Something is wanting here in the MS., and various guesses have been made as to the missing word. Probably Skeat's suggestion to supply "the fight" comes nearest. It may have been some equivalent expression as "hard strikes."-210. On hy upright. = 9.-213-234. Thear was slayne with the lord Perse. Percy says that most of these here mentioned belonged to distinguished families in the North. John Agertoun, or Haggerstoun, is supposed to have been one of the Rutherfords, then retained by the house of Douglas; "ryche Rugbé" is said to have been Ralph Neville of Raby Castle, cousin-german to Hotspur, etc. (See Reliques.)-217. Loumle Lumley. There was a prominent family in Northumberland by this name, at least one of whom was a follower of the Percies. See Burke's Extinct Peerages; also Stephen's Dict. Nat. Biog.-236. Makys, or make, mates.-237. Carpe sing, talk. (Carpen = to talk, to speak.) = = = 10.-242. Jamy, James I. (reigned 1424-1437.)—251. Lyfftenant of the marches = lieutenant, or deputy, to guard the marches or borders between Scotland and England.-257. Brook use, enjoy. See Cent. Dict.-262. Hombyll-doun Hamildon. There was a battle of Homildon Hill in 1402, between the English and the Scotch, in which the former were victorious. Percy, called Hotspur, commanded the English forces, and Douglas the Scotch. The reference to the occasion of this battle in the text is without historical foundation, as a careful examination of the chronology of the events referred to will show.-265. "Glendale is the district or ward in which Homildon is situated." (Percy.) 11.-279. Balys bete = remedy our evils. (Percy.) SIR PATRICK SPENS (OR SPENCE.) The question as to whether this famous ballad had any historical foundation, and if so, as to the precise events with which it is connected, has been much discussed. Various theories and opinions on these points will be found in Percy's Reliques, Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Child's Ballads, etc., but as the matter remains unsettled the conflicting views need not be here entered upon. Fortunately the determination of such questions is not necessary for readers who value the ballad as poetry, not as a topic for debate. On the whole Allingham's conclusion seems the sensible one: "There is no old MS. of the ballad. All the foundation which really seems attainable is this, that in old times there was much intercourse between Scotland and Norway, and between the royal courts of the two countries, and that some shipwreck not altogether unlike this may probably have happened." (The Ballad Book, 377.) Coleridge, who takes the motto of his ode Dejection from this poem, then refers to it as "the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens.' The great antiquity generally claimed for it has been unsuccessfully disputed, but the exact date is not known. 1. Dumferling Dumfermline, a town in Fifeshire, some sixteen miles N. W. of Edinburgh. It was a favorite residence of the early Scottish kings and contained a royal palace.—3. Sailór, accented here on the second syllable, as is letter. The practice is common in the old ballads.-9. Braid letter = an open, or patent, letter; i.e. here, a public document under the royal seal. = 12.-25. Late late yestreen, etc. Inwards quotes this in his Weather-Lore, and calls attention to the popular belief that the new moon holding the old moon in her arms, or with the entire disk visible, is a sign of storm.-32. Thair hats, etc. Motherwell gives this line: "They wat their hats aboun," and adds another reading, "Their hair was wat aboun," in a note. In any case the meaning is the same: loath to wet their shoes they were at last in over their heads. 13.-41. Aberdour, an old town on the Frith of Forth, about ten miles to the north of Edinburgh. It was half-way from Norway to this town that Sir Patrick was lost. WALY WALY, LOVE BE BONNY. This ancient song is said to have been first published in Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (1724), but it is thought to have been part of another ballad, Lord Jamie Douglas, which closely resembles it in some particulars. Allingham says that some have placed it about the middle of the sixteenth century. 1. Waly an interjection expressing grief, equivalent to alas. (See Wella way, of which it is an abbreviated form in Cent. Dict.)-8. Lichtlie make light of, to use with disrespect.-17. Arthur's-seat Arthur's Seat, a steep and rocky hill near Edinburgh. St. Anton's Well is about one third of the way up its side. (See description in Scott's Heart of Midlothian, Ch. VII.) = 14.-32. Cramasie = cramoisy = crimson. THE TWA SISTERS O'BINNORIE. Dr. Child notes that this is one of the very few old ballads still alive in tradition in the British Isles. Under the title of The Miller and the King's Daughter it was printed as a broadside in 1656, and included in the miscellany Wit Restored 1658. (Ballads, V. I. Pt. I. 118.) The whole tone and character of the story make it highly representative of a large class of popular songs and legends dealing with love, tragedy, and the supernatural. (Cf. ballads dealing with the allied themes of fratricide, The Twa Brothers, Edward Edward, Son Davie.) Not only has the story of the two sisters been told with many variations in the British Isles, it has a place in the popular poetry of many of the Teutonic nations, as the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, etc. (See Child. ib. supra.) The use of the refrain should be noted as a characteristic feature of early ballad poetry, imitated by certain modern poets. "The refrain," says Prof. Gummere, is almost the only rudiment of choral poetry surviving to our own day, and it has come down to us a companion of the ballad and the dance." (Old English Ballads, xc.) For modern use of the refrain cf. Rossetti's Troy Town, Eden Bower, Tennyson's Oriana, etc., and for parody on the Preraphaelite or other revivals of it, see Ballad in C. S. Calverly's Fly Leaves. 