634 the Rude-evyn. The eve of the Exaltation of the Rood, September 13.
674 draw the cleket. Probably then “she” was a mangonel, in which a movable beam, between uprights, was pressed back by ropes, and then suddenly let go from a catch (“cleket”), discharges a stone; or a trebuchet, in which the same result was obtained by poising the beam in the middle, and loading the other end with a heavy weight, which added to the force of the missile.
689 set thar-to juntly. “Set close up to.” Cf. line 704. In the Wallace, Stirling Bridge “off gud playne burd was weill and juntly maid” (vii. 1148).
691 wappyt. The correct Scots form. C has swappit. Cf. Gest. Historiale, “wappid (knocked) to ground” (7297), and “A wap wi a corner-stane o’ Wolf’s Crag wad defy the doctor” (Scott’s Bride of Lammermoor, Border edit., P. 349).
713 top-castellis. “Fighting-tops” on the mast, in addition to the structures rising fore and aft above the deck, “fore-castle” and “stern-castle.”
756 The barras. The “barriers,” a fortified post at the outer end of the drawbridge. See Glossary.
757 and brynt it doune. Skeat, in his rubric, explains that they “burnt the drawbridge”—a foolish thing to do if they wanted to cross the ditch! But what seems to have happened was this: the besiegers first seized the “barras,” then brought “doune” the bridge by burning the tackle, probably of ropes and beams, by which it was drawn up against the gate, and so were able to cross, and make their attempt to burn their way through the gate itself. So, too, they could retreat (790) over the fallen bridge. Cf. in Morte Arthure:
“Brittenes (destroys) theire barrers with theire bryghte wapyns,
Bett down a barbycan, and the brygge wynnys.”
(2469-2470).
828 on the morne. I.e., of September 14, seven days after the first attack. Despenser says that the news from England came “before he had been at Berwick (demorce) eight days” (as cited), practically corroborating Barbour.