Gunilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, who had been married to Earl Paling, a nobleman, and had embraced Christianity: she was first obliged to witness the murder of her husband and child, and then was killed herself. When Sueno, or Sweyn, the King of Denmark, sometimes styled the King of the Sea Kings, heard of this deed of blood, he swore he would have a great revenge. He raised an army and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet sailed to England, and landing on the western coasts, near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste. Wheresover the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare for them great feasts; and when they had satisfied their appetite, and had drunk a curse to England, with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, killed their Saxon entertainers, and continued their march. For several years they carried on this war; burning the crops, farm-houses, barns, mills, granaries, killing the labourers, causing famine and starvation, and leaving heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found thriving towns, hunting out every corner which had not been previously ransacked. Ethelred overwhelmed with such calamities, at length in the year 1007, agreed to pay the Danegelt to which I have before alluded. In the absence of accurate information, we may not unreasonably suppose this obelisk to have been raised in commemoration of some of the important events of this period. Sweyn was afterwards welcomed by the English people as their Sovereign, but died suddenly in little more than a month after he was proclaimed King of England. Can this have been his burial-place?[1]
The first letter in the second line is distinctly legible, and undoubtedly U. I sometimes fancy, that by taking the last imperfect letter of the preceding line, we may possibly obtain the word DUNSTANO. Dunstan, however, was dead before the time already mentioned, and though he lived to place the crown upon the head of Ethelred, and may without impropriety be classed among the contemporaries of that period, yet as he died in 988, he cannot have taken any part in the events above mentioned.
- ↑ I may mention that a friend to whom I gave a copy of my reading of the inscription, suggests that in the second line is "the word kisle, one of the cases of kisil, gravel." It is difficult to conceive however, why such an immense stone should be brought from so great a distance and covered with the most elaborate sculpture, for the purpose of making any record about gravel.
