hear of him again in "The Complaynt of Scotland," that curious composition attributed by some to Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount in Fife, and of Gilmerton in East Lothian, pp. 97, 98, where he says—
"Arthur knycht, he raid on nycht,
With gyldin spur and candil lycht."
Nor should we forget, when considering this legend, that story of Herne the Hunter, who,
"Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner."[1]
And even yet, in various parts of England, the story of some great man, generally a member of one of the county families, who drives about the country at night, is common. Thus, in Warwickshire, it is the "One-handed Boughton," who drives about in his coach and six, and makes the benighted traveller hold gates open for him; or it is "Lady Skip with," who passes through the country at night in the same manner. This subject might be pursued to much greater length, for popular tradition is full of such stories; but enough has been said to show how the awful presence of a glorious God can be converted into a gloomy superstition; and, at the same time, how the majesty of the old belief strives to rescue itself by clinging, in the popular consciousness, to some king or hero, as Arthur or Waldernar, or, failing that, to some squire's family, as Hackel-
- ↑ Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv. sc. 4.
