Then sang men songs of old time, and amongst them Wood-wont stood with his fiddle amidst the Hall and Bow-may beside him, and they sang in turn to it sweetly and clearly; and this is some of what they sang:
Wild is the waste and long leagues over; Whither then wend ye spear and sword, Where nought shall see your helms but the plover, Far and far from the dear Dale’s sward?
Many a league shall we wend together With helm and spear and bended bow. Hark! how the wind blows up for weather: Dark shall the night be whither we go.
Dark shall the night be round the byre, And dark as we drive the brindled kine; Dark and dark round the beacon-fire, Dark down in the pass round our wavering line.
Turn on thy path, O fair-foot maiden, And come our ways by the pathless road; Look how the clouds hang low and laden Over the walls of the old abode!
Bare are my feet for the rough waste’s wending, Wild is the wind, and my kirtle’s thin; Faint shall I be ere the long way’s ending Drops down to the Dale and the grief therein.
Do on the brogues of the wild-wood rover, Do on the byrnies’ ring-close mail; Take thou the staff that the barbs hang over, O’er the wind and the waste and the way to prevail.
Come, for how from thee shall I sunder? Come, that a tale may arise in the land; Come, that the night may be held for a wonder, When the Wolf was led by a maiden’s hand!
Now will I fare as ye are faring, And wend no way but the way ye wend; And bear but the burdens ye are bearing, And end the day as ye shall end.
And many an eve when the clouds are drifting Down through the Dale till they dim the roof, Shall they tell in the Hall of the Maiden’s Lifting, And how we drave the spoil aloof.
Over the moss through the wind and the weather, Through the morn and the eve and the death of the day, Wend we man and maid together, For out of the waste is born the fray.
Then the Sun-beam spake to Gold-mane softly, and told him how this song was made by a minstrel concerning a foray in the early days of their first abode in Shadowy Vale, and how in good sooth a maiden led the fray and was the captain of the warriors:
‘Erst,’ she said, ‘this was counted as a wonder; but now we are so few that it is no wonder though the women will do whatsoever they may.’