The Gibbelins eat, as is well known,
 nothing less good than man.
Their evil tower is joined to the lands we know, by a bridge.
 Their hoard is beyond all reason,
 a cellar for emeralds, a cellar for sapphires.
 The use for their wealth is to attract a supply of food.
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known,
 nothing less good than man.
In times of famine they have ever been known to scatter rubies abroad,
 and sure enough their larders would be full again.
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known,
 nothing less good than man.
Where the river is narrow the tower was built;
 they liked to see burglars rowing easily to their steps.
 There the Gibbelins lived and discreditably fed.
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known,
 nothing less good than man.
Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault,
 hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind,
 a man not unremembered among the makers of myth,
 pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard
 that by now he deemed it his.
Not in the folly of his youth did Alderic come to the tower,
 but he studied carefully for several years
 the manner in which burglars met their doom.
 In every case they had entered by the door.
He consulted those who gave advice on this quest;
 he noted every detail and cheerfully paid their fees,
 for what were their clients now?
No more than examples of the savoury art,
 mere half-forgotten memories of a meal.
These were the requisites for the quest that these men used to advise:
 a horse, a boat, mail armour, and at least three men-at-arms.
Some said, "Blow the horn at the tower door;"
 others said, "Do not touch it."
Alderic thus decided: he would take no horse down to the river's edge,
 he would not row in a boat,
 he would go alone and by way of the Forest Unpassable.
 How to pass, you may say, by the unpassable?
 This was his plan.
There was a dragon he knew of who deserved to die,
 not alone because of the number of maidens he cruelly slew,
 but because he ravaged the very land
 and was the bane of the dukedom.
Now Alderic determined to go up against him,
 took horse and spear and pricked till he met the dragon,
 breathing bitter smoke.
"Hath foul dragon ever slain a true knight?"
 And well the dragon knew that this had never been;
 he hung his head.
"Then," said the knight,
 "thou shalt be my trusty steed,
 and if not, by this spear there shall befall thee
 all that the troubadours tell of the dooms of thy breed."
And the dragon swore to the knight to become his trusty steed;
 on a saddle on this dragon's back
 Alderic sailed above the unpassable forest.
But first he pondered that subtle plan
 which was more profound than merely to avoid
 all that had been done before;
 he commanded a blacksmith,
 and the blacksmith made him a pickaxe.
There was a rejoicing.
 Men hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed,
 they would shatter their bridge,
 break the golden chain that bound them to the world.
There was little love for the Gibbelins,
 though all men envied their hoard.
 The hoard of the Gibbelins.
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known,
 nothing less good than man.
Alderic mounted his dragon as though he was already a conqueror,
 and what pleased the crowd more than the good
 was the gold that he scattered as he rode away;
 he would not need it, he said,
 if he found the Gibbelins' hoard.
When they heard he had rejected the advice of those that gave it,
 some said that the knight was mad,
 others said that he was greater than those that gave advice,
 but none appreciated the worth of his plan.
He reasoned thus:
 for centuries men had been well advised
 and had gone by the cleverest way,
 while the Gibbelins came to expect them to come by boat
 and to look for them at the door
 whenever their larder was empty,
 even as a man looks for a snipe in the marsh;
 if a snipe should sit in the top of a tree,
 would men find him there?
 Assuredly never!
So Alderic decided to swim the river
 and not to go by the door,
 but to pick his way into the tower through the stone.
It was in his mind to work below the level of the ocean,
 the river that girdles the world,
 so that as soon as he made a hole in the wall
 the water should pour in, confounding the Gibbelins,
 and flooding the cellars;
 therein he would dive for emeralds
 as a diver dives for pearls.
On the day that he galloped away from his home
 scattering largesse of gold,
 the dragon snapping at maidens as he went,
 they came to the arboreal precipice of the unpassable forest.
 The dragon rose at it with a rattle of wings.
Soon even there the twilight faded away;
 when they descended at the edge of the world
 it was night and the moon was shining.
Ocean, the ancient river, narrow and shallow there,
 flowed by and made no murmur.
 Whether the Gibbelins banqueted
 or whether they watched by the door,
 they also made no murmur.
Alderic dismounted and took his armour off,
 and saying one prayer to his lady,
 swam with his pickaxe.
 He did not part from his sword,
 for fear that he met with a Gibbelin.
Landed on the other side, he began to work at once,
 and all went well with him.
 Nothing put out its head from any window,
 all lighted so that nothing within could see him in the dark.
 The blows of his axe were dulled in the deep walls.
All night he worked, and at dawn
 the last rock swerved and tumbled inwards,
 and the river poured in after.
Then Alderic took a stone, went to the bottom step,
 and hurled the stone at the door;
 he heard the echoes roll into the tower,
 and then he ran back and dived through the hole in the wall.
He was in the emerald-cellar.
 There was no light in the lofty vault above him,
 but, diving through twenty feet of water,
 he felt the floor all rough with emeralds,
 and open coffers full of them.
By a faint ray of the moon he saw that the water was green with them,
 and, easily filling a satchel, he rose again to the surface; and...
Gibbelins! There were the Gibbelins waist-deep in water,
 torches in their hands!
 Without saying a word, or even smiling,
 they hanged him on the outer wall.
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known,
 nothing less good than man.