'O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!' &c.
line 112. 'I shall only produce one instance more of the great
veneration paid to Lady Hilda, which still prevails even in these
our days; and that is, the constant opinion, that she rendered, and
still renders herself visible, on some occasions, in the Abbey of
Streamshalh, or Whitby, where she so long resided. At a particular
time of the year (viz. in the summer months), at ten or eleven in
the forenoon, the sunbeams fall in the inside of the northern part
of the choir; and 'tis then that the spectators, who stand on the
west side of Whitby churchyard, so as just to see the most northerly
part of the abbey pass the north end of Whitby church, imagine they
perceive, in one of the highest windows there, the resemblance of a
woman, arrayed in a shroud. Though we are certain this is only a
reflection caused by the splendour of the sunbeams, yet fame reports
it, and it is constantly believed among the vulgar, to be an
appearance of Lady Hilda in her shroud, or rather in a glorified
state; before which, I make no doubt, the Papists, even in these our
days, offer up their prayers with as much zeal and devotion, as
before any other image of their most glorified saint." CHARLTON'S
History of Whitby, p. 33.'--SCOTT.
Stanza V. line 131. What makes, what is it doing? Cp. Judges xviii.
3: 'What makest thou in this place?' The usage is frequent in
Shakespeare; as e.g. As Yo Like It, i. I. 31: 'Now sir! what make
you here?'
line 137. Blood-gouts, spots of blood. Cp. 'gouts of blood,'
Macbeth, ii. I. 46.
line 150. Shakespeare, King John, iv. 2. 13, makes Salisbury say
that--
'To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish
Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.'
Stanza VI. line 174. Beadsman, one hired to pray for another. Cp.
'Piers the Plowman,' B, III. 40:--
'I shal assoille the my-selue . for a seme of whete,
And also be thi BEDEMAN.'
Edie Ochiltree, the Blue-gown in 'The Antiquary,' belongs to the
class called King's Bedesmen, 'an order of paupers to whom the kings
of Scotland were in the custom of distributing a certain alms, in
conformity with the ordinances of the Catholic Church, and who were
expected in return to pray for the royal welfare and that of the
state.' See Introd. to the novel. Cp. also Henry V, iv. I. 315:--
'Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,' &c.
Stanza VII. line 218. The Palmer's dress is put off like the
serpent's slough. Cp. the Earl of Surrey's Spring sonnet--
'The adder all her slough away she flings.'
Stanza VIII. line 261. Featly, cleverly, dexterously. Cp. Tempest,
i. 2. 380:--
'Foot it FEATLY here and there.'
Stanza IX. line 271. See Otterbourne, 'Border Minstrelsy,' i. p.
345. Douglas's death, during the battle was kept secret, so that
when his men conquered, as if still under his command, the old
prophecy was fulfilled that a dead Douglas should, win the field.
line 280. James encamped in Twisel glen (local spelling 'Twizel')
before taking post on Flodden.
line 282. The squire's final act of qualification for knighthood was
to watch by his armour till midnight. In his Essay on 'Chivalry'
Scott says: 'The candidates watched their arms ALL NIGHT in a
church or chapel, and prepared for the honour to be conferred on
them by vigil, fast, and prayer.' For a hasty and picturesque
ceremony of knighthood see Scott's 'Halidon Hill,' I. ii.
Stanza XI. With the moonlight scene opening this stanza, cp. 'Lay of
Last Minstrel,' II. i. Scott is fond of moonlight effects, and he
always succeeds with them. See e.g. a passage in 'Woodstock,' chap.
xix, beginning 'There is, I know not why, something peculiarly
pleasing to the imagination in contemplating the Queen of Night,'
&c.
line 327. 'The well-known Gawain Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, son of
Archibald Bell-the-Cat, Earl of Angus. He was author of a Scottish
metrical version of the "AEneid," and of many other poetical pieces
of great merit. He had not at this period attained the mitre.'--
SCOTT.
