The story of the martyrdom of King Edmund is of this character.

Edmund was a sort of king over one of the nations of Anglo-Saxons called East Angles, who, as their name imports, occupied a part of the eastern portion of the island.

Their particular hostility to Edmund was awakened, according to the story, in the following manner: There was a certain bold and adventurous Dane named Lothbroc, who one day took his falcon on his arm and went out alone in a boat on the Baltic Sea, or in the straits connecting it with the German Ocean, intending to go to a certain island and hunt.

The falcon is a species of hawk which they were accustomed to train in those days, to attack and bring down birds from the air, and falconry was, as might have been expected, a very picturesque and exciting species of hunting.

The game which Lothbroc was going to seek consisted of the wild fowl which frequents sometimes, in vast numbers, the cliffs and shores of the islands in those seas.