"Yield thee, Lord Percy," Douglas said, Where thou shalt high advanced be, By James, our Scottish king :1 "Thy ransom I will freely give, "No, Douglas," quoth Earl Percy then, With that there came an arrow keen Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart, Who never spoke more words than these, Lord Percy sees my fall."3 Then leaving life, Earl Percy took And said, "Earl Douglas, for thy life (1) James our Scottish king-There is much difficulty in fixing the date of the hunting in Chevy Chace. Mention is here made of "James our Scottish king," and a little before, of "Henry our (the English) king." Now it appears that James I. of Scotland came to the throne in 1424, just two years after the accession of Henry VI. of England, so that, in accordance with these data, the hunting must have taken place after 1424, and yet reference is made in the poem to the subsequent battle of Homildon Hill, which we know was fought in 1402, in the reign of Henry IV., when Robert III., father of James I., was alive. The only possible way of reconciling these discrepancies is to suppose that the author of the ancient ballad mistook Robert for James. (2) My merry men-a common expression in old ballads, nearly equivalent to "my brave fellows." (3) Lord Percy sees my fall-The introduction of this aggravating circumstance is much commended by Addison, as also Earl Percy's taking the dead man by the hand. "Ah me! my very heart doth bleed For sure a more redoubted1 knight A knight amongst the Scots there was, Sir Hugh Montgomery was he called ; And passed the English archers all, And through Earl Percy's body then With such a vehement force and might The spear went through the other side So thus did both these nobles die, He had a bow bent in his hand, Against Sir Hugh Montgomery In his heart's blood was wet. (1) Redoubted-formidable; from the French, redouter, to fear, dread. (2) Each earl died, it will be observed, by the national weapon of his enemy; the Scot by an English arrow, the Englishman by a Scottish spear. This fight did last from break of day For when they rung the evening bell, With stout Earl Percy there was slain Sir Robert Ratcliffe, and Sir John, And, with Sir George, and stout Sir James, For Witherington needs must I wail, For when his legs were smitten off, And with Earl Douglas there was slain Sir Charles Murray, that from the field (1) From break of day, &c.—This is not consistent with the opening of the ballad, where we are told of the huntsmen having dined before the arrival of Douglas and his men. In the old song this inconsistency is absent: "This battle begun in Cheviot An hour before the none (noon), And when even-song bell was rung, The battle was not half done." It would appear from this quotation that the evening bell, or curfew, was substituted by the moderniser, after the Reformation, for the vesper bell of the ancient writer. This ex (2) Doleful dumps-i. e. “I, as one in deep concern, must lament." pression, which has now become ludicrous, was formerly only employed in the sense given above. Dump is by some derived from dumb, and thought to express the silent grief which arises from deep affliction. It sometimes signifies a melancholy strain of music. The moderniser has not in this instance improved upon the pathetic simplicity of the original, which runs thus : "For Witherington my heart is woe, That ever he slain should be; For when both his legs were hewn in two, Yet he knelt and fought on his knee.' Sir Charles Murray of Ratcliffe, too, Sir David Lamb, so well esteemed, And the Lord Maxwell, in like case, Of fifteen hundred Englishmen, Next day did many widows come, They washed their wounds in brinish tears, But all would not prevail. Their bodies, bathed in purple gore, They bore with them away; They kissed them dead a thousand times, The news was brought to Edenborrow, "O heavy news!" King James did I have not any captain more Like tidings to King Henry came, That Percy of Northumberland Was slain in Chevy Chace. say, "Now God be with him," said our king, "Sith' 'twill no better be; I trust I have within my realm, Five hundred as good as he. (1) Sith-since. Another form is sithence, whence came since. "Yet shall not Scots nor Scotland say, For brave Earl Percy's sake." This vow full well the king performed, In one day fifty knights were slain, And of the rest of small account Thus endeth the hunting of Chevy Chace, God save the king! and bless this land, FEMALE NAMES. IN Christian world MARY the garland wears; (1) Humbledown-Humbleton, or Homildon Hill, in Northumberland, where a battle took place in 1402, in which the Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur gained a complete victory over the Scots. (2) Thus endeth-This battle at Homildon Hill, which was occasioned by the hunting in Chevy Chace, is called the ending of the hunting. (3) Debate-this word, formerly used to denote every kind of contest, has in course of time come to mean verbal strife only. Having displayed in the beginning of this ballad the tributes of praise which its merits have elicited, it is but fair to add, at the close, a contrary opinion delivered by a great authority. Dr. Johnson, in his "Life of Addison," while ridiculing Addison for having praised the ballad in the "Spectator," speaks of the "chill and lifeless imbecility of the poem;" and adds-" the story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind:" an opinion which, when compared with Dr. Percy's, given in a former note, proves how widely "doctors" may "differ." |