A word of caution is necessary as to the 'many pieces' mentioned
here. Besides his 'AEneid, ' Douglas's extant works are 'Palice of
Honour,' 'King Hart,' and a poem of four stanzas entitled
'Conscience.' To each book of the 'AEneid,' however, as well as to
the supplementary thirteenth book of Maphaeus Vegius, which he also
translates, he prefixes an introductory poem, so that there is a
sense in which it is correct to call him the author of 'many
pieces.' His works were first published in complete form in 1874, in
four volumes,
admirably edited by the late Dr. John Small. See 'Dict. of Nat.
Biog.'
line 329. Rocquet, a linen surplice.
line 344, 'Angus had strength and personal activity corresponding to
his courage. Spens of Kilspindie, a favourite of James IV, having
spoken of him lightly, the Earl met him while hawking, and,
compelling him to single combat, at one blow cut asunder his thigh-
bone, and killed him on the spot. But ere he could obtain James's
pardon for this slaughter, Angus was obliged to yield his castle of
Hermitage, in exchange for that of Bothwell, which was some
diminution to the family greatness. The sword with which he struck
so remarkable a blow, was presented by his descendant, James Earl of
Morton, afterwards Regent of Scotland, to Lord Lindesay of the
Byres, when he defied Bothwell to single combat on Carberry-hill.
See Introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'--SCOTT.
Stanza XII. line 379. With the use of fall = befall cp. Antony and
Cleopatra, iii. 7. 38:--
'No disgrace
Shall FALL you for refusing him at sea.'
Stanza XIV. line. Saint Bride is Saint Bridget of Ireland, who
became popular in England and Scotland under the abbreviated form of
her name. She was 'a favourite saint of the house of Douglas, and of
the Earl of Angus in particular.' See note to Clarendon Press 'Lay
of Last Minstrel,' VI. 469.
line 437. 'This ebullition of violence in the potent Earl of Angus
is not without its example in the real history of the house of
Douglas, whose chieftains possessed the ferocity, with the heroic
virtues, of a savage state. The most curious instance occurred in
the case of Maclellan, Tutor of Bombay, who, having refused to
acknowledge the pre-eminence claimed by Douglas over the gentlemen
and Barons of Galloway, was seized and imprisoned by the Earl, in
his castle of the Thrieve, on the borders of Kirkcudbrightshire. Sir
Patrick Gray, commander of King James the Second's guard, was uncle
to the Tutor of Bombay, and obtained from the King a "sweet letter
of supplication," praying the Earl to deliver his prisoner into
Gray's hand. When Sir Patrick arrived at the castle, he was received
with all the honour due to a favourite servant of the King's
household; but while he was at dinner, the Earl, who suspected his
errand, caused his prisoner to be led forth and beheaded. After
dinner, Sir Patrick presented the King's letter to the Earl, who
received it with great affectation of reverence; "and took him by
the hand, and led him forth to the green, where the gentleman was
lying dead, and showed him the manner, and said, 'Sir Patrick, you
are come a little too late; yonder is your sister's son lying, but
he wants the head; take his body, and do with it what you will.'--
Sir Patrick answered again with a sore heart, and said, 'My lord, if
ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon the body as ye
please;' and with that called for his horse, and leaped thereon; and
when he was on horseback, he said to the Earl on this manner: 'My
Lord, if I live, you shall be rewarded for your labours, that you
have used at this time, according to your demerits.'
'"At this saying the Earl was highly offended, and cried for horse.
Sir Patrick, seeing the Earl's fury, spurred his horse, but he was
chased near Edinburgh ere they left him; and had it not been his led
horse was so tried and good, he had been taken."'--PITSCOTTIE'S
History, p. 39.'--SCOTT.
Stanza XV. line 456. Cp. above, III. 429, and see As You Like It, i.
