"This Cat for his mother had Cathau the Blue, To Calais he does not belong; There's something about him of English breed, too, And that's why his tail is so long."[323]
About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Crétin, a Norman poet, combines encouragement of the French with the usual abuse of the English:—
"Praise shall reward the doughty deeds you do, And store of crowns, and golden angels, too; And, in the ransom of the 'long-tailed' crew, Their flesh and bone shall be as gold to you."[324]
As late as the seventeenth century, an echo of the gibe may still be heard. Larivey, in one of his comedies, Les Tromperies, makes a swaggering captain boast of the reputation which he has acquired by valiantly charging the English "tailards" when they attempted to land at Dieppe.[325] Still nearer our own day, Saint-Amant, who, indeed, is so modern that he was one of the original members of the French Academy and figures in Boileau's satires, has a reference to the English longtails in his Rome Ridicule. He incidentally claims for the French the strange merit of having rid their country of the goitre and of the king's evil by making carrion of the English invaders:—
"The goitre now we never see, And cruels, too, have ceased to be, E'er since we slew our 'tailard' foes And made them food to gorge the crows".[326]
By this time, however, the tradition had ceased to be popular; for in a note on this passage, Saint-Amant's contemporary, Conrart, thought it necessary to give an explanation of the epithet "quouez". According to him, it was justified by the fact that, in the case of the majority of Englishmen, the end of the os sacrum, called coccyx, actually protrudes and forms a tail![327]
But, even yet, the old cry has not wholly died out. In the Island of Guernsey, that genuine bit of Normandy, where it was once so frequently heard, it is perpetuated by the country children. They have a custom of slyly throwing at passers-by a hairy, clinging weed, which grows abundantly by the wayside. If any of it catches on to the victims of their childish trick, these are made aware of it by hearing themselves jeered at with cries of "la Coue!" The words are the very same as those recorded by Monstrelet; and this identity seems to justify the belief that they are a survival of the medieval scoff.
The Scots, sharing as they did the feeling of animosity entertained by the French against their English foes, were no less ready than they to give it expression; and the insulting taunt which they had learnt from their continental allies was adopted as an effective means to that end. It is not, however, amidst the excitement of international strife that the cry is first heard. The earliest instance of its use in the North Country is given by Bower. Under the date of 1217, he has an account of the mission to Scotland, undertaken by the Prior of Durham and the Archdeacon of York, in connection with the interdict under which the kingdom had been laid. These two prelates made themselves very unpopular by the mercenary spirit which they displayed; and a monkish satirist voiced the irritation which they aroused, in a strongly worded Latin poem, containing amongst other terms of reproach and invective, a denunciation of them as "tailards": —
"Those clerics, both in treach'rous England born, Are of the breed by whom long tails are worn".[328]
As regards the other instances supplied by the chroniclers, it is noteworthy that the insult was, in each case, avenged by the defeat of those who flung it at their enemies. The first occasion on which this is reported to have occurred was the battle of Dunbar, in 1296. The Castle, at that time one of the most important in Scotland, had been delivered over to the Scottish leaders by the Countess of Dunbar. Edward I at once sent John Plantagenet, Earl of Warrenne and Surrey, to recapture it. The garrison, conscious of its inability to hold out against the ten thousand foot and the thousand heavy-armed horse which the English leader commanded, agreed to surrender to him if it were not relieved within three days. In the meantime, John Baliol, anxious to retain so important a stronghold, sent his whole army of forty thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse to its succour. When the besieged saw this formidable force encamped on the heights above Spot, they felt confident of success; and in their premature exultation, they jeered at the English, calling them "tailed dogs", and threatening not only to kill them, but also to cut off their tails. Their boasts were not justified by the result. In the engagement that followed, the rashness of the Scots in abandoning their favourable position proved disastrous. Ten thousand of them fell on the field or during the pursuit; and next day the Castle surrendered at discretion to Edward, who came up from Berwick with the remainder of his army.[329]