"Yea, Rosamond, fair Rosamond,
Her name was called so,
To whom dame Elinor our Queene
Was known a deadly foe,
The King therefore for her defence
Against the furious Queene
At Woodstocke builded such a Bower
The like was never seen.
"Most curiously that Bower was built
Of stone and timber strong.
An hundered and fifty dores
Did to this Bower belong,
And they so cunningly contriv'd
With turnings round about
That none but with a clew of thread
Could enter in or out."
The whole ballad will be found in the well-known "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," collected by Bishop Percy and published by him in 1765.
Of a widely different nature was the version published in 1729 by Samuel Croxall in his "Select Collection of Novels," Vol. IV. "The Loves of King Henry II and Fair Rosamond." Here the attitude assumed is one of learned contempt for popular credulity. "What have we in this Story," says Croxall, "but a Copy of Ariadne's Clue and the Cretan Labyrinth?... Yet are we not to wonder that the monkish Historians should deliver down to us a Tale of such Absurdity, when the same Chronicles tell us that, in that King's Reign, a Dragon of marvellous Bigness was seen at St. Osyth's in Essex, which, by its very motion, set many Houses and Buildings on Fire."
As for the inscription on Rosamond's tomb, quoted by Brompton, our critic is equally scornful. "The conceit," he says, "is poor and common and, like the other Poetry of those times, depends on a certain Jingle and Play on the Words. The sense of them has been thus expressed in honest English Metre:"
(Whether the verse is in better taste when expressed in honest English metre the reader must judge for himself.)
"Rose of the World, not Rose the peerless Flow'r,
Within this Tomb hath taken up her Bow'r.
She scenteth now, and nothing Sweet doth smell
Who earst was wont to savour passing well."
This rendering is perhaps preferable to that of Stowe ("Annals," 1631), which concludes with:
"Though she were sweete, now foully doth she stinke,
A mirrour good for all men, that on her thinke."