In Byways of Scottish History

It is suggestive of the annoyance which the English felt at their opprobrious nickname that, when we find their writers noticing it, it is almost invariably under provocation and in a tone of indignant protest. One noteworthy exception to this is to be met with in a curious, half-literary, half-historical production, attributed to John of Bridlington. It is a political retrospect of the reign of Edward III, and consists of a supposed ancient text, in Latin verse, with a recent commentary on it. The poem itself purports to be a prophecy, whilst the notes indicate in what manner the predictions were fulfilled. As the leading event for the year 1356, the date of the battle of Poitiers, it is foretold that,

"The four cockrels shall learn what defeat is, that dayWhen the French meet the English in battle array,And the big-buttocked bullies are shamefully routedBy the men whom as 'tailards' their ribaldry flouted".310

The imaginary scholiast explains the meaning of this to be, that the brood of the Gallic cock, or, in other words, the French, will be vanquished by the English, whom they jeeringly call "tailards"; that the appellation which is here applied to them and which has been somewhat euphemistically translated by "big-buttocked", is intended as a set-off against the ignominious term by which they commonly designate the English; and that the four cockrels especially referred to, are the king and his three sons. "And, indeed, these four," it is added, "were actually vanquished in that battle, the King himself being captured with one of his sons, whilst the other two fled from the field."311

After Poitiers, the invasion of France by Henry V is chronologically the next important event in the long medieval struggle between England and France. The initial success of the English, whilst embittering the animosity of their enemies, inspired a restraining respect; and there is an expression of those mingled feelings of aversion and of fear in the lines which a poetaster of the day addressed to the invaders, partly as a reproach, partly as an appeal:

"Perfidious race that perjured England breeds,Whose evil nature shows in all your deeds,Why must you still, with baneful purpose, seekYour spite on righteous Frenchmen thus to wreak?Christ's servants they, and constant to the faithWhich twice from you has suffered wanton scathe;Your words are fair, but yet in all you do,The crooked paths of falsehood you pursue;Cut off that poisonous tail you long have worn,A byword to the nations, and their scorn!For thee, their king, be not my warning vain,And, in thy mem'ry let this truth remain:That God who willed thou shouldst a 'tailard' beHas not denied his hallowing grace to thee."312

But the fortune of war began to turn against the English on the death of Henry V in 1422; and the exultation caused by that event is voiced by Olivier Basselin, in one of his popular poems: —

"The King who sat upon the English throneThe crown of France claimed also for his own;He strove to drive as outcasts from their landThe men that dared to stem the invading tide;But, when death dashed the sceptre from his hand,The alien host was scattered far and wide,And France is now from English 'tailards' freed;May curses light on all the recreant breed!"313

A few years later, possibly about 1430, a popular ballade, in which an unknown writer celebrated the exploits of Jeanne d'Arc, opened with a repetition of the old insult: —

"Back, English 'tailards', back!"314

And Enguerrand de Monstrelet, the Burgundian chronicler of the events that marked the latter half of the Hundred Years' War, records another historical occasion on which the French gave utterance to their triumph in the traditional gibe at the alleged monstrosity of their old enemies. In his account of the evacuation of Paris, in 1436, he relates that, as the English retired from the city which they had held for sixteen years, the inhabitants hooted them with great cries of "Tails!"315

Coming down to the sixteenth century, we find that, in the early years of it, when hostilities broke out between Louis XII and Henry VIII, the old insult fell readily from the pen of the French versifiers who found subjects for their rhymes in the military incidents of the time. Thus, in the Dépucellage de la ville de Tournay, the town, referring to its ill-advised refusal of help when the English laid siege to it, is made to say: —

"To guard my ramparts from the foe's attackA ready offer from the King was brought;But, I refused, and sent the answer back:'With men for watch and ward, no means I lackTo bring the "tailards'" enterprise to nought'".316

But pride went before a fall. Tournay was occupied by the English in 1513.

