[52] Aglets, points or tags.
[53] Pinckt upon gold, etc., adorned with golden points, or eyelets, and regularly intersected with stripes. Paled (in heraldry), striped.
[54] A fool was a common appendage of the courts of those days when this romance was written. A fool was the ornament held in next estimation to a dwarf. He wore a white dress with a yellow bonnet, and carried a bell or bawble in his hand. Though called a fool, his words were often weighed and remembered as if there were a sort of oracular meaning in them.
[55] The word means both fisher and sinner.
[56] The use of green rushes in apartments was by no means peculiar to the court of Caerleon upon Usk. Our ancestors had a great predilection for them, and they seem to have constituted an essential article, not only of comfort, but of luxury. The custom of strewing the floor with rushes is well known to have existed in England during the Middle Ages, and also in France.
[57] Cordwal is the word in the original, and from the manner in which it is used it is evidently intended for the French Cordouan or Cordovan leather, which derived its name from Cordova, where it was manufactured. From this comes also our English word cordwainer.
[58] Amongst all the characters of early British history none is more interesting, or occupies a more conspicuous place, than the hero of this tale. Urien, his father, was prince of Rheged, a district comprising the present Cumberland and part of the adjacent country. His valor, and the consideration in which he was held, are a frequent theme of Bardic song, and form the subject of several very spirited odes by Taliesin. Among the Triads there is one relating to him; it is thus translated:
“Three Knights of Battle were in the court of Arthur: Cadwr, the Earl of Cornwall, Launcelot du Lac, and Owain, the son of Urien. And this was their characteristic—that they would not retreat from battle, neither for spear, nor for arrow, nor for sword. And Arthur never had shame in battle the day he saw their faces there. And they were called the Knights of Battle.”
[59] Before the sixth century all the silk used by Europeans had been brought to them by the Seres, the ancestors of the present Boukharians, whence it derived its Latin name of Serica. In 551 the silkworm was brought by two monks to Constantinople; but the manufacture of silk was confined to the Greek empire till the year 1130, when Roger, king of Sicily, returning from a crusade, collected some manufacturers from Athens and Corinth, and established them at Palermo, whence the trade was gradually disseminated over Italy. The varieties of silk stuffs known at this time were velvet, satin (which was called samite), and taffety (called cendal or sendall), all of which were occasionally stitched with gold and silver.
[60] There exists an ancient poem, printed among those of Taliesin, called the “Elegy of Owain ap Urien,” and containing several very beautiful and spirited passages. It commences: