Marmion

Ford Castle is about a mile to the north-east of Flodden Hill. It was repaired in 1761 in accordance with the style of the original architecture. Latterly the owner, the Countess of Waterford, utilizing the natural beauty of the property, has enhanced its value and its interest by improvements exhibiting not only exquisite taste but a true philanthropic spirit. It was at Ford Castle that James IV spent the night preceding the battle of Flodden.

line 195. Deas, dais, or chief seat on the platform at the upper end of the hall.

line 200. Scott mentions in a note that his friend, R. Surtees, of Mainsforth, had taken down this ballad from the lips of an old woman, who said it used ‘to be sung at the merry-makings.’ He likewise gave it a place in the ‘Border Minstrelsy.’ These things being so, it is unpleasant to learn from Lockhart that ‘the ballad here quoted was the production of Mr. R. Surtees, and palmed off by him upon Scott as a genuine relic of antiquity. ‘The title of the ballad in the ‘Border Minstrelsy’ is ‘The Death of Featherstonhaugh.’

line 203. ‘Hardriding Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding.’-SCOTT. The families named all belonged to the north and north-east of Northumberland. Scott adds (from Surtees), ‘A feud did certainly exist between the Ridleys and Featherstons, productive of such consequences as the ballad narrates.’ In regard to the ‘Northern harper,’ see Prof. Minto’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ p. 121.

Stanza XV. line 231. wassail-bowl. ‘Wassell’ or ‘wassail’ (A. S. waes hael) was first the wish of health, then it came to denote festivity (especially at Christmas). As an adj. it is compounded not only with bowl, but with cup, candle, &c. Cp. Comus, line 179: -

                           ‘I should be loth      To meet the rudeness and swill’d insolence      Of such late wassailers.’

Cp. also note on ‘gossip’s bowl’ of Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. I. 47, in Clarendon Press edition, and Prof. Minto’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ p. 174.

line 232. Cp. Iliad i. 470, and ix. 175, and Chapman’s translation, ‘The youths crowned cups of wine.’

line 238. Raby Castle, in the county of Durham, the property of the Duke of Cleveland.

line 254. As a page in a lady’s chamber. ‘Bower’ is often contrasted with ‘hall,’ as in ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’: -

     ‘They socht her baith by bower an’ ha’.’

Cp. below, 281.

Stanza XVI. line 264. For Lindisfarn, or Holy Island, see note to Canto II. St. i.

Stanza XVII. line 284. leash, the cord by which the greyhound is restrained till the moment when he is slipt in pursuit of the game. Cp. Coriolanus, i. 6. 38: -

     ‘Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash.’

Stanza XVIII. line 289. bide, abide. Cp. above, 215.

line 294. pray you = I pray you. Cp. ‘Prithee,’ so common in Elizabethan drama.

line 298. Scott annotates as follows:

‘The story of Perkin Warbeck, or Richard, Duke of York, is well known. In 1496, he was received honourably in Scotland; and James IV, after conferring upon him in marriage his own relation, the Lady Catharine Gordon, made war on England in behalf of his pretensions. To retaliate an invasion of England, Surrey advanced into Berwickshire at the head of considerable forces, but retreated, after taking the inconsiderable fortress of Ayton. Ford, in his Dramatic Chronicle of Perkin Warbeck, makes the most of this inroad: -

“SURREY     “Are all our braving enemies shrunk back,      Hid in the fogges of their distemper’d climate,      Not daring to behold our colours wave      In spight of this infected ayre? Can they      Looke on the strength of Cundrestine defac’t;      The glorie of Heydonhall devasted: that      Of Edington cast downe; the pile of Fulden      Orethrowne: And this, the strongest of their forts,      Old Ayton Castle, yeelded and demolished,      And yet not peepe abroad? The Scots are bold,      Hardie in battayle, but it seems the cause      They undertake considered, appeares      Unjoynted in the frame on’t”.’-SCOTT.

line 301. Ayton is on the Eye, a little above Eyemouth, in Berwickshire.

Stanza XIX. line 305. ‘The garrisons of the English castles of Wark, Norham, and Berwick were, as may be easily supposed, very troublesome neighbours to Scotland. Sir Richard Maitland of Ledington wrote a poem, called “The Blind Baron’s Comfort,” when his barony of Blythe, in Lauderdale, was harried by Rowland Foster, the English captain of Wark, with his company, to the number of 300 men. They spoiled the poetical knight of 5000 sheep, 200 nolt, 30 horses and mares; the whole furniture of his house of Blythe, worth 100 pounds Scots (L8. 6s. 8d.), and every thing else that was portable. “This spoil was committed the 16th day of May, 1570, (and the said Sir Richard was threescore and fourteen years of age, and grown blind,) in time of peace; when nane of that country lippened [expected] such a thing.”-”The Blind Baron’s Comfort” consists in a string of puns on the word Blythe, the name of the lands thus despoiled. Like John Littlewit, he had “a conceit left him in his misery-a miserable conceit.”