In Anatole de Montaiglon's collection of fifteenth and sixteenth century verse, there is a poem which bears the title of Courroux de la Mort contre les Anglois, and which is in substance a bitter invective against the English generally. It is undated; but an allusion to the porcupine, the well-known emblem of Louis XII, points to its having also been written at this same period. In an apostrophe, the poet promises his countrymen an easy victory over the English: —

"In war your arms will speedily prevailAgainst your foe, the King 'that wears a tail'".317

The fight of Guinegate, commonly known as the battle of the Spurs, can hardly have been looked upon by him as a fulfilment of his prophecy. It may rather, if that were still possible, have increased the animosity which inspired the two scurrilous lines in which he strung together as many opprobrious epithets as the measure of his verse would admit, and which duly included the traditional slander, linked, in this instance, with the equally popular nickname of "godon", supposed to have originated in the frequent and profane use which the English made of God's name: —

"Ye noisome, greedy, fetid braggarts, go!Ye 'tailard' godons, rid me of your sight!"318

So far, the use of the abusive term "tailard", in French coué and in Latin caudatus, has been traced in immediate connection with events that brought the English into direct conflict with their enemies. There are not wanting instances, however, to show that no special provocation was required, and that from century to century it currently served the purpose of those whom national antipathy prompted to revile the English, or to hold them up to ridicule. To begin with Eustache Deschamps, the most prolific and versatile versifier of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries, we find him giving Englishmen and their tails a conspicuous place in his satirical verses. In a poem of which only a fragment remains, he describes how

"They swagger grandly down the street,An awsome sight to all they meet";

but how, in order not to mar the effect of the imposing appearance which they assume,

"Between their legs they hide with careThe tail which rumour says they wear".319

The Englishmen's tails also supply the subject of a rondeau in which Deschamps mockingly compares the strength of the French with that of the English, ironically proclaiming the superiority of the latter as proved by the greater mass of flesh they have to carry, and the additional appendage they are obliged to drag about with them: —

The English are more stout, 'tis clear,Than any Frenchman you can meet.Slight burdens only Frenchmen bear;The English are more stout, 'tis clear.Two butts they carry everywhere,And eke a tail, so trig and neat,The English are more stout, 'tis clear,Than any Frenchman you can meet.320

In addition to this, Deschamps has a satirical ballade, in which he again drags in the English by the tail, professing concern for the inconvenience which it must cause them, and earnestly advising them to hold it up. "Billy", the predecessor of John Bull, as a typical Englishman, opens the poem with a gibe at the "French dogs", who "do nothing but drink wine". "Frenchy" does not deny the soft impeachment, but retorts that he considers it better to indulge in the juice of the grape than to swill beer. Then, by an abrupt transition and, if with rhyme, without any special reason, he compares red-haired Englishmen to mastiffs. On the strength of that canine similitude, he impresses upon them the necessity for holding up their tails. He commiserates them on the additional burden which they have to carry, though not endowed with the physical vigour of Jacques Thommelin, the strong man of the day. He warns them against walking abroad in dirty weather; and if, in spite of the rain, they must take their corn to the mill or gather grapes in the vineyard, he bids them imitate their four-footed neighbours the dogs, and hold up their tails to prevent their trailing in the mud. The satire is not keen, nor is the humour brilliant; and the whole point lies in the rather scurrilous than apt refrain: —

BALLADE(Sur les Anglais)"Franche dogue," dist un Anglois,"Vous ne faites que boire vin.""Si faisons bien," dist le François,"Mais vous buvez le henequin;Roux estes com pel de mastin,Vuillequot, de moy aprenez,Quant vous yrez par le chemin:Levez vostre queue, levez!Vous n'estes pas de membres faisSi comme est Jaques ThommelinQui porte si merveilleus faisQue vous n'y pourriez mettre fin:Ce sont deux tonneaulx de sapin,C'est voir, et la queue delez.Advisez-vous, dit Franchequin;Levez vostre queue, levez!N'alez a piet, par le temps frais,Porter vostre blé au moulin;S'il pluet, troussez vo queue prés,Autel facent vostre voisin;Et si vous pinciez le raisin,Afin que vous ne vous crotez,Soit en France ou en Limosin,Levez vostre queue, levez!"321

