25^1. #d.# ever.
25^2. #c#, #d#, #e#. I stood.
25^3. #d.# two be. #b.# quod W. #c#, #d#, #e#. said W.
27^1. bent.
27^4. #c#, #e#. threescore.
28^2. #c#, #d#, #e#. Earl D. #c.# had the bent. #d.# bad the bent.
28^3. A captain: mickle pride.
28^4. The spears. #e.# sent _for_ went.
29^3. And many.
30^1. #b.# a _for_ great.
30^2. #b.# each one chose. #c#, #d#, #e#. and likewise for to
hear.
30^{3,4}. #c#, #d#, #e#. The cries of men lying in their gore, and
scattered here and there.
31^3. lions mov’d.
31^4. and made.
32^3. Vntill the blood like drops of raine.
33^1. Yeeld thee Lord Piercy.
33^2. and _wanting_.
33^3. shalt.
33^4. #b.# with Iames. #d.# the _for_ our.
34^1. #c#, #d#. will I.
34^2. and thus.
34^4. that ever I did see.
35^1. #e.# To _for_ Noe.
36^3. #b.# And stroke E. D. to the heart. #c#, #d#, #e#. Which
struck E. D. to the heart.
36^4. #e.# and #a.#
37^1. #c#, #d#, #e#. never spake (spoke).
37^3. at an end.
38^3. #c#, #d#, #e#. And said. #b#, #c#, #d#, #e#. thy life.
39^2. with sorrow.
39^3. #c#, #d#, #e#. more renowned.
39^4. #c#, #d#. did. #e.# did ever.
40^1. #b.# among.
40^3. in wrath.
40^4. the Earl.
41^2. #c#, #e#. most bright.
43^2. #b.# his body he did. #c#, #d#, #e#. he did his body.
43^3. #c#, #d#, #e#. The spear went.
44^1. #c#, #d#, #e#. So thus. #b.# both these two. #c#, #e#.
these.
45^1. #b.# a good bow in. #c#, #d#, #e#. a bow bent in.
45^4. #c#, #d#, #e#. unto the head drew he.
46^1. #d.# Montgomery then.
46^2. so right his shaft.
46^4. heart.
47^1. fight did last from break of day.
48^1. #c#, #d#, #e#. With the Earl.
48^2. Ogerton.
48^3. #c#, #d#, #e#. Ratcliff and Sir Iohn.
49^1. and good.
49^3. And (_of_ #a#) _wanting_.
50^2. #b.# wofull. #c#, #d#, #e#. doleful.
50^4. #b.# still vpon.
51^3. And _wanting_: the field. #c#, #e#. Charles Currel.
51^4. flye.
52^1. #b.# Sir Robert. #c#, #d#, #e#. Sir Charles Murrel of
Ratcliff too.
52^2. #d.# sisters sisters.
52^3. #c#, #d#, #e#. Lamb so well.
52^4. yet saved could.
53^1. Markwell: #c#, #d#, #e#. in likewise.
53^2. did with E. Dowglas dye.
53^3. #b#, #d#. peers _for_ speeres.
54^3. #c#, #d#, #e#. rest were slain in C. C.
56^4. #c#, #d#, #e#. when _for_ ere.
57^1. #c#, #d#, #e#. This news.
58^1. did say.
58^2. can _for_ may.
59^4. was slain in Chevy Chase.
60^2. twill.
61^1. #c#, #e#. Scot.
61^4. #e.# Lord _for_ Erle.
62^1. #c#, #d#, #e#. vow full well the king performd.
62^4. #b.# of high.
63^3. ended. #d.# of _for_ in.
63^4. #b.# Lord _for_ Erle.
64^1. #c#, #d#, #e#. the king: the land.
64^2. #c#, #d#, #e#. in plenty.
#f.#
_The copy reprinted by Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs
Historical and Traditionary, 1868, I, 80. This copy was given
Maidment by Mr Gibb_, “for many years one of the sub-librarians
in the library of the Faculty of Advocates. It had belonged to
his grandmother, and was probably printed in Edinburgh about the
beginning of the last or end of the preceding century.”
5^3. fearing him.
6^1. twenty hundred.
13^3. fifteen hundred.
14^1. All pleasant men, _as in_ #a#, #b#.
27^1. Our Scotish archers bent.
27^4. they four score English slew.
28^2. Douglas bade on the bent.
30^1. O but it was a grief to see; _and again_, 39^1, O but _for_
O Christ.