2. 222: 'Hercules be thy speed!' The short epistle of St. Jude is
uncompromising in its condemnation of those who have fallen from
their faith--who have forgotten, so to speak, their vows of true
knighthood. It closes with the beautiful ascription--'To Him that is
able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before
the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.' There is deep
significance, therefore, in this appeal of the venerable and
outraged knight for the protection of St. Jude.
line 457. 'Lest the reader should partake of the Earl's
astonishment, and consider the crime as inconsistent with the
manners of the period, I have to remind him of the numerous
forgeries (partly executed by a female assistant) devised by Robert
of Artois, to forward his suit against the Countess Matilda; which,
being detected, occasioned his flight into England, and proved the
remote cause of Edward the Third's memorable wars in France. John
Harding, also, was expressly hired by Edward IV to forge such
documents as might appear to establish the claim of fealty asserted
over Scotland by the English monarchs.'--SCOTT.
line 458. It likes was long used impersonally, in the sense of it
pleases. Cp. King John, ii. 2. 234: 'It likes us well.'
line 460. St. Bothan, Bythen, or Bethan is said to have been a
cousin of St. Columba and his successor at Iona. His name is
preserved in the Berwickshire parish, Abbey-Saint-Bathan's; where,
towards the close of the twelfth century, a Cistertian nunnery, with
the title of a priory, was dedicated to him by Ada, daughter of
William the Lion. There is no remaining trace of this structure.
line 461. The other sons could at least sign their names. Their
signatures are reproduced in facsimile in 'The Douglas Book' by Sir
William Eraser, 4 vols. 4to, Edin. 1886 (privately printed).
line 468. Fairly, well, elegantly, as in Chaucer's Prol. 94:--
'Well cowde he sitte on hors, and FAIRE ryde';
and in 'Faerie Queene,' I. i. 8:--
'Full jolly knight he seemed, and FAIRE did sitt.'
Stanza XVI. line 498. This line is a comprehensive description of a
perfectly satisfactory charger or hunter.
line 499. Sholto is one of the Douglas family names. One of the
Earl's sons, being sheriff, could not go with his brothers to the
war.
line 500. 'His eldest son, the Master of Angus.'--SCOTT.
Stanza XVII. line 532. In Bacon's ingenious essay, 'Of Simulation
and Dissimulation,' he states these as the three disadvantages of
the qualities:--'The first, that Simulation and Dissimulation
commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any
business, doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark.
The second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many,
that would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man almost
alone to his own ends. The third, and greatest, is that it depriveth
a man of one of the most principal instruments for action; which is
trust and belief.'
Stanza XVIII. line 540. 'This was a Cistertian house of religion,
now almost entirely demolished. Lennel House is now the residence of
my venerable friend, Patrick Brydone, Esquire, so well known in the
literary world. {4} It is situated near Coldstream, almost opposite
Cornhill, and consequently very near to Flodden Field.'--SCOTT.
line 568. traversed, moved in opposition, as in fencing. Cp. Merry
Wives, ii. 3. 23: 'To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee
traverse,' &c.
Stanza XIX line 573, 'On the evening previous to the memorable
battle of Flodden, Surrey's headquarters were at Barmoor Wood, and
King James held an inaccessible position on the ridge of Flodden-
hill, one of the last and lowest eminences detached from the ridge
of Cheviot. The Till, a deep and slow river, winded between the
armies. On the morning of the 9th September, 1513, Surrey marched in
a north-westerly direction, and crossed the Till, with his van and
artillery, at Twisel Bridge, nigh where that river joins the Tweed,
his rear-guard column passing about a mile higher, by a ford. This
movement had the double effect of placing his army between King
James and his supplies from Scotland, and of striking the Scottish
monarch with surprise, as he seems to have relied on the depth of
the river in his front. But as the passage, both over the bridge and
through the ford, was difficult and slow, it seems possible that the
English might have been attacked to great advantage while straggling
with these natural obstacles. I know not if we are to impute James's
forbearance to want of military skill, or to the romantic
declaration which Pitscottie puts in his mouth, "that he was
determined to have his enemies before him on a plain field," and
therefore would suffer no interruption to be given, even by
artillery, to their passing the river.
