Lee Scrivner

Charlemagne was no Frenchman. He was a Frank, and the Franks were not Gauls but a Germanic folk who came across the Rhine like wolves in winter. His tongue was Frankish, Old High German, not the Latinized chansons of Paris. He did not ride from Versailles or speak in salons; he ruled from Aachen, a stone’s throw from the old Saxon woods, where oak and ash still held the breath of Wotan. Charlemagne butchered the Saxons because he feared their fire. At Verden, he baptized with blood, for he saw in Widukind a mirror of what he might have been, had he not been bent to Rome; and in that fear, he slaughtered 4,500 sons of the soil at Verden, not as a French king, but as a Judas to his own Volk. He is ours by blood, ours by tongue, and yet, not ours by soul. He betrayed the forest for the crown, the tribe for the cross; he betrayed Germania for an empire of stone. The French need myths, and Karl der Sachsenschlächter offers one they can almost grasp, so let them call him Father; but we, the heirs of the Red Brook, know better. We remember him as the Slayer of Free Men. We remember the bone-song of the heath, the cry of Herne’s stag, the fire-eyed fury of the old Saxon tribes who would rather die standing in their meadows than kneel before a Pope’s bastard. He may be buried at Aachen, but he is not at peace. Let the soil judge him, and let the blood speak. "Free men they will be in a free land, a land with neither master nor slave, neither justice nor law, with neither loyalty nor treason. Their heads will roll into the sand and their blood will flow into the yellow sand walled ditch that leads on to the brook. Four thousand five hundred widows and brides will cry today across the land and all the eagles and ravens, wolves and foxes will feed till they burst... Renke, if you would now take the sling out from under your shirt and the stone from your pocket, and would swing the sling with wild wide open eyes and mouth, staring at the white forehead beneath the golden crown, would make a sudden movement with your wrist, and the stone would crush the skull of the Frankish king, his brain splattering into the faces of the dignitaries and his blood flowing onto the crimson robe, then Renke, you would not have lived in vain. From the Emse to the Elbe rivers a cry would echo, would sound on the mountains and in the forests, heaths and marshes, bogs and moors. Under every straw roof the axes would be sharpened, ropes would be turned from all the willow switches, the resin would be scraped from every cart, all the reed stalks would be bound into torches, every hazelshoot would be carved into an arrow, every braid woven into a sinew. The Hillebillen [wooden signalling board struck with a hammer; used by colliers for communication] would be heard all day and the urus [Aurochs, now extinct giant cattle] horns would wail from morn till dark, and from the evenings twilight ["Ulenflucht" - literally "flight of the owl") to the cock's crow at dawn, the red fires would flicker on every mountain and hill. Every narrow passage and hollow way would be filled with stone blocks and trunks and branches, on every road there would be dug out wolf traps with sharpened poles at their bottom, all dams and dikes would be opened and all water would seep into the ground, and from every farm, bog and wood, the men and young lads would stream together, the hunger for blood in their gaze. And Widukind, the lost duke, would be there and would congregate the hordes around him, the men from the Emse and Lippe, Aller and Weser. No Frank in the land would stay alive, they all would have to return to the earth. The eagles and the ravens, wolves and foxes should burst from their generous pickings, and on the branches of the oaks by the great stones, the heads of the dignitaries would be picked apart by colorful Meisen [Blue Tits or Willow Tits (Parus Montanus)]. Get out the sling, Renke, and the stone, and push through the crowd. It is time. The black man has ceased to speak. The king breaks the white cane [thus condemning the men to death]. Four thousand five hundred heads are due. Four thousand five hundred necks are in danger. Four thousand five hundred male hearts stand still. And nine thousand blue eyes grow dim." - Hermann Löns, The Red Brook