Chapter 108

114. A verse in the passage from Drayton’s Polyolbion, Song xxvi, cited by Ritson, I, viii of Robin Hood, 1795, may refer to this version of the ballad: “The widow in distress he graciously relievd.”

115. In st. 2 Robin is in his proper Lincoln green. He wears scarlet red again in No. 141, st. 6 and in No 145, st. 18, his men being in green.

116. Fricke has observed this, pp 59, 69, and at p. 58 the resemblance to Wallace.

117. Even the author ofAseems not to be aware that Much, the Miller’s Son, is the standing name of one of Robin Hood’s men, and therefore would not answer for a disguise. InB,C, nothing is expressly said about the change of names, and in fact this arrangement seems not to be understood, since inB211Clifton is spoken of asoneClifton. ComparingB33, 34, 37, we see that Clifton should be Little John, but Midge, the Miller’s Son, himself, not Scathlock, still less John.

118. Also says Ritson, Robin Hood, II, 97, by Francis Coule, 13th June, 1631; but the ballad there entered is The Noble Fisherman.

119. Robin Hood, ed. 1832, p. xxxvi, note, p. lxxxvii.

120. The mutilated parts are supplied, to a slight extent, from a copy in the Bodleian Library (L. 78. Art., 5th tract), which happens to be injured on the right side of the title-page in nearly the same places as the Museum copy, and also has the lower portion cut off, to the loss of the printer’s name; the rest from an edition printed for J. Clark, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, 1686. Mr J. P. Collier possessed a copy with the same imprint as that of the Museum, which he lent Gutch, and which Gutch says he used for his text. If Gutch followed the Collier copy, then that was not identical with the Museum copy. Ritson reprinted the text of 1686.

121. “Now, under this precise gentleman’s favor, one would be glad to know what these same superstitious words were; there not being anything of the kind in Dr Gale’s copy, which seems to be the original, and which is shorter by two lines than the above. Thirteen should be thirty.” Ritson, Robin Hood, ed. 1832, II, 127 f. For the epitaph and the gravestone, see the same volume, pp. liv-lvii.

122. Percy: “As for Mirryland Town, it is probably a corruption of Milan (called by the Dutch Meylandt) town; the Pa is evidently the river Po, although the Adige, not the Po, runs through Milan.”B, 1 is unintelligible. Do the lads run down the Pa?

123. InJ, 4, he will be beaten for losing his ball. In the IrishF, 8, the mother takes a little rod in her hand, meaning to bate him for staying so long: cf.J10,N4, 12,and the last verse of T. Hood’s ‘Lost Heir.’

124.Dem Volke war die Glocke nicht herzlos; sie war ihm eine beseelte Persönlichkeit, und stand als solche mit dem Menschen in lebendigem Verkehr.... Die Glocken ... scheinen auch von höheren Mächten berührt zu werden; sie sprechen wie Gottesstimmen, ertönen oft von selbst, als Mahnung von oben, als Botschaft vom Tode bedeutender Personen, als Wahrzeichen der Unschuld eines Angeklagten, zur Bewährung der Heiligkeit eines von Gott erwählten Rüstzeugs. Uhland, Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung u. Sage, VIII, 588 f.

125. Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, II, 346 ff. “From 1219 to 1266 the MS. was written contemporaneously with the events described, from year to year:” p. xxxvi.

126. Chronica Majora, ed. Luard, V, 516–19. Matthew Paris died in 1259.

127. Seventy-one were thus reserved, but escaped, by the use of money or by the intercession of the Franciscans, or both. See the same volume, p. 546; but also the account which follows, from the Annals of Burton.

128. Annales de Burton, in Annales Monastici, Luard, I, 340–48. Hugh of Lincoln is commemorated in the Acta Sanctorum, July (27), VI, 494.

129. Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, etc., from a MS. in the “Bibliothèque royale, No 7268, 3. 3. A. Colb. 3745, fol. 135, rº, col. 1.” Reprinted by Halliwell, Ballads and Poems respecting Hugh of Lincoln, p. 1, and from Halliwell by Hume, Sir Hugh of Lincoln, etc., p. 43 ff. In stanzas 13, 75, there is an invocation in behalf of King Henry (Qui Deu gard et tenge sa vie!), which implies that he is living. The ballad shows an acquaintance with the localities.

130. “A la gule de aust.” The day, according to the Annals of Burton, was thevigilof St Peter ad vincula. We find in Henschel’s Ducange, “ad festum S. Petri, in gula Augusti,” and “le jour de feste S. Pere, en goule Aoust.” Strictly taken, goule should be the first day, Lammas.Peitevin was actually resident in Lincoln at the time. “He was called Peitevin the Great, to distinguish him from another person who bore the appellation of Peitevin the Little. The Royal Commission issued in 1256 directs an inquisition to be taken of the names of all those who belonged to the school of Peytevin Magnus, who had fled on account of his implication in the crucifixion of a Christian boy.” London Athenæum, 1849, p. 1270 f.

Peitevin was actually resident in Lincoln at the time. “He was called Peitevin the Great, to distinguish him from another person who bore the appellation of Peitevin the Little. The Royal Commission issued in 1256 directs an inquisition to be taken of the names of all those who belonged to the school of Peytevin Magnus, who had fled on account of his implication in the crucifixion of a Christian boy.” London Athenæum, 1849, p. 1270 f.

131. The site of the Jewry was on the hill and about the castle: London Athenæum, 1849, p. 1271.

132. These renegades play a like part in many similar cases.

133. Les Jus, 821; but this is impossible, and we have li justis in 911.

134. “Canwick is pleasantly situated on a bold eminence, about a mile northward of Lincoln.” Allen, History of the County of Lincoln, I, 208.

135. I do not find this story in the Basel edition of c. 1475.

136. A case cited by Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 2rTheil, p. 220, from Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, l. vii, 16, differs from later ones by being a simple extravagance of drunkenness. Some Jews in Syria, “A. D.419,” who were making merry after their fashion, and indulging in a good deal of tomfoolery, began, as they felt the influence of wine, to jeer at Christ and Christians; from which they proceeded to the seizing of a Christian boy and tying him to a cross. At first they were contented to make game of him, but, growing crazy with drink, they fell to beating him, and even beat him to death; for which they were properly punished.

137. See the ballads ‘Vom Judenmord zu Deggendorf,’ 1337, ‘Von den Juden zu Passau,’ 1478, in Liliencron, I, 45, No 12, II, 142, No 153.

138. Nothing could be more just than these words of Percy: “If we consider, on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times when such stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the monks who record them, and the eagerness with which they would be catched up by the barbarous populace as a pretence for plunder; on the other hand, the great danger incurred by the perpetrators, and the inadequate motives they could have to excite them to a crime of so much horror, we may reasonably conclude the whole charge to be groundless and malicious.” Reliques, 1795, I, 32.

139. Read the indictment against Christians filed by Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, pp 19–58, covering the time from the eleventh century to the middle of the sixteenth. It is regrettable that Zunz has not generally cited his authorities. See also Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, p. 183 ff., and notes, p. 280 ff., where the authorities are given.

140. In vol. viii, pp 225, 344, 476, 598, 730, vol. ix, 107, 219, 353, 472, 605, the confessions of the defendants are given from the original minutes of the trial; and it fully appears from these confessions that blood is requisite for a proper performance of the Paschal ceremonies, and also that the blood must be got from a boy, and from a boy while he is undergoing torment. Only it is to be remembered that the inducements to these confessions were the same as those which led the Jews of Passau to acknowledge that blood exuded from the Host when it was stabbed, and that when two bits of the wafer were thrown into an oven two doves flew out: Train, as above, p. 116, note 57.

