A Scot to Jeanne d'Arc
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NOTE TO ‘A SCOT TO JEANNE D'ARC’
Jeanne d'Arc is said to have led a Scottish force at Lagny, when she
defeated the Burgundian, Franquet d'Arras. A Scottish artist painted her
banner; he was a James Polwarth, or Power or a Hume of Polwarth,
according to a conjecture of Mr. Hill Burton's. A monk of Dunfermline,
who continued Fordun's Chronicle, avers that he was with the Maiden in
her campaigns, and at her martyrdom. He calls her Puella a spiritu sancto
excitata. Unluckily his manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence.
At her trial, Jeanne said that she had only once seen her own portrait:
it was in the hands of a Scottish archer. The story of the white dove
which passed from her lips as they opened to her last cry of Jesus! was
reported at the trial for her Rehabilitation (1450-56).
Two archers of the name of Lang, Lain or Laing were in the French
service about 1507.
See the book on the Scottish Guard by Father Forbes Leith.
Dark Lily without blame,
Not upon us the shame,
Whose sires were to the Auld Alliance true;
They, by the Maiden's side,
Victorious fought and died,
One stood by thee that fiery torment through,
Till the White Dove from thy pure lips had passed,
And thou wert with thine own St. Catherine at the last.
Once only didst thou see,
In artist's imagery,
Thine own face painted, and that precious thing
Was in an Archer's hand
From the leal northern land.
Alas, what price would not thy people bring
To win that portrait of the ruinous
Gulf of devouring years that hide the Maid from us!
Born of a lowly line,
Noteless as once was thine,
One of that name I would were kin to me,
Who, in the Scottish Guard
Won this for his reward,
To fight for France, and memory of thee:
Not upon us, dark Lily without blame,
Not on the north may fall the shadow of that shame.
On France and England both
The shame of broken troth,
Of coward hate and treason black must be;
If England slew thee, France
Sent not one word, one lance,
One coin to rescue or to ransom thee.
And still thy Church unto the Maid denies
The halo and the palms, the Beatific prize.
But yet thy people calls
Within the rescued walls
Of Orleans; and makes its prayer to thee;
What though the Church hath chidden
These orisons forbidden,
Yet art thou with this earth's immortal Three,
With him in Athens, that of hemlock died,
And with thy Master dear whom the world crucified.
