The Battle of Maldon
A Viking force pinned on an island offers to sail away for tribute, and the English ealdorman holding the causeway refuses; then, out of pride in his own strength, he lets them cross to fight on even ground. The retainers who stay on after their lord goes down speak the best-known lines in Old English on courage stiffening as everything else gives way. Composed within living memory of the engagement of 991, and surviving only through an eighteenth-century transcript of a manuscript later lost to fire.
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