'The ancient bridge of Twisel, by which the English crossed the
Till, is still standing beneath Twisel Castle, a splendid pile of
Gothic architecture, as now rebuilt by Sir Francis Blake, Bart.,
whose extensive plantations have so much improved the country
around. The glen is romantic and delightful, with steep banks on
each side, covered with copse, particularly with hawthorn. Beneath
a tall rock, near the bridge, is a plentiful fountain, called St.
Helen's Well.'--SCOTT.
That James was credited by his contemporaries with military skill
and ample courage will be seen by reference to Barclay's 'Ship of
Fooles,' formerly referred to. The poet proposes a grand general
European movement against the Turks, and suggests James IV as the
military leader. The following complimentary acrostic is a feature
of the passage:--
'I n prudence pereles is this moste comely kinge;
A nd as for his strength and magnanimitie
C onceming his noble dedes in every thinge,
O ne founde on grounde like to him can not be.
B y birth borne to boldenes and audacitie,
U nder the bolde planet of Mars the champion,
S urely to subdue his enemies eche one.'
line 583. Sullen is admirably descriptive of the leading feature in
the appearance of the Till just below Twisel Bridge. No one
contrasting it with the Tweed at Norham will have difficulty in
understanding the saying that:--
'For a'e man that Tweed droons, Till droons three.'
Stanza XX. line 608. The earlier editions have vails, 'lowers' or
'checks'; as in Venus and Adonis, 956, 'She vailed her eyelids.' The
edition of 1833 reads 'VAILS, contr. for 'avails.'
line 610. Douglas and Randolph were two of Bruce's most trusted
leaders.
line 611. See anecdote in 'Border Minstrelsy,' ii. 245 (1833 ed.),
with its culmination, 'O, for one hour of Dundee!' Cp. 'Pleasures of
Hope' (close of Poland passage):--
'Oh! once again to Freedom's cause return
The Patriot Tell--the Bruce of Bannockburn!'
and Wordsworth's sonnet, 'In the Pass of Killicranky,' in which the
aspiration for 'one hour of that Dundee' is prompted by the fear of
an invasion in 1803.
Stanza XXI. line 626. Hap what hap, come what may. Cp. above 'tide
what tide,' III. 416.
line 627. Basnet, a light helmet.
Stanza XXIII. line 682. 'The reader cannot here expect a full
account of the Battle of Flodden: but, so far as is necessary to
understand the romance, I beg to remind him, that, when the English
army, by their skilful countermarch, were fairly placed between King
James and his own country, the Scottish monarch resolved to fight;
and, setting fire to his tents, descended from the ridge of Flodden
to secure the neighbouring eminence of Brankstone, on which that
village is built. Thus the two armies met, almost without seeing
each other, when, according to the old poem of "Flodden Field,"--
"The English line stretch'd east and west,
And southward were their faces set;
The Scottish northward proudly prest,
And manfully their foes they met."