46^3. wings that were.
46^4. were.
50^4. fought still on the stumps.
53^3. Of fifteen hundred.
53^4. went hame but fifty three.
54^1. twenty hundred.
54^2. scarce fifty five did flee.
55^4. could.
56^4. when they were cold as clay.
58^1. 60 _is substituted here_.
60. 58 _is substituted, with change of_ James _to_ Henry, _and, in
the next line, of_ Scotland _to_ England.
61, 62 are omitted.
63^1. Now of.
64^3. debates.
163
THE BATTLE OF HARLAW
#A. a.# Communicated by Charles Elphinstone Dalrymple, Esq., of
Kinaldie, Aberdeenshire. #b.# Notes and Queries, Third Series, VII,
393, communicated by A. Ferguson.
#B.# The Thistle of Scotland, 1823, p. 92.
The copy of this ballad which was printed by Aytoun, 1858, I, 75, was
derived by Lady John Scott from a friend of Mr Dalrymple’s, and when it
left Mr Dalrymple’s hands was in the precise form of #A a#. Some changes
were made in the text published by Aytoun, and four stanzas, 14–16, 18,
were dropped, the first three to the advantage of the ballad, and quite
in accordance with the editor’s plan. Mr Dalrymple informs me that in
his younger days he had essayed to improve the last two lines of stanza
7 by the change,
We’d best cry in our merry men
And turn our horses’ head,
and had rearranged stanzas 18, 19, “which were absolutely chaotic,”
adhering, however, closely to the sense. #A b#, given in Notes and
Queries, from a manuscript, as “the original version of this ballad,”
exhibits the changes made by Mr Dalrymple, and was therefore, one would
suppose, founded upon his copy. Half a century ago the ballad was
familiar to the people, and the variations of #b#, which are not few,
may be traditional, and not arbitrary; for this reason it has been
thought best not to pass them over. The Great North of Scotland Railway,
A Guide, by W. Ferguson, Edinburgh, 1881, contains, p. 8 f, a copy which
is evidently compounded from #A b# and Aytoun. It adds this variation of
the last stanza:
Gin ony body spier at ye
For the men ye took awa,
They’re sleepin soun and in their sheen
I the howe aneath Harlaw.
The editor of The Thistle of Scotland treats the ballad as a burlesque,
and “not worth the attention of the public,” on which ground he refrains
from printing more than three stanzas, one of these being 15; and
certainly both this and that which follows it have a dash of the
unheroic and even of the absurd. Possibly there were others in the same
strain in the version known to Laing, but all such may fairly be
regarded as wanton depravations, of a sort which other and highly
esteemed ballads have not escaped.
The battle of Harlaw was fought on the 24th July, 1411. Donald of the
Isles, to maintain his claim to the Earldom of Ross,[181] invaded the
country south of the mountains with ten thousand islanders and men of
Ross (ravaging everywhere as he advanced) in the hope of sacking
Aberdeen, and reducing to his power the country as far as the Tay. There
was universal alarm in those parts. He was met at Harlaw, eighteen miles
northwest of Aberdeen, by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, and Alexander
Ogilby, sheriff of Angus, with the forces of Mar, Garioch, Angus, and
The Mearns, and his further progress was stayed. The Celts lost more
than nine hundred, the Lowlanders five hundred, including nearly all the
gentry of Buchan. (Scotichronicon, II, 444 f.) This defeat was in the
interest of civilization against savagery, and was felt, says Burton,
“as a more memorable deliverance even than that of Bannockburn.”
(History of Scotland, 1883, II, 394.)
As might be expected, the Lowlanders made a ballad about this hard
fight. ‘The battel of the Hayrlau’ is noted among other popular songs,
in immediate connection with ‘The Hunttis of Chevet,’ by the author of
The Complaint of Scotland, 1549 (Murray’s edition, p. 65), but most
unfortunately this ancient song, unlike Chevy Chase, has been lost.