‘The last line of the text contains a phrase, by which the Borderers jocularly intimated the burning a house. When the Maxwells, in 1685, burned the castle of Lochwood, they said they did so to give the Lady Johnstone “light to set her hood.” Nor was the phrase inapplicable; for, in a letter, to which I have mislaid the reference, the Earl of Northumberland writes to the King and Council, that he dressed himself at midnight, at Warkworth, by the blaze of the neighbouring villages burned by the Scottish marauders.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XXI. line 332. Bp. Pudsey, in 1154, restored the castle and added the donjon. See Jemingham’s ‘Norham Castle,’ v. 87.

line 341. too well in case, in too good condition, too stout. For a somewhat similar meaning of case, see Tempest, iii. 2. 25: -

     ‘I am in case to justle a constable.’

line 342. Scott here refers to Holinshed’s account of Welsh, the vicar of St. Thomas of Exeter, a leader among the Cornish insurgents in 1549: -

‘“This man,” says Holinshed, “had many good things in him. He was of no great stature, but well set, and mightilie compact. He was a very good wrestler; shot well, both in the long-bow, and also in the cross-bow; he handled his hand-gun and peece very well; he was a very good woodman, and a hardie, and such a one as would not give his head for the polling, or his beard for the washing. He was a companion in any exercise of activitie, and of a courteous and gentle behaviour. He descended of a good honest parentage, being borne at Peneverin, in Cornwall; and yet, in this rebellion, an arch-captain, and a principal doer.”-Vol. iv. p. 958, 4to edition. This model of clerical talents had the misfortune to be hanged upon the steeple of his own church.’-SCOTT.

‘The reader,’ Lockhart adds, ‘needs hardly to be reminded of Ivanhoe.’

line 349. Cp. Chaucer’s friar in Prologue, line 240: -

     ‘He knew wel the tavernes in every toun,’ &c.

The character and adventures of Friar John owe something both to the ‘Canterbury Tales’ and to a remarkable poem, probably Dunbar’s, entitled ‘The Friars of Berwick.’

line 354. St. Bede’s day in the Calendar is May 27. See below, line 410.

Stanza XXII. line 372. tables, backgammon.

line 387. fay = faith, word of honour. See below 454, and cp. Hamlet, ii. 2. 271, ‘By my fay, I cannot reason.’

Stanza XXIII. line 402. St. James or Santiago of Spain. Cp. ‘Piers the Plowman,’ i. 48 (with Prof. Skeat’s note), Chaucer’s Prologue, 465, and Southey’s ‘Pilgrim to Compostella,’ valuable both for its poetic beauty and its ample notes. In regard to the cockleshell, Southey gives some important information in extracts from ‘Anales de Galicia,’ and he says-

     ‘For the scallop shows in a coat of arms        That of the bearer’s line.      Some one, in former days, hath been        To Santiago’s shrine.’

line 403. Montserrat, a mountain, with a Benedictine abbey on it, in Catalonia. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood cherish a myth to the effect that the fantastic peaks and gorges of the mountain were formed at the Crucifixion.

lines 404-7. Scott annotates as follows: -

‘Sante Rosalie was of Palermo, and born of a very noble family, and, when very young, abhorred so much the vanities of this world, and avoided the converse of mankind, resolving to dedicate herself wholly to God Almighty, that she, by divine inspiration, forsook her father’s house, and never was more heard of, till her body was found in that cleft of a rock, on that almost inaccessible mountain, where now the chapel is built; and they affirm she was carried up there by the hands of angels; for that place was not formerly so accessible (as now it is) in the days of the Saint; and even now it is a very bad, and steepy, and break-neck way. In this frightful place, this holy woman lived a great many years, feeding only on what she found growing on that barren mountain, and creeping into a narrow and dreadful cleft in a rock, which was always dropping wet, and was her place of retirement, as well as prayer; having worn out even the rock with her knees, in a certain place, which is now open’d on purpose to show it to those who come here. This chapel is very richly adorn’d; and on the spot where the saint’s dead body was discover’d, which is just beneath the hole in the rock, which is open’d on purpose, as I said, there is a very fine statue of marble, representing her in a lying posture, railed in all about with fine iron and brass work; and the altar, on which they say mass, is built just over it.’-Voyage to Sicily and Malta, by Mr. John Dryden, (son to the poet,) p. 107.