The English army advanced in four divisions. On the right, which
first engaged, were the sons of Earl Surrey, namely, Thomas Howard,
the Admiral of England, and Sir Edmund, the Knight Marshal of the
army. Their divisions were separated from each other; but, at the
request of Sir Edmund, his brother's battalion was drawn very near
to his own. The centre was commanded by Surrey in person; the left
wing by Sir Edward Stanley, with the men of Lancashire, and of the
palatinate of Chester. Lord Dacres, with a large body of horse,
formed a reserve. When the smoke, which the wind had driven between
the armies, was somewhat dispersed, they perceived the Scots, who
had moved down the hill in a similar order of battle, and in deep
silence. {5} The Earls of Huntley and of Home commanded their left
wing, and charged Sir Edmund Howard with such success as entirely to
defeat his part of the English right wing. Sir Edmund's banner was
beaten down, and he himself escaped with difficulty to his brother's
division. The Admiral, however, stood firm; and Dacre advancing to
his support with the reserve of cavalry, probably between the
interval of the divisions commanded by the brothers Howard, appears
to have kept the victors in effectual check. Home's men, chiefly
Borderers, began to pillage the baggage of both armies; and their
leader is branded, by the Scottish historians, with negligence or
treachery. On the other hand, Huntley, on whom they bestow many
encomiums, is said, by the English historians, to have left the
field after the first charge. Meanwhile the Admiral, whose flank
these chiefs ought to have attacked, availed himself of their
inactivity, and pushed forward against another large division of the
Scottish army in his front, headed by the Earls of Crawford and
Montrose, both of whom were slain, and their forces routed. On the
left, the success of the English was yet more decisive; for the
Scottish right wing, consisting of undisciplined Highlanders,
commanded by Lennox and Argyle, was unable to sustain the charge of
Sir Edward Stanley, and especially the severe execution of the
Lancashire archers. The King and Surrey, who commanded the
respective centres of their armies, were meanwhile engaged in close
and dubious conflict. James, surrounded by the flower of his
kingdom, and impatient of the galling discharge of arrows, supported
also by his reserve under Bothwell, charged with such fury that the
standard of Surrey was in danger. At that critical moment, Stanley,
who had routed the left wing of the Scottish, pursued his career of
victory, and arrived on the right flank, and in the rear of James's
division, which, throwing itself into a circle, disputed the battle
till night came on. Surrey then drew back his forces; for the
Scottish centre not having been broken, and the left wing being
victorious, he yet doubted the event of the field. The Scottish
army, however, felt their loss, and abandoned the field of battle in
disorder, before dawn. They lost, perhaps, from eight to ten
thousand men; but that included the very prime of their nobility,
gentry, and even clergy. Scarce a family of eminence but has an
ancestor killed at Flodden; and there is no province in Scotland,
even at this day, where the battle is mentioned without a sensation
of terror and sorrow. The English also lost a great number of men,
perhaps within one-third of the vanquished, but they were of
inferior note.--See the only distinct detail of the Field of Flodden
in PINKERTON'S History, Book xi; all former accounts being full of
blunders and inconsistency.
'The spot from which Clara views the battle, must be supposed to
have been on a hillock commanding the rear of the English right
wing, which was defeated, and in which conflict Marmion is supposed
to have fallen.'--SCOTT.
Lockhart adds this quotation:--'In 1810, as Sir Carnaby
Haggerstone's workmen were digging in Flodden Field, they came to a
pit filled with human bones, and which seemed of great extent; but,
alarmed at the sight, they immediately filled up the excavation, and
proceeded no farther.
'In 1817, Mr. Grey of Millfield Hill found, near the traces of an
ancient encampment, a short distance from Flodden Field, a tumulus,
which, on removing, exhibited a very singular sepulchre. In the
centre, a large urn was found, but in a thousand pieces. It had
either been broken to pieces by the stones falling upon it when
digging, or had gone to pieces on the admission of the air. This urn
was surrounded by a number of cells formed of flat stones, in the
shape of graves, but too small to hold the body in its natural
state. These sepulchral recesses contained nothing except ashes, or
dust of the same kind as that in the urn."--Sykes' Local Records (2
vols. 8vo, 1833), vol. ii. pp. 60 and 109.'
Stanza XXIV. line 717. 'Sir Brian Tunstall, called in the romantic
language of the time, Tunstall the Undefiled, was one of the few
Englishmen of rank slain at Flodden. He figures in the ancient
English poem, to which I may safely refer my readers, as an edition,
with full explanatory notes, has been published by my friend, Mr.
Henry Weber. Tunstall, perhaps, derived his epithet of undefiled
from his white armour and banner, the latter bearing a white cock,
about to crow, as well as from his unstained loyalty and knightly
faith. His place of residence was Thurland Castle.'--SCOTT.
