It is obvious that veneri does not rhyme with drewe, as it should. No doubt the line ought to run thus :- More of venery he knew.'

But the great puzzle is the wonderful name Manerious, which no one (says the note) can explain. However, I explained it once somewhere, some years ago. It should rather be Manerius; and it is nothing but the Old Norman and Middle English word Manére, touched up with a Latin suffix to imitate its original. For what is its original? It is merely a French translation, meaning 'manner,' of the Latin name Modus. But what is meant by Modus? It is to be feared that its fame has departed; yet it was at that time one of the most famous of all works, as well known as the Roman de la Rose, or as the name of Newton is now to the students of science. Le Livre du Roi Modus et de la Reine Reson (The Book of King Manner and of Queen Reason) was the chief authority on this very subject of venery' or hunting, containing all the precious terms of the chase and all the directions for the cutting up of the deer which, as the Romance informs us, Sir Tristrem knew so well. If he really knew more of hunting terms than even King Manner, he had great reason to be proud. 327. He yaf as he gan winne, In raf.

Raf is explained as 'plunder'; from the A.S. reaf; which could only give such a form as reef. And plunder' is repugnant to the context. Raff means 'abundance, plenty, profusion,' and is still in use. See N.E.D. and the English Dialect Dictionary. We now get the true sense. It is said of Tristram that he gave away, even as he won, in great abundance. He won much by his skill, and he gave largely, like a gentleman.

353. Fand does not exactly mean 'found,' but provided' for him. See the Dialect Dictionary.

480. Ther nest is explained in the Notes to mean 'after that.' The literal sense is there next,' i.e. next to that. Nest is not in the Glossary.

485. The spande was the first brede, The erber dight he yare ;
To the stifles he yede, And euen a-to hem schare.

I think it clear that the right word is spaude, as Scott suggested. The objection made, that 'to derive spande from spalla (shoulder) is philologically incorrect' is no objection at all, since it begs the question as to the correctness of the printed form. The Eng. Dial. Dict. gives spald, a shoulder, with the variants spauld, spall, spade, spaud; so that there is no doubt about the matter. Brede means roast or roasted piece,' as Kölbing has already said; see my note to Chaucer's House of Fame, 1222. In Hazlitt's Popular Poetry, vol. i. p. 21, we have :

'The kyng of venyson hath non nede,
Yit myght me hape to haue a brede
To glad me and my gest.'

'The erber, etc.,' is explained by 'He quickly took out the bowels'; an explanation which I cannot well follow. Erber is not explained in the Glossary, but it is the same as arber, fully explained in the N.E.D. Cotgrave explains the Old French herbiere as 'the throat-bole, throat-pipe, or gullet of a beast'; and it was sometimes extended to mean the whole

'pluck' of an animal. To dight is to prepare or arrange; and 'to dight the erber' is the same as 'to make the erber,' i.e. to take out the pluck, the first stage in disembowelling.

Stifles is explained by knee-caps'; but this is apt to mislead. The 'knee' suggests the knee of the fore-leg; but the stifle (says Webster) is the joint next above the hock, and near the flank, in the hind leg of the horse and other animals; the joint corresponding to the knee in man.'

1273. That al games of grewe On grounde.

Here That refers to Tristrem. The Note says-Out of whom all games grew from the ground, i.e. who thoroughly understood every game.' But On cannot mean from'; the sense is rather-'Out of whom grew all the games on earth.'

1356. A maiden of swiche reles.

The Glossary has: Reles, kind, description.' I know of no authority for this. I have shown, in my Notes on Etymology, that reles is the modern 'relish.' It here means 'sweetness.' The N.E.D. says:-'sensation or impression left behind by anything; taste, after-taste, relish; odour,

scent.'

