King Flaxen's Annual Yuletide Address

Anus Horribilis (again)

Tis Yuletide once again and I find it incumbent upon my regal personage to pontificate anew on the year’s past events and to ruminate upon the true meaning and spirit of the season.

Once again large numbers of Jutes have travelled from their home in ramshackle longboats facing the frigid peril of the North Sea. As usual, my loyal band of House Carls did receive them with open arms, and indeed used those arms to slay them even unto their little ones. Mounds of the dead were piled on the beach as a supplication to Woden.

This year I was approached by a tonsured monk and asked about my preparations to celebrate the birth of the Christ child. I stated that I was enchanted with the events at the end of the good Lord’s corporeal existence and subsequently elaborated by nailing the impudent priest to a large piece of wood. As a nod to the festive season we placed a garland of mistletoe upon his head and painted a comic smiley face on his bald pate. Me and the war band did chortle so. The monk failed to see the joke and wailed and moaned abysmally. What happened to Christian fortitude in adversity?

The fiscal purse has been depleted by wanton and extravagant disbursement. My minister of finance, Igbert ‘The Innumerate’ has unfortunately met with a freak and forewarned accident when his neck brushed against the blade of my double headed war axe, ‘Twat Cruncher’. I should have listened to prudent counsel and appointed Athelstan ‘The Accountant’; thus are the vicissitudes of life. But fear not my good Thegns, I mean to recoup my losses by stealing from our neighbours, 'The Hippies'. The newly arrived Hippies are a peaceable folk who eschew violence in all its manifest guises. They are much beguiled by trees and eat only beans and root vegetables. Thusly, they are easy to kill and any comely women amongst them will be taken for ourselves. It is my supposition that any folk not prepared to defend their land; their women; their chattels are deserved of all the ills of a cruel world which undoubtedly will accrue and befall them......   

On a personal note, I have been much troubled by my 'man gland' which reposes in my pert posterior like a plum, with aplomb. It has waxed mightily into a vast tumescence. On a bad day, whilst seated, I am able to rock from side to side. As predicted, my physic prescribed leeches and blood letting and much colon irrigation. This has helped my choleric temperament, not at all and I have become prone to fits of unprovoked violence- no change there then.

And finally and as always:

Merry Yuletide to all my Thegns, Carls and Bondsmen. May 994AD be a year of fruitful bounty. May your loins swell with righteous turgidity and all offspring resemble their sire, especially as paternity assignment, through DNA testing, must await a 1,000 years. Be good to your kin and women who share your bed. As for the rest, deal as you see fit and exercise your will and whim to pillage, burn and slay according to your want.