Stanza XXV. line 744. Bent, the slope of the hill. It is less likely
to mean the coarse grass on the hill--also a possible meaning of the
word--because spectators would see the declivity and not what was on
it. For the former usage see Dryden, 'Palamon and Arcite,'
II. 342-45:--
'A mountain stood,
Threat'ning from high, and overlook'd the wood;
Beneath the low'ring brow, and on a BENT,
The temple stood of Mars armipotent.'
line 745. The tent was fired so that the forces might descend amid
the rolling smoke.
line 747. As a poetical critic Jeffrey was right for once when he
wrote thus of this great battle piece:--
'Of all the poetical battles which have been fought, from the days
of Homer to those of Mr. Southey, there is none, in our opinion, at
all comparable, for interest and animation--for breadth of drawing
and magnificence of effect--with this of Mr. Scott's.'
line 757. To this day a commanding position to the west of the hill
is called the 'King's Chair.'
Stanza XXVI. line 795. 'Badenoch-man,' says Lockhart, 'is the
correction of the author's interleaved copy of the ed. of 1830.'
HIGHLANDMAN was the previous reading. Badenoch is in the S. E. of
co. of Inverness, between Monagh Lea mountains and Grampians.
Stanza XXVIII. line 867 Sped, undone, killed. Cp. Merchant of
Venice, ii. 9. 70: ' So be gone; you are sped.' See also note on
'Lycidas' 122, Clarendon Press Milton, vol. i.
Stanza XXX. The two prominent features of this stanza are the sweet
tenderness of the verses, and the illustration of the irony of
events in the striking culmination of the hero's career.
line 904. Cp. Pope, 'Moral Epistles,' II. 269:--
'And yet, believe me, good as well as ill,
Woman's at best a contradiction still.'
line 906. Cp. Byron's 'Sardanapalus,' I. ii. 511:--
'Your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them.'
Stanza XXXII. line 972. See above, III. x.
line 976. Metaphor from the sand-glass. Cp. Pericles, v. 2. 26:--
'Now our sands are almost run.'
Stanza XXXIII. lines 999-1004. Charlemagne's rear-guard under Roland
was cut to pieces by heathen forces at Roncesvalles, a valley in
Navarre, in 778. Roland might have summoned his uncle Charlemagne by
blowing his magic horn, but this his valour prevented him from doing
till too late. He was fatally wounded, and the 'Song of Roland,'
telling of his worth and prowess, is one of the best of the
mediaeval romances. Olivier was also a distinguished paladin, and
the names of the two are immortalized in the proverb 'A Rowland for
an Oliver.' Fontarabia is on the coast of Spain, about thirty miles
from Roncesvalles. See Paradise Lost, I. 586, and note in Clarendon
Press ed.
line 1011 Our Caledonian pride, fitly and tenderly named 'the
flowers of the forest.'
Stanza XXXIV. line 1034. Cp. 'spearmen's twilight wood,' 'Lady of
the Lake,' VI. xvii.
line 1035. Cp. Aytoun's 'Edinburgh after Flodden,' vii, where
Randolph Murray tells of the 'riven banner':--
'It was guarded well and long
By your brothers and your children,
By the valiant and the strong.
One by one they fell around it,
As the archers laid them low,
Grimly dying, still unconquered,
With their faces to the foe.'
line 1059. Lockhart here gives an extract from Jeffrey:--'The
powerful poetry of these passages can receive no illustration from
any praise or observations of ours. It is superior, in our
apprehension, to all that this author has hitherto produced; and,
with a few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has ever been
written upon similar subjects. From the moment the author gets in
sight of FIodden Field, indeed, to the end of the poem, there is no
tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary passages. He does not
once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to describe dresses and
ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of feudal barons from
the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred lines, in
short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his course;
but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and
lofty movement, than any epic bard that we can at present remember.'
