ce qui est le beau de cela, et qui monstroit bien une grace de combat bien assieurée et froide, et nullement téméraire, comme il y en a qui tirent leurs espées de cinq cents pas de l'ennemy, voire de mille, comme j'en ay veu aucuns. Ainsi mourut ce brave Baron, le parangon de France, qu'on nommoit tel, à bien venger ses querelles, par grandes et déterminées résolutions. Il n'estoit pas seulement estimé en France, mais en Italie, 'Espaigne, Allemaigne, en Boulogne et Angleterre : et desiroient fort les Estrangers, venant en France, le voir: car je l'ay veu, tant sa renommée volloit. Il estoit fort petit de corps, mais fort grand de courage. Ses ennemis disoient qu'il ne tuoit pas bien ses gens, que par advantages et supercheries. Certes, je tiens de grands capitaines, et mesme d'Italiens, qui sont estez d'autres fois les premiers vengeurs du monde, in ogni modo, disoient ils, qui ont tenu cette maxime, qu'une supercherie ne se devoit payer que par semblable monnoye, et n'y alloit point là de déshonneur." -Oeuvres de Brantome, Paris, 1787-8. Tome VIII. p. 90-92. It may be necessary to inform the reader, that this paragon of France was the most foul assassin of his time, and had committed many desperate murders, chiefly by the assistance of his hired banditti; from which it may be conceived how little the point of honour of the period deserved its name. I have chosen to give my heroes, who are indeed of an earlier period, a stronger tincture of the spirit of chivalry. Page 126.-Stanza xv. Ill fared it then with Roderick Dhu, A round target of light wood, covered with strong leather, and studded with brass or iron, was a necessary part of a Highlander's equipment. In charging regular troops they received the thrust of the bayonet in this buckler, twisted it aside, and used the broadsword against the encumbered soldier. In the civil war of 1745 most of the front rank of the clans were thus armed; and Captain Grose informs us that, in 1747, the privates of the 42nd regiment, then in Flanders, were for the most part permitted to carry targets.-Military Antiquities, vol. I. p. 164. A person thus armed had a considerable advantage in private fray. Among verses between Swift and Sheridan, lately published by Dr. Barrett, there is an account of such an encounter, in which the circumstances, and consequently the relative superiority of the combatants, are precisely the reverse of those in the text: "A Highlander once fought a Frenchman at Margate, But all his fine pushes were caught in the wood, And Sawny, with back-sword, did slash him and nick him, Me will fight you, be gar! if you'll come from your door." Page 126.-Stanza xv. For, train'd abroad his arms to wield, Fitz-James's blade was sword and shield. The use of defensive armour, and particularly of the buckler or target, was general in Queen Elizabeth's time, although that of the single rapier seems to have been occasionally practised much earlier.* Rowland Yorke, however, who betrayed the fort of Zutphen to the Spaniards, for which good service he was afterwards poisoned by them, is said to have been the first who brought the rapier-fight into general use. Fuller, speaking of the Swash-bucklers, or bullies of Queen Elizabeth's time, says, "West Smithfield was formerly called Ruffians' Hall, where such men usually met, casually or otherwise, to try masteries with sword and buckler. More were frightened than hurt, more hurt than killed therewith, it being accounted unmanly to strike beneath the knee. But since that desperate traitor Rowland Yorke first introduced thrusting with rapiers, sword and buckler are disused." In The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, a comedy, printed in 1599, we have a pathetic complaint:"Sword and buckler fight begins to grow out of use. I am sorry for it: I shall never see good manhood again. It it be once gone, this poking fight of rapier and dagger will come up; then a tall man, and a good sword and buckler man, will be spitted like a cat or rabbit." But the rapier had upon the continent long superseded, in private duel, the use of sword and shield. The masters of the noble science of defence were chiefly Italians. They made great mystery of their art and mode of instruction, never suffered any person to be present but the scholar who was to be taught, and even examined closets, beds, and other places of possible concealment. Their lessons often gave the most treacherous advantages; for the challenger, naving the right to choose his weapons, frequently selected some strange, unusual, and inconvenient kind of arms, the use of which he practised under these instructors, and thus killed at his ease his antagonist, to whom it was presented for the first time on the field of battle. See BRANTOME'S Discourse on Duels, and the work on the same subject, "si gentement ecrit," by the venerable Dr. Paris de Puteo. The Highlanders continued to use broad-sword and target until disarmed after the affair of 1745-6. Page 127.