The Ballad of the White Horse

Produced by Paul Bonner, and Martin Ward





THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE

By G.K. Chesterton






Prefatory Note:


This ballad needs no historical notes, for the simple reason that it
does not profess to be historical.  All of it that is not frankly
fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to
emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in
the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that
he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader
and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things
about him.


The cult of Alfred was a popular cult, from the darkness of the ninth
century to the deepening twilight of the twentieth. It is wholly as a
popular legend that I deal with him here. I write as one ignorant of
everything, except that I have found the legend of a King of Wessex
still alive in the land.  I will give three curt cases of what I mean.
A tradition connects the ultimate victory of Alfred with the valley in
Berkshire called the Vale of the White Horse. I have seen doubts of the
tradition, which may be valid doubts. I do not know when or where the
story started; it is enough that it started somewhere and ended with me;
for I only seek to write upon a hearsay, as the old balladists did.  For
the second case, there is a popular tale that Alfred played the harp and
sang in the Danish camp; I select it because it is a popular tale, at
whatever time it arose. For the third case, there is a popular tale that
Alfred came in contact with a woman and cakes; I select it because it is
a popular tale, because it is a vulgar one.  It has been disputed by
grave historians, who were, I think, a little too grave to be good
judges of it. The two chief charges against the story are that it was
first recorded long after Alfred's death, and that (as Mr. Oman urges)
Alfred never really wandered all alone without any thanes or soldiers.
Both these objections might possibly be met. It has taken us nearly as
long to learn the whole truth about Byron, and perhaps longer to learn
the whole truth about Pepys, than elapsed between Alfred and the first
writing of such tales. And as for the other objection, do the historians
really think that Alfred after Wilton, or Napoleon after Leipsic, never
walked about in a wood by himself for the matter of an hour or two? Ten
minutes might be made sufficient for the essence of the story. But I am
not concerned to prove the truth of these popular traditions. It is
enough for me to maintain two things:  that they are popular traditions;
and that without these popular traditions we should have bothered about
Alfred about as much as we bother about Eadwig.


One other consideration needs a note.  Alfred has come down to us in the
best way (that is, by national legends) solely for the same reason as
Arthur and Roland and the other giants of that darkness, because he
fought for the Christian civilization against the heathen nihilism. But
since this work was really done by generation after generation, by the
Romans before they withdrew, and by the Britons while they remained, I
have summarised this first crusade in a triple symbol, and given to a
fictitious Roman, Celt, and Saxon, a part in the glory of Ethandune. I
fancy that in fact Alfred's Wessex was of very mixed bloods; but in any
case, it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while
preserving the sentiment; to see all ages in a sort of splendid
foreshortening.  That is the use of tradition: it telescopes history.


G.K.C.




DEDICATION


          Of great limbs gone to chaos,
          A great face turned to night--
          Why bend above a shapeless shroud
          Seeking in such archaic cloud
          Sight of strong lords and light?

          Where seven sunken Englands
          Lie buried one by one,
          Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
          Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
          To smoke and choke the sun?

          In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
          What shape shall man discern?
          These lords may light the mystery
          Of mastery or victory,
          And these ride high in history,
          But these shall not return.

          Gored on the Norman gonfalon
          The Golden Dragon died:
          We shall not wake with ballad strings
          The good time of the smaller things,
          We shall not see the holy kings
          Ride down by Severn side.

          Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
          As the broidery of Bayeux
          The England of that dawn remains,
          And this of Alfred and the Danes
          Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
          Too English to be true.

          Of a good king on an island
          That ruled once on a time;
          And as he walked by an apple tree