their own snare, and, as ladies who would not have their name made the theme of reproach by every minstrel, compelled to recompense the deeds which their champion had achieved in their name. There are instances in which the lover used his right of reprisals with some rigour, as in the well-known fabliau of the three knights and the shift; in which a lady proposes to her three lovers, successively, the task of entering, unarmed, into the mêlée of a tournament, arrayed only in one of her shifts. The perilous proposal is declined by two of the knights and accepted by the third, who thrusts himself, in the unprotected state required, into all the hazards of the tournament, sustains many wounds, and carries off the prize of the day. On the next day the husband of the lady (for she was married) was to give a superb banquet to the knights and nobles who had attended the tourney. The wounded victor sends the shift back to its owner, with his request, that she would wear it over her rich dress on this solemn occasion, soiled and torn as it was, and stained all over with the blood of its late wearer. The lady did not hesitate to comply, declaring, that she regarded this shift, stained with the blood of her "fair friend, as more precious than if it were of the most costly materials." Jaques de Basin, the minstrel, who relates this curious tale, is at a loss to say whether the palm of true love should be given to the knight or to the lady on this remarkable occasion. The husband, he assures us, had the good sense to seem to perceive nothing uncommon in the singular vestment with which his lady was attired, and the rest of the good company

highly admired her courageous requital of the knight's gallantry.

Sometimes the patience of the lover was worn out by the cold-hearted vanity which thrust him on such perilous enterprises. At the court of one of the German emperors, while some ladies and gallants of the court were looking into a den where two lions were confined, one of them purposely let her glove fall within the palisade which enclosed the animals, and commanded her lover, as a true knight, to fetch it out to her. He did not hesitate to obey, jumped over the enclosure; threw his mantle towards the animals as they sprung at him; snatched up the glove, and regained the outside of the palisade. But when in safety, he proclaimed aloud, that what he had achieved was done for the sake of his own reputation, and not for that of a false lady, who could, for her sport and cold-blooded vanity, force a brave man on a duel so desperate. And, with the applause of all that were present, renounced her love for ever.

This, however, was an uncommon circumstance. In general, the lady was supposed to have her lover's character as much at heart as her own, and to mean by pushing him upon enterprises of hazard, only to give him an opportunity of meriting her good graces, which she could not with honour confer upon one undistinguished by deeds of chivalry. An affecting instance is given by Godscroft.

At the time when the Scotch were struggling to recover their country from the usurpation of Edward I., the Castle of Douglas was repeatedly garrisoned by the English, and these garrisons were as fre

quently surprised, and cut to pieces, by the good Lord James of Douglas, who, lying in the mountainous wilds of Cairntable, and favoured by the intelligence which he maintained among his vassals, took opportunity of the slightest relaxation of vigilance to surprise the fortress. At length, a fair dame of England announced to the numerous suitors who sought her hand, that she would confer it on the man who should keep the perilous Castle of Douglas (so it was called) for a year and a day. The knight who undertook this dangerous task at her request, discharged his duty like a careful soldier for several months, and the lady, relenting at the prospect of his continued absence, sent a letter to recall him, declaring she held his probation as accomplished. In the meantime, however, he had received a defiance from Douglas, threatening, that, let him use his utmost vigilance, he would recover from him his father's castle before Palm-Sunday. The English knight deemed that he could not in honour leave the castle till this day was past; and on the very eve of Palm-Sunday was surprised and slain with his lady's letter in his pocket, the perusal whereof greatly grieved the good Lord James of Douglas. 1

We are left much to our own conjectures on the appearance and manners of these haughty beauties, who were wooed with sword and lance, whose favours were bought at the expense of such dear and desperate perils, and who were worshipped, like heathen deities, with human sacrifices. The

1 [Here is the germ of the last of the Waverley NovelsCastle Dangerous.]

character of the ladies of the ages of Chivalry was probably determined by that of the men, to whom it sometimes approached. Most of these heroines were educated to understand the treatment of wounds, not only of the heart, but of the sword; and in romance, at least, the quality of leech-craft (practised by the Lady Bountifuls of the last generation) was essential to the character of an accomplished princess. They sometimes trespassed on the province of their lovers, and actually took up arms. The Countess de Montfort in Bretagne is celebrated by Froissart for the gallantry with which she defended her castle, when besieged by the English; and the old Prior of Lochleven in Scotland is equally diffuse in the praise of Black Agnes, Countess of March, who, in the reign of Edward III., held out the castle of Dunbar against the English. She appeared on the battlements with a white handkerchief in her hands, and wiped the walls in derision where they had been struck by stones from the English engines. When Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, brought up to the walls a military engine, like the Roman testudo, called a sow, she exclaimed in rhyme,

"Beware, Montagou,

For farrow shall thy sow."

A huge rock discharged from the battlements dashed the sow to pieces, and the English soldiers who escaped from its ruins were called by the Countess in derision, Montagu's pigs.1

The nature of the conferences between these

1 [See this story at more length in Sir W. Scott's Provincial Antiquities, and also in the Tales of a Grandfather.]

high-minded heroines and their lovers, was somewhat peculiar. Their delectations were in tales of warlike exploits, and in discourse of hunting and hawking. But when these topics were exhausted, they found in metaphysical discussions of nice questions concerning the passion of love, an endless source of interesting disquisition. The idea and definition of a true and pure passion, illustrated by an hundred imaginary cases devised on purpose, were managed in the same manner in which the schoolmen of the day agitated their points of metaphysical theology. The Scotists and the Thomists, whose useless and nonsensical debates cumbered the world with so many volumes of absurd disquisition upon the most extravagant points of polemical divinity, saw their theological labours rivalled in the courts of love, where the most abstracted reasoning was employed in discussing subtle questions upon the exaggerated hopes, fears, doubts, and suspicions of lovers, the circumstances of whose supposed cases were often ridiculous, sometimes criminal, sometimes licentious, and almost always puerile and extravagant. It is sufficient to state, that the discussions in the Courts of Love regarded such important and interesting questions, as, Whether his love be most meritorious who has formed his passion entirely on hearing, or his who has actually seen his mistress? with others of a tendency equally edifying.

Extremes of every kind border on each other; and as the devotion of the knights of Chivalry degenerated into superstition, the Platonic refinements and subtleties of amorous passion which they