Marmion

‘Cuthbert, we have seen, had no great reason, to spare the Danes, when opportunity offered. Accordingly, I find in Simeon of Durham, that the Saint appeared in a vision to Alfred, when lurking in the marches of Glastonbury, and promised him assistance and victory over his heathen enemies; a consolation which, as was reasonable, Alfred, after the battle of Ashendown, rewarded, by a royal offering at the shrine of the Saint. As to William the Conqueror, the terror spread before his army, when he marched to punish the revolt of the Northumbrians, in 1096, had forced the monks to fly once more to Holy Island with the body of the Saint. It was, however, replaced before William left the north; and, to balance accounts, the Conqueror having intimated an indiscreet curiosity to view the Saint’s body, he was, while in the act of commanding the shrine to be opened, seized with heat and sickness, accompanied with such a panic terror, that, notwithstanding there was a sumptuous dinner prepared for him, he fled without eating a morsel (which the monkish historian seems to have thought no small part both of the miracle and the penance,) and never drew his bridle till he got to the river Tees.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XVI. line 300. ‘Although we do not learn that Cuthbert was, during his life, such an artificer as Dunstan, his brother in sanctity, yet, since his death, he has acquired the reputation of forging those Entrochi which are found among the rocks of Holy Island, and pass there by the name of St. Cuthbert’s Beads. While at this task, he is supposed to sit during the night upon a certain rock, and use another as his anvil. This story was perhaps credited in former days; at least the Saint’s legend contains some not more probable.’-SCOTT.

See in Mr. Aubrey de Vere’s ‘Legends of the Saxon Saints’ a fine poem entitled ‘How Saint Cuthbert kept his Pentecost at Carlisle.’ The ‘beads’ are there referred to thus: -

     ‘And many an age, when slept that Saint in death,      Passing his isle by night the sailor heard      Saint Cuthbert’s hammer clinking on the rock.’

The recognised name of these shells is still ‘St. Cuthbert’s beads.”

Stanza XVII. line 316. ‘Ceolwolf, or Colwulf, King of Northumberland, flourished in the eighth century. He was a man of some learning; for the venerable Bede dedicates to him his “Ecclesiastical History.” He abdicated the throne about 738, and retired to Holy Island, where he died in the odour of sanctity. Saint as Colwulf was, however, I fear the foundation of the penance-vault does not correspond with his character; for it is recorded among his memorabilia, that, finding the air of the island raw and cold, he indulged the monks, whose rule had hitherto confined them to milk or water, with the comfortable privilege of using wine or ale. If any rigid antiquary insists on this objection, he is welcome to suppose the penance-vault was intended by the founder for the more genial purposes of a cellar.

‘These penitential vaults were the Geissel-gewolbe of German convents. In the earlier and more rigid times of monastic discipline, they were sometimes used as a cemetery for the lay benefactor of the convent, whose unsanctified corpses were then seldom permitted to pollute the choir. They also served as places of meeting for the chapter, when measures of uncommon severity were to be adopted. But their most frequent use, as implied by the name, was as places for performing penances, or undergoing punishment.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XVIII. line 350. ‘Antique chandelier.’-SCOTT.

Stanza XIX. line 371. ‘That there was an ancient priory at Tynemouth is certain. Its ruins are situated on a high rocky point; and, doubtless, many a vow was made to the shrine by the distressed mariners, who drove towards the iron-bound coast of Northumberland in stormy weather. It was anciently a nunnery; for Virca, abbess of Tynemouth, presented St. Cuthbert (yet alive) with a rare winding-sheet, in emulation of a holy lady called Tuda, who had sent him a coffin: but, as in the case of Whitby, and of Holy Island, the introduction of nuns at Tynemouth, in the reign of Henry VIII, is an anachronism. The nunnery of Holy Island is altogether fictitious. Indeed, St. Cuthbert was unlikely to permit such an establishment; for, notwithstanding his accepting the mortuary gifts above mentioned, and his carrying on a visiting acquaintance with the abbess of Coldingham, he certainly hated the whole female sex; and, in revenge of a slippery trick played to him by an Irish princess, he, after death, inflicted severe penances on such as presumed to approach within a certain distance of his shrine.’-SCOTT.

line 376. ruth (A. S. hreow, pity) in Early and Middle English was used both for ‘disaster’ and ‘pity.’ These two shades of meaning are illustrated by Spenser in F. Q., Bk. ii. I. Introd. to Canto where Falsehood beguiles the Red Cross Knight, and ‘workes him woefull ruth,’ and in F. Q. I. v. 9:

     ‘Great ruth in all the gazers hearts did grow.’

