by Walter Scott
3 (p. 327) “I accept of no such presents, ” said the Knight: [Author’s note] Richard Cœur-de-Lion. The interchange of a cuff with the jolly priest is not entirely out of character with Richard I., if romances read him aright. In the very curious romance on the subject of his adventures in the Holy Land, and his return from thence, it is recorded how he exchanged a pugilistic favour of this nature while a prisoner in Germany. His opponent was the son of his principal warder, and was so imprudent as to give the challenge to this barter of buffets. The King stood forth like a true man, and received a blow which staggered him. In requital, having previously waxed his hand, a practice unknown, I believe, to the gentlemen of the modern fancy, he returned this box on the ear with such interest as to kill his antagonist on the spot. See in Ellis’s Specimens of English Romance, that of Cœur-de-Lion.
CHAPTER XXXIII
1 (p. 329) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (act 1, scene 6).
2 (p. 331) morris-dancer: Here is another example of the historical freedoms Scott allowed himself in Ivanhoe. Like jousting tournaments, morris-dancing is anachronistic to the twelfth century; no records of it appear before the fifteenth century. That said, it is highly apropos to Scott’s themes, as traditional morris-dancing features the characters of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck.
3 (p. 332) “Father Aymer, Prior of the rich Abbey of Jorvaulx”: [Author’s note] Jorvaulx Abbey. This Cistercian abbey was situate in the pleasant valley of the river Jore, or Ure, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. It was erected in the year 1156, and was destroyed in 1537. For nearly three centuries, the ruins were left in a state nearly approaching to utter demolition; but at length they were traced out and cleared at the expense of Thomas Earl of Aylesbury, in the year 1807. The name of the abbey occurs in a variety of forms, such as Jorvaulx, Jervaux, Gerveux, Gervaulx, Jorvall, Jorevaux, etc. In Whitaker’s History of Richmondshire, vol. i., a ground-plan of the building is given, along with notices of the monuments of the old abbots and other dignitaries which are still preserved (Laing).
4 (p. 335) Ichabod! ... my house!: Ichabod means “without glory.” See the Bible, 1 Samuel 4:21.
5 (p. 340) “Thou be’st a hedge-priest”: [Author’s note] Hedge-Priests. It is curious to observe, that in every state of society some sort of ghostly consolation is provided for the members of the community, though assembled for purposes diametrically opposite to religion. A gang of beggars have their patrico, and the banditti of the Apennines have among them persons acting as monks and priests, by whom they are confessed, and who perform mass before them. Unquestionably, such reverend persons, in such a society, must accommodate their manners and their morals to the community in which they live; and if they can occasionally obtain a degree of reverence for their supposed spiritual gifts, are, on most occasions, loaded with unmerciful ridicule, as possessing a character inconsistent with all around them.
Hence the fighting parson in the old play of Sir John Oldcastle, and the famous friar of Robin Hood’s band. Nor were such characters ideal. There exists a monition of the Bishop of Durham against irregular churchmen of this class, who associated themselves with Border robbers, and desecrated the holiest offices of the priestly function, by celebrating them for the benefit of thieves, robbers, and murderers, amongst ruins and in caverns of the earth, without regard to canonical form, and with torn and dirty attire, and maimed rites, altogether improper for the occasion.
CHAPTER XXXIV
1 (p. 342) epigraph: The lines are from Shakespeare’s King John (act 3, scene 3).
2 (p. 343) Ahithophel: Ahithophel was a co-conspirator with Absalom against his father, King David, in the Bible, 2 Samuel 15-17.
3 (p. 344) bloody ... with speed: The quotation, slightly altered, is from Shakespeare’s Richard II (act 2, scene 3) .
4 (p. 348) Thomas-a-Becket ... stained the steps of his own altar: The most notorious event of Henry II’s largely beneficent reign was the murder, at his suggestion, of his erstwhile friend Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. After Thomas’s elevation to sainthood three years later, Canterbury Cathedral, site of the killing, became a destination for pilgrims and is perhaps the most famous of England’s holy places. Waldemar Fitzurse, Prince John’s counselor in Ivanhoe, is a fictional son of one of Thomas’s murderers, Reginald Fitzurse.
