In Byways of Scottish History

THE STORY OF THE "LONG-TAIL" MYTH

The 17th of December, 1566, was the christening day of Mary Stuart's infant son. Amongst the festivities arranged in celebration of the event, there was a "great banquet", to which the representatives of foreign sovereigns had been invited, and at which a foremost place had been assigned to Hatton and the Englishmen who had accompanied him to Scotland. To enliven the entertainment, George Buchanan had written a masque, in which the actors were satyrs who, whilst reciting his complimentary verses, were to bring various symbolical gifts to the royal infant. The performance of this interlude had been entrusted to a Frenchman named Bastien. As the meat was being brought through the great hall, on a "trim engine", that seemed to move of itself, he made his appearance with a band of men disguised to represent the mythological monsters, and wearing long tails, in keeping with their assumed character. But he and his associates "were not content only to red roun". Whether merely acting on a mischievous impulse or deliberately carrying out a preconcerted joke, the mummers, as they passed near the English guests, put their hands to their tails and began wagging them. Hatton and his party "daftly apprehending that which they should not seem to have understood", and placing the worst construction on the silly and unseemly trick, chose to believe that it had been planned in derision of them and out of spiteful jealousy "that the Queen made more of them than of the Frenchmen". To mark their sense of the insult offered them, "they all set down upon the bare floor behind the back of the board, that they should not see themselves scorned, as they thought". In relating the incident to Sir James Melville, who records it in his Memoirs, Hatton added that, if it had not taken place in the Royal palace and in presence of the Queen herself, he would "have put a dagger to the heart of the French knave Bastien".292

Coarse and unmannerly as was the satyrs' by-play, it would hardly seem to have deserved to be taken so seriously and so ill by the English guests, if it were not remembered that it expressed in dumb show what had for centuries been looked upon by Englishmen as a deadly insult – a reference to the popular belief that they were distinguished from the natives of other countries by the physical monstrosity of bearing tails. That this was accepted as an actual and disgraceful fact there is abundant evidence to prove. In a medieval Latin poem293 devoted to an enumeration of the distinctive characteristics of the various nations of Europe, the unflattering lines that fall to the share of the English, jeer at them for this deformity, whilst not omitting to denounce the treachery so commonly and so spitefully attributed to them by their enemies:

The anonymous satirist, however, was not original. He had not the merit, such as it might be, of having invented the slander which he flung as an insult at the people against whom he obviously entertained a bitter animosity. If, as there is reason to believe, he was a Frenchman, he merely repeated a gibe which had long been one of the commonplaces of vulgar vituperation amongst his compatriots. In the description which the thirteenth-century chronicler, Jacques de Vitry, gives of the depraved state of Paris in his day, and more particularly of the rude behaviour and coarse jests of the students who flocked to its famous university, he states that diversity of nationality aroused amongst them dissensions, hatred and violent animosities, to which they gave vent by indulging in all kinds of invectives against each other. As an example of their scurrility, he mentions that they called the English drunkards and "tailards".295 To suppose, from the very absurdity of the imputation, that it was merely cast as a taunt, and that no actual belief lay behind it, would be to ignore all that medieval credulity was capable of. Moreover, the attitude taken up by the English themselves, implied shame at an alleged deformity fully as much as anger at a wanton insult. On this point evidence is supplied by the Dominican monk Etienne de Bourbon, a moralist who flourished about the middle of the thirteenth century. In a treatise which is devoted to the exposition of subjects suitable for the pulpit, and which abounds in quaint stories as well as in caustic commentaries on contemporary manners, he does not omit to deal with the inordinate love of dress displayed by women, and to denounce the prevailing fashion of wearing extravagantly long trains to their gowns. He rebukes them for impiously presuming to better God's work, for doing away with the honourable distinction conferred upon them as human beings, and for deliberately assuming that which brings them down to the same level as brute beasts. As a climax, he inveighs against their shamelessness in making themselves what the English blush to be called – "tailards".296

The events that were chiefly instrumental in bringing the English into either contact or conflict with Continental nations, during the Middle Ages, were the Crusades and the Hundred Years' War. The chronicles that deal with these are not wanting in instances from which it may be gathered how readily the obnoxious gibe came to the lips of those that wished to show their contempt for the islanders. Richard of Devizes, who wrote one of the earliest and most authentic narratives of the reign of Richard I, with whom he was contemporary, describes how, in 1190, the inhabitants of Messina manifested their hatred for the strangers whom the King had brought to their shores, and how they tried to wreak vengeance on him and his "tailards"; for, explains the chronicler, the Greeks and the Sicilians gave the name of "tailards" to all who followed the English monarch.297

Another very early reference to the use of the term "tailard" as an opprobrious synonym for "Englishmen" is that which occurs in a metrical romance dealing with the same period and also recording, but with poetical freedom, the life and exploits of Richard Cœur de Lion. The exact date of the poem is unknown; but the fact of its being mentioned in the Chronicles of Richard of Gloucester and in those of Robert de Brunne, supplies evidence of its having been written earlier than the year 1300. It is confessedly a translation from the French; and that may account for the appearance in it of an insulting epithet which an English writer might have hesitated to use, even as an invective in the mouth of an enemy. The Second Book of this romance is devoted to a journey to the Holy Land, which the English King is supposed to have undertaken prior to the actual crusade, but which is, however, made to include the well-known incident of his capture. The poet tells how, when returning from Palestine, with "Sir Foulke Doyly of renown, and Sir Thomas of Multoun", Richard was betrayed, captured, and brought as a prisoner before the King of Allemayne; and how, when he represented himself and his companions as pilgrims,

