Alfred told him that he was one of the king's _thanes_.

A thane was a sort of chieftain in the Saxon state.

He accounted for his condition by saying that Alfred's army had been beaten by the Danes, and that he, with the other generals, had been forced to fly.

He begged the cow-herd to conceal him, and to keep the secret of his character until times should change, so that he could take the field again.
The story of Alfred's seclusion on the _island_, as it might almost be called, of Ethelney, is told very differently by the different narrators of it.

Some of these narrations are inconsistent and contradictory.