d that he had come
to Denmark to find the son of Frode, not a man who crammed his proud
and gluttonous stomach with rich elaborate feasts. For the Teuton
extravagance which the king favoured had led him, in his longing for the
pleasures of abundance, to set to the fire again, for roasting, dishes
which had been already boiled. Thereupon he could not forbear from
attacking Ingild's character, but poured out the whole bitterness of
his reproaches on his head. He condemned his unfilial spirit, because
he gaped with repletion and vented his squeamishness in filthy hawkings;
because, following the lures of the Saxons, he strayed and departed far
from soberness; because he was so lacking in manhood as not to pursue
even the faintest shadow of it. But, declared Starkad, he bore the
heaviest load of infamy, because, even when he first began to see
service, he forgot to avenge his father, to whose butchers, forsaking
the law of nature, he was kind and attentive. Men whose deserts were
most vile he welcomed with loving affection; and not only did he let
those go scot-free, whom he should have punished most sharply, but he
even judged them fit persons to live with and entertain at his table,
whereas he should rather have put them to death. Hereupon Starkad is
also said to have sung as follows:

"Let the unwarlike youth yield to the aged, let him honour all the years
of him that is old. When a man is brave, let none reproach the number of
his days.

"Though the hair of the ancient whiten with age, their valour stays
still the same; nor shall the lapse of time have power to weaken their
manly heart.

"I am elbowed away by the offensive guest, who taints with vice his
outward show of goodness, whilst he is the slave of his belly and
prefers his daily dainties to anything.

"When I was counted as a comrade of Frode, I ever sat in the midst of
warriors on a high seat in the hall, and I was the first of the princes
to take my meal.

"Now, the lot of a nobler age is reversed; I am shut in a corner, I am
like the fish that seeks shelter as it wanders to and fro hidden in the
waters.

"I, who used surely in the former age to lie back on a couch handsomely
spread, am now thrust among the hindmost and driven from the crowded
hall.

"Perchance I had been driven on my back at the doors, had not the wall
struck my side and turned me back, and had not the beam, in the way made
it hard for me to fly when I was thrust forth.

"I am bai