Another ballade records an incident which is supposed to have happened in Calais. In company with Granson, a mercenary captain in English pay, but without the necessary safe-conduct, the poet entered the town, which was then in possession of the English. He was at once pulled up by two men-at-arms who addressed him in language of which he quotes such scraps as "dogue" and "goday", "ride" and "commidre". He, on his side, intimated his recognition of their nationality by exclaiming: "Oh yes! I see your tail!" Whilst Granson, who had led him into the trap, made off laughing and calling out that he had no wish to stand surety for him, Deschamps was told that he would be kept in durance, an announcement which again drew from him the taunt, "Oil, je voy vo queue!" Though confessedly blue with fright, he nevertheless summoned up enough courage to make a dash for liberty. Digging his heels vigorously into his cob, he made it rear with a suddenness that sent his captors sprawling; and whilst they lay helplessly on the ground, he hastily betook himself out of their reach, uttering the inevitable refrain: —

BALLADE(Récit d'une Aventure à Calais)Je fu l'autrier trop mal venuzQuant j'alay pour veir Calays;J'entray dedenz comme cornuz,Sanz congié; lors vint deux Anglois,Granson devant et moy aprés,Qui me prindrent parmi la bride:L'un me dist: "dogue", l'autre: "ride";Lors me devint la coulour bleue:"Goday", fait l'un, l'autre: "commidre".Lors dis: "Oil, je voy vo queue."Pour mal content s'en est tenuzL'un d'eulx, qui estoit le plus lays,Et dist: "Vous seres retenuzPrinsonnier, vous estes forfais."Mais Granson s'en aloit adésQui en riant faisait la vuide:A eulx m'avoit trahi, ce cuide,En anglois dist: "Pas ne l'adveue."Passer me font de Dieu l'espite;Lors dis: "Oil, je voy vo queue."Puis ay mes talons estenduzDe mon roucin, le serray prés,Lors sault, si furent espanduz;Delez Granson fut mes retraisLà ne me vault treves ne pais,De paour la face me ride,De tel amour ma mort me cuide;Au derrain leur dist: "Je l'adveue.""Chien, faisoit l'un, vez vous vo guide?"Lors dis: "Oil, je voy vo queue!"322

Another writer of the same period, Olivier Basselin, refers to the Englishmen's tails in a satirical poem, in which he alleges this physical deformity as his reason for not wishing to live in their country: —

"Do you think it's a joke that I never would dwell'Mongst the English, as oft I declare?Nay, believe me, my friend, 'tis the truth that I tell,For I hate the long tails that they wear."323

In one of his minor poems, Jean Molinet, part-author of the Roman de la Rose, who also belongs to the fifteenth century, humorously goes one step further than his fellow satirists, and gives even animals of English race a share in the distinctive peculiarity which birth in England entailed on the human Islanders. Of a certain tom-cat he says: —

"This Cat for his mother had Cathau the Blue,To Calais he does not belong;There's something about him of English breed, too,And that's why his tail is so long."324

About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Crétin, a Norman poet, combines encouragement of the French with the usual abuse of the English: —

"Praise shall reward the doughty deeds you do,And store of crowns, and golden angels, too;And, in the ransom of the 'long-tailed' crew,Their flesh and bone shall be as gold to you."325

As late as the seventeenth century, an echo of the gibe may still be heard. Larivey, in one of his comedies, Les Tromperies, makes a swaggering captain boast of the reputation which he has acquired by valiantly charging the English "tailards" when they attempted to land at Dieppe.326 Still nearer our own day, Saint-Amant, who, indeed, is so modern that he was one of the original members of the French Academy and figures in Boileau's satires, has a reference to the English longtails in his Rome Ridicule. He incidentally claims for the French the strange merit of having rid their country of the goitre and of the king's evil by making carrion of the English invaders: —