141. For other pictures of these martyrdoms, see the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, fol. ccliiii, vº, for Simon of Trent; Lacroix, Mœurs, Usages, etc., 1875, p. 473, for Richard of Pontoise, p. 475, for Simon, repeated from the N. Chron.; that of Munich, 1285, and the children of Ratisbon, reproduced in Cosmos, March 30, 1885 (according to Drumont, II, 418, note). See also Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, p. 54, note 41.

142. The extraordinary occurrence in Damascus in the same year, 1840, which excited the indignation, sympathy, and active interposition of nearly all the civilized world, requires but the briefest allusion. A capuchin friar was in this instance the victim immolated, and for blood to mix with the Paschal bread. The most frightful torture was used, under the direction of the Turkish pacha, assisted by the French consul, under which three unhappy men succumbed. See Illgen’s detailed account of this persecution in the periodical and article above cited, pp. 153 ff. Drumont is of the same mind as he would have been four or five hundred years ago: “les faits étaient prouvés, démontrés, indiscutables” (La France Juive, II, 411).

143. The threat implied inE34has no motive; and the phrase “haly spark” in 54is an unadvised anticipation.

144. Found also in the ballad, A Warning-Piece to England against Pride and Wickedness: Being the Fall of Queen Eleanor, Wife to Edward the First, King of England, who, for her Pride, by God’s Judgments, sunk into the Ground at Charing-Cross and rose at Queen-Hithe. A Collection of Old Ballads, I, 97.

145. There attributed to Jacques de Vitry, but not found in his Exempla. Professor Crane informs me that, though the Scala Celi cites Jacques de Vitry sixty-two times, only fourteen of suchexemplaoccur among J. de V.’s.

146. The story does not occur in Doni’s Marmi, iii, 27, as has been said. What is there found is somewhat after the fashion of ‘The Baffled Knight,’ No 112.

147. Cunningham, in his loose way, talks of several fragments which he had endeavored to combine, but can spare room for only one couplet:Though lame of a leg and blind of an ee,You’re as like William Wallace as ever I did see.But this is the William of ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter,’ No 110.

147. Cunningham, in his loose way, talks of several fragments which he had endeavored to combine, but can spare room for only one couplet:

Though lame of a leg and blind of an ee,You’re as like William Wallace as ever I did see.

Though lame of a leg and blind of an ee,

You’re as like William Wallace as ever I did see.

But this is the William of ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter,’ No 110.

148.A15,B12,D12, are somewhat corrupted. InF14 Wallace says he neverhada better bode. InE10 Wallace’s reply is, Pay down, for if your answer be not good you shall have the downfall of Robin Hood; and inG30, Tell down, and ye shall see William Wallace with the downcome of Robin Hood; that is, I suppose, you shall be knocked down as if by Robin Hood.

149.Post enim conflictum de Roslyn, Wallace, ascensa navi, Franciam petit, ubi quanta probitate refulsit, tam super mare a piratis quam in Francia ab Anglis perpessus est discrimina, et viriliter se habuit, nonnulla carmina, tam in ipsa Francia quam Scotia, attestantur. Scotichronicon, Goodall, II, 176, note.

150. “Thou hadst twenty ships hither, thou’st have twenty away,”B37. It would be more in the ballad-way were the second twenty doubled.

151. In the London Athenæum, about twenty-five years ago, there was (I think) a story of an Englishman in Russia resembling Hugh Spencer’s. I have wrongly noted the number as 1871, and have not recovered the story after much rummaging. This ballad is not very unlike Russianbylinas.

152.Presbyteri, fratres et clerici, sutores et mechanici, Bower; agricolæ ac pastores, et capellani imbecilles et decrepiti, Knyghton; miseri monachi, improbi presbyteri, porcorum pastores, sutores et pelliparii, Chronicon de Lanercost; clericos et pastores, Walsingham, Hist. Angl.

