Marmion

                           ‘I should be loth 
      To meet the rudeness and swill’d insolence 
      Of such late wassailers.’

Cp. also note on ‘gossip’s bowl’ of Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. I. 47, in Clarendon Press edition, and Prof. Minto’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ p. 174.

line 232. Cp. Iliad i. 470, and ix. 175, and Chapman’s translation, ‘The youths crowned cups of wine.’

line 238. Raby Castle, in the county of Durham, the property of the Duke of Cleveland.

line 254. As a page in a lady’s chamber. ‘Bower’ is often contrasted with ‘hall,’ as in ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’:-

     ‘They socht her baith by bower an’ ha’.’

Cp. below, 281.

Stanza XVI. line 264. For Lindisfarn, or Holy Island, see note to Canto II. St. i.

Stanza XVII. line 284. leash, the cord by which the greyhound is restrained till the moment when he is slipt in pursuit of the game.  Cp. Coriolanus, i. 6. 38:-

     ‘Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash.’

Stanza XVIII. line 289. bide, abide. Cp. above, 215.

line 294. pray you = I pray you. Cp. ‘Prithee,’ so common in Elizabethan drama.

line 298. Scott annotates as follows:

‘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 Catharine 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 
      Looke on the strength of Cundrestine defac’t;

      The glorie of Heydonhall devasted: that 
      Of Edington cast downe; the pile of Fulden 
      Orethrowne: And this, the strongest of their forts, 
      Old Ayton Castle, yeelded and demolished, 
      And yet not peepe abroad? The Scots are bold, 
      Hardie in battayle, but it seems the cause 
      They undertake considered, appeares 
      Unjoynted in the frame on’t”.’-SCOTT.

line 301. Ayton is on the Eye, a little above Eyemouth, in Berwickshire.

Stanza XIX. line 305. ‘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 (L8. 6s. 8d.), and every thing else that was portable.