2393. Ouer the bregge he deste.

The Glossary has: 'deste, dashed.' This gives the sense, but deste is not the past tense of dash. It is an error for diste, just as threste is an error for thriste; the rhyming words are miste, he missed, wiste, knew, and kiste, kissed. The N.E.D. gives deste twice. S.v. deste, we are wrongly referred to dash; but under dust, verb, we have it well explained. Diste is, in fact, the past tense of an A.S. verb dystan, answering to a non-recorded Teutonic dustjan, not otherwise known excepting as it appears in the Mid. Eng. disten and dusten. Transitively, it means 'to fling violently'; and intransitively, as here, 'to fling oneself violently'; so that 'dashed' gives a sufficiently good sense.

2801. Tristrem knewe him fre; Beliagog in hight,

Nought lain, An halle to maken him bright.

The note says: "Tristrem acknowledged him as a free man, i.e. accorded him his freedom.' This is a very harsh construction of knewe. I take fre in its usual sense of 'liberal' or 'bounteous.' Further, I alter the semi-colon after fre to a comma, and place another comma after Beliagog. The sense is: Tristrem knew him, Beliagog, (to be) liberal in his promise, (namely), if I am to conceal nothing, that he would make a bright hall for him.' Here is nothing forced or obscure. For hight, a promise, see the Cursor Mundi, 1. 785. The semi-colon after fre deprives the rest of the passage of its verb.

2500. He fond a wele ful gode, Al white it was, the grete.

Grete is not explained. I take it to mean: he found a well that was very good; all white it was, viz. the gravel below.' See grit in the New E. Dict.; grete, meaning 'gravel,' is common enough. Compare 1. 121 of Le Roman de la Rose, quoted in my Chaucer, vol. i. p. 98, where

it is said of the well: Le fons de l'iaue de gravele'; the bottom of the water was of gravel.

2955. Tristrem tho gan him calle, On astilt he com tho,

Ful swithe.

Astilt is not explained. It is an error for als tit or as titt, a common phrase meaning 'as fast as possible,' and parallel to ful swithe. The sense is: then did Tristrem call him; then he came on as fast as possible, very soon.' See tid in Stratmann; and astite and alstite in the N.E.D. The phrase occurs again, in l. 248, where the scansion shows that al so tite ought to be as tite, in two syllables, not three.

3054. Fayt does not mean 'to slander,' but 'to pretend'; see P. Plowman, B. vii. 94.

3129. For that read thaim, 'them'; and all difficulty vanishes.

3274. Thai token the heighe held.

Held does not mean 'a hill,' but 'a slope'; see hield in the N.E.D.

3167. This lond nis worth anay.

Anay is not noticed, either under anay, or nay, or ay. a nay, which is merely another form of an ay, i.e. an egg.' by Stratmann, s.v. ei. In l. 3288, for halle read hille.

It stands for This is noted

With reference to the miswriting of n for u, as in spande for spaude, it is worth noting that this is by no means the sole instance. The word blihand should certainly be blihaud; Rohand should (I think) be Rohaud, cf. Ital. Roaldo; and I suspect that Ganhardin should be Gauhardin. As to Ysonde, it seems a sad perversion of Ysoude, as the French form was Ysoude or Yseulte; cf. Ital. Isolta. It is remarkable that the name never occurs at the end of a line, except in the modern continuation by Sir Walter Scott. There is a curious fault in the rhythm at l. 1068. It is due to mere misarrangement.

'Moraunt of yrland smot

Tristrem in the scheld,

That half fel fram his hond
Ther adoun in the feld.'

Rearrange the first two lines thus:

'Moraunt of yrlond (as in 1. 969)
Smot Tristrem in the scheld' ; &c.
';

It is yrlond, not smot, that rhymes with hond.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

I

Claverhouse's Last Letter

GLADLY take advantage of the Editor's courteous invitation to reply to Mr. Barrington's interesting article, S.H.R. v. 505. I admit that the allegation of forgery in regard to the alleged letter written by Dundee after his victory is supported by no positive evidence, and for that reason a verdict of Not proven' is, as Mr. Barrington demands, the proper one. But a verdict of Not proven' by no means precludes a belief that a charge is true though incapable of proof. In the absence of direct disproof of the genuineness of the alleged letter, Dundee's authorship of it must be judged in relation to (1) the circumstances in which it was written, and (2) the authority of the documents which attribute

it to him.