153. It is very doubtful whether there was an Earl of Buchan in 1346. Henry de Beaumont, according to the peerages, died in 1341. He was an Englishman, had fought against the Scots at Duplin, 1332, and was after that in the service of Edward III.

154. ‘Famous,’ the MS. reading in 141, may probably be an error for James, which occurs so often in 28–33. William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, had a brother James, but this James had been killed in 1335. He had also a brother John, Scotichronicon and Chronicon de Lanercoste, and the latter, as has been mentioned, puts John in Murray’s division. Knyghton, col. 2590, gives as among the prisoners dominus Willielmus Duglas et frater ejusdem Willielmi.

155. When William Douglas, in the Chronicle of Lanercost, tells the king that the English are at hand, and David replies, there is nothing in England but monks, priests, swineherds, etc., Douglas says, ‘aliter invenietis; sunt varii validi viri.’

156. Froissart says that the English force was in four battalions: the first commanded by the Bishop of Durham and Lord Percy; the second by the Archbishop of York and Lord Neville; the third by the Bishop of Lincoln and Lord Mowbray; the fourth by Edward Balliol and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

157. Crécy, 26 August, 1346; Durham, 17 October, 1346; Poitiers, 19 September, 1356.

158. “Froissart describes a Scottish host of the same period as consisting of ‘.iiii. M. of armes, knightis and squiers, mounted on good horses, and other .x. M. men of warre, armed after their gyse, right hardy and firse, mounted on lytle hackeneys, the whiche were never tyed nor kept at hard meate, but lette go to pasture in the feldis and busshes.’” Happily cited by Scott, in illustration ofC16: Lord Berners’ translation, cap. xvii, Pynson, 1523, fol. viii.

159. A consolation as old as wise. So Paris, for himself:νίκη δ’ ἐπαμείβεται ἄνδρας, Iliad, vi, 339.

160. Buchanan has these numbers, with the exception of 1840, for 1860, killed: ed. 1582, fol. 101. “That there was a memorable slaughter in this affair, a slaughter far beyond the usual proportion to the numbers engaged, cannot be doubted; nor was there ever bloodshed more useless for the practical ends of war. It all came of the capture of the Percy’s pennon. The Scots might have got clear off with all their booty; the English forgot all the precautions of war when they made a midnight rush on a fortified camp without knowledge of the ground or the arrangements of their enemy. It was for these specialties that Froissart admired it so. He saw in it a fight for fighting’s sake, a great passage at arms in which no bow was drawn, but each man fought hand to hand; in fact, about the greatest and bloodiest tournament he had to record. Hence his narrative is ever interrupted with bursts of admiration as his fancy contemplates the delightful scene raised before it.” Burton, History of Scotland, II, 364, ed. 1873 (who, perhaps by an error of the press, makes the losses of the English in killed eight hundred and forty, in place of Buchanan’s eighteen hundred and forty).

161. Bower and Barry say St Oswald’s day, Wednesday, the 5th, Scotichronicon, II, 405, 407; Knyghton also; the continuator of Higden’s Polychronicon, August 12, Wednesday. The ballad,A184, gives the day as Wednesday. There was a full moon August 20, which makes the 19th of itself far more probable, and Froissart says the moon was shining. See White, Battle of Otterburn, p. 133.

162. Walsingham writes in the vein of Froissart: “Erat ibidem cernere pulchrum spectaculum, duos tam præclaros juvenes manus conserere et pro gloria decertare.” Walsingham says that the English were few. Malverne puts the Scots at 30,000, and here, as in the balladA35, the cronykle does not layne (indeed, the ballad is all but accurate), if the main body of the Scots be included, which was at first supposed to be supporting Douglas.

163. ‘The perssee and the mongumrye met, that day, that day, that gentil day,’ which I suppose to be either a different reading from any that has come down, or a blending of a line from Otterburn with one from The Hunting of the Cheviot,A241; indicating in either case the present ballad only, for The Hunttis of Cheuet had been cited before. Furnivall holds that the second line means another ballad: Captain Cox, p. clix.

