Once There were Heroes By Lars Walker
A little while back, somebody quoted a line from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to me. I was thinking what a marvelously prissy name "J. Alfred Prufrock" is, and then it struck me -- how the heck did a name like "Alfred" slide to a place where it evokes images of skinny gentlemen ("But how his arms and legs are thin!") with weak chins and pince nez?
To a guy like me, who spends a lot of weekends as a hobby reenactor, dressing up as a Viking and whacking (and being whacked) with blunt swords, the name Alfred has very different associations. Alfred (c. 849-899) is the only Anglo-Saxon king to whom we apply the descriptive "the Great." A mighty and shrewd warrior, he prevented the subjugation of his country by the Danes (known to us reenactors as "our guys"), forcing them to accept Christian baptism and the partition of the country after whomping them at the Battle of Edington.
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