Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum.
(Poems, Maitland Club, p. 413, after the first
dated edition of 1684.)
[188]. 32. Away and away and away, e, f, i, k. 121. The first that fired it was the French, f, g, h. 124. were forced to flee, f, i, m (first to flee, e). 143. in all French land, e, f, g, (in our) h, m. Etc.
[189]. English balls again in m, tennis-balls in i, k.
[190]. Whose work was printed in 1850, ed. Benjamin Williams. I am for the most part using Sir Harris Nicolas’s excellent History of the Battle of Agincourt, 2d ed., 1832, here; see pp. 8–13, 301 f.
[191]. Nicolas, p. 302 f, slightly corrected; much the same in another copy of the poem, ib., Appendix, p. 69 f. The jest in Henry’s reply is carried out in detail when he comes to Harfleur, ib., pp. 308–310.
[192]. Nicolas, p. 10, as corrected by Hales and Furnivall, II, 161, and in one word emended by me. By several of the above writers the Dauphin Louis is called Charles, through confusion with his father or his younger brother.
[193]. The gifts are a whip (σκῦτος), a ball, and a casket of gold. In Julius Valerius’s version, Müller, as above, σκῦτος is rendered habena, whip or reins; in Leo’s Historia de Preliis, ed. Landgraf, p. 54, we have virga for habena; in Lamprecht’s Alexander, Weismann, I, 74, 1296–1301, the habena is a pair of shoe-strings. The French romance, Michelant, p. 52, 25 ff, to make sure, gives us both rod (verge) and reins; the English Alexander, Weber, I, 75, 1726–28, has a top, a scourge, and a small purse of gold. Weber has noticed the similarity of the stories, Romances, III, 299, and he remarks that in ‘The Famous Victories of Henry Fifth’ a carpet is sent with the tun of tennis-balls, to intimate that the prince is fitter for carpet than camp.
[194]. Cheshire, Lancashire, and the Earl of Derby are made to carry off the honors in ballad-histories of Bosworth and Flodden: see the appendix to No 168. Perhaps the hand of some minstrel of the same clan as the author or authors of those eulogies may be seen in this passage.