THE HUNTING
God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all; A woeful hunting once there did In Chevy-Chace befall;
To drive the deer with hound and horn Erle Percy took his way; The child may rue that is unborn, The hunting of that day.
The stout Erle of Northumberland A vow to God did make, His pleasure in the Scottish woods Three summer's days to take,
The chiefest harts in Chevy-Chace To kill and bear away. These tydings to Erle Douglas came, In Scotland where he lay:
Who sent Erle Percy present word, He wold prevent his sport. The English Erle, not fearing that, Did to the woods resort
With fifteen hundred bow-men bold, All chosen men of might, Who knew full well in time of neede To ayme their shafts aright.
The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran, To chase the fallow deere: On Monday they began to hunt, Ere daylight did appeare;
And long before high noone they had An hundred fat buckes slaine; Then having dined, the drovyers went To rouse the deere againe.
The bow-men mustered on the hills, Well able to endure; Their backsides all, with special care That day were guarded sure.
The hounds ran swiftly through the woods, The nimble deere to take, And with their cryes the hills and dales An echo shrill did make.
Lord Percy to the quarry went, To view the slaughtered deere: Quoth he, ‘Erle Douglas promisèd This day to meet me here,
But if I thought he wold not come, No longer wold I stay.’ With that, a brave younge gentleman Thus to the Erle did say:
‘Lo, yonder doth Erle Douglas come, His men in armour bright; Full twenty hundred Scottish speares All marching in our sight;
All men of pleasant Tivydale, Fast by the river Tweede’: ‘O, cease your sports,’ Erle Percy said, ‘And take your bowes with speede;
And now with me, my countrymen, Your courage forth advance, For there was never champion yet, In Scotland or in France,
That ever did on horsebacke come, But if my hap it were, I durst encounter man for man, And with him break a speare.’