To fetche him dukes and lordes and knightes, My mother was a westerne woman,

Tone day to marrye Kyng Adlands daughter,
Tother daye to carrye her home.

That he must either turne againe and fighte, And you shal be a harper, brother,

This word is derived by the very learned editor of Junius, from the Anglo-Saxon Tyn 255 very, and wagan 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 260 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 God. Afterwards, when the irruptions of the Saracens into Europe, and the Crusades into the East, had 265 brought them acquainted with a new species of unbelievers, our ignorant ancestors, who thought all that did not receive the Christian law were necessarily 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 man. ner as they afterwards used the name of Sarazen to express any kind of pagan or idolater. In the ancient romance of Merline (in the

270

And their swordes soe sore can byte,
Throughe help of Gramaryè,
That soone they have slayne the kempery

men,

Or forst them forth to flee.

Kyng Estmere tooke that fayre ladyè,
And marryed her to his wiffe,
And brought her home to merry England
With her to leade his life.

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280

*** 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.

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

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 interludes 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.]

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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

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

hands of such Tarmagants." [So the orig. | maker]; yet if one should cal him by his 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 oredoing 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 interludes 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 stageplay, "the people know right well, that he that plaieth the sowdain is percase a sowter [shoe

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 romancers, 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,

but whose story hath nothing in common with this of the ballad. As Wood was the most noted warrior of Scotland, it is proba ble that, like the Theban Hercules, he hath engrossed the renown of other heroes.

THE king sits in Dumferling toune,

-is given from two MS. copies, transmit- | who flourished in the time of our Edw. IV., ted 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

Drinking the blude-reid wine:
O quhar will I get guid sailor,
To sail this schip of mine?

Up and spak an eldern knicht,

Sat at the kings richt kne:
Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,
That sails upon the se.

The king has written a braid letter,*
And signd it wi' his hand;

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10

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