of the desperate straits to which he was reduced. Fontarabia is a border town of Spain, on the sea-coast, about thirty miles north of Roncesvalles. Milton, following a different version of the same legend, says that "Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia."-Paradise Lost, 1. 586. For the skilful employment of proper names in this passage see note on 3. IX. 5. 13. them, Huntley and Home, and the Borderers under their command. 18. Notice the climax. 'bleeds' than 'toils.' ་ 'Dies' is a stronger word than bleeds,' XXXIV. 3. hail'd, showered thick as hail. 10. bill-men, men armed with bills, hatchets with hooked points, which would inflict more ghastly" (hideous) wounds than a spear or sword. 13. Similarly in the Lady of the Lake, 6. XVII., an army of spearmen is called "the spearmen's twilight wood" and "the serried grove of lances brown." 17. serried, crowded together. 28. their mightiest low, the mightiest having been laid low. 36. down, an open plain generally on the top of a hill, opposed to 'dale,' a low-lying valley. 34. dash ought to be 'dashes,' as the subject is a singular noun. 39. "The most celebrated of these songs is referred to in XXXVI. 24. Scarce a family of eminence but has an ancestor killed at Flodden; and there is no province in Scotland, even at this day, where the battle is mentioned without a sensation of terror and sorrow."-Scott. Sometimes the undying memory of Flodden takes a humorous form, as in the case of a Scotchman who, without previous training, set up as a medical practitioner on the English side of the Border. When reproached with the possible loss of life that might result from his ignorance, he drily replied that it would be a long time before he could make up for Flodden. XXXV. 5. view not that corpse mistrustfully, the corpse of King James; mistrustfully, with doubt as to whether it is King James's corpse or not. Compare 2. XIX. 14. 7. yon Border castle high, Home Castle. These lines refer to certain idle reports that were current in Scotland after the battle of Flodden. Home was accused by the popular voice not only of failing to support his king, but even of having carried him out of the field and murdered him. Other reports averred that James, weary of greatness after the carnage among his nobles, had gone on pilgrimage to earn absolution for the death of his father and the breach of his oath of amity to Henry of England. 11. the Royal Pilgrim etc., that the king is a pilgrim and may return. 19. yon blithe night, the gay night, at Holyrood. See the Fifth Canto. XXXVI. 2. a pierced and mangled body, believed by FitzEustace to be the body of Marmion. 8. This storm of Lichfield Cathedral, which had been garrisoned on the part of the king, took place in the Great Civil War. Lord Brooke, who with Sir John Gill commanded the assailants, was shot with a musket ball through the vizor of his helmet. The royalists remarked that he was killed by a shot from St. Chad's Cathedral, and upon St. Chad's day. 12. martial Marmion, Marmion's effigy. erst, in former days. 13. couchant, lying. 17. blazed, blazoned. 20. The fact that Marmion was not buried in hallowed ground was a further fulfilment of the imprecation uttered against the false lover in the song of Constance. See 3. XI. 16. 24. wede away, weeded out, extirpated like weeds, destroyed. The refrain of an old song lamenting the death of the young men who had gone to Flodden from Ettrick Forest is "The flowers of the forest are a' wede away." 30. took the room, was placed in the tomb in the baron's room, in his place. XXXVII. 7. font, basin of the fountain. 9. springlet, little spring. 13. This pastoral picture is introduced in order to bring vividly before our minds the contrast between the terrible scene of carnage that has just been described and the ordinary appearance of Flodden Field in the time of peace. 21-28. The sentiment in these lines is based on Christ's words"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." The concluding words are a reminiscence of the exclamation in Sir Tristrem, "God help Sir Tristrem the knight—he fought for England." XXXVIII. The writers of romances whether in prose or verse, have a way of representing their unhistorical heroes as dis. X tinguished actors on great historical occasions. In this stanza Scott anticipates the vein of fun indulged in by Thackeray in the following passages in Rebecca and Rowena, his amusing continuation of Ivanhoe. "It was Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the barons of England to league together and extort from the king that famous instrument and palladium of our liberties at present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, the Magna Charta. His name does not naturally appear in the list of barons, because he was only a knight etc. "And although none of the Spanish historians make mention of Sir Wilfred as the real author of the numerous triumphs" (over the Moors), "which now graced the arms of the good cause, this is not in the least to be wondered at in a nation that has always been notorious for bragging." In the MS. Scott was inclined to impose still more upon his readers' credulity. He originally wrote "He hardest pressed the Scottish ring; 'Twas thought that he struck down the king." but altered the lines on second thoughts. 