348 NOTES
Kirkconnell in Dumfriesshire, was beloved by Adam Fleming, and (as some say) Bell of Blacket House ; that she favoured the first, but her people encouraged the second ; that she was thus con- strained to tryst with Fleming by night in the churchyard, ' a romantic spot, almost surrounded by the river Kirtle ' ; that they were here surprised by the rejected suitor, who fired at his rival from the far bank of the stream ; that Helen, seeking to shield her lover, was shot in his stead; and that Fleming, either there and then, or afterwards in Spain, avenged her death on the body of her slayer. Wordsworth has told the story in a copy of verses which shows, like so much more of his work, how dreary a poetaster he could be.
��This epic-in-little, as tremendous an invention as exists in verse, is from the Minstrelsy : ' as written down from tradition by a lady ' (C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe).
corbies = crows fail-dyke = wall of hause-bane = breast-
theek = thatch turf bone
��Begun in 1755, and finished and printed (with The Progress of Poetry) in 1757. ' Founded,' says the poet, ' on a tradition cur- rent in Wales, that Edward the First, when he concluded the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The ' agonising king ' (line 56) is Edward II.; the 'she-wolf of France' (57), Isabel his queen; the 'scourge of heaven ' (60), Edward III.; the 'sable warrior' (67), Edward the Black Prince. Lines 75-82 commemorate the rise and fall of Richard II. ; lines 83-90, the Wars of the Roses, the murders in the Tower, the ' faith ' of Margaret of Anjou, the ' fame ' of Henry V., the 'holy head' of Henry VI. The 'bristled boar' (93) is symbolical of Richard III.; ' half of thy heart' (99) of Eleanor of Castile, ' who died a few years after the conquest of Wales." Line no celebrates the accession of the House of Tudor in fulfil- ment of the prophecies of Merlin and Taliessin; lines 115-20, Queen Elizabeth ; lines 128-30, Shakespeare ; lines 131-32, Milton ; and the ' distant warblings ' of line 133, ' the succession of poets after Milton's time' (Gray).
��XXXIV, XXXV
Written, the one in September 1782 (in the August of which year the Royal George (108 guns) was overset in Portsmouth Harbour with the loss of close on a thousand souls), and the other 'after reading Hume's History in 1780' (Benham).
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