For I'll cut my green coat a foot above my knee,
And I'll clip my yellow locks an inch below mine ee.
Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny.
I'll buy me a white cut, forth for to ride,
And I'll go seek him through the world that is so wide.
Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny.
[391]. "Chimborazo, Cotopaxi."
In medieval days it seems that a traveller here and there, happily supposing the world to be a floating island of indiscoverable dimensions, hung in the wilds of space, and not knowing that it was merely an "oblate spheroid," would journey clean round it and so come back, to his amazement, to the place from which he started. Here is such an experience from Sir John Mandeville, in his own words: "It was told that a certain worthy man departed some time from our Country for to go search the World.... He passed India and the Isles beyond it, where are more than 5000 Isles, and so long and for so many seasons he went by Sea and Land, and so environed the World, that he came at last to an Isle whereon he heard spoken his own language—a calling of oxen in the Plough—such Words in fact as men were wont to speak to Beasts in his own country. Whereof he greatly marvelled, knowing not how that might be." For there—as if it were a ghost or spectre—there was the chimney of his own house smoking up into the clear morning air! And what did he do, maybe? He stared; he sighed; he grew pale; he shuddered: and—he turned back!
[392]. "Hallo my fancy."
For the first sight of this poem I most gratefully thank my friend Mr. Ivor Gurney, though no doubt it was in Mr. Nahum's Book somewhere, and I was too indolent at the time to copy it out. The poem was written by William Cleland while he was still at St. Andrews. All else I know of him is that he was born about 1661, and fell at Dunkeld in 1689. There is nothing in English to my knowledge that resembles it. Erra Pater (stanza 4) was the name given to a busy astrologer and almanac-concocter, William Lilly, of the time. King Phalaris's monstrous bull was of brass: he perished in it.