O quene of mercy, O lady full of grace,
Maiden moste pure, and goddis moder dere, 205
To sorow full harts chef comfort and solace,
Of all women O floure withouten pere,
Pray to thy son above the starris clere,
He to vouchesaf by thy mediatioun

To pardon thy servant, and bringe to salvacion. 210

In joy tryumphaunt the hevenly yerarchy,
With all the hole sorte of that glorious place,
His soule mot receyve into ther company
Thorowe bounte of hym that formed all solace :
Well of pite, of mercy, and of grace,
The father, the son, and the holy goste
In Trinitate one God of myghts moste.

215

+++ I have placed the foregoing poem of Skelton's before the following extract from Hawes, not only because it was written first, but because I think Skelton is in general to be considered as the earlier poet; many of his poems being written long before Hawes's Graunde Amor.

27

X.

THE reader has here a specimen of the descriptive powers of Stephen Hawes, a celebrated poet in the reign of Hen. VII., though now little known. It is extracted from an allegorical poem of his (written in 1505,) intitled, "The Hist. of Graunde Amoure & La Belle Pucel, called the Palace of Pleasure, &c." 4to. 1555. See more of Hawes in Ath. Ox. v. 1, p. 6, and Warton's Observ. v. 2, p. 105. He was The Temple of also author of a book, intitled, Glass. Wrote by Stephen Hawes, gentleman of the Pr. for Caxton, bedchamber to K. Henry VII." 4to. no date.

The following Stanzas are taken from Chap. III. "How and IV. of the Hist. above mentioned. Fame departed from Graunde Amour and left him with Governaunce and Grace, and howe he went to the Tower of Doctrine, &c." As we are able to give no small lyric piece of Hawes's, the reader will excuse the insertion of this extract.

And after thys further forth me brought
Dame Countenaunce into a goodly Hall,
Of jasper stones it was wonderly wrought:
Thy wyndowes cleare depured all of crystall, €0
And in the roufe on hye over all

Of golde was made a ryght crafty vyne;
Instede of grapes the rubies there did shyne.

The flore was paved with berall clarified,
With pillers made of stones precious,
Like a place of pleasure so gayely glorified,
It myght be called a palaice glorious,
So muche delectable and solacious;
The hall was hanged hye and circuler
With cloth of arras in the rychest maner,

65

70

was printed at Glasgow, by Robert and Andrew Foulis, mdeclv. 8vo, 12 pages,-We are ndebted for its publication (with many other valuable things in these volumes) to Sir David Dalrymple, Bart, who gave it as it was preserved in the memory of a lady, that is now dead.

The reader will here find it improved, and enlarged with several fine stanzas, recovored from a fragment of the same ballad, in the Editor's folio MS. It is remarkable that the latter is entitled Captain Adam Carre, and is in the English idiom. But whether the author was English or Scotch, the difference originally was not great. The English Ballads are generally of the North of England, the Scottish are of the South of Scotland, and of consequence the country of Ballad-singers was sometimes subject to one crown, and sometimes to the other, and most frequently to neither. Most of the finest old Scotch songs have the scene laid within twenty miles of England, which is indeed all poetic ground, green hills, remains of woods, clear brooks. The pastoral scenes remain: of the rude chivalry of former ages happily nothing remains but the ruins of the castles, where the more daring and successful robbers resided. The House or Castle of the Rodes stood about a measured mile south from Duns, in Berwickshire some of the ruins of it may be seen to this day. The Gordons were anciently seated in the same county: the two villages of East and West Gordon lie about ten miles from the castle of the Rodes* The fact, however, on which the Ballad is founded. happened in the North of Scotland, (see below,) yet it is but too faithful a specimen of the violences practised in the feudal times in every part of this Island, and indeed all over Europe.

From the different titles of this Ballad, it should seem that the old strolling bards or minstrels (who gained a livelihood by reciting these poems) made no scruple of changing the names of the personages they introduced, to humour their hearers. For instance, if a Gordon's conduct was blame-worthy in the opinion of that age, the obsequious minstrel would, when among Gordons, change the name to Car, whose clan or sept lay further West, and vice versa. The foregoing observation, which I owed to Sir David Dalrymple, will appear the more perfectly well founded, if, as I have since been informed (from Crawford's Memoirs), the principal Commander of the expedition was a Gordon, and the immediate Agent a Car, or Ker; for then the reciter might, upon good grounds, impute the barbarity here deplored, either to a Gordon or a Car, as best suited his purpose. In the third volume the reader will find a similar instance. See the song of Gil

This Ballad is well known in that neighbourhood, where it is entitled Adam o' Gordon. It may be observed, that the famous freebooter, whom Edward I. fought with hand to hau, near Farnham, was named Adam Gordon.

Morris, wherein the principal character introduced had different names given him, perhaps from the

same cause.

It may be proper to mention, that in the folio MS. instead of the "Castle of the Rodes," it is the "Castle of Britton's-borrow," and also "Diactors" or "Draitours-borrow," (for it is very obscurely written,) and " Capt. Adam Carre" is called the "Lord of Westerton-town." Uniformity required that the additional stanzas supplied from that copy should be clothed in the Scottish orthography and idiom this has therefore been attempted, though perhaps imperfectly.