"Call me
here in your own country what ye will, but at home I am called the
Sleeping Bard."
At that word I could see an ancient mannikin, bent double, head to feet,
like a bramble, straightening himself, and looking at me more malignantly
than the red devil, and without a word he hurled a big skull at my head,
but, thanks to a sheltering tombstone, missed me. "Truce, sir, I pray
you," cried I, "to a stranger who was never here before, and will never
come again, could I but once find the way home." "I'll make you remember
you've been here," quoth he, and, again setting upon me with a thighbone,
he beat me most unmercifully, while I dodged about as best as I could.
"Ho ho!" I cried, "this country is very unmannerly towards strangers; is
there no justice of the peace here?" "Peace, indeed," said he, "thou,
surely, hast no right to sue for peace, who disturbest the dead in their
graves." "Pray, sir, might I know your name, for I wot not that I have
ever molested anyone from this country?" "Sirrah!" cried he, "know then
that I, and not you, am the Sleeping Bard, and have been left in peace
these nine centuries by all but you," and again he set upon me.
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