164. The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, p. 104.

165. For Motherwell’s views, see his Minstrelsy, li, lii, and lxxi, note 30.

166. .sp 1B20.Ingen iomfru maa ieg loffue,huerchen lønlig eller aaben-bahre;det haffuer ieg iomfru Maria loffuethindis tienere skall ieg verre.

166. .sp 1

B20.Ingen iomfru maa ieg loffue,huerchen lønlig eller aaben-bahre;det haffuer ieg iomfru Maria loffuethindis tienere skall ieg verre.

B20.

Ingen iomfru maa ieg loffue,

huerchen lønlig eller aaben-bahre;

det haffuer ieg iomfru Maria loffuet

hindis tienere skall ieg verre.

167. The burden is ‘O kiennicheinn Maria’ in the first, ‘Hilf Maria’ in the second; in both George declines the king’s daughter, and orders a church to be built ‘mit Mariabeild,’ or to himself and Mary. This, and perhaps the hint for St George’s addiction to Mary altogether, is from the Golden Legend, where the king “in honorem beatæ Mariæ et beati Georgii ecclesiam miræ magnitudinis construxit”: Grässe, p. 261.

168. Following in part Buchanan, who, however, says nothing of Melrose, or of the prophecy, which is the point here.Illa vero a vobis postrema peto: primum, vt mortem meam et nostros et hostes cœletis; deinde, ne vexillum meum dejectum sinatis; demum, vt meam cædem vlciscamini. Hæc si sperem ita fore, cætera æquo animo feram.Fol. 101, ed. 1582.

169. I have not resorted to the MS. in this case, for the reason that I could not expect to get a transcript which would merit the confidence which must attach to one made by the hand of Professor Skeat.

170. British Bibliographer, IV, 99 f; Wright, Songs and Ballads, p. viii; etc.

171. The grammatical forms of the Hunting of the Cheviot are, however, older than those of the particular copy of Otterburn which has been preserved. The plural of the noun is very often in -ës or -ys, as lordës, 231; longës, 371; handdës, 601; sydis, 82; bowys, 132, 251, 291, etc., at least sixteen cases. We find, also, sydë at 62, and possibly should read fayllë at 93. The plural in -ës is rare in The Battle of Otterburn: starrës, 454; swordës, 542; Skottës, 591, 621. Probably we are to read swordës length in 553.

172. See the passage in the Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, referred to in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, I, 235, and given at length in Hales and Furnivall, II, 3 f.

173. The minstrel was not too nice as to topography either: Otterburn is not in Cheviot.

174. Tytler, History of Scotland, III, 293, though citing only the Scotichronicon, says Sir Robert Ogle, and also Scott, I, 270; for reasons which do not appear.

175. An Apologie for Poetrie, p. 46 of Arber’s reprint of the first edition, 1595. For the date of the writing, 1581–85, see Arber, p. 7 f.

176. The courtly poet deserves much of ballad-lovers for avowing his barbarousness (one doubts whether he seriously believed that the gorgeous Pindar could have improved upon the ballad), but what would he not have deserved if he had written the blind crowder’s song down!

177. Popular Music, I, 198. Chevy Chase is entered in the Stationers’ Registers, among a large parcel of ballads, in 1624, and clearly was no novelty: Arber, IV, 131. “Had it been printed even so early as Queen Elizabeth’s reign,” says Percy, “I think I should have met with some copy wherein the first line would have been, God prosper long our noble queen.” “That it could not be much later than that time appears from the phrasedoleful dumps, which in that age carried no ill sound with it, but to the next generation became ridiculous. We have seen it pass uncensured in a sonnet that was at that time in request, and where it could not fail to have been taken notice of had it been in the least exceptionable; see above, Book ii, song v, ver. 2 [by Richard Edwards, 1596?]. Yet, in about half a century after, it was become burlesque. Vide Hudibras, Pt. I, c. 3, v. 95.” Reliques, 1794, I, 268, note, 269.The copy in the Percy MS.,B a, though carelessly made, retains, where the broadsides do not, two of the readings ofA: bade on the bent, 282; to the hard head haled he, 454.

