A 3. By these “shyars thre” is probably meant three districts in Northumberland which still go by the name of shires and are all in the neighborhood of Cheviot. These are Islandshire, being the district so named from Holy Island; Norehamshire, so called from the town and castle of Noreham or Norham; and Bamboroughshire, the ward or hundred belonging to Bamborough castle and town. Percy’s Reliques, 1794, I, 5, note.
15. Chyviat Chays, well remarks Mr Wheatley in his edition of the Reliques, I, 22, becomes Chevy Chace by the same process as that by which Teviotdale becomes Tividale, and there is no sufficient occasion for the suggestion that Chevy Chase is a corruption of chevauchée, raid, made by Dr. E. B. Nicholson, Notes and Queries, Third Series, XII, 124, and adopted by Burton, History of Scotland, II, 366.
38 f. “That beautiful line taking the dead man by the hand will put the reader in mind of Æneas’s behavior towards Lausus, whom he himself had slain as he came to the rescue of his aged father” (Ingemuit miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit, etc., Æn. X, 823, etc.): Addison, in Spectator, No 70.
543,4, and B 503,4. Witherington’s prowess was not without precedent, and, better still, was emulated in later days. Witness the battle of Ancrum Muir, 1545, or “Lilliard’s Edge,” as it is commonly called, from a woman that fought with great bravery there, to whose memory there was a monument erected on the field of battle with this inscription, as the traditional report goes:
“Fair maiden Lilliard lies under this stane;
Little was her stature, but great her fame;
On the English lads she laid many thumps,
And when her legs were off, she fought upon her stumps.”[[179]]
The giant Burlong also fought wonderfully on his stumps after Sir Triamour had smitten his legs off by the knee: Utterson’s Popular Poetry, I, 67, 1492–94, cited by Motherwell; Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, II, 131. Sir Graysteel fights on one leg: Eger and Grine, Percy MS., I, 386 f, 1032, 1049. Nygosar, in Kyng Alisaunder, after both his armes have been cut off, bears two knights from their steeds “with his heved and with his cors”: 2291–2312, Weber, I, 98 f. Still better, King Starkaðr, in the older Edda, fights after his head is off: Helgakviða Hundingsbana, ii, 27, Bugge, p. 196.[[180]]
“Sed, etiam si ceciderit, de genu pugnat,” Seneca, De Providentia 2, 4 (cited in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1794, I, 306), is explained by Seneca himself, Epis. lxvi, 47: “qui, succisis poplitibus, in genua se excepit nec arma dimisit.” “In certaminibus gladiatorum hoc sæpe accidisse et statuæ existentes docent, imprimis gladiator Borghesinus.” Senecæ Op. Phil., Bouillet, II, 12.