"The goitre now we never see,And cruels, too, have ceased to be,E'er since we slew our 'tailard' foesAnd made them food to gorge the crows".327

By this time, however, the tradition had ceased to be popular; for in a note on this passage, Saint-Amant's contemporary, Conrart, thought it necessary to give an explanation of the epithet "quouez". According to him, it was justified by the fact that, in the case of the majority of Englishmen, the end of the os sacrum, called coccyx, actually protrudes and forms a tail!328

But, even yet, the old cry has not wholly died out. In the Island of Guernsey, that genuine bit of Normandy, where it was once so frequently heard, it is perpetuated by the country children. They have a custom of slyly throwing at passers-by a hairy, clinging weed, which grows abundantly by the wayside. If any of it catches on to the victims of their childish trick, these are made aware of it by hearing themselves jeered at with cries of "la Coue!" The words are the very same as those recorded by Monstrelet; and this identity seems to justify the belief that they are a survival of the medieval scoff.

The Scots, sharing as they did the feeling of animosity entertained by the French against their English foes, were no less ready than they to give it expression; and the insulting taunt which they had learnt from their continental allies was adopted as an effective means to that end. It is not, however, amidst the excitement of international strife that the cry is first heard. The earliest instance of its use in the North Country is given by Bower. Under the date of 1217, he has an account of the mission to Scotland, undertaken by the Prior of Durham and the Archdeacon of York, in connection with the interdict under which the kingdom had been laid. These two prelates made themselves very unpopular by the mercenary spirit which they displayed; and a monkish satirist voiced the irritation which they aroused, in a strongly worded Latin poem, containing amongst other terms of reproach and invective, a denunciation of them as "tailards": —

"Those clerics, both in treach'rous England born,Are of the breed by whom long tails are worn".329

As regards the other instances supplied by the chroniclers, it is noteworthy that the insult was, in each case, avenged by the defeat of those who flung it at their enemies. The first occasion on which this is reported to have occurred was the battle of Dunbar, in 1296. The Castle, at that time one of the most important in Scotland, had been delivered over to the Scottish leaders by the Countess of Dunbar. Edward I at once sent John Plantagenet, Earl of Warrenne and Surrey, to recapture it. The garrison, conscious of its inability to hold out against the ten thousand foot and the thousand heavy-armed horse which the English leader commanded, agreed to surrender to him if it were not relieved within three days. In the meantime, John Baliol, anxious to retain so important a stronghold, sent his whole army of forty thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse to its succour. When the besieged saw this formidable force encamped on the heights above Spot, they felt confident of success; and in their premature exultation, they jeered at the English, calling them "tailed dogs", and threatening not only to kill them, but also to cut off their tails. Their boasts were not justified by the result. In the engagement that followed, the rashness of the Scots in abandoning their favourable position proved disastrous. Ten thousand of them fell on the field or during the pursuit; and next day the Castle surrendered at discretion to Edward, who came up from Berwick with the remainder of his army.330

In the following year, Lord Robert Clifford made an incursion into Annandale, at the head of twenty thousand infantry, preceded by a body of only one hundred cavalry. On passing the Solway, it was proclaimed by sound of trumpet that every soldier might plunder for himself and keep his own booty. On hearing this welcome announcement, the infantry dispersed over the country, and the horse alone remained together and marched on Annan, where the Scots, thinking they had to do with a mere handful, received them with jeers and insults, as a pack of "tailed" dogs. But when it came to actual fighting, the heavy-armed cavalry proved too much for the dalesmen. They were driven into marshy ground, where they were easily overpowered by the infantry that had hurried up to reinforce the vanguard. Over three hundred of the Scots were slain, many prisoners were taken; and before the Englishmen returned to Carlisle with their booty, the destruction of ten villages had given the scoffers good reason to think less contemptuously of the "tailards".331