There is a well-known poem upon the battle, in thirty-one eight-line
stanzas, printed by Ramsay, in his Ever Green, 1724, I, 78.[182] David
Laing believed that it had been printed long before. “An edition,” he
says, “printed in the year 1668, was in the curious library of old
Robert Myln” (Early Metrical Tales, p. xlv.) In the catalogue of Myln’s
books there is entered, apparently as one of a bundle of pamphlets,
“Harlaw, The Battle yrof, An. 1411 ... 1668,”[183] and the entry may
reasonably be taken to refer to the poem printed by Ramsay. This piece
is not in the least of a popular character. It has the same artificial
rhyme as The Raid of the Reid Swyre and The Battle of Balrinnes, but in
every other respect is prose. Mr Norval Clyne, Ballads from Scottish
History, p. 244 ff, has satisfactorily shown that the author used
Boece’s History, and even, in a way, translated some of Boece’s phrases.
The story of the traditional ballad is, at the start, put into the mouth
of a Highlander, who meets Sir James the Rose and Sir John the Gryme,
and is asked for information about Macdonell; but after stanza 8, these
gentlemen having gone to the field, the narrator describes what he saw
as he went on and further on. It is somewhat surprising that John
Highlandman should be strolling about in this idle way when he should
have been with Macdonell. The narrator[184] in the Ever Green poem
reports at second hand: as he is walking, he meets a man who, upon
request, tells him the beginning and the end.[185] Both pieces have
nearly the same first line. The borrowing was more probably on the part
of the ballad, for a popular ballad would be likely to tell its tale
without preliminaries.
A ballad taken down some four hundred years after the event will be apt
to retain very little of sober history. It is almost a matter of course
that Macdonell should fall, though in fact he was not even routed, but
only forced to retire. It was vulgarly said in Major’s time that the
Highlanders were beaten: they turned and ran awa, says the ballad.
Donaldum non fugarunt, says Major, and even the ballad, inconsistently,
‘Ye’d scarce known who had won.’ We are not disconcerted at the Highland
force being quintupled, or the battle’s lasting from Monday morning till
Saturday gloaming: diuturna erat pugna, says Major. But the ignoring of
so marked a personage as Mar, and of other men of high local distinction
that fell in the battle,[186] in favor of the Forbeses, who, though
already of consequence in Aberdeenshire, are not recorded to have taken
any part in the fight, is perhaps more than might have been looked for,
and must dispose us to believe that this particular ballad had its rise
in comparatively recent times.
Dunidier is a conspicuous hill on the old road to Aberdeen, and Netherha
is within two miles of it. (Overha and Netherha are only a mile apart,
and the one reading is as good as the other.) Harlaw is a mile north
from Balquhain (pronounced Bawhyne), and precisely at a right angle to
John Highlandman’s route from the West. Drumminor (to which Brave Forbes
sends for his mail-coat in stanza 15) was above twenty miles away, and
the messenger would have to pass right through the Highland army. The
fact that Drumminor ceased to be the head-castle of that powerful name
in the middle of the last century tells in some degree in favor of the
age of the ballad. (Notes of Mr Dalrymple.)
“The tune to which the ballad is sung, a particularly wild and simple
one, I venture to believe,” says Mr Dalrymple, “is of the highest
antiquity.” A tune of The Battle of Harlaw, as Motherwell pointed out,
Minstrelsy lxii, is referred to in Polemo Middiana;[187] and a “march,
or rather pibroch,” held to be this same air, is given in the Lute Book
of Sir William Mure of Rowallan, p. 30, and is reproduced in Dauney’s
Ancient Scotish Melodies, p. 349 (see the same work, p. 138 f, note b.)
Sir William Mure is said to have died in 1657. The Ever Green Harlaw is
adapted to an air in Johnson’s Museum, No 512, and “The Battle of
Hardlaw, a pibroch,” is given in Stenhouse’s Illustrations, IV, 447,
1853, “from a folio MS. of Scots tunes, of considerable antiquity.” This
last air occurs, says Maidment, in the rare Collection of Ancient Scots
Music (c. 1776) by Daniel Dow, “The Battle of Hara Law,” p. 28: Scotish
Ballads, etc., I, 200.
A
#a.# Communicated by Charles Elphinstone Dalrymple, Esq., of
Kinaldie, Aberdeenshire, in 1888, as obtained from the country
people by himself and his brother fifty years before. #b.# Notes and
Queries, Third Series, VII, 393, communicated by A. Ferguson.
1
As I cam in by Dunidier,
An doun by Netherha,
There was fifty thousand Hielanmen
A-marching to Harlaw.
Wi a dree dree dradie drumtie dree.
2
As I cam on, an farther on,
An doun an by Balquhain,
Oh there I met Sir James the Rose,
Wi him Sir John the Gryme.
3
‘O cam ye frae the Hielans, man?