-Stanza xvi. Like mountain-cat who guards her young, I have not ventured to render this duel so savagely desperate as that of the celebrated Sir Ewan of Lochiel, chief of the clan Cameron, called, from his sable complexion, Ewan Dhu. was the last man in Scotland who maintained the royal cause • See Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare, Vol. II. p. 61. He during the great civil war, and his constant incursions rendered him a very unpleasant neighbour to the republican garrison at Inverlochy, now Fort-William. The governor of the fort detached a party of three hundred men to lay waste Lochiel's possessions, and cut down his trees; but in a sudden and desperate attack, made upon them by the chieftain, with very inferior numbers, they were almost all cut to pieces. The skirmish is detailed in a curious memoir of Sir Ewan's life, printed in the Appendix of Pennant's Scottish Tour. In this engagement, Lochiel himself had several wonderful escapes. In the retreat of the English, one of the strongest and bravest of the officers retired behind a bush, when he observed Lochiel pursuing, and seeing him unaccompanied with any, he leaped out, and thought him his prey. They met one another with equal fury. The combat was long and doubtful: the English gentleman had by far the advantage in strength and size; but Lochiel exceeding him in nimbleness and agility, in the end tript the sword out of his hand: they closed, and wrestled, till both fell to the ground, in each other's arms. The English officer got above Lochiel, and pressed him hard, but stretching forth his neck, by attempting to disengage himself, Lochiel, who by this time had his hands at liberty, with his left hand seized him by the collar, and jumping at his extended throat, he bit it with his teeth quite through, and kept such a hold of his grasp, that he brought away his mouthful: this he said, was the sweetest bite he ever had in his lifetime."-Vol. I. p. 375. Page 131.-Stanza xx. -Ye towers! within whose circuit dread And thou, O sad and fatal mound! That oft hast heard the death-axe sound. An eminence on the north-east of the Castle, where state criminals were executed. Stirling was often polluted with noble blood. It is thus apostrophized by J. Jonston : -Discordia tristis Heu quoties procerum sanguine tinxit humum ! Lætior aut cœli frons geniusve soli. The fate of William, eighth Earl of Douglas, whom James II. stabbed in Stirling Castle with his own hand, and while under his royal safe-conduct, is familiar to all who read Scottish history. Murdack, Duke of Albany, Duncan, Earl of Lennox, his fatherin-law, and his two sons, Walter and Alexander Stuart, were executed at Stirling in 1425. They were beheaded upon an eminence without the castle walls, but making part of the same hill, from whence they could behold their strong castle of Doune, and their extensive possessions. This "heading-hill," as it was sometimes termed, bears commonly the less terrible name of Hurly-hacket, from its having been the scene of a courtly amuse ment alluded to by Sir David Lindsay, who says of the pastimes in which the young king was engaged, "Some harled him to the Hurly-hacket;" which consisted in sliding, in some sort of chair it may be supposed, from top to bottom of a smooth bank. The boys of Edinburgh, about twenty years ago, used to play at hurly-hacket on the Calton-hill, using for their seat a horse's skull. Page 132.