Thair was not sen King Keneths days
Sic strange intestine crewel stryf
In Scotland sene, as ilk man says,235
Quhair mony liklie lost thair lyfe;
Quhilk maid divorce twene man and wyfe,
And mony childrene fatherless,
Quhilk in this realme has bene full ryfe:
Lord help these lands, our wrangs redress.240
In July, on Saint James his even,
That four and twenty dismall day,
Twelve hundred, ten score and eleven
Of zeirs sen Chryst, the suthe to say,
Men will remember, as they may,245
Quhen thus the veritie they knaw,
And mony a ane may murn for ay,
The brim battil of the Harlaw.
KING HENRIE THE FIFTH'S CONQUEST.
Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England. Percy Society, vol. xvii. p. 52.
"From the singing of the late Francis King, of Skipton in Craven, an eccentric character, who was well known in the western dales of Yorkshire as 'the Skipton Minstrel.' King's version does not contain the third verse, which is obtained, as is also the title, from a modern broadside, from whence also one or two verbal corrections are made, of too trifling a nature to particularize. The tune to which King used to sing it, is the same as that of The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood."
Another ballad, much inferior in spirit to this, on the Battle of Agincourt, is to be found in The Crown Garland of Golden Roses (ed. 1659), Percy Soc. vol.
xv. p. 65. Percy inserted in the Reliques, ii. 26, a song on this battle. Another, quoted in Heywood's Edward Fourth, and therefore popular before 1600, is printed in Mr. Collier's preface to Shakespeare's Henry Fifth (new edition).
The story of the tennis-balls is adopted from the chronicles by Shakespeare. "It is reported by some historians," says Hume, "that the Dauphin, in derision of Henry's claims and dissolute character, sent him a box of tennis-balls, intimating that mere implements of play were better adapted to him than the instruments of war. But this story is by no means credible; the great offers made by the court of France show that they had already entertained a just idea of Henry's character, as well as of their own situation." History of England, ch. xix.