instant

In regard to the first test, the letter must be denounced as a forgery if the manner of Dundee's death was such as to make the writing of the letter by him an impossibility. Naturally, therefore, Mr. Barrington is sceptical of the evidence which I adduced as to Dundee having been shot in the eye. Such a wound, he supposes, would mean death. Probably it would; though I am told that an oblique_shot might shatter the eye-socket and not be immediately fatal. Mr. Lang (History of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 20) doubts whether a man could receive such a wound and retain consciousness. He points out pertinently that such a wound, and Dundee's conversation with a Mr. Johnstone,' are difficult to reconcile. I agree. But I must point out that the statement of Mackay's officers, who saw Dundee's dead body and noticed the eye-wound, is not less authoritative and credible than the statement of Johnstone, of whom we know nothing, and who may even have had discreditable motives for identifying himself with the last moments of Dundee. This point also is worth noticing: the statement of the manner of Dundee's death by Mackay and his officers, who saw the body at Blair, is not only nearest in point of time to the event, but is also the only definite evidence we have from persons who actually saw Dundee's dead body. In the Military History of Perthshire, recently edited by the Marchioness of Tullibardine, and in a most interesting and detailed chapter therein written by herself (p. 272), Lady Tullibardine criticizes the statement of Mackay's officers on the ground that it is improbable that an army of victorious Highlanders would leave its General unburied.' But apart from the fact that the statement of Mackay's officers is confirmed by Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, who also saw the body of Dundee coffined but unburied

in Blair Church, it appears eminently natural that it should have been deposited but not interred at Blair, in view of an ultimate and possibly imminent transference to its natural resting-place among the dead man's forebears; particularly seeing that Dundee's army was victorious and in possession of the field. Lady Tullibardine also objects, though she does not push the objection, that credible statements assert that Dundee's body was buried' within a few days of the battle. But, as Lady Tullibardine admits, the interment might merely have consisted in laying the coffin in the vault of the church.'

In addition to the head-wound there are statements, to which Mr. Barrington refers, to the effect that Dundee was also shot in the body. In my book I quoted Balhaldy's statement-he is not a contemporary witness to the effect that Dundee was shot 'about two hand'sbreadth within his armour, on the lower part of his left side.' Balcarres, on the other hand, places the wound in Dundee's 'right side, immediately below his armour.' Mr. Barrington advances some reason to doubt whether the latter statement carries the weight of Balcarres' authority; but let it stand. I added that the breastplate of Dundee at Blair shows no trace of a shot-hole and therefore, if genuine, refutes both statements. Mr. Barrington says that neither of these alleged wounds affect the question of a hole in the breastplate.' As to Balhaldy, does Mr. Barrington weigh sufficiently the words within his armour'? If these words mean anything, they imply that the shot wounded Dundee in a spot protected by his armour. Lady Tullibardine thinks that the shot may have penetrated the back-piece (which is not extant), and that in the left side' could refer as well to the back of the armour as to the front. But Balhaldy describes the wound as being about two hand's-breadth within his armour, on the lower part of his left side,' and a wound at such a distance from the junction of the breast- and back-pieces would certainly be described as a wound in the back if the shot penetrated the back-piece, as Lady Tullibardine suggests it may have done. However that may be, it is clear, as against Mr. Barrington's contention, that the condition of the breastplate, if genuine, is exceedingly relevant to the credibility of Balhaldy's statement. And in regard to Balcarres ? Mr. Barrington does not take Balcarres' statement by itself, but makes a compound statement of Balhaldy plus Balcarres to the effect that if the fatal wound was below his armour in the lower part of his side, the breastplate would naturally remain untouched.' But Balcarres does

not say a word about 'the lower part.' He says that the wound was in his right side immediately below his armour.' Now below' may obviously refer either to the top or bottom of the armour. Mr. Barrington takes it in the latter sense. But a wound below the bottom of the armour would certainly not be called a wound in the side, as is clear from the portrait of Dundee in armour at page 89 of my Life of Claverhouse. A wound below the neck-rim of the breastplate, on the other hand, would certainly come within the category of a side wound.