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VI.

KING ESTMERE.

This old Romantic Legend (which is given from two copies, one of them in the Editor's folio MS, but which contained very great variations,) bears marks of considerable antiquity, and perhaps ought to have taken place of any in this volume. It should seem to have been written while part of Spain was in the hands of the Saracens or Moors; whose empire there was not fully extinguished before the year 1491. The Mahometans are spoken of in ver. 49, &c. just in the same terms as in all other old Romances. The author of the ancient Legend of Sir Bevis represents his hero, upon all occasions, breathing out defiance against

"Mahound and Termagaunte";"

and so full of zeal for his religion, as to return the following polite message to a Paynim king's fair daughter, who had fallen in love with him, and sen: two Saracen knights to invite him to her bower:

"I wyll not ones stirre off this grounde,
To speake with an heathen hounde.
Unchristen houndes, I rede you fle,
Or I your harte bloud shall set."

Indeed they return the compliment by calling him elsewhere "A Christen hounde‡.”

This was conformable to the real manners of the barbarous ages: perhaps the same excuse will hardly serve our bard; for that the Adland should be found lolling or leaning at his gate (ver. 35.) may be thought perchance a little out of character. And yet the great painter of manners, Homer, did not think it inconsistent with decorum to represent a king of the Taphians leaning at the gate of Ulysses to inquire for that monarch, when he touched at Ithaca as he was taking a voyage with a ship's cargo of iron to dispose in traffic. So little ought we to judge of ancient manners by our own.

Before I conclude this article, I cannot help observing that the reader will see, in this ballad, the character of the old Minstrels (those successors of the Bards) placed in a very respectable light||: here he will see one of them represented mounted on a fine horse, accompanied with an attendant to bear his harp after him, and to sing the poems of his composing. Here he will see him mixing in the company of kings without ceremony: no mean proof of the great antiquity of this poem. The further we carry our inquiries back, the greater respect we find paid to the professors of poetry and music among all the Celtic and Gothic nations. Their character was deemed so sacred, that under its sanction our famous King Alfred (as we have already seen¶) made no scruple to enter the Danish camp, and was at once admitted to the king's head-quarters.** Our poet has

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suggested the same expedient to the heroes of this ballad. All the histories of the North are full of the great reverence paid to this order of men. Harold Harfagre, a celebrated king of Norway, was wont t: seat them at his table above all the officers of his court and we find another Norwegian king placing five of them by his side in a day of battle, that they might be eye-witnesses of the great exploits they were to celebrate. As to Estmere's riding into the hall while the kings were at table, this was usual in the ages of chivalry; and even to this day we see a relic of this custom still kept up, in the champion's riding into Westminster-hall during the coronation dinnert

Some liberties have been taken with this tale by the Editor, but none without notice to the reader, in that part which relates to the subject of the Harper and his attendant.

HEARKEN to me, gentlemen,

Come and you shall heare;

Ile tell you of two of the boldest brethren
That ever borne y-were.

The tone of them was Adler younge,
The tother was Kyng Estmere:
The were as bolde men in their deeds,
As any were farr and neare.

As they were drinking ale and wine
Within Kyng Estmeres halle:
When will ye marry a wyfe, brother,
A wyfe to glad us all?

Then bespake him Kyng Estmere,

And answered him hastilee :

I know not that ladye in any land
That's able to marrye with mee.

Kyng Adland hath a daughter, brother,
Men call her bright and sheene;
If I were kyng here in your stead,

That ladye shold be my queene.

Saies, Reade me, reade me, deare brother,
Throughout merry England,
Where we might find a messenger
Betwixt us towe to sende.

Saies, You shal ryde yourselfe, brother,
Ile beare you companye;
Many throughe fals messengers are deceived,
And I feare lest soe shold wee.

Thus the renisht them to ryde

Of twoe good renisht steeds, And when the came to King Adlands halle, Of redd gold shone their weeds.

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V. 3, brether, fol. MS. V. 10, his brother's hall, fol. MS. V. 14, hartilye, fol. MS.-V. 27, Many a man... is. fol. MS. Bartholini Antiq. Dan. p. 173.-Northern Antiquities &c. vol. i. pp. 386, 389, &c.

See also the account of Edw. II., in the Essay on the Minstrels, and Note (X.)

He means fit, suitable.

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The word Gramarye, which occurs several times in the foregoing poem, is probably a corruption of the French word Grimoire, which signifies a conjuring book in the old French romances, if not the art of necromancy itself.

+++ Termagaunt (mentioned above), is the name given in the old romances to the god of the Saracens: in which he is constantly linked with Mahound, or Mahomet. Thus in the legend of Syr Guy, the Soudan (Sultan) swears,

"So helpe me Mahowne of might,
And Termagaunt my God so bright."
Sign. p. iij. b.

This word is derived by the very learned editor of Junius, from the Anglo-Saxon Tyn very, and Magan mighty.—As this word had so sublime a derivation, and was so applicable to the true God, how shall we account for its being so degraded ? Perhaps Tyn-magan or Termagant had been a name originally given to some Saxon idol, before our ancestors were converted to Christianity; or had been the peculiar attribute of one of their false deities; and therefore the first Christian missionaries rejected it as profane and improper to be applied to the true

Ver. 253, Some liberties have been taken in the following stanzas; but wherever this Edition differs from the preceding, it hath been brought nearer to the folio MS.

God. Afterwards, when the irruptions of the Sa racens into Europe, and the Crusades into the East, had brought them acquainted with a new species of unbelievers, our ignorant ancestors, who thought all that did not receive the Christian law were neces sarily pagans and idolaters, supposed the Mahometan creed was, in all respects, the same with that of their pagan forefathers, and therefore made no scruple to give the ancient name of Termagant to the God of the Saracens : just in the same manner as they afterwards used the name of Sarazen to express any kind of pagan or idolater. In the ancient romance of Merline (in the Editor's folio MS.) the Saxons themselves that came over with Hengist, because they were not Christians, are constantly called Sarazens.

