150 Mannaustt the Scottis. Cf. note on 79-82.
163 Glowcister. Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, nephew of the King, and a young man of twenty-three. Herfurd. Humphrey de Bohun, or Boun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and Constable of England. “The Earl of Gloucester and the Earl of Herford commanded the first line” (primam aciem, Vit. Edw. Sec., p. 202). The Scalacronica says Gloucester commanded “the advance guard” (p. 141), but does not mention Hereford (see note on Bk. XIII. 466).
174 Schir Gylys de Argente. Sir Giles d’Argentine, popularly regarded as one of the three most eminent men of the time, the others being the Emperor Henry and Robert Bruce (Scotich. Lib., xiii. 16). He “guided the King’s bridle” (Vita Edw. Sec., p. 204). Cf. also Scalacronica (p. 143), votre reyne me fust baillez—“your rein was entrusted to me”: among others (p. 142).
210 the Torwood. Stretching north and west from Falkirk. It reached to near Bannockburn, a little south of which is “Torwoodhead” Castle.
250 abaysing. Fear which grew to panic. Morale, or firm courage, is always an important element in warfare, but in medieval times it seems to have been specially important (cf. IV. 191-200, and XII. 184-8). The remarkable successes of the Scots against larger numbers were often due to the “abaysing,” for one reason or other, of their opponents. Footmen were peculiarly liable to this loss of nerve, as they received no mercy, as a rule, from the mounted knights. Bruce was all along most anxious to guard against the rise of any such spirit of “funk” among his men. “Success in battle,” said Napoleon, “depends not so much upon the number of men killed as upon the number frightened.”
277 the wayis. As Bruce explains in the lines that follow, there were two “ways” of advance to Stirling; one through the wooded New Park, and the other by the level below St. Ninian’s, extending to the “pools” or lagoons along the side of the Forth. The trees of the New Park seem to have extended from above the banks of the burn to St. Ninian’s on the one side and Stirling, or near it, on the other (cf. note on Bk. XII. 58). It was made as late as 1264 by Alexander III., and enclosed with a paling in 1288 (Excheq. Rolls, I. 24, 38); whence the name “New.”
291 licht armyng. “Everyone of them (the Scots) was protected by light armour” (levi armatura). (Vita Edw. Sec., p. 203). See further, note on Bk. XII. 448.
296 ficht on fut. Fighting was still regarded as almost entirely the business of armoured men on horseback, the footmen serving only for minor purposes. That an army all on foot should oppose chivalry was a new departure. Bruce was an original general. Sir Thomas Gray says that the Scots “took example from the Flemings,” who, in 1302, at Courtrai had in this way defeated the French knights (Scalacronica, p. 142). But this is an after-thought. The Vita Edwardi Sec. also draws the parallel with Courtrai (p. 206). But the Scots could take the hint from the tactics at Falkirk in 1298, where Wallace was only defeated by the English archers. An English chronicler of about 1330 suggests that the Scots were made to fight on foot to avoid the mischance at Falkirk when their little body of cavalry fled at the sight of the English advance (Annales Johannis de Trokelowe, p. 84).
300 the sykis. No doubt shallow lagoons with a muddy bottom, about the Bannock, where it entered the Forth, flooded by the tide. Jamieson, in his Dictionary, defines syk as “a marshy bottom, with a small stream in it.” A rivulet in Selkirkshire is known as the Red Syke (Chambers’ Popular Rhymes, p. 17, ed. 1826).