Stanza XXXV. 1. 1067. Lockhart quotes from Byron's 'Lara' as a
parallel,--
'Day glimmers on the dying and the dead,
The cloven cuirass, and the helmless head,' &c.
line 1084. 'There can be no doubt that King James fell in the battle
of Flodden. He was killed, says the curious French Gazette, within a
lance's length of the Earl of Surrey; and the same account adds,
that none of his division were made prisoners, though many were
killed; a circumstance that testifies the desperation of their
resistance. The Scottish historians record many of the idle reports
which passed among the vulgar of their day. Home was accused, by the
popular voice, not only of failing to support the King, but even of
having carried him out of the field, and murdered him. And this tale
was revived in my remembrance, by an unauthenticated story of a
skeleton, wrapped in a bull's hide, and surrounded with an iron
chain, said to have been found in the well of Home Castle, for
which, on enquiry, I could never find any better authority than the
sexton of the parish having said, that, IF THE WELL WERE CLEANED
OUT, HE WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED AT SUCH A DISCOVERY. Home was the
chamberlain of the King, and his prime favourite; he had much to
lose (in fact did lose all) in consequence of James's death, and
nothing earthly to gain by that event: but the retreat, or
inactivity, of the left wing, which he commanded, after defeating
Sir Edmund Howard, and even the circumstance of his returning
unhurt, and loaded with spoil, from so fatal a conflict, rendered
the propagation of any calumny against him easy and acceptable.
Other reports gave a still more romantic turn to the King's fate,
and averred, that James, weary of greatness after the carnage among
his nobles, had gone on a pilgrimage, to merit absolution for the
death of his father, and the breach of his oath of amity to Henry.
In particular, it was objected to the English, that they could never
show the token of the iron belt; which, however, he was likely
enough to have laid aside on the day of battle, as encumbering his
personal exertions. They produce a better evidence, the monarch's
sword and dagger, which are still preserved in the Herald's College
in London. Stowe has recorded a degrading story of the disgrace with
which the remains of the unfortunate monarch were treated in his
time. An unhewn column marks the spot where James fell, still called
the King's Stone.'--SCOTT. See also Mr. Jerningham's 'Norham
Castle,' chap. xi.
line 1084. See above, V. vii, &c.
Stanza XXXVI. line 1096. 'This storm of Lichfield Cathedral, which
had been garrisoned on the part of the King, took place in the Great
Civil War. Lord Brook, who, with Sir John Gill, commanded the
assailants, was shot with a musket-ball through the vizor of his
helmet. The royalists remarked that he was killed by a shot fired
from St. Chad's Cathedral, and upon St. Chad's day, and received his
death-wound in the very eye with which, he had said, he hoped to see
the ruin of all the cathedrals in England. The magnificent church in
question suffered cruelly upon this, and other occasions; the
principal spire being ruined by the fire of the besiegers.'--SCOTT.
Ceadda, or Chad, after resigning the bishopric of York in 669 A. D.,
was appointed Bp. of Lichfield, where he 'lived for a little while
in great holiness.' See Hunt's 'English Church in the Middle Ages,'
p. 17.
line 1110. The allusion is to the old fragment on Flodden, which has
been so skilfully extended by Jean Elliot and also by Mrs. Cockburn
in their national lyrics, 'The Flowers o' the Forest.'
line 1117. Once more the poet uses the irony of events with
significant force.
Stanza XXXVII. line 1125. There is now a font of stone with a
drinking cup, and an inscription on the back of the font runs thus:-
-
'Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and stay,
Rest by the well of Sybil Grey.'
Stanza XXXVIII. In this stanza the poet indicates the spirit in
which romances are written, clearly indicating that those only that
have ears will be able to hear. 'Phonanta sunetoisin' might be the
watchword of all imaginative writers. Cp. Thackeray's 'Rebecca and
Rowena.'
line 1155. Hall and Holinshed were chroniclers of the sixteenth
century, to both of whom Shakespeare was indebted for pliant
material.
line 1168. Sir Thomas More, Lord Sands, and Anthony Denny. See Henry
VIII.
lines 1169-70. The references are to old homely customs at weddings.
See Brand's 'Popular Antiquities.'