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:-
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:-
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-
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.