Milton (Lycidas, 163) favours the poetical employment of the word, which modern poets continue to use. Cp. Wordsworth, ‘Ode for a General Thanksgiving’: -

     ‘Assaulting without ruth       The citadels of truth;’

and Tennyson’s ‘Geraint and Enid,’ II. 102: -

                             ‘Ruth began to work      Against his anger in him, while he watch’d      The being he lov’d best in all the world.’

Stanza XX. line 385. doublet, a close-fitting jacket, introduced from France in the fourteenth century, and fashionable in all ranks till the time of Charles II. Cp. As You Like It, ii. 4. 6: – ’Doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat.’

line 398. Fontevraud, on the Loire, 8 miles from Saumur, had one of the richest abbeys in France. It was a retreat for penitents of both sexes, and presided over by an abbess. ‘The old monastic buildings and courtyards, surrounded by walls, and covering from 40 to 50 acres, now form one of the larger prisons of France, in which about 2000 men and boys are confined, and kept at industrial occupations.’ See Chambers’s ‘Encyclopaedia,’ s. v., and Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 2d. S, I. 104.

Stanza XXI. line 408. but = except that. Cp. Tempest, i. 2. 414: -

                            ‘And, but he’s something stain’d      With grief that’s beauty’s canker, thou might’st call him      A goodly person.’

line 414. Byron, writing to Murray on 3 Feb., 1816, expresses his belief that he has unwittingly imitated this passage in ‘Parisina.’ ‘I had,’ he says, ‘completed the story on the passage from Gibbon, which indeed leads to a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind; but it comes upon me not very comfortably.’ Byron is quite right in his assertion that, if he had taken this striking description of Constance as a model for his Parisina, he would have been attempting ‘to imitate that which is inimitable.’ See ‘Parisina,’ st. xiv: -

     ‘She stood, I said, all pale and still,      The living cause of Hugo’s ill.’

Stanza XXII. line 415. a sordid soul, &c. For such a character in the drama see Lightborn in Marlowe’s Edward II, and those trusty agents in Richard III, whose avowed hardness of heart drew from Gloucester the appreciative remark: -

     ‘Your eyes drop millstones, when fools’ eyes drop tears.’Richard III, i. 3. 353.

Stanza XXIII. line 438. grisly, grim, horrible; still an effective poetic word. It is, e.g., very expressive in Tennyson’s ‘Princess,’ sect. vi, where Ida sees

     ‘The haggard father’s face and reverend beard      Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood,’ &c.

See below, III. 382.

Stanza XXV. line 468. ‘It is well known, that the religious, who broke their vows of chastity, were subjected to the same penalty as the Roman vestals in a similar case. A small niche, sufficient to enclose their bodies, was made in the massive wall of the convent; a slender pittance of food and water was deposited in it, and the awful words, VADE IN PACE, were the signal for immuring the criminal. It is not likely that, in latter times, this punishment was often resorted to; but among the ruins of the abbey of Coldingham, were some years ago discovered the remains of a female skeleton, which, from the shape of the niche, and position of the figure, seemed to be that of an immured nun.’-SCOTT.

Lockhart adds: – ‘The Edinburgh Reviewer, on st. xxxii, post, suggests that the proper reading of the sentence is vade in pacem-not part in peace, but go into peace, or eternal rest, a pretty intelligible mittimus to another world.’

Stanza XXVII. line 506. my = ‘of me,’ retains the old genitive force as in Elizabethan English. Cp. Julius Caesar, i. I. 55: -

                                    ‘In his way      That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood.’

line 516. The very old fancy of a forsaken lover’s revenge has been powerfully utilized in D. G. Rossetti’s fascinating ballad, ‘Sister Helen’: -

     ‘Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow,                                 Sister Helen,      ‘Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.’     ‘One morn for pride and three days for woe,                                 Little brother!’

