'The heralds, like the minstrels, were a race allowed to have great
claims upon the liberality of the knights, of whose feats they kept
a record, and proclaimed them aloud, as in the text, upon suitable
occasions.
'At Berwick, Norham, and other Border fortresses of importance,
pursuivants usually resided, whose inviolable character rendered
them the only persons that could, with perfect assurance of safety,
be sent on necessary embassies into Scotland. This is alluded to in
Stanza xxi. p. 25.'--SCOTT.
line 165. Blazon'd shield, a shield with a coat of arms painted on
it, especially with bearings quartered in commemoration of victory
in battle. See below V. xv, VI. xxxviii, and cp. Tennyson, 'The
Lady of Shalott,' Part 3:--
'And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung.'
line 174. The Cotswold downs, Gloucestershire, were famous as a
hunting-ground. Cp. Merry Wives of Windsor, I. i. 92, 'How does your
fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say he was outrun on Cotsall.'
line 185. The reversed shield, hung on the gallows, indicated the
degraded knight.
Stanza XIII. line 192. Scott writes:--'Were accuracy of any
consequence in a fictitious narrative, this castellan's name ought
to have been William; for William Heron of Ford was husband to the
famous Lady Ford, whose syren charms are said to have cost our James
IV so dear. Moreover, the said William Heron was, at the time
supposed, a prisoner in Scotland, being surrendered by Henry VIII,
on account of his share in the slaughter of Sir Robert Ker of
Cessford. His wife, represented in the text as residing at the Court
of Scotland, was, in fact, living in her own castle at Ford.--See
Sir RICHARD HERON'S curious Genealogy of the Heron Family.'
Ford Castle is about a mile to the north-east of Flodden Hill. It
was repaired in 1761 in accordance with the style of the original
architecture. Latterly the owner, the Countess of Waterford,
utilizing the natural beauty of the property, has enhanced its value
and its interest by improvements exhibiting not only exquisite taste
but a true philanthropic spirit. It was at Ford Castle that James IV
spent the night preceding the battle of Flodden.
line 195. Deas, dais, or chief seat on the platform at the upper end
of the hall.
line 200. Scott mentions in a note that his friend, R. Surtees, of
Mainsforth, had taken down this ballad from the lips of an old
woman, who said it used 'to be sung at the merry-makings.' He
likewise gave it a place in the 'Border Minstrelsy.' These things
being so, it is unpleasant to learn from Lockhart that 'the ballad
here quoted was the production of Mr. R. Surtees, and palmed off by
him upon Scott as a genuine relic of antiquity. 'The title of the
ballad in the 'Border Minstrelsy' is 'The Death of
Featherstonhaugh.'
line 203. 'Hardriding Dick is not an epithet referring to
horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding.'--SCOTT. The
families named all belonged to the north and north-east of
Northumberland. Scott adds (from Surtees), 'A feud did certainly
exist between the Ridleys and Featherstons, productive of such
consequences as the ballad narrates.' In regard to the 'Northern
harper,' see Prof. Minto's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' p. 121.
Stanza XV. line 231. wassail-bowl. 'Wassell' or 'wassail' (A. S.
waes hael) was first the wish of health, then it came to denote
festivity (especially at Christmas). As an adj. it is compounded not
only with bowl, but with cup, candle, &c. Cp. Comus, line 179:--
'I should be loth
To meet the rudeness and swill'd insolence
Of such late WASSAILERS.'
Cp. also note on 'gossip's bowl' of Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. I.
47, in Clarendon Press edition, and Prof. Minto's 'Lay of the Last
Minstrel,' p. 174.
line 232. Cp. Iliad i. 470, and ix. 175, and Chapman's translation,
'The youths CROWNED cups of wine.'
line 238. Raby Castle, in the county of Durham, the property of the
Duke of Cleveland.
line 254. As a page in a lady's chamber. 'Bower' is often contrasted
with 'hall,' as in 'Jock o' Hazeldean':--
'They socht her baith by bower an' ha'.'
Cp. below, 281.
Stanza XVI. line 264. For Lindisfarn, or Holy Island, see note to
Canto II. St. i.
Stanza XVII. line 284. leash, the cord by which the greyhound is
restrained till the moment when he is slipt in pursuit of the game.
Cp. Coriolanus, i. 6. 38:--
'Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash.'
Stanza XVIII. line 289. bide, abide. Cp. above, 215.
line 294. pray you = I pray you. Cp. 'Prithee,' so common in
Elizabethan drama.
line 298. Scott annotates as follows:-
'The story of Perkin Warbeck, or Richard, Duke of York, is well
known. In 1496, he was received honourably in Scotland; and James
IV, after conferring upon him in marriage his own relation, the Lady
Catharine Gordon, made war on England in behalf of his pretensions.
