83. Verge. Pronounced varge, as the rhyme shows. In v. 219 below it has
its ordinary sound; but cf. v. 812.
84. The Hero's Targe. "There is a rock so named in the Forest of
Glenfinlas, by which a tumultuary cataract takes its course. This wild
place is said in former times to have afforded refuge to an outlaw, who
was supplied with provisions by a woman, who lowered them down from
the brink of the precipice above. His water he procured for himself, by
letting down a flagon tied to a string into the black pool beneath the
fall" (Scott).
98. Broke. Quartered. Cf. the quotation from Jonson below. Scott says
here: "Everything belonging to the chase was matter of solemnity among
our ancestors; but nothing was more so than the mode of cutting up,
or, as it was technically called, breaking, the slaughtered stag. The
forester had his allotted portion; the hounds had a certain allowance;
and, to make the division as general as possible, the very birds had
their share also. 'There is a little gristle,' says Tubervile, 'which
is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I
have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that
she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in
breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it.' In the
very ancient metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, that peerless knight,
who is said to have been the very deviser of all rules of chase, did not
omit the ceremony:
'The rauen he yaue his yiftes
Sat on the fourched tre.' [9]
"The raven might also challenge his rights by the Book of St. Albans;
for thus says Dame Juliana Berners:
'slitteth anon
The bely to the side, from the corbyn bone;
That is corbyns fee, at the death he will be.'
Jonson, in The Sad Shepherd, gives a more poetical account of the same
ceremony:
'Marian. He that undoes him,
Doth cleave the brisket bone, upon the spoon
Of which a little gristle grows--you call it
Robin Hood. The raven's bone.
Marian. Now o'er head sat a raven
On a sere bough, a grown, great bird, and hoarse,
Who, all the while the deer was breaking up,
So croaked and cried for 't, as all the huntsmen,
Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous.'"