1. Elf' is by derivation the same word and seems here to have the same meaning as 'oaf' (a blockhead). The word 'oaf' came to mean 'blockhead,' because it was believed that elves (fairies) were in the habit of abstracting intelligent human children, and substituting in their places stupid elf-children. 3. night. The battle commenced at four o'clock in the afternoon, and continued, as we have seen, until it was quite dark (XXXIV. 20). 9. Holinshed was an English chronicler. He died between 1578 and 1582. The work by which he is remembered is entitled The Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande. Shakespeare took from it the materials of some of his historical plays. Hall was an earlier chronicler, who died in 1547, and from his writings also Shakespeare obtained the foundations of many scenes and even of whole plays. 11. his faith made plain, his good faith having been cleared of the charges which Marmion had brought against him. 13. charged his shield with bearings, put bearings on his shield. 14. bearings, the charges or figures on a shield, as for instance the leopards on the shield of Edward I. (3. XXIII. 24), Marmion's falcon, and the lion rampant of Scotland (4. XXVIII. 18). 16. in terms, in detail. 20. the bridal's state, the splendour of the marriage ceremony. 23. To draw a curtain means to open or close it according to the way in which it is drawn. Here it means to open the curtain. The wedding guests, according to the custom of the time, went to see the newly married pair on the morning after their marriage. At this visit it was customary to throw the stockings of the bride at the head of the bridegroom, and those of the bridegroom at the head of the bride. If the missile was successfully aimed, it was considered to be a good omen for the thrower. 24. Catherine of Arragon was the first wife of Henry VIII. He divorced her in 1533, and she died in 1537. 27, 28. The following is an extract from a description of the Muhammadan marriage ceremony printed as an Appendix to Macnaghten's Principles of Muhammadan Law. "After this the Cazi offers up a supplication to heaven on behalf of the newly married pair, saying, 'Oh, great God! grant that mutual love may reign between this couple as it existed between Adam and Huwa (Adam and Eve), Ibraheem and Sara (Abraham and Sarah) etc." L'ENVOY (Fr.) was anciently a sort of postscript, sent with poetical compositions, and serving either to recommend them to the attention of some particular person, or to enforce the moral of them. The last six stanzas of Chaucer's Clerke's Tale are in many MSS. entitled L'Envoy de Chaucer a les maris de notre temps (the postscript of Chaucer to the husbands of our time). 3. bid speed, wish prosperity. Gentles is an old term for persons of superior rank. The word is still used in Scotland. See 3. XXV. 20; and note on v. 18. 4. røde, which generally means 'advice,' here seems to mean 'story.' 7. Before 'sound head etc.' we must understand the words 'I wish,' which are understood from the sense of the previous lines, for the first three lines of this postscript are equivalent to 'I wish the gentles speed.' Cf. 6. Int. 233. clean hand, integrity. This virtue of Pitt's has already been alluded to. See 1. Int. 89. 8. as Pitt, as Pitt's heart, wit, hand, and head. See note on 3. XXI. 5. 19. 'Light task' may be regarded as governed by the preposition but,' if we understand what can I wish but' from 1.14. Or we may understand 'I wish' as in 1. 7. INSTANCES OF FIGURES OF SPEECH, ETC. (The following lists of instances do not profess to be exhaustive. Abstract for concrete, 2. XXXIII. 7; 3. Int. 48, 183; 5. x. 12. Adjectives used as adverbs, 1. Int. 36, 69, 226; 1. x. 2; xv. 6; Anachronism (deviation from historical accuracy with regard to 6. XV. 20. Anacoluthon (change of construction), 1. v. Apostrophe (changing the course of a speech, and making a Archaic forms, 1. Int. 148; 3. I. 16; XIV. II; XXXI. 8; 4. Int. Chiasmus (reversal of order previously observed), Int. 1. 61, Climax (rising gradually from weaker to stronger words), Colour painting, 1. Int. 2; 13; 15; 18; 21; 1. I. 7 ; VI. 9; Comparatio compendiaria (abridged comparison), 3. XXI. 5; 4. Grammatical irregularity, 3. IX. 7; XXIII. 16; 4. XII. 13; |