An cam ye a’ the wey?
Saw ye Macdonell an his men,
As they cam frae the Skee?’
4
‘Yes, me cam frae ta Hielans, man,
An me cam a’ ta wey,
An she saw Macdonell an his men,
As they cam frae ta Skee.’
5
‘Oh was ye near Macdonell’s men?
Did ye their numbers see?
Come, tell to me, John Hielanman,
What micht their numbers be?’
6
‘Yes, me was near, an near eneuch,
An me their numbers saw;
There was fifty thousan Hielanmen
A-marchin to Harlaw.’
7
‘Gin that be true,’ says James the Rose,
‘We’ll no come meikle speed;
We’ll cry upo our merry men,
And lichtly mount our steed.’
8
‘Oh no, oh no,’ says John the Gryme,
‘That thing maun never be;
The gallant Grymes were never bate,
We’ll try phat we can dee.’
9
As I cam on, an farther on,
An doun an by Harlaw,
They fell fu close on ilka side;
Sic fun ye never saw.
10
They fell fu close on ilka side,
Sic fun ye never saw;
For Hielan swords gied clash for clash,
At the battle o Harlaw.
11
The Hielanmen, wi their lang swords,
They laid on us fu sair,
An they drave back our merry men
Three acres breadth an mair.
12
Brave Forbës to his brither did say,
Noo brither, dinna ye see?
They beat us back on ilka side,
An we’se be forced to flee.
13
‘Oh no, oh no, my brither dear,
That thing maun never be;
Tak ye your good sword in your hand,
An come your wa’s wi me.’
14
‘Oh no, oh no, my brither dear,
The clans they are ower strang,
An they drive back our merry men,
Wi swords baith sharp an lang.’
15
Brave Forbës drew his men aside,
Said, Tak your rest a while,
Until I to Drumminnor send,
To fess my coat o mail.
16
The servan he did ride,
An his horse it did na fail,
For in twa hours an a quarter
He brocht the coat o mail.
17
Then back to back the brithers twa
Gaed in amo the thrang,
An they hewed doun the Hielanmen,
Wi swords baith sharp an lang.
18
Macdonell, he was young an stout,
Had on his coat o mail,
An he has gane oot throw them a’,
To try his han himsell.
19
The first ae straik that Forbës strack,
He garrt Macdonell reel,
An the neist ae straik that Forbës strack,
The great Macdonell fell.
20
An siccan a lierachie
I’m sure ye never saw
As wis amo the Hielanmen,
When they saw Macdonell fa.
21
An whan they saw that he was deid,
They turnd an ran awa,
An they buried him in Leggett’s Den,
A large mile frae Harlaw.
22
They rade, they ran, an some did gang,
They were o sma record;
But Forbës an his merry men,
They slew them a’the road.
23
On Monanday, at mornin,
The battle it began,
On Saturday, at gloamin,
Ye’d scarce kent wha had wan.
24
An sic a weary buryin
I’m sure ye never saw
As wis the Sunday after that,
On the muirs aneath Harlaw.
25
Gin ony body speer at you
For them ye took awa,
Ye may tell their wives and bairnies
They’re sleepin at Harlaw.
B
The Thistle of Scotland, 1823, p. 92.
1
As I cam thro the Garrioch land,
And in by Over Ha,
There was sixty thousan Highland men
Marching to Harlaw.
11
The Highland men, with their broad sword,
Pushd on wi might and power,
Till they bore back the red-coat lads
Three furlongs long, and more.
15
Lord Forbës calld his men aside,
Says, Take your breath awhile,
Until I send my servant now
To bring my coat o mail.
* * * * *
#A. a.#
1^1. _Var._ Garioch land.
4^3. she: _so delivered, notwithstanding the inconsistency with_
me _in lines 1, 2_.
11^3. _Var._ back the red-coats.
20^1. _Sometimes_ pitleurachie.
25. “_There are different versions of this stanza_:” C. E. D.
#A. b.#
_Printed in two long lines._
_Burden_: In a dree, etc.
1^2. Wetherha.
1^4. a’marchin.
3^4, 4^4. Come marchin frae. 4^{1,2}. she cam.
5^1. Oh were ye near an near eneuch.
6^1. she was.
6^2. An she.
6^4. a’marchin for Harlaw.
7^1. quo James.
7^{3,4}.
So we’d best cry in our merry men,
And turn our horses’ heeds.
8^1. quo John.