In the Sixth Book of the same poem, it is related how the English King, on his way to Acre, put in at Cyprus and sent messengers to the Emperor, and how that monarch "began to rage", threw a knife at one of them, and followed this up by peremptorily ordering them out of his presence, with the words: —

When the Emperor's steward ventured to represent to his master that such treatment of honourable knights who came to him in the character of ambassadors was not justifiable, the furious but apocryphal potentate

There is a further account of Richard's journey to the Holy Land in a poem by a writer of whom we know that his name was Ambrose, and that he witnessed various historical events between 1188 and 1196. It would also appear from his narrative that he actually accompanied the Crusaders on the expedition which he records. He, too, refers to the hostile attitude assumed by the inhabitants of Messina towards the English King's followers, and states that they jeered at the foreigners and called them "foul dogs", an epithet which, in the light of the parallel texts, may be looked upon as an allusion to the tails which the English were commonly believed to bear.301

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is an instance of the use of the offensive gibe which shows to what purpose it was beginning to be turned by the literate class of the day. During the minority of Henry III, Louis VIII, continuing the aggressive policy inaugurated by his father, Philip Augustus, against the incapable administration of King John, made a vigorous effort to wrest Poitou from the English. Amongst the most noteworthy achievements of this campaign, was the capture of La Rochelle, in 1224. In celebration of this event, a poetaster of the day wrote some doggerel verses, which the Chronicle of Lanercost302 has preserved: —

On the other side, however, it was not forgotten that, a few years earlier, in 1217, the same Louis, after being deserted by the discontented barons who had called him over, had suffered a crushing defeat at Lincoln. This supplied fair material for a retort in the same style: —

The circumstances in which we next hear the contemptuous appellation of "tailards" applied to the English are particularly dramatic. It is in the course of the seventh crusade, that which was undertaken, in 1248, by Louis IX with an English contingent, and of which Matthew of Paris is one of the chroniclers. This time, however, it is not from the enemy that the insult comes. It is from an impetuous and overbearing ally, from the French King's brother, Count Robert of Artois. The Count was jealous of William Longsword; and on one occasion, when the leader of the English was returning from a successful but unauthorized raid, he was arbitrarily deprived by his arrogant rival of the booty which he was bringing back to the camp. Having in vain appealed to Louis, who appears to have been quite powerless against his brother's presumption, the English chief retired to Acre, with his two hundred knights; and the news of their departure drew from Artois the scornful exclamation that the army of the noble French was well purged of those "tailards".305 Longsword was ultimately prevailed upon by the king to return; but it was not long before he had again to bear the brunt of Artois' overweening pride and insolence. A difference of opinion had arisen between the rash and headstrong Count and the more cautious Master of the Templars, as to the advisability of following up a successful attack that had just been made on the infidels. Longsword was present and attempted to intervene as a peacemaker between the disputants; but he only succeeded in drawing on himself the anger of the hot-headed Frenchman, who put a climax to his violent invectives by insultingly referring to the pusillanimity of the timid "tailards", and expressing a wish that the army might, once for all, be purged of tails and "tailards".306 Even the dignified self-possession of Longsword was not proof against such jeers. "Count Robert," he replied, "I shall certainly proceed, undismayed by any peril of impending death. We shall, I fancy, be to-day where you will not dare to touch my horse's tail."307 In the engagement thus recklessly forced on – it was the battle of Mansourah – both Artois and Longsword perished. But whilst the French prince lost his life when trying to swim his horse across a river, after ignominiously turning tail,308 the English knight fell fighting valiantly with his face to the overwhelming foe.

The chronicles which record the events that marked the closing years of the thirteenth century supply a grim illustration of the ignominious treatment which their reputation as "tailards" sometimes brought upon the English. The war which broke out about this time between Edward I and Philip IV of France had for its cause, or, perhaps more correctly, for its pretext, one of the brawls which frequently arose when the sailors of the two countries met in the ports on either side of the Channel. Whether rightly or wrongly, the Frenchmen represented the English as the aggressors. They brought the matter under the notice of their own king, and represented it as an insult to him and to the whole nation that they should have been so wantonly ill-used by the "tailards". In the reprisals which followed, Philip's brother, Charles, took a conspicuous part. Having a previous and personal grievance against the English, he vented his spite even on unoffending pilgrims and students. He hanged several of the poor wretches who fell into his hands; and, adding insult to injury, strung up dogs side by side with them, to intimate, says the Chronicle of Lanercost, the resemblance which he thought to exist between the two, or, as another record even more plainly puts it, to show that he made no difference between a dog and an Englishman. Amongst the State Papers relative to the history of Edward I, there is a document which very strikingly confirms the truth of this barbarous incident. It consists of a long roll containing an account of the various outrages committed by the French on English mariners and on inhabitants of the Cinque Ports. One of the charges brought against the Norman seamen is illustrated in the margin by a contemporaneous sketch representing a row of Englishmen hanging up, with a dog between each two.309