line 475. The tears of such as Douglas are of the kind mentioned in Cowley’s ‘Prophet,’ line 20:-
Stanza XVII. line 501. ‘The ancient cry to make room for a dance or pageant.’-SCOTT.
Cp. Romeo and Juliet, i. 5. 28: ‘A hall! a hall! give room,’ &c.
line 505. The tune is significant of a Scottish invasion of England. See Scott’s appropriate song to the ‘ancient air,’ ‘Monastery,’ xxv. Reference is made in I Henry II, ii. 4. 368, to the head-dress of the Scottish soldiers, when Falstaff informs Prince Hal that Douglas is in England, ‘and a thousand blue-caps more.’
Stanza XIX. line 545. Many of the houses in Old Edinburgh are built to a great height, so that the common stairs leading up among a group of them have sometimes been called ‘perpendicular streets.’ Pitch, meaning ‘height,’ is taken from hawking, the height to which a bird rose depending largely on the pitch given it.
Stanza XX. line 558. St. Giles’s massive steeple is one of the features of Edinburgh. The ancient church, recently renovated by the munificence of the late William Chambers, is now one of the most imposing Presbyterian places of worship in Scotland.
line 569. For bowne see above, IV. 487.
line 571. A certain impressiveness is given by the sudden introduction of this pentameter.
Stanza XXI. Jeffrey, in reviewing’ Marmion, ‘fixed on this narrative of the Abbess as a passage marked by ‘flatness and tediousness,’ and could see in it ‘no sort of beauty nor elegance of diction.’ The answer to such criticism is that the narrative is direct and practical, and admirably suited to its purpose.
line 585. Despiteously, despitefully. ‘Despiteous’ is used in ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ V. xix. Cp. Chaucer’s ‘Man of Lawe,’ 605 (Clarendon Press ed.):-
line 587. ‘A German general, who commanded the auxiliaries sent by the Duchess of Burgundy with Lambert Simnel. He was defeated and killed at Stokefield. The name of this German general is preserved by that of the field of battle, which is called, after him, Swart-moor.-There were songs about him long current in England. See Dissertation prefixed to RITSON’S Ancient Songs, 1792, p. lxi.’-SCOTT.
line 588. Lambert Simnel, the Pretender, made a scullion after his overthrow by Henry VII.
line 590. Stokefield (Stoke, near Newark, county Nottingham) was fought 16 June, 1487.
line 607. ‘It was early necessary for those who felt themselves obliged to believe in the divine judgment being enunciated in the trial by duel, to find salvos for the strange and obviously precarious chances of the combat. Various curious evasive shifts, used by those who took up an unrighteous quarrel, were supposed sufficient to convert it into a just one. Thus, in the romance of “Amys and Amelion,” the one brother-in-arms, fighting for the other, disguised in his armour, swears that he did not commit the crime of which the Steward, his antagonist, truly, though maliciously, accused him whom he represented. Brantome tells a story of an Italian, who entered the lists upon an unjust quarrel, but, to make his cause good, fled from his enemy at the first onset. “Turn, coward!” exclaimed his antagonist. “Thou liest,” said the Italian, “coward am I none; and in this quarrel will I fight to the death, but my first cause of combat was unjust, and I abandon it.” “Je vous laisse a penser,” adds Brantome, “s’il n’y a pas de l’abus la.” Elsewhere he says, very sensibly, upon the confidence which those who had a righteous cause entertained of victory: “Un autre abus y avoit-il, que ceux qui avoient un juste subjet de querelle, et qu’on les faisoit jurer avant entrer au camp, pensoient estre aussitost vainqueurs, voire s’en assuroient-t-ils du tout, mesmes que leurs confesseurs, parrains et confidants leurs en respondoient tout-a-fait, comme si Dieu leur en eust donne une patente; et ne regardant point a d’autres fautes passes, et que Dieu en garde la punition a ce coup la pour plus grande, despiteuse, et exemplaire.”-Discours sur le Duels.’-SCOTT.
Stanza XXII. line 612. Recreant, a coward, a disgraced knight. See ‘Lady of the Lake,’ V. xvi:-
and cp. ‘caitiff recreant,’ Richard II, i. 2. 53.
line 633. The Tame falls into the Trent above Tamworth.
Stanza XXIII. line 662. Quaint, neat, pretty, as in Much Ado, iii. 4. 21: ‘A fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion.’
Stanza XXIV. line 704. St. Withold, St. Vitalis. Cp. King Lear, iii. 4. III. Clarendon Press ed., and note. This saint was invoked in nightmare.
Stanza XXV. line 717. Malison, curse.
line 717. ‘The Cross of Edinburgh was an ancient and curious structure. The lower part was an octagonal tower, sixteen feet in diameter, and about fifteen feet high. At each angle there was a pillar, and between them an arch, of the Grecian shape. Above these was a projecting battlement, with a turret at each corner, and medallions, of rude but curious workmanship, between them. Above this rose the proper Cross, a column of one stone, upwards of twenty feet high, surmounted with a unicorn. This pillar is preserved in the grounds of the property of Drum, near Edinburgh. The Magistrates of Edinburgh, in 1756, with consent of the Lords of Session, (proh pudor!) destroyed this curious monument, under a wanton pretext that it encumbered the street; while, on the one hand, they left an ugly mass called the Luckenbooths, and, on the other, an awkward, long, and low guard-house, which were fifty times more encumbrance than the venerable and inoffensive Cross.
‘From the tower of the Cross, so long as it remained, the heralds published the acts of Parliament; and its site, marked by radii, diverging from a stone centre, in the High Street, is still the place where proclamations are made.’-SCOTT.
See Fergusson’s ‘Plainstanes,’ Poems, p. 48. The Cross was restored by Mr. Gladstone in 1885, to commemorate his connexion with Midlothian as its parliamentary representative.
line 735. ‘This supernatural citation is mentioned by all our Scottish historians. It was, probably, like the apparition at Linlithgow, an attempt, by those averse to the war, to impose upon the superstitious temper of James IV. The following account from Pitscottie is characteristically minute, and furnishes, besides, some curious particulars of the equipment of the army of James IV. I need only add to it, that Plotcock, or Plutock, is no other than Pluto. The Christians of the middle ages by no means disbelieved in the existence of the heathen deities; they only considered them as devils, and Plotcock, so far from implying any thing fabulous, was a synonyme of the grand enemy of mankind.” {2} “Yet all thir warnings, and uncouth tidings, nor no good counsel, might stop the King, at this present, from his vain purpose, and wicked enterprize, but hasted him fast to Edinburgh, and there to make his provision and famishing, in having forth of his army against the day appointed, that they should meet in the Barrow-muir of Edinburgh: That is to say, seven cannons that he had forth of the Castle of Edinburgh, which were called the Seven Sisters, casten by Robert Borthwick, the master-gunner, with other small artillery, bullet, powder, and all manner of order, as the master-gunner could devise.