Say, hast thou given that lovely youth To serve in lady's bower? Or was the gentle page, in sooth, A gentle paramour ?" XVI. Lord Marmion ill could brook such jest; He roll'd his kindling eye, With pain his rising wrath suppress'd, Yet made a calm reply: "That boy thou thought so goodly fair, Enough of him.-But, Heron, say, XVII. Unmark'd, at least unreck'd, the taunt, Careless the Knight replied, "No bird, whose feathers gaily flaunt, Delights in cage to bide : Norham is grim and grated close, Hemm'd in by battlement and fosse, 1 See Note, canto ii., stanza i. We hold our greyhound in our hand, But where shall we find leash or band, For dame that loves to rove? Let the wild falcon soar her swing, She'll stoop when she has tired her wing." XVIII. "Nay, if with Royal James's bride Your tender greetings prompt to bear; I have not ridden in Scotland since James back'd the cause of that mock prince, Who on the gibbet paid the cheat. Then did I march with Surrey's power, What time we razed old Ayton tower." The story of Perkin Warbeck, or Richard Duke of York, is well known. In 1496, he was received honourably in Scotland; and James IV, after conferring upon him in marriage his own relation, the Lady Catherine Gordon, made war on England in behalf of his pretensions. To retaliate an invasion of England, Surrey advanced into Berwickshire at the head of considerable forces, but retreated, after taking the inconsiderable fortress of Ayton. Ford, in his Dramatic Chronicle of Perkin Warbeck, makes the most of this inroad :— "SURREY. "Are all our braving enemies shrunk back, Hid in the fogges of their distemper'd climate, Not daring to behold our colours wave In spight of this infected ayre? Can they Of Eddington cast downe; the pile of Fulden Old Ayton Castle, yeelded and demolished, And yet not peepe abroad? The Scots are bold, XIX. "For such-like need, my lord, I trow, And given them light to set their hoods.". XX. Now, in good sooth," Lord Marmion cried, "Were I in warlike wise to ride, 1 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, (£8:6: 8,) and everything 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 miserya 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. A better guard I would not lack, Than your stout forayers at my back; Why through all Scotland, near and far, XXI. The Captain mused a little space, So, safe he sat in Durham aisle, And pray'd for our success the while. |