At least once again the ill-omened cry was heard. It was on the eve of the battle of Dupplin, which was fought on the 12th of August, 1332, between Edward Baliol, with his English supporters, and the army of David II, under the Earl of Mar. Trusting to their superior numbers and to their advantageous position, the Scots were confident of success. They spent a part of the night in drinking and in singing songs that contained insulting reference to

"The English 'tailards', jeered at for their tails",

and they bragged that they would turn those same tails to practical use, by binding their wearers, and dragging them to the gallows with them.332 But the boastful Scots were beaten, and one of the chroniclers who record their defeat, reminds them of Seneca's saying, that never did proud joy stand on a sure footing. "Now," he adds, by way of moral, "you who, but the day before, declared you would make ropes of the Englishmen's tails to bind them with, are yourselves bound in real fetters."333

In Wright's collection of medieval political songs, there are some doggerel verses, which are ascribed to this same half of the fourteenth century, and which probably refer to the driving out of the English from some of the strongholds which they had occupied. In his crabbed Latin, the writer, doubtless some monkish patriot, bids Scotland rejoice at the happy deliverance:

"The 'tails' appeared, a while they held their sway,But now, at last, they've all been lopped away;The 'tails' have gone, and fearlessly we mayProclaim 'O Scotland, hail the happy day!'"334

Those lines, such as they are, may serve as a connecting link between the historical instances of the use of the derogatory appellation and those which refer to no special incident, but are merely adaptations of the old scoff for the purpose of literary invective. The latter are not numerous; but one of them is interesting from the fact that it introduces the familiar "tails" under a new name. It occurs in The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, that remarkable production which, though probably nothing more than a jeu d'esprit, a kind of friendly sparring-match between two adversaries "who give each other plaguy knocks with all the love and fondness of a brother", is assuredly one of the most astonishing instances of verbal scurrility to be found in literature. In this wordy tournament the two poets allude in uncomplimentary language to each other's family history, and Kennedy reproaches Dunbar, who was a native of Lothian, with being descended from a traitor, from Corspatrick, who,

"Throu his tressoun brocht Inglis 'rumpillis' in".335

John Skelton, a satirist of the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century, has preserved three Latin hexameters in which a Scottish scholar, George Dundas, at one time a professor at the University of Aberdeen, scoffs at the English in the familiar way, by alluding to their tails. The Englishman himself, after the battle of Flodden, had written against the Scots, with the scurrility which characterized him and which made him obnoxious even to his own countrymen; and it seems probable that Dundas's lines occurred in a poem written as a retort. The only connection between them, however, consists in the repetition of the same idea in a slightly different form; and it is hardly possible to assume that they stood together, and are to be taken as an epigram. It may also be noted that the first of them is almost identical with one that is known to have been current at a much earlier date:

"An Englishman's a dog, because we findThat, like a dog he bears a tail behind"."Thou English 'tailard', hold thy tail with care,For fear it drop from thee, at unaware.""By reason of their tails, the English raceMust bear about a burden of disgrace."336

In whatever connection the lines may have appeared, they provoked "the noble poet Skelton", as he styles himself, to a reply which has for its heading the statement that, "The most vile Scot, Dundas, alleges that Englishmen have tails". Apostrophizing him as a "shameless, noxious, foul-mouthed, lying Scot", he asks him how he dares utter such a slander. Then, dropping into macaronic verses, he adorns them with such flowers of vituperation as these:

This Dundas,This Scottishe as,He rymes and railesThat Englishmen have tailes.Skelton LaureatAfter this rateDefendeth with his penAll EnglishmenAgayn DundasThe Scottishe as.Shake thy tayle, Scot, like a cur,For thou beggest at every mannes dur.Tut, Scot, I sey,Go, shake the, dog, hey!Dundas of GalawayWith thy versyfyeng raylesHow they have tayles.337

Though recalled, some half a century later, by the insulting piece of by-play which it suggested to Mary Stuart's French courtiers, and at which, as we have already recorded, Hatton and his countrymen waxed so wroth, the "tailard" taunt is not again heard in the story of the old feud between England and Scotland. From the sixteenth century to its final disappearance from use and even from memory, it seems to have remained as exclusively French as it doubtless was in its origin.