Stanza XXVIII. line 520. plight, woven, united, as in Spenser F. Q., II. vi. 7: -

                                ‘Fresh flowerets dight      About her necke, or rings of rushes plight.’

lines 524-40. The reference in these lines is to what was known as the appeal to the judgment of God. On this subject, Scott at the close of the second head in his ‘Essay on Chivalry,’ says, ‘In the appeal to this awful criterion, the combatants, whether personally concerned, or appearing as champions, were understood, in martial law, to take on themselves the full risk of all consequences. And, as the defendant, or his champion, in case of being overcome, was subjected to the punishment proper to the crime of which he was accused, so the appellant, if vanquished, was, whether a principal or substitute, condemned to the same doom to which his success would have exposed the accused. Whichever combatant was vanquished he was liable to the penalty of degradation; and, if he survived the combat, the disgrace to which he was subjected was worse than death. His spurs were cut off close to his heels, with a cook’s cleaver; his arms were baffled and reversed by the common hangman; his belt was cut to pieces, and his sword broken. Even his horse shared his disgrace, the animal’s tail being cut off, close by the rump, and thrown on a dunghill. The death-bell tolled, and the funeral service was said for a knight thus degraded as for one dead to knightly honour. And if he fell in the appeal to the judgment of God, the same dishonour was done to his senseless corpse. If alive, he was only rescued from death to be confined in the cloister. Such at least were the strict roles of Chivalry, though the courtesy of the victor, or the clemency of the prince, might remit them in favourable cases.’

For illustration of forms observed at such contests, see Richard II, i. 3.

line 524. Each knight declared on oath that he ‘had his quarrel just.’ The fall of an unworthy knight is referred to below, VI. 961.

Stanza XXIX. line 545. This illustrates Henry’s impulsive and imperious character, and is not, necessarily, a premonition of his final attitude towards Roman Catholicism.

line 555. dastard (Icel. doestr = exhausted, breathless; O. Dut. dasaert = a fool) is very appropriately used here, after the description above, St. xxii, to designate the poltroon that quails only before death. Cp. Pope’s Iliad, II. 427: -

     ‘And die the dastard first, who dreads to die.’

Stanza XXX. line 568. Cp. Julius Caesar, ii. 2. 35: -

     ‘It seems to me most strange that men should fear;      Seeing that death, a necessary end,      Will come when it will come.’

Stanza XXXI. line 573. the fiery Dane. See note on line 10 above. Passing northwards after destroying York and Tynemouth, the Danes in 875 burned the monastery on Lindisfarne. The bishop and monks, with their relics and the body of St. Cuthbert, fled over the Kylve hills. See Raine, &c.

line 576. the crosier bends. Crosier (O. Fr. croiser; Fr. croix = cross) is used both for the staff of an archbishop with a cross on the top, and for the staff of a bishop or an abbot, terminating in a carved or ornamented curve or crook. The word is used here metaphorically for Papal power, as Bacon uses it, speaking of Anselm and Becket, ‘who with their crosiers did almost try it with the king’s sword.’ Constance’s prophecy refers to Henry VIII’s victorious collision with the Pope.

Stanza XXXII. lines 585-91. It is impossible not to connect this striking picture with that of Virgil’s Sibyl (Aeneid, VI. 45): -

     ‘Ventum erat ad limen, cum virgo, ‘poscere fata      Tempus,’ ait; ‘deus, ecce, deus.’ Cui talia fanti      Ante fores subito non voltus, non color unus,      Non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum,      Et rabie fera corda tument; maiorque videri      Nec mortale sonans, adflata est numine quando      Iam propiore dei.’

line 588. Stared, stood up stiffly. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 280, and Tempest, i. 2. 213, ‘with hair upstaring.’

line 600. See above, line 468, and note.

Stanza XXXIII. line 616. for terror’s sake = because of terror. Cp. ‘For fashion’s sake,’ As You Like It, iii. 2. 55.

line 620. The custom of ringing the passing bell grew out of the belief that a church bell, rung when the soul was passing from the body, terrified the devils that were waiting to attack it at the moment of its escape. ‘The tolling of the passing bell was retained at the Reformation; and the people were instructed that its use was to admonish the living, and excite them to pray for the dying. But by the beginning of the l8th century the passing bell in the proper sense of the term had almost ceased to be heard. ‘A mourning bell is still rung during funeral services as a mark of respect. See s. v. ‘Bell,’ Chambers’s Encyclopaedia. Cp. Byron’s ‘Parisina,’ St. xv.

     ‘The convent bells are ringing,        But mournfully and slow;      In the grey square turret swinging        With a deep sound to and fro.’

