Down fell the dagger; down the knight
Sank kneeling and opprest;
And the lady oped her snow white arms,
And wept upon his breast!"
"A foul song!—a wanton woman!"—exclaimed Sir Bryan de Barreilles—"he should have stabbed her for living so long with a Jew villain like the Soldan of Bagdad."
"Was the villain a Jew?" enquired Dr Howlet, who had caught the word. "I did not know Bagdad was in Jewry. Is a heathen the same as a Jew, Mr Peeper?"
The gentleman thus appealed to, coughed as if to clear his throat, and though he usually spoke with the utmost clearness, he mumbled and muttered in the same unintelligible manner as he had done when he was saying grace; and it was a very peculiar habit of the learned individual, whenever he was applied to for an explanation, to betake himself to a mode of speech that would have puzzled a far wiser head than Dr Howlet's, to make head or tail of it.
Dr Howlett, however, appeared to be perfectly satisfied with the information; and by the indignant manner in which he struck his long gold-headed ebony walking-stick on the floor, seemed entirely to agree with the worthy knight in his estimate of the heroine of Phil Lorimer's ballad.
"I like the ballad about the jousting of Romulus the bold Roman, with Judas Maccabaeus in the Camp at Ascalon far better," said Hasket of Norland. "Sing it, Phil."
"No, no," cried Maulerer, who was far gone in intoxication. "Sing us the song of the Feasting at Glaston, when Eneas the Trojan married Arthur's daughter.—Sing the song, sirrah, this moment, or I'll cut your tongue in two, to make your note the sweeter.—Sing."