat of an English version of the story in the Nibelungenlied of Sigurd and Kriemhild.