5 (p. 348) Tracy, Morville, Brito: [Author’s note] Slayers of Becket. Reginald Fitzurse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito were the gentlemen of Henry the Second’s household who, instigated by some passionate expressions of their sovereign, slew the celebrated Thomas-a-Becket.
CHAPTER XXXV
1 (p. 350) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.
2 (p. 351) “we visit the preceptories”: [Author’s note] Preceptories. The establishments of the Knights Templars were called preceptories, and the title of those who presided in the order was preceptor ; as the principal Knights of St. John were termed commanders, and their houses commanderies. But these terms were sometimes, it would seem, used indiscriminately.—Such an establishment formerly existed at Temple Newsam, in the West Riding, near Leeds (Laing) .
3 (p. 352) fiery furnace seven times heated: See the Bible, Daniel 3:19.
4 (p. 355) Ut leo semper feriatur: The Latin translates as “The lion must always be struck down.” [Author’s note follows] Ut Leo Semper Feriatur. In the ordinances of the Knights of the Temple, this phrase is repeated in a variety of forms, and occurs in almost every chapter, as if it were the signal-word of the order; which may account for its being so frequently put in the Grand Master’s mouth.
5 (p. 357) “Take to thee the brand of Phineas”: The Grand Master refers to a grisly incident in the Bible (Numbers 25:7-8) and a symbolic biblical indictment of interracial sex that is pertinent to the case of Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert. Phineas, on finding an Israelite soldier sleeping with a Midianite woman, slays them both with a single thrust of his spear.
6 (p. 360) the thrashing-floor: See Matthew 3:12.
7 (p. 360) Vinum ... pulchritudine tua: The first phrase quotes the Bible, Psalm 104:15: “Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.” The second derives from Psalm 45:11, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty” (KJV).
CHAPTER XXXVI
1 (p. 363) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.
CHAPTER XXXVII
1 (p. 371) epigraph: The lines are written by Scott himself.
2 (p. 383) trial by combat: In a recent article, Gary Dyer has uncovered a contemporary context for Scott’s evocation of this Norman law, which allows the accused to defend themselves, if proxy by necessary, in single combat; the belief was that God would justly decide the outcome of the contest, revealing the truth of the case in a manner beyond human divination. In 1817 Britons were amazed to learn that the law of combat was still on the books when Abraham Thornton, accused of the murder of Mary Ashford, invoked his defendant’s chivalric right. The case against Thornton broke down in confusion, and the trial was widely reported. See Gary R. Dyer, “Ivanhoe, Chivalry, and the Murder of Mary Ashford,” Criticism 39 ( 1997) , pp. 383-408.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
1 (p. 383) epigraph: The lines, slightly altered, are from Shakespeare’s Richard II (act 4, scene 1).
2 (p. 388) “even as the signet of the mighty Solomon was said to command the evil genii: The Koran records that God gave Solomon power over the genii. It is only tradition, however, possibly derived from its mention in The Arabian Nights, which locates the power in his signet ring.
3 (p. 389) Benoni: The name, which means ”son of my sorrow” in Hebrew, was given by the dying Rachel to her son in the Bible, Genesis 35:18. Jacob would rename him Benjamin, and the boy became his ill-fated favorite.
4 (p. 389) gourd of Jonah: Isaac is referring not to a cup, but rather to the fruit tree God provided for Jonah, which became infested with worms overnight and died. See the Bible, Jonah 4:7.
5 (p. 390) Boabdil the Saracen: T
his is a glaring anachronism. Boabdil was the last Moorish king of Grenada (1482-1492), under whose reign Jews enjoyed equal rights and freedoms with other citizens. When a Christian army reconquered Spain in 1492, the Jews were expelled and sought sanctuary in the Islamic east and the Ottoman Empire.