The copy in the Percy MS.,B a, though carelessly made, retains, where the broadsides do not, two of the readings ofA: bade on the bent, 282; to the hard head haled he, 454.

178. Addison was not behind any of us in his regard for traditional songs and tales. No 70 begins: “When I travelled, I took a particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from father to son and are most in vogue among the common people of the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, tho they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man. Human nature is the same in all reasonable creatures, and whatever falls in with it will meet with admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions.”

179. A Description of the Parish of Melrose [by the Revd. Adam Milne], Edinburgh, 1743, p. 21. Scott cites the epitaph, with some slight variations (as “English louns”), Appendix to The Eve of St. John, Minstrelsy, IV, 199, ed. 1833. The monument was “all broken in pieces” in Milne’s time; seems to have been renewed and again broken up (The Scotsman, November 12, 1873); but, judging from Murray’s Handbook of Scotland, has again been restored.Squire Meldrum’s valor was inferior to nobody’s, but as his fortune was happier than Witherington’s and Lilliard’s, a note may suffice for him. “Quhen his schankis wer schorne in sunder, vpon his knees he wrocht greit wounder:” Lindsay, ed. 1594, Cv. recto, v. 30 f, Hall, p. 358, v. 1349 f. But really he was only “hackit on his hochis and theis,” or as Pittscottie says, Dalyell, p. 306, “his hochis war cutted and the knoppis of his elbowis war strikin aff,” and by and by he is “haill and sound” again, according to the poet, and according to the chronicler he “leived fyftie yeires thairefter.”

Squire Meldrum’s valor was inferior to nobody’s, but as his fortune was happier than Witherington’s and Lilliard’s, a note may suffice for him. “Quhen his schankis wer schorne in sunder, vpon his knees he wrocht greit wounder:” Lindsay, ed. 1594, Cv. recto, v. 30 f, Hall, p. 358, v. 1349 f. But really he was only “hackit on his hochis and theis,” or as Pittscottie says, Dalyell, p. 306, “his hochis war cutted and the knoppis of his elbowis war strikin aff,” and by and by he is “haill and sound” again, according to the poet, and according to the chronicler he “leived fyftie yeires thairefter.”

180. As stanch as some of these was a Highlander at the battle of Gasklune, 1392, who, though nailed to the ground by a horseman’s spear, held fast to his sword, writhed himself up, and with a last stroke cut his foeman above the foot to the bone, “through sterap-lethire and the bute, thre ply or foure”: Wyntoun’s Chronicle, B. ix, ch. 14, Laing, III, 59.

181. Legally just: Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, Historical and Traditionary, I, 349 ff.

182. And afterwards, 1748, by Robert Foulis, Glasgow: “Two old Historical Scots Poems, giving an account of the Battles of Harlaw and the Reid-Squair.”

183. Ane Catalogue of the Books, Manuscripts and Pamphlets Belonging to Robert Mylne, Wryter in Edr., 1709: Advocates Library. Mr Macmath, who has come to my aid here, writes: “So far as I can make out, this catalogue contains no MSS. It is in two divisions: 1st, Printed Books; 2d, Pamphlets. The following is in the second division, and I understand the reference to be, year of publication, volume, or bundle of pamphlets, number of piece in bundle or volume:“Harlaw The Battle yrof An: 1411 ... 1668, 79, 5.”Mylne died in 1747, at the age, it is said, of 103 or 105: [Maidment], A Book of Scotish Pasquils, p. 423.

“Harlaw The Battle yrof An: 1411 ... 1668, 79, 5.”