-Stanza xx. The burghers hold their sports to-day. Every burgh of Scotland, of the least note, but more especially the considerable towns, had their solemn play, or festival, when feats of archery were exhibited, and prizes distributed to those who excelled in wrestling, hurling the bar, and the other gymnastic exercises of the period. Stirling, a usual place of royal residence, was not likely to be deficient in pomp upon such occasions, especially since James V. was very partial to them. His ready participation in these popular amusements was one cause of his acquiring the title of King of the Commons, or Rex Plebeiorum, as Lesley has Latinized it. The usual prize to the best shooter was a silver arrow. Such a one is preserved at Selkirk and at Peebles. At Dumfries, a silver gun was substituted, and the contention transferred to fire-arms. The ceremony, as there performed, is the subject of an excellent Scottish poem, by Mr. John Mayne, entitled the Siller Gun, 1808, which surpasses the efforts of Ferguson, and comes near those of Burns. Of James's attachment to archery, Pitscottie, the faithful though rude recorder of the manners of that period, has given us evidence: "In this year there came an ambassador out of England named Lord William Howard, with a bishop with him, with many other gentlemen, to the number of threescore horse, which were all able men, and waled (picked) men for all kind of games and pastimes, shooting, louping, running, wrestling, and casting of the stone, but they were well 'stayed (essayed or tried) ere they past out of Scotland, and that by their own provocation; but ever they tint: till at last, the queen of Scotland, the king's mother, favoured the Englishmen, because she was the king of England's sister, and therefore she took an enterprise of archery upon the Englishmen's hands, contrary her son the king, and any six in Scotland that he would wale, either gentlemen or yeomen, that the Englishmen should shoot against them, either at pricks, revers, or buts, as the Scots pleased. The king, hearing this of his mother, was content, and gart her pawn a hundred crowns and a ton of wine upon the English. men's hands; and he incontinent laid down as much for the Scottish men. The field and ground was chosen in St. Andrew's, and three landed men and three yeomen chosen to shoot against the Englishmen, to wit, David Weemyss of that ilk, David Arnott of that ilk, and Mr. John Wedderburn, vicar of Dundee; the yeomen, John Thomson, in Leith, Steven Taburner, with a piper, called Alexander Bailie; they shot very near, and warred (worsted) the Englishmen of the enterprise, and wan the hundred crowns and the tun of wine, which made the king very merry, that his men wan the victory."-P. 147. 66 Page 133.-Stanza xxii. -Robin Hood. The exhibition of this renowned outlaw and his band was a favourite frolic at such festivals as we are describing. This sport, in which kings did not disdain to be actors, was prohibited in Scotland upon the Reformation, by a statute of the 6th parliment of Queen Mary, c. 61, A. D. 1555, which ordered, under heavy penalties, that, na manner of person be chosen Robert Hude, nor little John, Abbot of Unreason, Queen of May, nor otherwise." But, in 1561, "the rascal multitude," says John Knox, were stirred up to make a Robin Hude, whilk enormity was of mony years left and damned by statute and act of parliament; yet would they not be forbidden. Accordingly they raised a very serious tumult, and at length made prisoners the magistrates, who endeavoured to suppress it, and would not release them till they extorted a formal promise that no one should be punished for his share of the disturbance. It would seem, from the complaints of the General Assembly of the Kirk, that these profane festivities were continued down to 1592.* Bold Robin was, to say the least, equally successful in maintaining his ground against the reformed clergy of England; for the simple and evangelical Latimer complains of coming to a country church, where the people refused to hear him because it was Robin Hood's day; and his mitre and rochet were fain to give way to the village pastime. Much curious information on this subject may be found in the Preliminary Dissertation to the late Mr. Ritson's edition of the songs respecting this memorable outlaw. The game of Robin Hood was usually acted in May; and he was associated with the morrice-dancers, on whom so much illustration has been bestowed by the commentators on Shakspeare. A very lively picture of these festivities, containing a great deal of curious information on the subject of the private life and amusements of our ancestors, was thrown by the late ingenious Mr. Strutt into his romance entitled Queen-hoo-Hall, published after his death, in 1808. Page 134.-Stanza xxii. Indifferent as to archer wight, The Monarch gave the arrow bright. The Douglas of the poem is an imaginary person, a supposed uncle of the Earl of Angus. But the King's behaviour during Book of the Universal Kirk, p. 414. |