Come listen! bold in thy applause, MARMION. CANTO FIFTH. THE COURT. I. THE train has left the hills of Braid; Their men the warders backward drew, Fast ran the Scottish warriors there, [MS. "The barrier guard the Lion knew, Advanced their pikes, and soon withdrew The slender palisades and few That closed the tented ground; And Marmion with his train rode through, And envy with their wonder rose, Such length of shafts, such mighty bows,1 II. Nor less did Marmion's skilful view Heavily sheathed in mail and plate, 1 [MS.-"So long their shafts, so large their bows."] 2 This is no poetical exaggeration. In some of the counties of England, distinguished for archery, shafts of this extraordinary length were actually used. Thus, at the battle of Blackheath, between the troops of Henry VII. and the Cornish insurgents, in 1496, the bridge of Dartford was defended by a picked band of archers from the rebel army, "whose arrows," says Hollinshed, "were in length a full cloth yard." The Scottish, according to Ascham, had a proverb, that every English archer carried under his belt twentyfour Scots, in allusion to his bundle of unerring shafts. |