CHAPTER XXXIX
1 (p. 392) epigraph: The lines, slightly altered, are from Anna Seward’s ”From Thy Waves, Stormy Lannow, I Fly” (1799; lines 6-7) . Scott edited a three-volume edition of Seward’s poetry, published in 1810.
2 (p. 397) heaven ... nearly scaled: In the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Titans pile up rocks toward the heavens in an effort to overthrow the Olympian gods. Poet John Keats inverted the myth by having the Olympian gods overthrow the Titans in his Miltonic epic fragment ”Hyperion,” written in the same year as Ivanhoe.
CHAPTER XL
1 (p. 404) epigraph: The line is not from Shakespeare, but from Colley Cibber’s subliterary revision The Tragicall History of King Richard III (1700), which was the version of the play known to British theatergoers for more than a hundred years.
2 (p. 418) ”I am Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest”: [Author’s note] Locksley. From the ballads of Robin Hood, we learn that this celebrated outlaw, when in disguise, sometimes assumed the name of Locksley, from a village where he was born, but where situated we are not distinctly told.—
According to tradition, a village of this name was the birth-place of Robin Hood, while the county in which it was situated remains undetermined. There is a broadside printed about the middle of the 17th century with the title of A New Ballad of Bold Robin Hood, showing his birth, etc., calculated for the meridian of Staffordshire. But in the ballad itself, it says—
In Locksley town, in merry Nottinghamshire,
In merry sweet Locksley town,
There bold Robin Hood, he was born and was bred,
Bold Robin of famous renown.
Ritson says, it may serve quite as well for Derbyshire or Kent as for Nottingham (Laing).
CHAPTER XLI
1 (p. 421) epigraph: These lines, slightly altered, are from an opera by Andrew Macdonald called Love and Loyalty (1788). Many of Scott’s novels were adapted for the operatic stage, most famously Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), by Donizetti.
2 (p. 423) “The Chancellor must make sure of London”: William de Longchamp was Richard I’s chancellor and longtime ally; he was left in charge of much of the kingdom’s affairs on Richard’s leaving for the Third Crusade in 1789. On finding that authority usurped by the scheming John, William left for Germany. He was principally responsible for the raising of Richard’s ransom money; on the King’s return, he resumed the office of chancellor.
3 (p. 427) the Charter of the Forest was extorted from the unwilling hands of King John when he succeeded to his heroic brother: This is a specific instance of Scott’s altering the historical record to Richard’s advantage. The Lion-Heart was in fact a champion of the Norman forest laws, and the liberalizing Charter of the Forest was not signed until after John’s death.
4 (p. 427) treacherous death... weight in gold: According to legend, as recorded in the broadsheet ballads of the Middle Ages (that is, the “black-letter garlands”), Robin Hood was poisoned by his cousin, the Prioress of Kirlees. The quotation is from John Ferriar’s “The Bibliomania” (1809).
5 (p. 428) various monuments ... are shown in the neighboring churchyard: [Author’s note] Castle of Coningsburgh. When I last saw this interesting ruin of ancient days, one of the very few remaining examples of Saxon fortification, I was strongly impressed with the desire of tracing out a sort of theory on the subject, which, from some recent acquaintance with the architecture of the ancient Scandinavians, seemed to me peculiarly interesting. I was, however, obliged by circumstances to proceed on my journey, without leisure to take more than a transient view of Coningsburgh. Yet the idea dwells so strongly in my mind, that I feel considerably tempted to write a page or two in detailing at least the outline of my hypothesis, leaving better antiquaries to correct or refute conclusions which are perhaps too hastily drawn.
Those who have visited the Zetland Islands are familiar with the description of castles called by the inhabitants burghs, and by the Highlanders—for they are also to be found both in the Western Isles and on the mainland—duns. Pennant has engraved a view of the famous Dun Dornadilla in Glenelg; and there are many others, all of them built after a peculiar mode of architecture, which argues a people in the most primitive state of society. The most perfect specimen is that upon the island of Mousa, near to the Mainland of Zetland, which is probably in the same state as when inhabited.