10^3. gaed _for_ gied.
11^4. or mair.
12^1. did to his brither say.
12^4. And we’ll be.
15^1. Forbes to his men did say.
15^2. Noo, tak.
16^1. Brave Forbes’ hinchman, _var._ servant, then did.
19^2. Made the great M’Donell.
19^3. The second stroke that.
20^1. a ‘pilleurichie.’ 20^2. The like ye.
20^3. As there was amang.
21^3. in ‘Leggatt’s lan:’ “_the manuscript is indistinct, and it
would read equally well_, Leggalt’s lan.
21^4. Some twa three miles awa.
22^2. But they were.
22^3. For Forbes.
22^4. Slew maist a’by the.
23^4. Ye’d scarce tell wha.
24^2. The like ye never.
24^3. As there was.
24^4. muirs down by.
25^1. An gin Hielan lasses speer.
25^2. them that gaed awa.
25^3. tell them plain an plain eneuch.
#B.#
15^1. man.
164
KING HENRY FIFTH’S CONQUEST OF FRANCE
#a-d#, broadsides. #a.# Among Percy’s papers. #b.# Roxburghe Ballads,
III, 358. #c.# Jewitt’s Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire, p. 1. #d.#
Chetham’s Library, Manchester, in Hales and Furnivall, Percy’s Folio
MS., II, 597. #e.# Percy papers, “taken down from memory.” #f.#
Nicolas, History of the Battle of Agincourt, 1832, Appendix, p. 78,
from the recitation of a very aged person. #g.# The same, p. 80,
source not mentioned. #h.# Tyler, Henry of Monmouth, II, 197,
apparently from memory. #i.# Percy Society, XVII, Dixon, Ancient
Poems, etc., p. 52, from singing. #j.# Skene MS., p. 42. #k.#
Macmath MS., p. 27, from tradition. #l#, #m#. Buchan’s MSS, I, 176,
II, 124, probably broadside or stall copies.
All the known copies of this ballad are recent. It is not in Thackeray’s
list of broadsides, which dates perhaps as late as 1689 (Chappell, The
Roxburghe Ballads, I, xxiv-xxvii); and it is not included in the
collection of 1723–25, which showed particular favor to historical
pieces. In a manuscript index of first lines to a large collection of
songs and ballads “formed in 1748,” I find, “As our king lay on his
bed,” and the ballad may probably have first been published in the
second quarter of the last century. In a woodcut below the title of #a#,
#b#, there are two soldiers with G R on the flap of the coat and G on
the cap (no doubt in #c# as well); the date of these broadsides cannot
therefore be earlier than the accession of George I, 1714. The broadside
is in a popular manner, but has no mark of antiquity. It may, however,
represent an older ballad, disfigured by some purveyor for the Aldermary
press.
It is probable that the recited versions had their ultimate source in
print, and that printed copies were in circulation which, besides the
usual slight variations,[188] contained two more stanzas, one after 2
and another after 8, such as are found in #h# and elsewhere; which
stanzas are likely to have formed part of the original matter.
_After_ 2, #h# (see also #g#, #i#, #j#):
Tell him to send me my tribute home,
Ten ton of gold that is due to me;
Unless he send me my tribute home,
Soon in French land I will him see.
After 8, #h# (see also #g#, #i#, #k#, #m#):
O then bespoke our noble king,
A solemn vow then vowed he:
I’ll promise him such English balls[189]
As in French lands he neer did see!
#g# has several stanzas which are due to the hand of some improver.
Another, and much more circumstantial, ballad on Agincourt, written from
the chronicles, was current in the seventeenth century. It begins, ‘A
councell braue [grave] our king did hold,’ and may be seen in the Percy
Manuscript, p. 241, Hales and Furnivall, II, 166, in The Crown Garland
of Golden Roses (with seven stanzas fewer), ed. 1659, p. 65 of the
reprint by the Percy Society, vol. xv; Pepys’ Ballads, I, 90, No 44; Old
Ballads, II, 79; Pills to purge Melancholy, V, 49; etc.