However that be, it is certain that, after the times of the Crusades, both Mahound and Termagaunt made their frequent appearance in the pageants and religious enterludes of the barbarous ages; in which they were exhibited with gestures so furious and frantic, as to become proverbial. Thus Skelton speaks of Wolsey:

“Like Mahound in a play,

No man dare him withsay."

Ed. 1736, p. 158. In like manner Bale, describing the threats used by some papist magistrates to his wife, speaks of them as " grennyng upon her lyke Termagauntes in a playe."-[Actes of Engl. Votaryes, pt. 2, fo. 83, ed. 1550, 12mo.]

Accordingly, in a letter of Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, to his wife or sister*, who, it seems, with all her fellows (the players), had been "by my Lorde Maiors officer [s] mad to rid in a cart," he expresses his concern that she should "fall into the hands of such Tarmagants." [So the orig. dated May 2, 1593, preserved by the care of the Rev. Thomas Jenyns Smith, Fellow of Dulw. Coll.]-Hence we may conceive the force of Hamlet's expression in Shakspeare, where, condemning a ranting player, he says, "I could have such a fellow whipt for ore-doing Termagant: it out-herods Herod." A. iii. sc. 3.-By degrees, the word came to be applied to an outrageous turbulent person, and especially to a violent brawling woman; to whom alone it is now confined, and this the rather as, I suppose, the character of Termagant was anciently represented on the stage after the eastern mode, with long robes or petticoats.

Another frequent character in the old pageants or enterludes of our ancestors, was the sowdan, or soldan, representing a grim eastern tyrant: this appears from a curious passage in Stow's Annals [p. 458]. In a stage-play, "the people know right well, that he that plaieth the sowdain is percase a sowter [shoe-maker]; yet if one should cal him by his owne name, while he standeth in his majestie, one of his tormentors might hap to break his head." The soudain or soldan, was a name given to the Sarazen king (being only a more rude pronunciation of the word sultan), as the soldan of Egypt, the soudan of Persia, the sowdan of Babylon, &c. who were generally represented as accompanied with grim Sarazens, whose business it was to punish and torment Christians. I cannot conclude this short memoir, without observing that the French roman

• See Lysons's "Environs of London, 4to, vol. i.

cers, who had borrowed the word termagant from us, and applied it as we in their old romances, corrupted it into Tervagaunte: and from them La Fontaine took it up, and has used it more than once in his tales.-This may be added to the other proofs

adduced in this volume, of the great intercourse that formerly subsisted between the old minstrels and legendary writers of both nations, and that they mutually borrowed each others romances

VII.

SIR PATRICK SPENCE,

A SCOTTISH BALLAD,

-is given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland. In what age the hero of this ballad lived, or when this fatal expedition happened that proved so destructive to the Scots nobles, I have not been able to discover; yet am of opinion, that their catastrophe is not altogether without foundation in history, though it has escaped my own researches. In the infancy of navigation, such as used the northern seas were very liable to shipwreck in the wintry months: hence a law was enacted in the reign of James III., (a law which was frequently repeated afterwards,) "That there be na schip frauched out of the realm, with any staple gudes, fra the feast of Simons-day and Jude, unto the feast of the purification of our lady called Candelmess." Jam. III. Parlt. 2, ch. 15.

In some modern copies, instead of Patrick Spence hath been substituted the name of Sir Andrew Wood, a famous Scottish admiral who flourished in the time of our Edw. IV., but whose story hath nothing in common with this of the ballad. As Wood was the most noted warrior of Scotland, it is probable that, like the Theban Hercules, he bath er grossed the renown of other heroes.

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The first line that Sir Patrick red,
A loud lauch lauched he:
The next line that Sir Patrick red,
The teir blinded his ee.

O quha is this has don this deid,
This ill deid don to me;

To send me out this time o' the zeir,
To sail upon the se?

Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all,
Our guid schip sails the morne.

O say na sae, my master deir,

For I feir a deadlie storme.

Late late yestreen I saw the new moone
Wi' the auld moone in hir arme ;
And I feir, I feir, my deir master,
That we will com to harme.

O our Scots nobles wer richt laith

To weet their cork-heild schoone: Bot lang owre a' the play wer playd,

Thair hats they swam aboone.

O lang, lang, may thair ladies sit
Wi' thair fans into their hand,
Or eir they se Sir Patrick Spence
Cum sailing to the land.

O lang, lang, may the ladies stand
Wi' thair gold kems in their hair,
Waiting for thair ain deir lords,
For they'll se thame na mair.

Have owre, have owre to Aberdour*, It's fiftie fadom deip:

And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence, Wi' the Scots lords at his feitt.

VIII.

ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE.

We have here a ballad of Robin Hood (from the Editor's folio MS.) which was never before printed, and carries marks of much greater antiquity than any of the common popular songs on this subject.

The severity of those tyrannical forest-laws, that were introduced by our Norman kings, and the great temptation of breaking them by such as lived near

A braid letter, i e. open, or patent; in opposition to close Rolls.

the royal forests, at a time when the yeomanry of this kingdom were every where trained up to the long-bow, and excelled all other nations in the art of shooting, must constantly have occasioned great

A village lying upon the river Forth, the entrance to which is sometimes denominated De mortuo mari.

+ An ingenious friend thinks the Author of Hardyknute has borrowed several expressions and sentiments from the foregoing, and other old Scottish songs in this colection.

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