Belasise, Belassis, daft was thy nowle,
When thou gave Bellassis for Henknowle,
connects it with a grant dated 1380, from John de Belasye to the convent
of Durham, of his lands in Wolveston, in exchange for the Manor of
Henknoll. But Bellasyse is not even within the Manor of Wolveston, and,
in fact, the Manor of Bellasye was held by the Prior in 1361; and we can
only account for the proverb by supposing that, at a former period,
Bellasyse had been exchanged for lands, but not the manor of Henknoll.
The legend dates the matter in crusading times, and is chivalric in the
extreme. John of Bellasis, minded to take up the cross, and fight in
Holy Land, found his piety sorely let and hindered by his attachment to
the green pastures and deep meadows of his ancestors. With resolution
strong, he exchanged them with the Church of Durham, for Henknoll, near
Auckland. He went to fight, but lived it seems to return and repent his
rash bargain. I descend by one step, from the sublime to the ridiculous,
to mention how oddly more recent characters are wound round those of
olden time, for a popular notion is that the Red-Cross Knight had
enormous teeth, and was passionately addicted to "race-horses!"
Children, moreover, have a dark saying when they leap off anything:
Bellasay, Bellasay, what time of day?
One o'clock, two o'clock, three and away!
Miss Bellasyse, the heiress of Brancepeth, died for love of Robert
Shafto, of Whitworth, whose portrait at Whitworth represents him as very
young and handsome, with _yellow_ hair. He was the favorite candidate in
the election of 1791, when he was popularly called Bonny Bobby Shafto;
and the old song of the older Bobby, who, it seems, was also "bright and
fair, combing down his _yellow_ hair," was revived with the addition
of—
Bobby Shafto's looking out,
All his ribbons flew about,
All the ladies gave a shout—
Hey, for Bobby Shafto!