MATCH OF ARCHERY AT ASHBY.
“IVANHOE.”
he match in which the yeoman Locksley overcomes all the antagonists whom Prince John brings up against him, finds a parallel, and indeed we may say foundation, in the ballad of “Adam Bell, Clym o’ the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslea.” The story of the ballad bears, that these three “perilous outlaws,” having wrought great devastation among the “foresters of the fee” and liege burghers of Carlisle, while in the act of rescuing one of their companions from prison, “fure up to London Town” to crave of their Sovereign a charter of peace. This, by the intercession of the Queen, he grants them; but no sooner is the royal word passed for their pardon, than messengers arrive from the “North Countrye,” with the tidings of the deadly havoc. The King happens to be quietly engaged in eating his dinner at the time, and is completely thunderstruck at the intelligence, so that,—
“Take up the table,” then said he,
“For I can eat no mo’.”
He straightway assures the three offenders, that if they do not prevail over every one of his own bowmen, their lives shall be forfeited.
“Then they all bent their good yew bows,
Looked that their strings were rownd,
And twice or thrice they shot their shafts
Full deftly in that stound.
“Then out spoke William of Cloudeslea,
‘By him that for me died,
I hold him not a good archer
That shoots at butt so wide.’
“‘Whereat, I crave,’ then said the King,
‘That thou wilt tell to me?’
‘At such a butt, sire, as we wont
To use in our countrye.’
“Then William, with his brethren twain,
Stept forth upon the green,
And there set up two hazel rods,
Twenty score pace between.”
The reader will recollect that Locksley upbraids his adversary, after his unsuccessful shot, for not having made an allowance for the pressure of the breeze. Cloudeslea gives a caution to the spectators no less minute:
“He prayed the people that were there
That they would all still stand;
‘He that for such a wager shoots,
Has need of steady hand;’”
and, having chosen a “bearing flane,” splits the wand.