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A Mediaeval Ship
IT IS indeed little we know of the ships of that dark period between the fall of the Roman power and the first re-awakenings of pictorial art. We have only a single intermediate concrete example-the Gokstad ship, heretofore described. That there were seagoing ships at this time we know from the sagas; also from the monkish manuscripts, the minstrel lays, the folk stories and fables. We may believe that for many centuries, at the beginning of our era, there was little or no change in the craft that sailed the seas or closely skirted the shores. So to picture a ship of the Dark Ages is to draw upon our imagination, limiting our vision by the horizon of our scanty knowledge. Therefore, be lenient, we pray thee, with our day-dream, for it is naught but romance in both senses of the world.
Nor can we do better than to quote a scene of shipping from that fantastically appealing and altogether delightful fairy tale of William Morris, entitled "The Wood Beyond the World." "He saw there a tall ship. . a ship all boun, which had her boats out, and men sitting to the oars thereof ready to tow her outwards when the hawser should be cast off, and by seeming her mariners were but abiding for some one or other to come aboard. . "So Walter stood idly watching the said ship and as he looked, lo!--folk passed him toward the gangway. These were three: first came a dwarf, dark brown of hue and hideous. After him came a maiden, young by seeming . . fair of face as a flower, gray eyed, brown haired, with lips full and red, slim and gentle of body. Simple was her array, of a short and green gown, so that on her right ankle was clear to see an iron ring. . Last of the three was a lady, tall and stately, so radiant of visage and glorious of raiment that it was hard to say what like she was . . "They went over the gangway into the ship . . then he saw how the hawser was cast off and the boat fell to tugging the big ship towards the harbour mouth with hale and how of men. Then the sail fell down from the yard and was sheeted home and filled with the fair wind as the ship's bows ran up on the first green wave outside the haven. "Even therewith the shipmen cast abroad a banner whereon was done in a green field a grim wolf ramping up against a maiden; and so went the ship upon her way."