The story of the Tennis-Balls is not mentioned by the French historians,
by Walsingham, Titus Livius, or the anonymous biographer of Henry in
Cotton MS., Julius E. IV.[190] It occurs, however, in several
contemporary writings, as in Elmham’s Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto,
cap. xii (Quod filius regis Francorum, in derisum, misit domino regi
pilas, quibus valeret cum pueris ludere potius quam pugnare, etc.),
Cole, Memorials of Henry the Fifth, 1858, p. 101; but not in Elmham’s
prose history. So in Capgrave, De illustribus Henricis, with a _fertur_,
ed. Hingeston, 1858, p. 114; but not in Capgrave’s chronicle. We might
infer, in these two cases, that the tale was thought good enough for
verses and good enough for eulogies, though not good enough for history.
Again, in verses of Harleian MS. 565, “in a hand of the fifteenth
century,” the Dolphin says to the English ambassadors:
Me thinke youre kyng he is nought [so] old
No werrys for to maynteyn.
Grete well youre kyng, he seyde, so yonge,
That is both gentill and small;
A tonne of tenys-ballys I shall hym sende,
For hym to pleye with all.
Henry sends back this message:
Oure Cherlys of Fraunce gret well or ye wende,
The Dolfyn prowed withinne his wall;
Swyche tenys-ballys I schal hym sende
As schall tere the roof all of his [h]all.[191]
But there is a chronicler who has the tale still. Otterbourne writes:
Eodem anno \[1414], in quadragesima, rege existente apud Kenilworth,
Karolus, regis Francorum filius, Delphinus vocatus, misit pilas
Parisianas ad ludendum cum pueris. Cui rex Anglorum rescripsit, dicens
se in brevi pilas missurum Londoniarum, quibus terreret et confunderet
sua tecta.
And once more, the author of an inedited “Chronicle of King Henry the
Fifth that was Kyng Henries son,” Cotton MS., Claudius A. viii, of the
middle of the fifteenth century, fol. 1, back:[192]
And tha_n_ the Dolphine of Fraunce aunswered to our embassatours,
and said in this man_er_, ‘that the kyng was ouer yong and to tender
of age to make any warre ayens hym, and was not lyke yet to be noo
good werrioure to doo and to make suche a conquest there vpon hym.
And somwhat in scorne and dispite he sente to hym a tonne full_e_ of
tenys-ballis, be-cause he wolde haue some-what for to play
w_i_t_h_all_e_ for hym and for his lordis, and that be-came hym
better than to mayntayn any werre. And than anone oure lordes that
was embassatours token hir leue and comen in to England ayenne, and
tolde the kyng and his counceill_e_ of the vngoodly aunswer that
they had of the Dolphy_n_, and of the present the which_e_ he had
sent vnto the kyng. And whan the kyng had hard her wordis, and the
answere of the Dolp[h]ynne, he was wondre sore agreued, and right_e_
euell_e_ apayd towarde the Frenssh_e_men, and toward the kyng, and
the Dolphynne, and thought_e_ to auenge hym vpon hem as sone as God
wold send hym grace and myght_e_; and anon lette make tenys-ballis
for the Dolp[h]ynne in all the hast that the myght_e_ be made, and
they were grete gonne-stones for the Dolp[h]ynne to play
wyth_e_-all_e_.’
The Dolphin, whom two of these writers make talk of Henry as if he were
a boy, was himself in his nineteenth year, and the English king more
than eight years his senior. “Hume has justly observed,” says Sir Harris
Nicolas, “that the great offers made by the French monarch, however
inferior to Henry’s demands, prove that it was his wish rather to
appease than exasperate him; and it is almost incredible that, whilst
the advisers of Charles evinced so much forbearance, his son should have
offered Henry a personal insult.... It should be observed, as additional
grounds for doubting that the message or gift was sent by the Dauphin,
that such an act must have convinced both parties of the hopelessness of
a pacific arrangement afterwards, and would, it may be imagined, have
equally prevented the French court and Henry from seeking any other
means of ending the dispute than by the sword. This, however, was not
the case; for even supposing that the offensive communication was made
on the occasion of the last, instead ... of that of the first embassy,
it is certain that overtures were again sent to Henry whilst he was on
his journey to the place of embarkation, and that even when there, he
wrote to the French monarch with the object of adjusting his claims
without a recourse to arms:” pp. 9, 12 f.
History repeats itself. Darius writes to Alexander as if he were a boy,
and sends him, with other things, a ball to play with; and Alexander, in
his reply to Darius, turns the tables upon the Persian king by his
interpretation of the insolent gifts: Pseudo-Callisthenes, I, 36, ed.
Müller, p. 40 f.[193] The parallel is close. It is not inconceivable
that the English story is borrowed, but I am not prepared to maintain
this.