of some other colours. These white ridges, as I call them, that, as we stood on Fauxside Bray, did make so great muster toward us, which I did take then to be a number of tentes, when we came, we found it a linnen drapery, of the coarser cambryk in dede, for it was all of canvas sheets, and wear the tenticles, or rather cabayns and couches of their soldiers; the which (much after the common building of their country beside) had they framed of four sticks, about an ell long a piece, whearof two fastened together at one end aloft, and the two endes beneath stuck in the ground, an ell asunder, standing in fashion like the bowes of a sowes yoke; over two such bowes ( one, as it were, at their head, the other at their feet,) they stretched a sheet down on both sides, whereby their cabin became roofed like a ridge, but skant shut at both ends, and not very close beneath on the sides, unless their sticks were the shorter, or their wives the more liberal to lend them larger napery; howbeit, when they had lined them, and stuff'd them so thick with straw, with the weather as it was not very cold, when they were ones couched, they were as warm as they had been wrapt in horses dung."-PATTEN'S AĻ count of Somerset's Expedition. Note XII in proud Scotland's royal shield The ruddy Lion ramped in gold.-P. 49. The well-known arms of Scotland. If you will believe Boethius and Buchanan, the double tressure round the shield, mentioned p. 25, counter fleur-de-lised or, lingued and armed azure, was first assumed by Achaius, King of Scotland, contemporary of Charlemagne, and founder of the celebrated League with France; but later antiquaries make poor Eochy, or Achy, little better than a sort of King of Brentford, whom old Grig (who has also swelled into Gregorius Magnus,) associated with himself in the important duty of governing some part of the north-eastern coast of Scotland. NOTES TO CANTO FIFTH. Note I. Caledonia's Queen is changed.-P. 61. The Old Town of Edinburgh was secured on the north side by a lake, now drained, and on the south by a wall, which there was some attempt to make defensible even so late as 1745. The gates, and the greater part of the wall, have been pulled down, in the course of the late extensive and beautiful enlargement of the city. My ingenious and valued friend, Mr Thomas Campbell, proposed to celebrate Edinburgh under the epithet here borrowed. But the "Queen of the North" has not been so fortunate as to receive from so eminent a pen the proposed distinction. Note II. Flinging thy white arms to the sea.-P. 62. Since writing this line, I find I have inadvertently borrowed it almost verbatim, though with somewhat a different meaning, from a chorus in "Caractacus:" Britain heard the descant bold, She flung her white arms o'er the sea, The freight of harmony. Note III. Since first, when conquering York arose, Henry VI., with his queen, his heir, and the chiefs of his family, fled to Scotland after the fatal battle of Towton. In this note a doubt was formerly expressed, whether Henry VI. came to Edinburgh, though his queen certainly did; Mr Pinkerton inclining to believe that he remained at Kirkcudbright. But my noble friend, Lord Napier, has pointed out to me a grant by Henry, of an annuity of forty marks to his lordship's ancestor, John Napier, subscribed by the King himself, at Edinburgh, the 28th day of August, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, which corresponds to the year of God 1461. This grant, Douglas, with his usual neglect of accuracy, dates in 1368. But this error being corrected from the copy in Macfarlane's MSS. p. 119, 120, removes all scepticism on the subject of Henry VI. being really at Edinburgh. John Napier was son and heir of Sir Alexander Napier, and about this time was Provost of Edinburgh. The hospitable reception of the distressed Monarch and his family, called forth on Scotland the encomium of Molinet, a contemporary poet. The English people, he says, Ung nouveau roy créerent, Et son legitime hóir, De tous siecles le mendre, Et le plus tolerant. RECOLLECTION DES AVANTURES. Note IV. -the romantic strain, Whose Anglo-Norman tones whilere Could win the Royal Henry's ear.-P. 66. Mr Ellis, in his valuable Introduction to the " Specimens of Romance," has proved, by the concurring testimony of La Ravaillere, Tressan, but especially the Abbe de la Rue, that the courts of our Anglo-Norman kings, rather than those of the French monarchs, produced the birth of romance literature. Marie, soon after mentioned, compiled, from Armorican originals, and translated into Norman-French, or romance language, the twelve curious Lays, of which Mr Ellis has given us a precis in the Appendix to his Introduction. The story of Blondel, the famous and faithful minstrel of Richard I,, needs no commentary, |