“thow spreit of Gy.”
Dunbar’s Poems, ii. 72. ed. Laing.
and at p. 37 of the same vol., in The Droichis Part of the Play, attributed to Dunbar,—
“I wait I am the spreit of Gy.”
So too Sir D. Lyndsay in his Epistill to the Kingis Grace before his Dreme,—
“And sumtyme, lyke the grislie gaist of Gy.”
Works, i. 187. ed. Chalmers,—
who explains it “the well-known Sir Guy of romance.” But both Dunbar and Lyndsay allude to a story concerning the ghost of a person called Guy, an inhabitant of Alost. There is a Latin tract on the subject, entitled De spiritu Guuidonis, of which various translations into English are extant in MS. One of these is now before me, in verse, and consisting of 16 closely written 4to pages: Here begynnyth a notabyll matere and a gret myracule don be oure lord ihesus cryst and shewyd In the ȝeer of his incarnacion MCCCXXIII. [printed Latin tract now before me has MCCCXXIIII.] and in the xvi day of decembyr in the Cete of Aleste. Whiche myracule ys of a certeyn man that was callyd Gy. and deyde and aftyr viii days he apperyd to his wyf aftyr the comaundment of god. of whiche apperyng she was aferd and oftyn tyme rauysshid. Than she toke conseyl and went to the ffreris of the same cete and tolde the Pryor ffrere Iohnn goly of this mater, &c. As Gaunt is the old name of Ghent, and as Alost is about thirteen miles from that city, perhaps the reader may be inclined to think,—what I should greatly doubt,—that Skelton also alludes to the same story.
Page 122. v. 71. olyfaunt] i. e. elephant.
v. 72. pykes] i. e. pickaxe. “Pykeys. Ligo. Marra.” Prompt. Parv. ed. 1499.