[97] On accompanying Mr. Lower to the spot, in January, 1853, I was satisfied of the correctness of his views.
[98] Sussex Archæological Collections, vol. vi., p. 27.
[99] There has been a discussion respecting the word pueros, some supposing that the parties thus addressed were young soldiers, inexperienced recruits. It is probable, however, that the word is equivalent to the phrase, “lads” among us, or the word “boys” in the lines which carried so much terror to the heart of James the Second, after he had seen a specimen of the stalwart youth which Cornwall produces—
“And must Trelawney die, and must Trelawney die?
Then twenty thousand Cornish boys will ask the reason why.”
[100] Benoit de Saint-More. Taylor’s Wace, 193.
[101] The special correspondent of The Times, writing from the Heights of Alma, Sep. 21st, 1854, says, “The attitudes of some of the dead were awful. One man might be seen resting on one knee, with the arms extended in the form of taking aim, the brow compressed, the lips clinched—the very expression of firing at an enemy stamped on the face and fixed there by death; a ball had struck this man in the neck. Physiologists or anatomists must settle the rest. Another was lying on his back with the same expression, and his arms raised in a similar attitude, the Minié musket still grasped in his hands undischarged. Another lay in a perfect arch, his head resting on one part of the ground and his feet on the other, but his back raised high above it.—The Times, Oct. 11th, 1854. See also Sir Charles Bell’s Anatomy of Expression, 3rd edition, p. 160.
[102] M. A. Lower’s Battle Abbey Chronicle, p. 7.
[103] Ibid.
[104] The Tapestry represents the death of Harold as rapidly succeeding the infliction of the wound in his eye. The impression left by a perusal of Wace is, that at least an hour or two elapsed between the one event and the other. The diversity of statement between these authorities is probably more apparent than real. After Harold was wounded in so important an organ as the eye, it was impossible that he could long withstand the onset of William’s troops; his defeat, or, in other words, his death, was certain. However manfully Harold may have borne up under the inconvenience and pain of his wound, the artist of the Tapestry is logically correct in at once bringing us to the conclusion of the scene.
[105] Ingulph’s Chronicle, p. 139.