It is a single round tower, the wall curving in slightly, and then turning outward again in the form of a dice-box, so that the defenders on the top might the better protect the base. It is formed of rough stones, selected with care, and laid in courses or circles, with much compactness, but without cement of any kind. The tower has never, to appearance, had roofing of any sort; a fire was made in the centre of the space which it incloses, and originally the building was probably little more than a wall drawn as a sort of screen around the great council fire of the tribe. But, although the means or ingenuity of the builders did not extend so far as to provide a roof, they supplied the want by constructing apartments in the interior of the walls of the tower itself. The circumvallation formed a double inclosure, the inner side of which was, in fact, two feet or three feet distant from the other, and connected by a concentric range of long flat stones, thus forming a series of concentric rings or stories of various heights, rising to the top of the tower. Each of these stories or galleries has four windows, facing directly to the points of the compass, and rising, of course, regularly above each other. These four perpendicular ranges of windows admitted air, and, the fire being kindled, heat, or smoke at least, to each of the galleries. The access from gallery to gallery is equally primitive. A path, on the principle of an inclined plane, turns round and round the building like a screw, and gives access to the different stories, intersecting each of them in its turn, and thus gradually rising to the top of the wall of the tower. On the outside there are no windows; and I may add that an inclosure of a square, or sometimes a round, form gave the inhabitants of the burgh an opportunity to secure any sheep or cattle which they might possess.
Such is the general architecture of that very early period when the Northmen swept the seas, and brought to their rude houses, such as I have described them, the plunder of polished nations. In Zetland there are several scores of these burghs, occupying in every case capes, headlands, islets, and similar places of advantage singularly well chosen. I remember the remains of one upon an island in a small lake near Lerwick, which at high tide communicates with the sea, the access to which is very ingenious, by means of a causeway or dike, about three or four inches under the surface of the water. This causeway makes a sharp angle in its approach to the burgh. The inhabitants, doubtless, were well acquainted with this, but strangers, who might approach in a hostile manner, and were ignorant of the curve of the causeway, would probably plunge into the lake, which is six or seven feet in depth at the least. This must have been the device of some Vauban or Cohorn of those early times.
The style of these buildings evinces that the architect possessed neither the art of using lime or cement of any kind, nor the skill to throw an arch, construct a roof, or erect a stair; and yet, with all this ignorance, showed great ingenuity in selecting the situation of burghs, and regulating the access to them, as well as neatness and regularity in the erection, since the buildings themselves show a style of advance in the arts scarcely consistent with the ignorance of so many of the principal branches of architectural knowledge.
I have always thought that one of the most curious and valuable objects of antiquaries has been to trace the progress of society by the efforts made in early ages to improve the rudeness of their first expedients, until they either approach excellence, or, as is most frequently the case, are supplied by new a
nd fundamental discoveries, which supersede both the earlier and ruder system and the improvements which have been ingrafted upon it. For example, if we conceive the recent discovery of gas to be so much improved and adapted to domestic use as to supersede all other modes of producing domestic light, we can already suppose, some centuries afterwards, the heads of a whole Society of Antiquaries half turned by the discovery of a pair of patent snuffers, and by the learned theories which would be brought forward to account for the form and purpose of so singular an implement.
Following some such principle, I am inclined to regard the singular Castle of Coningsburgh—I mean the Saxon part of it—as a step in advance from the rude architecture, if it deserves the name which must have been common to the Saxons as to other Northmen. The builders had attained the art of using cement, and of roofing a building—great improvements on the original burgh. But in the round keep, a shape only seen in the most ancient castles, the chambers excavated in the thickness of the walls and buttresses, the difficulty by which access is gained from one story to those above it, Coningsburgh still retains the simplicity of its origin, and shows by what slow degrees man proceeded from occupying such rude and inconvenient lodgings as were afforded by the galleries of the Castle of Mousa to the more splendid accommodations of the Norman castles, with all their stern and Gothic graces.
I am ignorant if these remarks are new, or if they will be confirmed by closer examination; but I think that, on a hasty observation, Coningsburgh offers means of curious study to those who may wish to trace the history of architecture back to the times preceding the Norman Conquest.