Marmion Part 23

'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 a.s.surance of safety, be sent on necessary emba.s.sies into Scotland. This is alluded to in Stanza xxi. p. 25.'--SCOTT.

line 165. Blazon'd s.h.i.+eld, a s.h.i.+eld with a coat of arms painted on it, especially with bearings quartered in commemoration of victory in battle. See below V. xv, VI. x.x.xviii, 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, Gloucesters.h.i.+re, 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 s.h.i.+eld, hung on the gallows, indicated the degraded knight.

Stanza XIII. line 192. Scott writes:--'Were accuracy of any consequence in a fict.i.tious 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 t.i.tle of the ballad in the 'Border Minstrelsy' is 'The Death of Featherstonhaugh.'

line 203. 'Hardriding d.i.c.k is not an epithet referring to horsemans.h.i.+p, 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. wa.s.sail-bowl. 'Wa.s.sell' or 'wa.s.sail' (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 Wa.s.sAILERS.'

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. Coriola.n.u.s, 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 Berwicks.h.i.+re 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 Berwicks.h.i.+re.

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 was.h.i.+ng. 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 princ.i.p.al 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, ent.i.tled '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 c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l, Southey gives some important information in extracts from 'a.n.a.les 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.'