Mylne died in 1747, at the age, it is said, of 103 or 105: [Maidment], A Book of Scotish Pasquils, p. 423.

184. He talks like a canny packman:I wist nocht quha was fae or freind;Yet quietly I did me carrie,. . . . . . .And thair I had nae tyme to tairie,For bissiness in Aberdene.

184. He talks like a canny packman:

I wist nocht quha was fae or freind;Yet quietly I did me carrie,. . . . . . .And thair I had nae tyme to tairie,For bissiness in Aberdene.

I wist nocht quha was fae or freind;

Yet quietly I did me carrie,

. . . . . . .

And thair I had nae tyme to tairie,

For bissiness in Aberdene.

185. So with The Battle of Balrinnes and The Haughs of Cromdale. The first line of The Battle of Balrinnes is, ‘Betuixt Dunother and Aberdein.’

186. Not only were these long and affectionately remembered, but their heirs were exempted from certain feudal taxes, because the defeat of the Celts was regarded as a national deliverance: Burton’s History, II, 394.

187. A macaronic ascribed to Drummond of Hawthornden.Interea ante alios dux piperlarius herosPræcedens, magnamque gestans cum burdine pipam,Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum.(Poems, Maitland Club, p. 413, after the firstdated edition of 1684.)

187. A macaronic ascribed to Drummond of Hawthornden.

Interea ante alios dux piperlarius herosPræcedens, magnamque gestans cum burdine pipam,Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum.(Poems, Maitland Club, p. 413, after the firstdated edition of 1684.)

Interea ante alios dux piperlarius herosPræcedens, magnamque gestans cum burdine pipam,Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum.

Interea ante alios dux piperlarius heros

Præcedens, magnamque gestans cum burdine pipam,

Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum.

(Poems, Maitland Club, p. 413, after the firstdated edition of 1684.)

(Poems, Maitland Club, p. 413, after the first

dated edition of 1684.)

188. 32. Away and away and away,e,f,i,k. 121. The first that fired it was the French,f,g,h. 124. were forced to flee,f,i,m(first to flee,e). 143. in all French land,e,f,g, (in our)h,m. Etc.

189. English balls again inm, tennis-balls ini,k.

190. Whose work was printed in 1850, ed. Benjamin Williams. I am for the most part using Sir Harris Nicolas’s excellent History of the Battle of Agincourt, 2d ed., 1832, here; see pp. 8–13, 301 f.

191. Nicolas, p. 302 f, slightly corrected; much the same in another copy of the poem,ib., Appendix, p. 69f.The jest in Henry’s reply is carried out in detail when he comes to Harfleur,ib., pp. 308–310.

192. Nicolas, p. 10, as corrected by Hales and Furnivall, II, 161, and in one word emended by me. By several of the above writers the Dauphin Louis is called Charles, through confusion with his father or his younger brother.

193. The gifts are a whip (σκῦτος), a ball, and a casket of gold. In Julius Valerius’s version, Müller, as above,σκῦτοςis rendered habena, whip or reins; in Leo’s Historia de Preliis, ed. Landgraf, p. 54, we have virga for habena; in Lamprecht’s Alexander, Weismann, I, 74, 1296–1301, the habena is a pair of shoe-strings. The French romance, Michelant, p. 52, 25 ff, to make sure, gives us both rod (verge) and reins; the English Alexander, Weber, I, 75, 1726–28, has a top, a scourge, and a small purse of gold. Weber has noticed the similarity of the stories, Romances, III, 299, and he remarks that in ‘The Famous Victories of Henry Fifth’ a carpet is sent with the tun of tennis-balls, to intimate that the prince is fitter for carpet than camp.

194. Cheshire, Lancashire, andthe Earl ofDerby are made to carry off the honors in ballad-histories of Bosworth and Flodden: see the appendix to No 168. Perhaps the hand of some minstrel of the same clan as the author or authors of those eulogies may be seen in this passage.

