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8 MAEGAEET OF ' -KOitWAY;-
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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» Of At So A Time Much Like Discussion T...
had But lately relinquished paganism . They took ho part in- ' the " crusades . They traded chiefly among themselves ,
andunless-, under a piratical flag " , were rarely to be encountered beyond that point where the North Sea first merges into the- English Channel .
Nay , so remote and barbarous were these regions supposed to be , that a geographical work of the year 1010 describe _* Norway and
Sweden as two vast realms unknown to the Christian world , and gravely asserts that the inhabitants of Russia are favored by nature
with only one eye and one leg ! Not , however , to go quite so far as this ingenious author , we nmst confess that Norway , Sweden , and
Denmark were , up to the middle of the fourteenth century , in a very unsettled and uncivilized condition . Frequent interregnums
and assassinations had undermined the security of all three crowns , and the oppression of the barons had already evoked more than one
signal and sudden vengeance on the part of the peasantry . Entrenched in their hereditary domains , these haughty nobles set
the laws at defiance , exempted themselves from taxation , were freebooters by land and pirates hy sea , and stipulated that they
should never be governed by a woman . How these rude Northmen came afterwards to be both _g-overned
and subdued by a woman ; how a woman not only abated them of their personal privileges , but deprived them of even their national
individuality ; how , driven from all their strongholds of pride and prejudice , they were made to bow lower beneath that woman ' s yoke
than ever their ancestors bowed in the old time before the priestesses of the temple , it is now our purpose to- relate .
Margaret Waldemar , younger daughter of King Waldemar III , of Denmark and _Jledwige his wife , was born at Copenhagen in the
year 1352 . Some Danish chroniclers tell a strange story of her birth—a fragment of mediaeval scandal , no doubt , and sufficiently
undeserving of serious credence . After several years of wedded happiness , during which he had become the father of two children ,
King "Waldemar , they say , grew causelessly jealous of his Queen , and banished her to the retirement of Soborg Castle . Here she
remained , solitary and faithful , till one day when the King , weary of hunting , found himself in the neighbourhood of the Castle , and
went in to rest . Struck by the beauty of an attendant who waited upon him at supper , he proposed _^ o _make her his mistress . The
woman feigned consent , and by such a strategem as that which is concerted between Isabella and the Duke , in " Measure for Measure , "
Waldemar , like Lord Angelo , remained true to his true wife without intending it . By and by the little Margaret was born , and we are
left to hope that Hedwige regained her husband's love , for the story goes no farther .
Fiction apart , Waldemar III . was a patriotic sovereign , a temperate judge , and a profound politician . His life bears an outline
resemblance to that of Charles II . of England , inasmuch as he
underwent exile and adversity , suffered in his youth for the sins of
8 Maegaeet Of ' -Koitway;-
8 MAEGAEET OF ' -KOitWAY ; -
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1859, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031859/page/8/
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