line 157. following = feudal retainers.-SCOTT. To the poet’s explanation Lockhart appends the remark that since Scott thought his note necessary the word has been ‘completely adopted into English, and especially into Parliamentary parlance.’
line 166. Scott says:-‘In all transactions of great or petty importance, and among whomsoever taking place, it would seem that a present of wine was a uniform and indispensable preliminary. It was not to Sir John Falstaff alone that such an introductory preface was necessary, however well judged and acceptable on the part of Mr. Brook; for Sir Ralph Sadler, while on an embassy to Scotland in 1539-40, mentions, with complacency, ‘the same night came Rothesay (the herald so called) to me again, and brought me wine from the King both white and red.’-
line 168. For weeds see above, I. Introd. 256.
Stanza VII. line 172. For wassell see above, I. xv. 231; and cp. ‘merry wassail’ in ‘Rokeby,’ III. xv.
line 190. Cp. above, IV. Introd. 3.
line 200. An Elizabethan omission of relative.
Stanza VIII. The admirable characterisation, by which in this and the two following stanzas the King, the Queen, and Lady Heron are individually delineated and vividly contrasted, deserves special attention. There is every reason to believe that the delineations, besides being vivid and impressive, have the additional merit of historical accuracy.
line 213. piled = covered with a pile or nap. The Encyclopaedic Dict., s. v., quotes: ‘With that money I would make thee several cloaks and line them with black crimson, and tawny, three filed veluet.’- Barry; Ram Alley, III. i.
line 221. A baldric (remotely from Lat. balteus, a girdle) was an ornamental belt passing over one shoulder and round the other side, and having the sword suspended from it. Cp. Pope’s Iliad, III. 415:-
See also the ‘wolf-skin baldric’ in ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ III. xvi.
Stanza IX. line 249. ‘Few readers need to be reminded of this belt, to the weight of which James added certain ounces every year that he lived. Pitscottie founds his belief that James was not slain in the battle of Flodden, because the English never had this token of the iron-belt to show to any Scottishman. The person and character of James are delineated according to our best historians. His romantic disposition, which led him highly to relish gaiety, approaching to license, was, at the same time, tinged with enthusiastic devotion. These propensities sometimes formed a strange contrast. He was wont, during his fits of devotion, to assume the dress, and conform to the rules, of the order of Franciscans; and when he had thus done penance for some time in Stirling, to plunge again into the tide of pleasure. Probably, too, with no unusual inconsistency, he sometimes laughed at the superstitions observances to which he at other times subjected himself. There is a very singular poem by Dunbar, seemingly addressed to James IV, on one of these occasions of monastic seclusion. It is a most daring and profane parody on the services of the Church of Rome, entitled:-
See the whole in Sibbald’s Collection, vol. i. p. 234.’-SCOTT.
Since Scott’s time Dunbar’s poems have been edited, with perfect scholarship and skill, by David Laing (2 vols. post 8vo. 1824), and by John Small (in l885) for the Scottish Text Society. See Dict. of Nat. Biog.
lines 254-9. This perfect description may be compared, for accuracy of observation and dexterous presentment, with the steed in ‘Venus and Adonis,’ the paragon of horses in English verse. Both writers give ample evidence of direct personal knowledge.
