Her tender neck was cut in twain, and out her blood did flow.
The next, and not the last of the series, as Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly has it, is obviously the handiwork of Walter Scott, than whom none could fail more miserably on occasion. We can picture him doling “The Death of Don Pedro” from out the great thesaurus of his brain (that sadly drained mint, ever at the service of a friend or a publisher), as a dinted and defaced coin. Only in the last verse does the old fire blaze up.
Thus with mortal gasp and quiver,
While the blood in bubbles well’d,
Fled the fiercest soul that ever
In a Christian bosom dwell’d.
On such a subject the composer of “Bonnie Dundee” might well have felt the blood run faster, and the pen quiver in his fingers like an arrow on a tightened bow-string. Two royal brothers strive with hateful poniards for each other’s lives. Pedro, a prisoner in the hands of Henry of Trastamara, his natural brother, is wantonly insulted by the victorious noble, and replies by flying at his throat in an outburst of animal courage and kingly rage. Dumbfounded at the death-struggle of monarch and usurper, Henry’s allies look on, among them the great Du Guesclin. Pedro pins the lord of Trastamara to the ground. His dagger flashes upward. Du Guesclin turns to Henry’s squire. “Will ye let your lord die thus, you who eat his bread?” he scoffs. The esquire throws himself upon Pedro, clings to his arms and turns him over, and, thus aided, Henry rises, searches for a joint in the King’s armour, and thrusts his dagger deep into that merciless heart. The murderer, the friend of Jew and Saracen, is slain. His head is hacked off, and his proud body trampled beneath mailed feet. Surely a subject for a picture painted in the lights of armour and the red shadows of blood and hate.
Down they go in deadly wrestle,
Down upon the earth they go.
Fierce King Pedro has the vantage,