44 BONNIE GEORGE CAMPBELL. 18. The historical basis for this lament is of little importance and not certainly known. Motherwell thinks that it may have been "a lament for one of the adherents of the house of Argyle who fell in the battle of Glenlivet, 1594." 10. Greeting = weeping.-15. Toom build. empty.-19. Big = HELEN OF KIRCONNEL. 19. The foundation of this lament as given by Scott is substantially as follows: Helen Irving or Bell, daughter of the laird of Kirconnel in Dumfriesshire, had two suitors; one of them, Adam Fleming, was preferred. During a secret interview between the lovers in Kirconnel Churchyard on the river Kirtle, the rejected suitor fired on his rival from the other side of the stream. Helen was shot in shielding her lover, and died in his arms. The poem is the lament of Fleming over Helen's grave. (Minstrelsy, etc., 324.) Wordsworth has treated this subject in a very inferior poem, Ellen Irwin (see Knight's Wordsworth, II. 191, and note) "choosing" (as he tells us) a different style to preclude all comparison." A similar theme is handled more successfully by Tennyson in The Ballad of Oriana, but even this cannot equal the Scotch ballad of a nameless singer in pathetic interest. 7. Burd burde = maid. SPENSER TO DRYDEN (CIR. 1579-CIR. 1660.) EDMUND SPENSER 21. Edmund Spenser, b. London 1552 and d. London 1599. His first important work, The Shepherds Calendar, 1579,stands at the beginning of a great epoch in English poetry. The first three books of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and three additional books in 1596. Spenser follows Chaucer in the chronological succession of the greater English poets. He was born about twelve years before Shakespeare; he made his mark on English poetry about ten years before Shakespeare began his work; and he died about nine years before the birth of Milton. THE FAERIE QUEENE. The Faerie Queene, Spenser's longest and greatest work, bears a general resemblance to the romantic epics of Tasso and Ariosto. It differs from its Italian models, however, in the elevation of its tone and in the definiteness and importance of its moral purpose. It is not merely a romance, it is a religious or spiritual allegory. Its object is to aid in the formation of noble character,-"to fashion a gentleman or noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline," by presenting the triumph of chivalric ideals of manhood over sin. Spenser accordingly takes the twelve "moral virtues" which he conceives to be the essential elements in the character of a true knight, or Christian gentleman, representing each virtue by a knight who is made "the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions and feates of armes and chivalry the operations of that virtue whereof he is the protector 'are expressed,' and the vices that oppose themselves against the same are beaten down and overcome." One book was to have been devoted to each of the twelve virtues, but only six were completed. These six treat respectively of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. Each complete book is composed of twelve cantos, each canto containing from thirty-five to sixty nine-line stanzas. There are also some fragmentary cantos, which appeared after Spenser's death. Spenser hoped to add a second part, consisting likewise of twelve books, which should treat of the twelve public or politick" virtues, i.e. those of a man in his relation to the state. 64 The Selections here given are from the first and second books, and are so arranged that they can be read and understood as a continuous narrative. That the underlying, or allegorical, meaning of the story may become plain, a few points should be grasped at the outset and kept in mind. The first book shows us the perils which "enfold" Holiness, or "the righteous man," who is brought before us in the person of the Red-Cross Knight. This knight may be further, as Hallam holds, the militant Christian," or perhaps England, or the Reformed England of Elizabeth's time, or-as Dean Church suggests-"the commonalty of England." However this may be, the Knight, or Holiness, is shown to us as the proper mate and champion of Una, or Truth, but beguiled and deceived by the wiles of Duessa, or Falsehood. Further, we are to understand that Una is not only truth, but religious truth, especially as it is embodied in the Church of England, and that similarly Duessa is not only error. but those especial errors with which (as Spenser believed) the Church of Rome was identified. Briefly the subject of the book may then be said to be Righteousness, incomplete and misled if separated from Religion, betrayed by Error and ultimately restored by being reunited to the true Church. (See Bk. I. Cant. VIII. 1.) 'The second book, Of Temperance," (in the words of Dean Church,) "represents the internal conquests of self-mastery, the conquests of a man over his passions, his violence, his covetousness, his ambition, his despair, his sensuality." (See Life of Spenser, E. M. L. series, 125-6.) The first book thus deals mainly with faith, or religion, the second with practice, or morality, the outcome, or practical result, of religious belief in the struggle with the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. The two together thus contain, as Dean Kitchin observes, "the substance of man's faith and duty." (See Kitchin's ed. Faerie Queene, Bk. II., Introd.) The selections given in the text deal with the struggle with two out of these three foes; viz., the struggle with Mammon, or the world, and the struggle with the Flesh, or the seductions of idle pleasures and self-indulgence. 1. Book I. (Introductory Stanzas.)—Lo I the man, etc. An allusion to Spenser's first important work, The Shepherds Calendar, a pastoral, 1579. The lines follow closely the opening of Vergils Ænead, "Ille ego qui quondam," etc.-7. Areeds = directs, counsels.-10. O holy virgin, etc. The muse Clio. Why |