In criticising ‘Marmion,’ in the Edinburgh Review, Lord Jeffrey says that the sound of the knell rung for Constance ‘is described with great force and solemnity;’ while a writer in the Scots Magazine of 1808 considers that ‘the whole of this trial and doom presents a high-wrought scene of horror, which, at the close, rises almost to too great a pitch.’

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD

‘William Erskine, Esq. advocate, sheriff-depute of the Orkneys, became a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Kinnedder, and died in Edinburgh in August, 1823. He had been from early youth the most intimate of the Poet’s friends, and his chief confidant and adviser as to all literary matters. See a notice of his life and character by the late Mr. Hay Donaldson, to which Sir Walter Scott contributed several paragraphs.’-LOCKHART.

There are frequent references to Erskine throughout Lockhart’s Life of Scott. The critics of the time were of his opinion that Scott as a poet was not giving his powers their proper direction. Jeffrey considered Marmion ‘a misapplication in some degree of extraordinary talents.’ Fortunately, Scott decided for himself in the matter, and the self-criticism of this Introduction is characterised not only by good humour and poetic beauty but by discrimination and strong common-sense.

line 14. a morning dream. This may simply be a poetic way of saying that his method is unsystematic, but Horace’s account of the vision he saw when he was once tempted to write Greek verses is irresistibly suggested by the expression: -

                   ‘Vetuit me tali voce Quirinus      Post mediam noctem visus, cum somnia vera:      “In silvam non ligna feras insanius, ac si      Magnas Graecorum malis implere catervas?’                                       Sat. I. x. 32.

line 24. all too well. This use of ‘all too’ is a development of the Elizabethan expression ‘all-to’ = altogether, quite, as ‘all to topple,’ Pericles, iii. 2. 17; ‘all to ruffled,’ Comus, 380. In this usage the original force of to as a verbal prefix is lost sight of. Chaucer has ‘The pot to breaketh’ in Prologue to Chanon Yeomanes Tale. See note in Clarendon Press Milton, i. 290.

line 26. Desultory song may naturally command a very wide class of those intelligent readers, for whom the Earl of Iddesleigh, in ‘lectures and Essays,’ puts forward a courageous plea in his informing and genial address on the uses of Desultory Reading.

line 28. The reading of the first edition is ‘loftier,’ which conveys an estimate of his own achievements more characteristic of Scott than the bare assertion of his ability to ‘build the lofty rhyme’ which is implied in the line as it stands. Perhaps the expression just quoted from ‘Lycidas’ may have led to the reading of all subsequent editions.

line 46. The Duke of Brunswick commanded the Prussian forces at Jena, 14 Oct., 1806, and was mortally wounded. He was 72. For ‘hearse,’ cp. above, Introd. to I. 199.

line 54. The reigning house of Prussia comes from the Electors of Brandenburg. In 1415 Frederick VI. of Hohenzollern and Nuremberg became Frederick the First, Elector of Brandenburg. The Duchy of Prussia fell under the sway of the Elector John Sigismund (1608-19), and from that time to the present there has been a very remarkable development of government and power. See Carlyle’s ‘Frederick the Great,’ and Mr. Baring-Gould’s ‘Germany’ in the series ‘Stories of the Nations.’

lines 57-60. The Duke of Brunswick was defeated at Valmy in 1792, and so failed to crush the dragon of the French Revolution in its birth, as in all likelihood he would have done had he been victorious on the occasion.

line 64. Prussia, without an ally, took the field instead of acting on the defensive.

line 67. seem’d = beseemed, befitted; as in Spenser’s May eclogue, ‘Nought seemeth sike strife,’ i.e. such strife is not befitting or seemly.

line 69. Various German princes lost their dominions after Napoleon conquered Prussia.

line 78. By defeating Varus, A. D. 9, Arminius saved Germany from Roman conquest. See the first two books of the Annals of Tacitus, at the close of which this tribute is paid to the hero: ‘liberator haud dubie Germaniae et qui non primordia populi Romani, sicut alii reges ducesque, sed florentissimum imperium lacessierit, proeliis ambiguus, bello non victus.’

