s in contest with the Danes. Probably the full
total of the misery inflicted on this country by the Danish raids can
never be reckoned, but that they crippled and exhausted Saxon England
by their frequency and the great duration of time over which they
extended is apparent by the advance made in civilization in the short
period between the breaking of their power and the coming of the
Normans. Devonshire was not spared by them, and the cliffs of
Teignmouth are said to be blood-red since a great slaughter of the
Danes in 970. Certainly the Saxon Chronicle records contests bloody
and pitiless enough, and tradition lingers still in many places where
history has no record. In Devon, for instance, wherever the
dwarf-elder grows folk say that Danish blood has been spilt, and that a
group of these trees marks the site of an old battlefield; indeed, the
dwarf-elder is still called "Danes-elder" in the West Country.

Between Bideford and Appledore, on this northern coast of Devon, stands
Kenwith Castle--long called Hennaborough or Henry Hill--under whose
walls the great Alfred and his son met the Danes under Hubba, and
defeated them with great slaughter about the year 877. The English
captured the famous standard of the Danes, the Raven, which was
"wrought in needlework by the daughters of Lothbroc," and which had
magical properties--clapping its wings when defeat was at hand. The
remnant of the Danish force, carrying their wounded leader with them,
retreated to their ships, and Hubba died there on the beach, and was
buried by his followers before they fled aboard, under a great rock
called Hubba's Stone, and now in corrupt form Hubblestone, a name which
still clings near the spot, though probably the rock of Hubba is now
swept by the sea. But under this rock he lies, with his weapons and
trophies about him and his crown of gold on his head, until the last
trump shall rouse him.

[Illustration: Bossington Hill from Porlock Hill]

The grave of Hubba lies under the sea, like King Arthur's lost country
of Lyonesse, where the fisher-folk say they can hear the bells ring
from the drowned churches as they sail over them on still summer
mornings; but near Porlock the sea has yielded the strip of land it has
stolen from Bideford, and the Danish long-ships rode what are now the
green fields around Porlock.

That it was so the very name Porlock shows, for Port-locan means an
enclosed place for ships, under which name it is ment