Walter Scott - Marmion

Stanza XXV. line 521. ‘The Borough, or Common Moor of Edinburgh, was of very great extent, reaching from the southern walls of the city to the bottom of Braid Hills. It was anciently a forest; and, in that state, was so great a nuisance, that the inhabitants of Edinburgh had permission granted to them of building wooden galleries, projecting over the street, in order to encourage them to consume the timber; which they seem to have done very effectually. When James IV mustered the array of the kingdom there, in 1513, the Borough-moor was, according to Hawthornden, “a field spacious, and delightful by the shade of many stately and aged oaks.” Upon that, and similar occasions, the royal standard is traditionally said to have been displayed from the Hare Stane, a high stone, now built into the wall, on the left hand of the highway leading towards Braid, not far from the head of Bruntsfield Links. The Hare Stane probably derives its name from the British word Har , signifying an army.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XXVI. lines 535-538. The proper names in these lines are Hebrides; East Lothian; Redswire, part of Carter Fell near Jedburgh; and co. of Ross.

Stanza XXVII. line 557. ‘Seven culverins so called, cast by one Borthwick.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XXVIII. line 566. ‘Each ensign intimated a different rank.’-SCOTT.

line 567. As illustrating an early mode of English encampment, Scott quotes from Patten’s description of what he saw after Pinkie, 1547:-

‘As they had no pavilions, or round houses, of any commendable compass, so wear there few other tentes with posts, as the used manner of making is; and of these few also, none of above twenty foot length, but most far under; for the most part all very sumptuously beset, (after their fashion,) for the love of France, with fleur-de-lys, some of blue buckeram, some of black, and some of some other colours. These white ridges, as I call them, that, as we stood on Fauxsyde Bray, did make so great muster toward us, which I did take then to be a number of tentes, when we came, we found it a linen drapery, of the coarser cambryk in dede, for it was all of canvas sheets, and wear the tenticles, or rather cabyns and couches of their soldiers; the which (much after the common building of their country beside) had they framed of four sticks, about an ell long a piece, whereof two fastened together at one end aloft, and the two endes beneath stuck in the ground, an ell asunder, standing in fashion like the bowes of a sowes yoke; over two such bowes (one, as it were, at their head, the other at their feet), they stretched a sheet down on both sides, whereby their cabin became roofed like a ridge, but skant shut at both ends, and not very close beneath on the sides, unless their sticks were the shorter, or their wives the more liberal to lend them larger napery; howbeit, when they had lined them, and stuff’d them so thick with straw, with the weather as it was not very cold, when they wear ones couched, they were as warm as they had been wrapt in horses dung.’-PATTEN’S Account of Somerset’s Expedition .

line 578. ‘The well-known arms of Scotland. If you will believe Boethius and Buchanan, the double tressure round the shield (mentioned above, vii. 141), counter fleur-de-lysed, or lingued and armed azure , was first assumed by Achaias, King of Scotland, contemporary of Charlemagne, and founder of the celebrated League with France but later antiquaries make poor Eochy, or Achy, little better than a sort of King of Brentford, whom old Grig (who has also swelled into Gregorius Magnus) associated with himself in the important duty of governing some part of the north-eastern coast of Scotland.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XXIX. lines 595-9. Cp. the ‘rash, fruitless war,’ &c., of Thomson’s ‘Edwin and Eleonora,’ i. 1, and Cowper’s ‘Task,’ v. 187:-

Stanza XXX. This description of Edinburgh is one of the passages mentioned by Mr. Ruskin in ‘Modern Painters’ as illustrative of Scott’s quick and certain perception of the relations of form and colour. ‘Observe,’ he says, ‘the only hints at form given throughout are in the somewhat vague words “ridgy,” “ massy,” “close,” and “high,” the whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most tangible form of smoke. But the colours are all definite; note the rainbow band of them-gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black), amethyst (pure purple), green and gold-a noble chord throughout; and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine part of the group,

line 632. In the demi-volte (one of seven artificial equestrian movements) the horse rises on his hind feet and makes a half-turn. Cp. below, v. 33.

Stanza XXXI. line 646. 6 o’clock a.m., the first canonical hour of prayer.

lines 650-1. St. Catherine of Siena, a famous female Spanish saint, and St. Roque of France, patron of those sick of the plague, who died at Montpelier about 1327.

line 655. Falkland, in the west of Fife, at base of Lomond Hills, a favourite residence of the Stuart kings, and well situated for hunting purposes. The ancient stately palace is now the property of the Marquis of Bute.

Stanza XXXII. line 679. stowre, noise and confusion of battle. Cp. ‘Faery Queene,’ I. ii. 7, ‘woeful stowre.’

‘GEORGE ELLIS, to whom this Introduction is addressed, is “the well-known coadjutor of Mr. Canning and Mr. Frere in the “Anti-Jacobin,” and editor of “Specimens of Ancient English Romances,” &c. He died 10th April, 1815, aged 70 years; being succeeded in his estates by his brother, Charles Ellis, Esq., created in 1827 Lord Seaford.’-LOCKHART. See ‘Life of Scott’ and ‘Dictionary of National Biography.’

line 36. See Introd. to Canto II.

line 37. ‘The Old Town of Edinburgh was secured on the north side by a lake, now drained, and on the south by a wall, which there was some attempt to make defensible even so late as 1745. The gates, and the greater part of the wall, have been pulled down, in the course of the late extensive and beautiful enlargement of the city. My ingenious and valued friend, Mr. Thomas Campbell, proposed to celebrate Edinburgh under the epithet here borrowed. But the “Queen of the North” has not been so fortunate as to receive from so eminent a pen the proposed distinction.’-SCOTT.

line 57. ‘Since writing this line, I find I have inadvertently borrowed it almost verbatim, though with somewhat a different meaning, from a chorus in “Caractacus”:-

line 58. For= instead of.

lines 60-1. gleam’st, with trans. force, is an Elizabethanism. Cp. Shakespeare’s Lucrece, line 1378:-

line 67. See ‘Faerie Queene,’ III. iv.

line 78. “For every one her liked, and every one her loved.” Spenser, as above.’-SCOTT.

line 106. A knospis an architectural ornament in form of a bud.

lines 111-12. See Genesis xviii.