Sir Frederick Madden
writing from 1828 to 1832 at the outset of his highly interesting
communications to the Asiatic Society, at first inclined to the
Crusaders theory, but upon further investigation later in his articles
he arrived at the conclusion that chess might have been known
among us in Athelstan's reign from 925 to 941, and Professor
Forbes writing from 1854 to 1860 concurred in that view. Both
of these authorities after quoting old chess incidents and anecdotes
of Pepin's and Charlemagne's times with other references to chess
in France, Germany, and Scandinavia, then pass on to chess in
England, and after asserting the probability that the Saxons most
likely received chess from their neighbours the Danes then fix
apparently somewhat inconsistently so late as the Tenth century
for it. They assert that the tradition of the game having been
brought from the North certainly existed, and is mentioned by
Gaimar who wrote about the year 1150, when speaking of the
mission of Edelwolth from King Edgar to the castle of Earl Orgar,
in Devonshire to verify the reports of his daughter Elstreuth's
beauty. When he arrived at the mansion,
"Orgar juout a un esches,
Un gin k'il aprist des Daneis,
Od lui juout Elstruat lu bele,
Sus ciel n'ont donc tele damesele.
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