[205] Mariana, xiii. 7. This last story of Garcia Perez de Vargas is the subject of a beautiful ballad, which Mr. Lockhart has translated. The stanzas regarding the scarf are particularly pleasing.
“He look’d around, and saw the scarf, for still the Moors were near,
And they had pick’d it from the sward, and loop’d it on a spear.
‘These Moors,’ quoth Garci Perez, ‘uncourteous Moors they be—
Now, by my soul, the scarf they stole, yet durst not question me!
“‘Now reach once more my helmet.’ The esquire said him nay,
‘For a silken string why should you fling, perchance, your life away?’
—‘I had it from my lady,’ quoth Garci, ‘long ago,
And never Moor that scarf, be sure, in proud Seville shall show.’—
“But when the Moslems saw him, they stood in firm array:
—He rode among their armed throng, he rode right furiously.
—‘Stand, stand, ye thieves and robbers, lay down my lady’s pledge,’
He cried, and ever as he cried, they felt his faulchion’s edge.
“That day when the lord of Vargas came to the camp alone,
The scarf, his lady’s largess, around his breast was thrown:
Bare was his head, his sword was red, and from his pommel strung
Seven turbans green, sore hack’d I ween, before Garci Perez hung.”
Lockhart’s Ancient Spanish Ballads, p. 75.
[206] This is another and singular proof of the generally acknowledged excellence of Italian armour.
[207] Libro del paso honroso, defendido por el excelente caballero Sueno de Quinones, copilado de un libro antiquo de mano, por Juan de Pineda. 1588. Reprinted, Madrid, 1783.
[208] Paston, Letters, vol. i. p. 6.
[209] Monstrelet, vol. vii. c. 82.
[210] Sismondi. Hist. des Rep. Ital. vii. 439. The Germans were more observant of the forms than of the spirit of chivalry. The reader remembers that the spur, the golden spur, was the great mark of knighthood; and every ancient church in this country, or a copy of its antique monumental effigies, will inform him of the custom of placing a spur over or upon a knight’s tomb. This was also a custom among the Germans, who, besides, reposited spurs in churches, when age, infirmity, or other causes, unnerved the arm of the knight: moreover, they reposited spurs in churches as memorials of victory. In the fourteenth century five hundred pair of them, which had been taken in a victory over the French, were hung round the walls of the church at Gröningen. Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, p. 212.
[211] Olaus. Hist. Septent. lib. xiv. c. 7.
[212] Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, from the Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances, p. 76.
[213] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. i. p. 59.