In midsummer, when the purple is on the broom, a strange pageant
moves on the dim horizon, a shifting mirage of sea and shore,
forest, lake, and islands lying high, with ships and castles and
spires of distant churches--the witchery of the heath that speaks in
the tales and superstitions of its simple people. High in the blue
soars the lark, singing its song of home and hope to its nesting
mate. This is the heath which, denying to the hardest toil all but
the barest living, has given of its poetry to the Danish tongue some
of its sweetest songs.
But in this busy world day-dreams must make way for the things that
make the day count, castles in the air to homes upon the soil. The
heath had known such in the dim past. It had not always been a
desert. The numberless cairns that lie scattered over it, sometimes
strung out for miles as if marking the highways of the ancients,
which they doubtless do, sometimes grouped where their villages
stood, bear witness to it. Great battles account for their share,
and some of them were fought in historic times. On Grathe Heath the
young King Valdemar overcame his treacherous rival Svend. Alone and
hunted, the beaten man sought refuge, Saxo tells us, behind a stump,
where he was found and slain by one of the King's axemen.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135