Stanza XXIV. line 408. The national motto is ‘St. George for Merrie England.’ The records of various central and eastern English towns tell of a very ancient custom of ‘carrying the dragon in procession, in great jollity, on Midsummer Eve.’ See Brand’s ‘Popular Antiquities,’ i. 321. In reference to the ‘Birth of St George’ and his deeds, see Percy’s ‘Reliques.’

line 409. Becket (1119-70), Archbishop of Canterbury. See ‘Canterbury Tales’ and Aubrey de Vere’s ‘St. Thomas of Canterbury: a dramatic poem.’

line 410. For Cuthbert, see below, II. xiv. 257. Bede (673-735), a monk of Jarrow on Tyne; called the Venerable Bede; author of an important ‘Ecclesiastical History’ and an English translation of St. John’s Gospel.

lines 419-20. Lord Jeffrey’s sense of humour was not adequate to the appreciation of these two lines, which he specialised for condemnation.

Stanza. XXV. line 421. Gramercy, from Fr. grand merci, sometimes used as an emphatic exclamation, although fundamentally implying the thanks of the speaker.

line 430 still = always. Cp., inter alia, 440 and 452 below. See ‘still vexed Bermoothes,’ Tempest, i. 2. 229, and cp. Hamlet, ii. 2. 42, -

     ‘Thou still hast been the father of good news.’

Stanza XXVI. line 452. Scott quotes from Rabelais the passage in which the monk suggests to Gargantua that in order to induce sleep they might together try the repetition of the seven penitential psalms. ‘The conceit pleased Gargantua very well; and, beginning the first of these psalms, as soon as they came to Beati quorum they fell asleep, both the one and the other.’ Cp. Chaucer’s Monk and the character of Accidia in ‘Piers the Plowman,’ Passus V.

line 453. ave, an address to the Virgin Mary, beginning ‘Ave Maria’; creed, a profession of faith, beginning with Credo. It has been objected to this line that the creed is not an essential part of the rosary, and that ten aves and one paternoster would have been more accurate. It should, however, be noticed that both Friar John and young Selby know more of other matters than the details of religious devotion.

Stanza XXVII. line 459. ‘A Palmer, opposed to a Pilgrim, was one who made it his sole business to visit different holy shrines; travelling incessantly, and subsisting by charity: whereas the Pilgrim retired to his usual home and occupations, when he had paid his devotions at the particular spot which was the object of his pilgrimage. The Palmers seem to have been the Quaestionarii of the ancient Scottish canons 1242 and 1296. There is in the Bannatyne MS. a burlesque account of two such persons, entitled, “Simmy and his Brother.” Their accoutrements are thus ludicrously described (I discard the ancient spelling): -

     “Syne shaped them up, to loup on leas,        Two tabards of the tartan;      They counted nought what their clouts were        When sew’d them on, in certain.      Syne clampit up St. Peter’s keys,        Made of an old red gartane;      St. James’s shells, on t’other side, shews        As pretty as a partane                            Toe,      On Symmye and his brother.”‘-SCOTT.

With this account of the Palmer, cp. ‘Piers the Plowman,’ v. 523: -

     ‘He bare a burdoun ybounde  with a brode liste,      In a withewyndes wise  ywounden aboute.      A bolle and a bagge  he bare by his syde;      An hundredth of ampulles  on his hatt seten,      Signes of Synay  and shelles of Galice;      And many a cruche on his cloke  and keyes of Rome,      And the vernicle bifore  for men shulde knowe,      And se bi his signes  whom he soughte hadde.’

In connexion with this, Prof. Skeat draws attention to the romance of Sir Isumbras and to Chaucer’s Prol. line 13.

line 467. Loretto, in Ancona, Italy, is the site of a sanctuary of the Virgin, entitled Santa Casa, Holy House, which enjoys the reputation of having been the Virgin’s residence in Nazareth, and the scene of the Annunciation, &c.