lines 46-80. This undoubtedly vigorous and well-sustained tribute is not without its special purpose. The Princess Caroline was daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, and Scott was one of those who believed in her, in spite of that ‘careless levity’ which he did not fail to note in her demeanour when presented at her Court at Blackheath in 1806. This passage on the Duke of Brunswick had been read by the Princess before the appearance of ‘Marmion.’ Lockhart (Life of Scott, ii. 117) says: ‘He seems to have communicated fragments of the poem very freely during the whole of its progress. As early as the 22nd February, 1807, I find Mrs. Hayman acknowledging, in the name of the Princess of Wales, the receipt of a copy of the Introduction to Canto III, in which occurs the tribute to her Royal Highness’s heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena-a tribute so grateful to her feelings that she herself shortly after sent the poet an elegant silver vase as a memorial of her thankfulness.’

line 81. The Red-Cross hero is Sir Sidney Smith, the famous admiral, who belonged to the Order of Knights Templars. The eight-pointed Templar’s cross which he wore throughout his career is said to have belonged to Richard Coeur-de-Lion. In early life, with consent of the Government, Smith distinguished himself with the Swedes in their war with Russia. He was frequently entrusted with the duty of alarming the French coast, and once was captured and imprisoned, in the Temple at Paris, for two years. His escape was effected by a daring stratagem on the part of the French Royalist party. He and his sailors helped the Turks to retain St. Jean d’Acre against Napoleon, till then the ‘Invincible,’ who retired baffled after a vain siege of sixty days (May, 1799). Had Acre been won, said Napoleon afterwards, ‘I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies-I would have changed the face of the world.’ See Scott’s ‘Life of Napoleon,’ chap. xiii.

line 91. For metal’d see above, Introd. to I. 308.

line 92. For warped = ‘frozen,’ cp. As You Like It, ii. 7. 187, where, addressing the bitter sky, the singer says: -

     ‘Though thou the waters warp,      Thy sting is not so sharp,          As friends remember’d not.’

line 94. The reference is to Sir Ralph Abercromby, who commanded the expedition to Egypt, 1800-1, and fell at the battle of Alexandria. Sir Sidney Smith was wounded in the same battle, and had to go home.

lines 100-10. Scott pays compliment to his friend Joanna Baillie (1764-1851), with chivalrous courtesy asserting that she is the first worthy successor of Shakespeare. ‘Count Basil’ and ‘De Montfort’ are the two most remarkable of her ‘Plays of the Passions,’ of which she published three volumes. ‘De Montfort’ was played in London, Kemble enacting the hero. Several of Miss Baillie’s Scottish songs are among standard national lyrics.

line 100. Cp. opening of ‘Lady of the Lake.’

lines 115-28. Lockhart notes the resemblance between this passage and Pope’s ‘Essay on Man,’ II. 133-148.

line 134. Cp. Goldsmith’s ‘Traveller,’ 293: -

     ‘The slow canal, the yellow-blossom’d vale,      The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.’

Batavia is the capital of the Dutch East Indies, with canals, architecture, &c., after the home model.

line 137. hind, from Early Eng. hyne, servant (A. S. hina) is quite distinct from hind, a female stag. Gavin Douglas, translating Tyrii coloni of Aen. I. 12, makes them ‘hynis of Tyre.’ Shakespeare (Merry Wives, iii. 5. 94) uses the word as servant, ‘A couple of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were called forth.’ The modern usage implies a farm-bailiff or simply a farm-servant.

line 149. Lochaber is a large district in the south of Invernesshire, having Ben Nevis and other Grampian heights within its compass. It is a classic name in Scottish literature owing to Allan Ramsay’s plaintive lyric, ‘Lochaber no more.’

line 153. For early influences, see Lockhart’s Life, vol. i.

line 178. ‘Smailholm Tower, in Berwickshire, the scene of the author’s infancy, is situated about two miles from Dryburgh Abbey.’-LOCKHART.

line 180. The aged hind was ‘Auld Sandy Ormiston,’ the cow-herd on Sandyknows, Scott’s grandfather’s farm. ‘If the child saw him in the morning,’ says Lockhart, ‘he could not be satisfied unless the old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company as he lay watching his charge.’

line 183. strength, stronghold. Cp. Par. Lost, vii. 141: -

     ‘This inaccessible high strength…      He trusted to have seiz’d.’

line 194. slights, as pointed out by Mr. Rolfe, was ‘sleights’ in the original, and, as lovers’ stratagems are manifestly referred to, this is the preferable reading. But both spellings occur in this sense.

line 201. The Highlanders displayed such valour at Killiecrankie (1689), and Prestonpans (1745).

line 207. ‘See notes on the Eve of St. John, in the Border Minstrelsy, vol. iv; and the author’s Introduction to the Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 101.’-LOCKHART.