PART II

The use which some of the Latin chroniclers and verse-makers make of the words caudatus and cauda suggests that the former of these may have been intended to bear the sense of "cowed" or "coward", and the latter to symbolize the evil qualities, more particularly, perhaps, the treachery ascribed to the English. Thus, in Matthew of Paris, one, at least, of Count Robert's insulting outbursts, though hardly both, remains perfectly intelligible even if a figurative rather than a literal meaning be given to the epithet.338 And, again, when John Oxenedes, in his account of the battle of Lewes, fought, in 1264, between Henry III and the Barons, under Simon of Montfort, places it in immediate juxtaposition to "full of guile", "false", "unstable", and "dispirited", it seems more natural to interpret it as a reference to a moral defect than to take it as a taunt at a physical deformity.339 As regards the substantive, a symbolical sense, not, indeed, excluding the primary meaning, but rather taken in combination with it, is obviously consistent with the anonymous poetaster's advice to "cut off that poisonous tail".340 And the Annales Gandenses, the most noteworthy chronicle of the closing years of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, whilst doubtless alluding to the popular belief in a real caudal appendage worn by Englishmen, seem to employ the word metaphorically in the passage which records the incendiarism and the looting by which the troops of Edward I disgraced themselves in Ghent, where they had been cordially received and hospitably entertained by the inhabitants in 1298. "The English, like the most ungrateful men that they were," says the Minorite author, "dragging after them their habitual tail, and eager to plunder the town of Ghent and to slay those that resisted them, set fire to it in four places, at the four corners, so to speak, in order that the people of Ghent, whilst endeavouring to extinguish the conflagration, should be less careful about the custody of their property."341 In the Eulogium Historiarum, too, there is a passage where the word cauda occurs in such a connection as to make it quite clear that the literal acceptation would be out of place, the more so, indeed, from the circumstance that the "tail" is bestowed, not on an Englishman, but on a Scot, and on a Scot no less genuine than Robert the Bruce. Referring to the capture and punishment of the Scottish King's adherents, the chronicler adds that Bruce himself found safety in flight and concealment, but that this did not in the least trouble Edward, who, now that his enemy's tail was completely cut off, was quite willing that he should wander about, wherever he found it easiest to save his life.342 And if, in this instance, the amputation of the tail is a figure of speech intended to convey the notion of reducing to powerlessness, it might be argued, with some show of reason, that, even when applied to Englishmen, as in the lines which exultingly proclaim how the French King made them harmless by submitting them to similar treatment, the expression does not necessarily imply the actual possession of a real tail. This would add yet another passage to those which, if they stood by themselves, would justify some hesitation in accepting them as proofs of a serious conviction as to the alleged anatomical peculiarity of Englishmen. But when the fullest allowance has been made for all of them, they do not appreciably affect the evidence of the many witnesses who not only testify to the general acceptance of the phenomenon as an actual fact, but are also ready with a reason for its cause and an explanation of its origin. The first of these in age, and by no means the least in point of standing and respectability, is the biographer Goscelin. He is said to have been born at or near Terouanne, and was originally a monk in the monastery of St. Bertin, but was brought over to England, possibly as early as 1053, by Hermann, Bishop of Salisbury. Being a monk at Canterbury, he became interested in the founder of the see, and not only drew up an account of the translation of Augustine, a ceremony at which he was present, but also wrote a life of the Saint. He professes to have based this work on older records; and it may be assumed that it embodied local tradition as it existed prior to the Norman Conquest. It consists of two versions of the story of the life of the Apostle of England. One of them, known as the Historia Minor Sancti Augustini, is brief and compendious. The other, or Historia Major as it is called, which enjoys the distinction of having been selected by the Bollandists for inclusion in their Acta Sanctorum, whilst identical with it in substance, has that greater fulness of details which its title suggests.