To retaliate an invasion of England, Surrey advanced into
Berwickshire at the head of considerable forces, but retreated,
after taking the inconsiderable fortress of Ayton. Ford, in his
Dramatic Chronicle of Perkin Warbeck, makes the most of this
inroad:--
"SURREY.
"Are all our braving enemies shrunk back,
Hid in the fogges of their distemper'd climate,
Not daring to behold our colours wave
In spight of this infected ayre? Can they
Looke on the strength of Cundrestine defac't;
The glorie of Heydonhall devasted: that
Of Edington cast downe; the pile of Fulden
Orethrowne: And this, the strongest of their forts,
Old Ayton Castle, yeelded and demolished,
And yet not peepe abroad? The Scots are bold,
Hardie in battayle, but it seems the cause
They undertake considered, appeares
Unjoynted in the frame on't".'--SCOTT.
line 301. Ayton is on the Eye, a little above Eyemouth, in
Berwickshire.
Stanza XIX. line 305. 'The garrisons of the English castles of Wark,
Norham, and Berwick were, as may be easily supposed, very
troublesome neighbours to Scotland. Sir Richard Maitland of
Ledington wrote a poem, called "The Blind Baron's Comfort," when his
barony of Blythe, in Lauderdale, was HARRIED by Rowland Foster, the
English captain of Wark, with his company, to the number of 300 men.
They spoiled the poetical knight of 5000 sheep, 200 nolt, 30 horses
and mares; the whole furniture of his house of Blythe, worth 100
pounds Scots (L8. 6s. 8d.), and every thing else that was portable.
"This spoil was committed the 16th day of May, 1570, (and the said
Sir Richard was threescore and fourteen years of age, and grown
blind,) in time of peace; when nane of that country LIPPENED
[expected] such a thing."--"The Blind Baron's Comfort" consists in a
string of puns on the word BLYTHE, the name of the lands thus
despoiled. Like John Littlewit, he had "a conceit left him in his
misery--a miserable conceit."
'The last line of the text contains a phrase, by which the Borderers
jocularly intimated the burning a house. When the Maxwells, in 1685,
burned the castle of Lochwood, they said they did so to give the
Lady Johnstone "light to set her hood." Nor was the phrase
inapplicable; for, in a letter, to which I have mislaid the
reference, the Earl of Northumberland writes to the King and
Council, that he dressed himself at midnight, at Warkworth, by the
blaze of the neighbouring villages burned by the Scottish
marauders.'--SCOTT.
Stanza XXI. line 332. Bp. Pudsey, in 1154, restored the castle and
added the donjon. See Jemingham's 'Norham Castle,' v. 87.
line 341. too well in case, in too good condition, too stout. For a
somewhat similar meaning of case, see Tempest, iii. 2. 25:--
'I am in case to justle a constable.'
line 342. Scott here refers to Holinshed's account of Welsh, the
vicar of St. Thomas of Exeter, a leader among the Cornish insurgents
in 1549:--
'"This man," says Holinshed, "had many good things in him. He was of
no great stature, but well set, and mightilie compact. He was a very
good wrestler; shot well, both in the long-bow, and also in the
cross-bow; he handled his hand-gun and peece very well; he was a
very good woodman, and a hardie, and such a one as would not give
his head for the polling, or his beard for the washing. He was a
companion in any exercise of activitie, and of a courteous and
gentle behaviour. He descended of a good honest parentage, being
borne at Peneverin, in Cornwall; and yet, in this rebellion, an
arch-captain, and a principal doer."--Vol. iv. p. 958, 4to edition.
This model of clerical talents had the misfortune to be hanged upon
the steeple of his own church.'--SCOTT.
'The reader,' Lockhart adds, 'needs hardly to be reminded of
Ivanhoe.'
line 349. Cp. Chaucer's friar in Prologue, line 240:--
'He knew wel the tavernes in every toun,' &c.
The character and adventures of Friar John owe something both to the
'Canterbury Tales' and to a remarkable poem, probably Dunbar's,
entitled 'The Friars of Berwick.'
line 354. St. Bede's day in the Calendar is May 27. See below, line
410.
Stanza XXII. line 372. tables, backgammon.
line 387. fay = faith, word of honour. See below 454, and cp.
Hamlet, ii. 2. 271, 'By my fay, I cannot reason.'
Stanza XXIII. line 402. St. James or Santiago of Spain. Cp. 'Piers
the Plowman,' i. 48 (with Prof. Skeat's note), Chaucer's Prologue,
465, and Southey's 'Pilgrim to Compostella,' valuable both for its
poetic beauty and its ample notes. In regard to the cockleshell,
Southey gives some important information in extracts from 'Anales de
Galicia,' and he says--
'For the scallop shows in a coat of arms
That of the bearer's line.
