Marmion

     ‘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).

line 68. Cp. Wordsworth’s two Matthew poems, ‘The Two April Mornings’ and ‘The Fountain’; also Matthew Arnold’s ‘Thyrsis’-

     ‘Too rare, too rare grow now my visits here! 
      But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick; 
        And with the country-folk acquaintance made 
      By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick, 
        Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d.’

line 82. Janet in the ballad of ‘The Young Tamlane’ in the Border Minstrelsy. The dissertation Scott prefixed to this ballad is most interesting and valuable.

line 84. See above, note on Rev. J. Marriott.

line 85. Scott was sheriff-substitute of Selkirkshire. As the law requires residence within the limits of the sheriffdom, Scott dwelt at Ashestiel at least four months of every year. Prof. Veitch, in his descriptive poem ‘The Tweed,’ writes warmly on Ashestiel, as Scott’s residence in his happiest time:-

     ‘Sweet Ashestiel! that peers ‘mid woody braes, 
      And lists the ripple of Glenkinnon’s rill- 
      Fair girdled by Tweed’s ampler gleaming wave- 
      His well loved home of early happy days, 
      Ere noon of Fame, and ere dark Ruin’s eve, 
      When life lay unrevealed, with hopeful thrill

      Of all that might be in the reach of powers 
      Whose very flow was a continued joy- 
      Strong-rushing as the dawn, and fresh and fair 
      In outcome as that morning of the world, 
      Which gilded all his kindled fancy’s dream!’

line 88. Harriet, Countess of Dalkeith, afterwards Duchess of Buccleuch. A suggestion of hers led to the composition of the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel.’ See Prof. Minto’s Introduction to Clarendon Press edition of the poem, p. 8.

lines 90-93. ‘These lines were not in the original MS.’-LOCKHART.

line 106. ‘The late Alexander Pringle, Esq., of Whytbank-whose beautiful seat of the Yair stands on the Tweed, about two miles below Ashestiel.’-LOCKHART.

line 108. ‘The sons of Mr. Pringle of Whytbank.’-LOCKHART.

line 113. Cp. VI. 611, below.

line 115. ‘There is, on a high mountainous ridge above the farm of Ashestiel, a fosse called Wallace’s Trench.’-SCOTT.

line 124. Cp. Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,’ especially lines 6l-2:-

     ‘These shall the fury Passions tear, 
         The vultures of the mind.’

lines 126-33. Cp. Wordsworth variously, particularly in the Matthew poems, the Ode on Intimations of Immortality, and Tintern Abbey, especially in its last twenty-five lines:-

                  ‘Therefore let the moon 
      Shine on thee in thy solitary walk,’ &c.

line 143. Cp. I Kings xix. 12.

lines 147-73. ‘This beautiful sheet of water forms the reservoir from which the Yarrow takes its source. It is connected with a smaller lake, called the Loch of the Lowes, and surrounded by mountains. In the winter, it is still frequented by flights of wild swans; hence my friend Mr. Wordsworth’s lines:-

     “The swan on sweet St. Mary’s lake 
      Floats double, swan and shadow.”

Near the lower extremity of the lake are the ruins of Dryhope tower, the birth-place of Mary Scott, daughter of Philip Scott of Dryhope, and famous by the traditional name of the Flower of Yarrow. She was married to Walter Scott of Harden, no less renowned for his depredations than his bride for her beauty. Her romantic appellation was, in latter days, with equal justice, conferred on Miss Mary Lilias Scott, the last of the elder branch of the Harden family. The author well remembers the talent and spirit of the latter Flower of Yarrow, though age had then injured the charms which procured her the name. The words usually sung to the air of “Tweedside,” beginning “What beauties does Flora disclose,” were composed in her honour.’-SCOTT.

Quoting from memory, Scott gives ‘sweet’ for still in Wordsworth’s lines. Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in ‘Essays Chiefly on Poetry,’ ii. 277, reports an interview with Wordsworth, in which the poet, referring to St. Mary’s Lake, says: ‘The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness; there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan-its own white image in the water.’ For a criticism, deeply sympathetic and appreciative, of Scott’s description of St. Mary’s Loch in calm, see Prof. Veitch’s ‘Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry,’ ii. 196. The scene remains very much what it was in Scott’s time, ‘notwithstanding that the hand of the Philistine,’ says Prof. Veitch, ‘has set along the north shore of St. Mary’s, as far as his power extended, a strip of planting.’