o Vićła Emmanuel the King, hought In Hafsburg end Bourbolagreeds But, for us, a great Italy freed . With a hero ħ head us.. our King Ekrabetzarrett una, POEMS OF ADVENTURE AND RURAL SPORTS. CHEVY-CHASE. (Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had vowed to hunt for three days in the Scottish border, without condescending to ask leave fron Earl Douglas, who was either lord of the soil or lord warden of the Marches. This provoked the conflict which was celebrated in the old ballad of the " Hunting a' the Cheviot." The circuns. stances of the battle of Otterbourne (A. D. 1388) are woven into the ballad and the affairs of the two events confounded. The ballad preserved in the Percy Reliques is probably as old as 1574. The one following is a modernized form of the time of Jaues I.) God prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safeties all ; In Chevy-Chase befall. To drive the deer with hound and horn Earl Percy took his way ; The hunting of that day. A vow to God did make, Three summer days to take, To kill and bear away. In Scotland where he lay ; He would prevent his sport. Did to the woods resort, All chosen men of might, To aim their shafts aright. To chase the fallow deer ; When daylight did appear ; A hundred fat bucks slain ; Then, having dined, the drovers went To rouse the deer again. The bowmen mustered on the hills, Well able to endure ; That day was guarded sure. The nimble deer to take, An echo shrill did make. To view the slaughtered deer; Quoth he, “Earl Douglas promised This day to meet me here; No longer would I stay”; Thus to the carl did say :- His men in armor bright; Full twenty hundred Scottish spears All marching in our sight; “All men of pleasant Teviotdale, Fast by the river Tweed "; “Then cease your sports,” Earl Percy said, “And take your bows with speed ; “And now with me, my countrymen, Your courage forth advance ; In Scotland or in France, But if my hap it were, With him to break a spear.” Most like a baron bold, Whose armor shone like gold. “Show me," said he, “whose men you be, That hunt so bollly here, And kill my fallow-deer." |