book ix

. c. 11. The Sir David de Lindsay, mentioned above is the knight of whom Sir Walter Scott tells an amusing story in his notes to Marmion, canto i. note 8.

[326] "Or verra l'on s'il y a nul d'entre vous Anglois, qui soit amoureux." Froissart, vol. ii. c. 55. Lyons's edit.

[327] Froissart, i. 345.

[328] Berners' Froissart, vol. i. c. 374.

[329] Froissart, vol. ii. c. 78.

[330] Some writers, confounding the joust with the duel, have said that bearded darts, poisoned needles, razors, and similar weapons, were lawful in the jousts. The instance to support this assertion is the challenge of the Duke of Orleans to Henry IV. of England, recorded by Monstrelet, vol. i. c. 9., where the Duke declined to use them. But Orleans challenged Lancaster to a duel, and not to a chivalric joust.

[331] Segar, of Honor, lib. iii. c. 13.

[332] I do not know when exactly this truly chivalric circumstance occurred. The story is told in a manuscript, in the Lansdowne Collection, British Museum, No. 285. It is described as the challenge of an ancestor of the Earl of Warwick, and the MS. bears date in the days of Edward IV.

[333] Vous savez, et bien l'avez oui dire et recorder plusieurs fois, que les ebatemens des dames et damoiselles encouragent voulontiers les coeurs des jeunes gentils-hommes, et les elevent, en requerant et desirant tous honneur. Froissart, vol. iv. c. 6. ed. Lyons, 1560.

[334] "Ye may know well that Charles the French King was sore desirous to be at those jousts: he was young and light of spirit, and glad to see new things. It was shewed me that from the beginning to the ending he was there present, disguised as unknown, so that none knew him but the Lord of Garansyers, who came also with him as unknown, and every day returned to Marquise." Froissart, vol. i. c. 168.

[335] As the weather was bright, according to Froissart, I wonder he did not, in his fondness for detail, mention the number of barrels of water that were every evening poured on the dusty plain. On one occasion he says, "The knights complained of the dust, so that some of them said they lost their deeds by reason thereof. The King made provision for it: he ordained more than two hundred barrels of water that watered the place, whereby the ground was well amended, and yet the next day they had dust enough, and too much." vol. ii. p. 157.

[336] Du Cange (Dissertation 7. on Joinville) is incorrect in saying that a joust seldom terminated without some knights being slain, or very grievously wounded. The jousts at St. Ingilberte were on the most extensive scale, and nothing worse than a flesh-wound or a bruise from falling was felt, even by the most unskilful or unlucky knight. Froissart perpetually describes jousts of three courses with lances, three strokes with axes, three encounters both with swords and daggers; and generally concludes with saying, "And when all was done, there was none of them hurt." "You should have jousted more courteously," was the reproach of the spectators to a knight, when his lance had pierced the shoulder of the other jouster. Froissart, vol. ii. c. 161. Du Cange preserved no clear idea in his mind of the difference between the joust _à la plaisance_ and the joust _à l'outrance_, and most subsequent writers have only blindly followed him. I shall notice in this place another popular error on the subject of jousts. Mr. Strutt, (Sports and Pastimes of the People of England,