[10] Os livros de Linhagens, in Portugaliæ Monumenta Historica, Scriptores, 1856, I, 180 f., 274-7. The latter account was printed by Southey in the preface to his ballad ‘King Ramiro’ (1802), Poetical Works, 1853, VI, 122, and a passage from the other.
Kemble, Salomon & Saturnus, p. 19, 1848, remarks on the resemblance of the story of Ramiro to that of Solomon. For historical names and facts in the Portuguese sage, see Baist in Zs. f. romanische Philologie, V, 173.
[11] There is nothing about the fair Moor in the first and briefer account, or of the penance given Ramiro. Ortiga is there the name of the servant who comes to fetch water. Ramiro is brought before the Moor and told that he is to die. But I should like to ask you, says the Moor, what manner of death mine should be if you had me in your hands. The king was very hungry, and he answered, I would give you a stewed capon and a loaf, and make you eat them, and then wine and make you drink, and then open the gates of my cattle-yard and have all my people called to see you die, and make you mount on a pillar and blow your horn till your breath was gone.
[12] Madame Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, in Paul u. Braune’s Beiträge, VIII, 315 f.
[13] Ed. Scheler, Bruxelles, 1877; vv. 4503-6253.
[14] I am indebted to Dr Axel Olrik for information concerning the Solfager ballads, and for transcripts of Danish and Swedish versions not received in time for notice here. See p. 280.
[15] Originally, no doubt, as Motherwell suggests, Joan Thomson’s man, or husband.
[16] “One John Thomson is mentioned as an officer in the army of Edward Bruce in Ireland. After Bruce’s death, he led back to Scotland the remnant of his army. In 1333, he held for David Bruce the castle of Lochdoun in Carrick. Sir W. Scott thus characterizes him: ‘John Thomson, a man of obscure birth and dauntless valor, the same apparently who led back from Ireland the shattered remainder of Edward Bruce’s army, held out for his rightful sovereign.’ History of Scotland, I, 181.” Note by Motherwell in Mr Ramsay’s copy of the Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. ix.
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