Stanza XXVIII. line 483. haggard wild is a twofold adj. in the Elizabethan fashion, like ‘bitter sweet,’ ‘childish foolish,’ and other familiar examples.

line 490. Science appears to support this theory. See various examples in Sir Erasmus Wilson’s little work, ‘Healthy Skin.’ Many of the cases are within the writer’s own knowledge, and all the others are historical or otherwise well authenticated. He mentions Sir T. More the night before his execution; two cases reported by Borellus; three by Daniel Turner; one by Dr. Cassan; and in a note he recalls John Libeny, a would-be assassin of the Emperor of Austria, ‘whose hair turned snow-white in the forty-eight hours preceding his execution.’ See ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th S. vols. vi. to ix., and 7th S. ii. Not only fear but sorrow is said to cause the hair to turn white very suddenly. Byron makes his Prisoner of Chillon say that his white hairs have not come to him

                      ‘In a single night,      As men’s have grown from sudden fears.’

Stanza XXIX. line 506. ‘St. Regulus (Scottice, St. Rule), a monk of Patrae, in Achaia, warned by a vision, is said, A. D. 370, to have sailed westward, until he landed at St. Andrews, in Scotland, where he founded a chapel and tower. The latter is still standing; and, though we may doubt the precise date of its foundation, is certainly one of the most ancient edifices in Scotland. A cave, nearly fronting the ruinous castle of the Archbishops of St. Andrews, bears the name of this religion person. It is difficult of access; and the rock in which it is hewed is washed by the German Ocean. It is nearly round, about ten feet in diameter, and the same in height. On one side is a sort of stone altar; on the other an aperture into an inner den, where the miserable ascetic, who inhabited this dwelling, probably slept. At full tide, egress and regress are hardly practicable. As Regulus first colonised the metropolitan see of Scotland, and converted the inhabitants in the vicinity, he has some reason to complain that the ancient name of Killrule (Cella Reguli) should have been superseded, even in favour of the tutelar saint of Scotland. The reason of the change was, that St. Rule is said to have brought to Scotland the relics of Saint Andrew.’-SCOTT.

line 509. ‘St. Fillan was a Scottish saint of some reputation. Although Popery is, with us, matter of abomination, yet the common people still retain some of the superstitions connected with it. There are in Perthshire several wells and springs dedicated to St. Fillan, which are still places of pilgrimage and offerings, even among the Protestants. They are held powerful in cases of madness; and, in some of very late occurrence, lunatics have been left all night bound to the holy stone, in confidence that the saint would cure and unloose them before morning. [See various notes to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.]’-SCOTT.

line 513. Cp. Macbeth, v. 3. 40: -

     ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?’

and Lear, iii. 4. 12: -

                  ‘The tempest in my mind      Doth from my senses take all feeling else      Save what beats there.’

Stanza XXX. line 515. With ‘midnight draught,’ cp. Macbeth’s ‘drink,’ ii. 1. 31, and the ‘posset,’ ii. 2. 6. See notes to these passages in Clarendon Press Macbeth.

Stanza XXXI. line 534. ‘In Catholic countries, in order to reconcile the pleasures of the great with the observances of religion, it was common, when a party was bent for the chase, to celebrate mass, abridged and maimed of its rites, called a hunting-mass, the brevity of which was designed to correspond with the impatience of the audience.’-Note to ‘The Abbot,’ new edition.

line 538. Stirrup-cup, or stirrup-glass, is a parting-glass of liquor given to a guest when on horseback and ready to go.

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO SECOND

The Rev. John Marriott, A. M., to whom this introductory poem is dedicated, was tutor to George Henry, Lord Scott, son of Charles, Earl of Dalkeith, afterwards fourth Duke of Buccleuch and sixth of Queensberry. Lord Scott died early, in 1808. Marriott, while still at Oxford, proved himself a capable poet, and Scott shewed his appreciation of him by including two of his ballads at the close of the ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.’ The concluding lines of this Introduction refer to Marriott’s ballads.

line 2. ‘Ettrick Forest, now a range of mountainous sheep-walks, was anciently reserved for the pleasure of the royal chase. Since it was disparked, the wood has been, by degrees, almost totally destroyed, although, wherever protected from the sheep, copses soon arise without any planting. When the King hunted there, he often summoned the array of the country to meet and assist his sport. Thus, in 1528, James V “made proclamation to all lords, barons, gentlemen, landward-men, and freeholders, that they should compear at Edinburgh, with a month’s victuals, to pass with the King where he pleased, to danton the thieves of Tiviotdale, Annandale, Liddisdale, and other parts of that country; and also warned all gentlemen that had good dogs to bring them, that he might hunt in the said country as he pleased: The whilk the Earl of Argyle, the Earl of Huntley, the Earl of Athole, and so all the rest of the gentlemen of the Highland, did, and brought their hounds with them in like manner, to hunt with the King, as he pleased.