Some one, in former days, hath been
To Santiago's shrine.'
line 403. Montserrat, a mountain, with a Benedictine abbey on it, in
Catalonia. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood cherish a myth to
the effect that the fantastic peaks and gorges of the mountain were
formed at the Crucifixion.
lines 404-7. Scott annotates as follows:--
'Sante Rosalie was of Palermo, and born of a very noble family, and,
when very young, abhorred so much the vanities of this world, and
avoided the converse of mankind, resolving to dedicate herself
wholly to God Almighty, that she, by divine inspiration, forsook her
father's house, and never was more heard of, till her body was found
in that cleft of a rock, on that almost inaccessible mountain, where
now the chapel is built; and they affirm she was carried up there by
the hands of angels; for that place was not formerly so accessible
(as now it is) in the days of the Saint; and even now it is a very
bad, and steepy, and break-neck way. In this frightful place, this
holy woman lived a great many years, feeding only on what she found
growing on that barren mountain, and creeping into a narrow and
dreadful cleft in a rock, which was always dropping wet, and was her
place of retirement, as well as prayer; having worn out even the
rock with her knees, in a certain place, which is now open'd on
purpose to show it to those who come here. This chapel is very
richly adorn'd; and on the spot where the saint's dead body was
discover'd, which is just beneath the hole in the rock, which is
open'd on purpose, as I said, there is a very fine statue of marble,
representing her in a lying posture, railed in all about with fine
iron and brass work; and the altar, on which they say mass, is built
just over it.'--Voyage to Sicily and Malta, by Mr. John Dryden, (son
to the poet,) p. 107.
Stanza XXIV. line 408. The national motto is 'St. George for Merrie
England.' The records of various central and eastern English towns
tell of a very ancient custom of 'carrying the dragon in procession,
in great jollity, on Midsummer Eve.' See Brand's 'Popular
Antiquities,' i. 321. In reference to the 'Birth of St George' and
his deeds, see Percy's 'Reliques.'
line 409. Becket (1119-70), Archbishop of Canterbury. See
'Canterbury Tales' and Aubrey de Vere's 'St. Thomas of Canterbury:
a dramatic poem.'
line 410. For Cuthbert, see below, II. xiv. 257. Bede (673-735), a
monk of Jarrow on Tyne; called the Venerable Bede; author of an
important 'Ecclesiastical History' and an English translation of St.
John's Gospel.
lines 419-20. Lord Jeffrey's sense of humour was not adequate to the
appreciation of these two lines, which he specialised for
condemnation.
Stanza. XXV. line 421. Gramercy, from Fr. grand merci, sometimes
used as an emphatic exclamation, although fundamentally implying the
thanks of the speaker.
line 430 still = always. Cp., inter alia, 440 and 452 below. See
'STILL vexed Bermoothes,' Tempest, i. 2. 229, and cp. Hamlet, ii. 2.
42,--
'Thou STILL hast been the father of good news.'
Stanza XXVI. line 452. Scott quotes from Rabelais the passage in
which the monk suggests to Gargantua that in order to induce sleep
they might together try the repetition of the seven penitential
psalms. 'The conceit pleased Gargantua very well; and, beginning the
first of these psalms, as soon as they came to Beati quorum they
fell asleep, both the one and the other.' Cp. Chaucer's Monk and the
character of Accidia in 'Piers the Plowman,' Passus V.
line 453. ave, an address to the Virgin Mary, beginning 'Ave Maria';
creed, a profession of faith, beginning with Credo. It has been
objected to this line that the creed is not an essential part of the
rosary, and that ten aves and one paternoster would have been more
accurate. It should, however, be noticed that both Friar John and
young Selby know more of other matters than the details of religious
devotion.
Stanza XXVII. line 459. 'A PALMER, opposed to a PILGRIM, was one who
made it his sole business to visit different holy shrines;
travelling incessantly, and subsisting by charity: whereas the
Pilgrim retired to his usual home and occupations, when he had paid
his devotions at the particular spot which was the object of his
pilgrimage. The Palmers seem to have been the Quaestionarii of the
ancient Scottish canons 1242 and 1296. There is in the Bannatyne MS.
a burlesque account of two such persons, entitled, "Simmy and his
Brother." Their accoutrements are thus ludicrously described (I
discard the ancient spelling):--
"Syne shaped them up, to loup on leas,
Two tabards of the tartan;
They counted nought what their clouts were
When sew'd them on, in certain.
Syne clampit up St. Peter's keys,
Made of an old red gartane;
St. James's shells, on t'other side, shews
As pretty as a partane
Toe,
On Symmye and his brother."'--SCOTT.