"Could he have had his pleasure wilde,
He had crippled the joints of the noble child;
&c. &c.
But his awful mother he had in dread,
And also his power was limited,"
&c. &c.
Here let me observe that all this contrivance is essential to the conduct of the narrative, and if we simply grant the postulate which a legendary minstrel has a right to demand, to wit, the potency of magic spells to effect such delusions (pictoribus atque Poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas), all the remainder of the narrative is easy, natural, and probable. This contrivance is necessary, because, in the first place, if it had been known to the warders that William of Deloraine had been brought into the castle wounded almost unto death, he could not be supposed capable of engaging Richard Musgrave in single combat two days afterwards; nor, in the second place, would the young chief have been permitted to stroll out unattended from the guarded precincts.
To proceed: the boy thus bewildered in the forest falls into the lands of an English forayer, and is by him conveyed to Lord Dacre, at that time one of the Wardens of the Marches, by whom he is detained as a hostage, and carried along with the English troops, then advancing towards Branksome under the command of the Lord Wardens in person.
"(But) though the child was led away,
In Branksome still he seemed to stay,