University of Virginia Library

This old romantic tale was preserved in the Editor's folio MS, but in so defective and mutilated a condition that it was necessary to supply several stanzas in the first part, and still more in the second, to connect and compleat the story.

There is something peculiar in the metre of this old ballad: it is not unusual to meet with redundant stanzas of six lines; but the occasional insertion of a double third or fourth line, as ver. 31, 44, &c. is an irregularity I do not remember to have seen elsewhere.

---

39

It may be proper to inform the reader before he comes to Pt. 2. v. 110, 111. that the round table was not peculiar to the reign of K. Arthur, but was common in all the ages of Chivalry. The proclaiming a great turnament (probably with some peculiar solemnities) was called “holding a Round Table.” Dugdale tells us, that the great baron Roger de Mortimer “having procured the honour of knighthood to be conferred ‘on his three sons’ by K. Edw. I. he, at his own costs, caused a tourneament to be held at Kenilworth; where he sumptuously entertained an hundred knights, and as many ladies for three days; the like whereof was never before in England; and there began the round table, (so called by reason that the place wherein they practised those feats, was environed with a strong wall made in a round form:) And upon the fourth day, the golden lion, in sign of triumph, being yielded to him; he carried it (with all the company) to Warwick.”—It may further be added, that Matthew Paris frequently calls justs and turnaments Hasti Iudia Mensæ Rotundæ.

As to what will be observed in this ballad of the art of healing being practised by a young princess; it is no more than what is usual in all the old romances, and was conformable to real manners; it being a practice derived from the earliest times among all the Gothic and Celtic nations, for [illeg.]men, even of the highest rank, to exercise the art of surgery. In the Northern Chronicles we always find the young damsels stanching the wounds of their lovers, and the wives those of their husbands . And even so late as the time of Q. Elizabeth, it is mentioned among the accomplishments of the ladies of her court, that the “eldest of them are skilful in surgery.”

In this conclusion of the First Part, and at the beginning of the Second, the reader will observe a resemblance to the story of Sigismunda and Guiscard, as told by Boccace and Dryden: See the latter's Description of the Lovers meeting in the Cave, and those beautiful lines, which contain a reflection so like this of our poet, “everye white, &c. viz.