195. Henry of Monmouth, or Memoirs of the Life and Character of Henry the Fifth, II, 121, 197. Jewitt, Derbyshire Ballads, p. 2, says that there is a tradition in the Peak of Derby that Henry V would take no married man or widow’s son, when recruiting for Agincourt; but he goes on to say that the ballad is not unfrequently sung by the hardy sons of the Peak, which adequately accounts for the tradition.

196.Cf.g6 and ‘Lord Bateman,’ 14, II, 508.

197. Vol. cxiii, fol. 14, Bodleian Library: cited (p. 303 f.) in Beamont’s Annals of the Lords of Warrington, Chetham Society, 1872, where may be found the fullest investigation yet attempted of this obscure matter. I have freely and thankfully used chapters 17–19 of that highly interesting work.

198. For Lord Grey’s making the suit void, and his lady’s resolution to be buried near Sir John, see Beamont, p. 319 f, pp. 297–99.

199. Beamont, p. 304.

200. Pennant, in the second half of the last century, heard that both Sir Thomas and his lady were murdered in his house by assassins, who, in the night, crossed the moat in leathern boats. Again, Sir Peter Legh, simply, was said to have slain Sir Thomas Butler. Sir Thomas died quietly in his bed, and Sir Peter, who had turned priest, administered ghostly consolations to him not long before his decease.

201. See Beamont, p. 308; and also p. 296 for another hypothesis.

202. Beamont, pp. 259, 321.

203. These are duly interpreted in Hales and Furnivall.

204. Lord Strange’s hair-breadth escape is, however, perhaps apocryphal: see Croston, County Families of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1887, p. 25 f.

205.Bbegins vilely, but does not go on so ill. The forty merchants coming ‘with fifty sail’ to King Henry on a mountain top, 31,2, requires to be taken indulgently.

206. .sp 1“God’s curse on his hartt,’ saide William,‘Thys day thy cote dyd on;If it had ben no better then myne,It had gone nere thy bone.’(Vol. iii, 23, st. 27.)

206. .sp 1

“God’s curse on his hartt,’ saide William,‘Thys day thy cote dyd on;If it had ben no better then myne,It had gone nere thy bone.’(Vol. iii, 23, st. 27.)

“God’s curse on his hartt,’ saide William,‘Thys day thy cote dyd on;If it had ben no better then myne,It had gone nere thy bone.’

“God’s curse on his hartt,’ saide William,

‘Thys day thy cote dyd on;

If it had ben no better then myne,

It had gone nere thy bone.’

(Vol. iii, 23, st. 27.)

207. An approach to sense may be had by reading ‘either in hach-bord or in hull,’ that is, by striking with his beam either the side or the body of the vessel; but I do not think so well of this change as to venture it.

208. The letters granted to the Bartons authorized them to seize all Portuguese ships till repaid 12,000 ducats of Portugal. Pinkerton, whose excellent account, everywhere justified by documents, I have been indebted to above, remarks: “The justice of letters of reprisal after an interval of thirty years may be much doubted. At any rate, one prize was sufficient for the injury, and the continuance of their captures, and the repeated demands of our kings, even so late as 1540, cannot be vindicated. Nay, these reprisals on Portugal were found so lucrative that, in 1543, Arran, the regent, gave similar letters to John Barton, grandson of the first John. In 1563 Mary formally revoked the letters of marque to the Bartons, because they had been abused into piracy.” Pinkerton’s History of Scotland, II, 60 f, 70.

209. Robert was skipper of the Great Michael, a ship two hundred and forty feet long, with sides ten feet thick, and said to be larger and stronger than any vessel in the navy of England or of France.

210. A mistake of Edmund for Edward and an anticipation. Sir Edward Howard was not made admiral till the next year. Edmund was his younger brother. Lesley has Edmund again; Stowe has Edward.

Back to Index Next