‘“The second day of June the King past out of Edinburgh to the hunting, with many of the nobles and gentlemen of Scotland with him, to the number of twelve thousand men; and then past to Meggitland, and hounded and hawked all the country and bounds; that is to say, Crammat, Pappert-law, St. Mary-laws, Carlavirick, Chapel, Ewindoores, and Langhope. I heard say, he slew, in these bounds, eighteen score of harts.” PITSCOTTIE’S History of Scotland, folio edition, p. 143.

‘These huntings had, of course, a military character, and attendance upon them was part of the duty of a vassal. The act for abolishing ward or military tenures in Scotland, enumerates the services of hunting, hosting, watching and warding, as those which were in future to be illegal.’-SCOTT.

lines 5-11. Cp. Wordsworth’s ‘Thorn’: -

     ‘There is a Thorn-it looks so old,      In truth, you’d find it hard to say      How it could ever have been young,      It looks so old and grey.’

There is a special suggestion of antiquity in the wrinkled, lichen-covered thorn of a wintry landscape, and thus it is a fitting object to stir and sustain the poet’s tendency to note ‘chance and change’ and to lament the loss of the days that are no more. The exceeding appropriateness of this in a narrative poem dealing with departed habits and customs must be quite apparent. The thorn grows to a very great age, and many an unpretentious Scottish homestead receives a pathetic grace and dignity from the presence of its ancestral thorn-tree.

line 15. The rowan is the mountain ash. One of the most tender and haunting of Scottish songs is Lady Nairne’s ‘Oh, Rowan tree!’-

     ‘How fair wert thou in summer time, wi’ a’ thy clusters white,      How rich and gay thy autumn dress, wi’ berries red and bright.’

line 27. There are some notable allusions in the poets to the moonlight baying of dogs and wolves. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 27: -

     ‘I had rather be a dog and bay the moon.’

See also Shield’s great English song, ‘The Wolf’: -

     ‘While the wolf, in nightly prowl,      Bays the moon with hideous howl!’

One of the best lines in English verse on the wolf-both skilfully onomatopoeic and suggestively picturesque-is Campbell’s, line 66 of ‘Pleasures of Hope’: -

     ‘The wolf’s long howl from Oonalaska’s shore.’

line 30. Cp. the movement of this line with line 3 in ‘Sang of the Outlaw Murray’: -

     ‘There’s hart and hynd, and dae and rae.’

line 31. ‘Grene wode’ is a phrase of the ‘Robyn Hode Ballads.’ Cp.: -

     ‘She set her on a gode palfray,      To grene wode anon rode she.’

line 32. The ruins of Newark Castle are above the confluence of the Ettrick and the Yarrow, on the latter river, and a few miles from Selkirk. Close by is Bowhill, mentioned below, 73. See Prof. Minto’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ (Clarendon Press), pp. 122-3. In the days of the ‘last minstrel’ it was appropriate to describe this ‘riven’ relic as ‘Newark’s stately tower.’

line 33. James II built Newark as a fortress.

line 41. The gazehound or greyhound hunts by sight, not scent. The Encyclopedic Dictionary quotes Tickell ‘On Hunting’: -

     ‘See’st thou the gazehound! how with glance severe      From the close herd he marks the destined deer.’

line 42. ‘Bratchet, slowhound.’-SCOTT. The older spelling is brachet (from brach or brache), as: -

     ‘Brachetes bayed that best, as bidden the maystarez.’                                 Sir Gaw. and the Green Knyght, 1603.

In contrast with the gazehound the brachet hunts by scent.

line 44. Cp. Julius Caesar, iii. I. 273, ‘Let slip the dogs of war.’

line 48. Harquebuss, arquebus, or hagbut, a heavy musket. Cp. below, V. 54.

line 49. Cp. Dryden’s ‘Alexander’s Feast,’ ‘The vocal hills reply.’

line 54. Yarrow stream is the ideal scene of Border romance. See the Border Minstrelsy, and cp. the works of Hamilton of Bangour, John Leyden, Wordsworth’s Yarrow poems, the poems of the Ettrick Shepherd, Prof. Veitch, and Principal Shairp. John Logan’s ‘Braes of Yarrow’ also deserves special mention, and many singers of Scottish song know Scott Riddell’s ‘Dowie Dens o’ Yarrow.’

line 61. Holt, an Anglo-Saxon word for wood or grove, has been a favourite with poet’s since Chaucer’s employment of it (Prol. 6): -

     ‘Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breethe      Enspired hath in every holte and heethe      The tendre croppes.’

See Dr. Morris’s Glossary to Chaucer’s Prologue, &c. (Clarendon Press).