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It was at this time, too, that the first Act dealing with desertion from the army was passed. It gave strict injunctions to the Colonels and Committees of War to apprehend all those, both of horse and foot, who ran away from their colours, and empowered them, if they thought it expedient for the good of the army, to "decimate the fugitives, and cause hang the tenth man". If there were less than ten offenders, one might still be put to death, "for terrifying others"; and if there were only one, he might be made to suffer the extreme penalty.

Milder legislation originated at this time, too. It was in 1645 that an Act "in favour of lamed soldiers" promised maintenance upon the public charges to all who were so hurt and wounded in the defence of the public cause as to be unfit for their ordinary employment; and that another appointed a Committee to devise measures for the relief of the widows and orphans of those who fell. And so anxious were the Estates that their good faith should not be doubted, that they pledged the honour of the kingdom in proof of it.

From this point, the story of the Scots army merges into that of the civil wars of the period. And to relate it further would be to recapitulate what general histories of Scotland have already made more or less familiar to all.

THE STORY OF THE "LONG-TAIL" MYTH

The 17th of December, 1566, was the christening day of Mary Stuart's infant son. Amongst the festivities arranged in celebration of the event, there was a "great banquet", to which the representatives of foreign sovereigns had been invited, and at which a foremost place had been assigned to Hatton and the Englishmen who had accompanied him to Scotland. To enliven the entertainment, George Buchanan had written a masque, in which the actors were satyrs who, whilst reciting his complimentary verses, were to bring various symbolical gifts to the royal infant. The performance of this interlude had been entrusted to a Frenchman named Bastien. As the meat was being brought through the great hall, on a "trim engine", that seemed to move of itself, he made his appearance with a band of men disguised to represent the mythological monsters, and wearing long tails, in keeping with their assumed character. But he and his associates "were not content only to red roun". Whether merely acting on a mischievous impulse or deliberately carrying out a preconcerted joke, the mummers, as they passed near the English guests, put their hands to their tails and began wagging them. Hatton and his party "daftly apprehending that which they should not seem to have understood", and placing the worst construction on the silly and unseemly trick, chose to believe that it had been planned in derision of them and out of spiteful jealousy "that the Queen made more of them than of the Frenchmen". To mark their sense of the insult offered them, "they all set down upon the bare floor behind the back of the board, that they should not see themselves scorned, as they thought". In relating the incident to Sir James Melville, who records it in his Memoirs, Hatton added that, if it had not taken place in the Royal palace and in presence of the Queen herself, he would "have put a dagger to the heart of the French knave Bastien".²⁹²

Coarse and unmannerly as was the satyrs' by-play, it would hardly seem to have deserved to be taken so seriously and so ill by the English guests, if it were not remembered that it expressed in dumb show what had for centuries been looked upon by Englishmen as a deadly insult – a reference to the popular belief that they were distinguished from the natives of other countries by the physical monstrosity of bearing tails. That this was accepted as an actual and disgraceful fact there is abundant evidence to prove. In a medieval Latin poem²⁹³ devoted to an enumeration of the distinctive characteristics of the various nations of Europe, the unflattering lines that fall to the share of the English, jeer at them for this deformity, whilst not omitting to denounce the treachery so commonly and so spitefully attributed to them by their enemies:

 
A brute beast is the Englishman,
For he doth bear a tail;
Beware, and treat him as a foe,
E'en when he bids thee "Hail!"²⁹⁴
 

The anonymous satirist, however, was not original. He had not the merit, such as it might be, of having invented the slander which he flung as an insult at the people against whom he obviously entertained a bitter animosity. If, as there is reason to believe, he was a Frenchman, he merely repeated a gibe which had long been one of the commonplaces of vulgar vituperation amongst his compatriots. In the description which the thirteenth-century chronicler, Jacques de Vitry, gives of the depraved state of Paris in his day, and more particularly of the rude behaviour and coarse jests of the students who flocked to its famous university, he states that diversity of nationality aroused amongst them dissensions, hatred and violent animosities, to which they gave vent by indulging in all kinds of invectives against each other. As an example of their scurrility, he mentions that they called the English drunkards and "tailards".²⁹⁵ To suppose, from the very absurdity of the imputation, that it was merely cast as a taunt, and that no actual belief lay behind it, would be to ignore all that medieval credulity was capable of. Moreover, the attitude taken up by the English themselves, implied shame at an alleged deformity fully as much as anger at a wanton insult. On this point evidence is supplied by the Dominican monk Etienne de Bourbon, a moralist who flourished about the middle of the thirteenth century. In a treatise which is devoted to the exposition of subjects suitable for the pulpit, and which abounds in quaint stories as well as in caustic commentaries on contemporary manners, he does not omit to deal with the inordinate love of dress displayed by women, and to denounce the prevailing fashion of wearing extravagantly long trains to their gowns. He rebukes them for impiously presuming to better God's work, for doing away with the honourable distinction conferred upon them as human beings, and for deliberately assuming that which brings them down to the same level as brute beasts. As a climax, he inveighs against their shamelessness in making themselves what the English blush to be called – "tailards".²⁹⁶

The events that were chiefly instrumental in bringing the English into either contact or conflict with Continental nations, during the Middle Ages, were the Crusades and the Hundred Years' War. The chronicles that deal with these are not wanting in instances from which it may be gathered how readily the obnoxious gibe came to the lips of those that wished to show their contempt for the islanders. Richard of Devizes, who wrote one of the earliest and most authentic narratives of the reign of Richard I, with whom he was contemporary, describes how, in 1190, the inhabitants of Messina manifested their hatred for the strangers whom the King had brought to their shores, and how they tried to wreak vengeance on him and his "tailards"; for, explains the chronicler, the Greeks and the Sicilians gave the name of "tailards" to all who followed the English monarch.²⁹⁷

Another very early reference to the use of the term "tailard" as an opprobrious synonym for "Englishmen" is that which occurs in a metrical romance dealing with the same period and also recording, but with poetical freedom, the life and exploits of Richard Cœur de Lion. The exact date of the poem is unknown; but the fact of its being mentioned in the Chronicles of Richard of Gloucester and in those of Robert de Brunne, supplies evidence of its having been written earlier than the year 1300. It is confessedly a translation from the French; and that may account for the appearance in it of an insulting epithet which an English writer might have hesitated to use, even as an invective in the mouth of an enemy. The Second Book of this romance is devoted to a journey to the Holy Land, which the English King is supposed to have undertaken prior to the actual crusade, but which is, however, made to include the well-known incident of his capture. The poet tells how, when returning from Palestine, with "Sir Foulke Doyly of renown, and Sir Thomas of Multoun", Richard was betrayed, captured, and brought as a prisoner before the King of Allemayne; and how, when he represented himself and his companions as pilgrims,

 
"The Kyng callid Rychard be name,
And clepyd him 'taylard', and sayde him schame."²⁹⁸
 

In the Sixth Book of the same poem, it is related how the English King, on his way to Acre, put in at Cyprus and sent messengers to the Emperor, and how that monarch "began to rage", threw a knife at one of them, and followed this up by peremptorily ordering them out of his presence, with the words: —

 
"Out, 'taylards', of my paleys!
Now go and say your 'tayled' King
That I owe him no thing."²⁹⁹
 

When the Emperor's steward ventured to represent to his master that such treatment of honourable knights who came to him in the character of ambassadors was not justifiable, the furious but apocryphal potentate

 
"Carved off his nose by the grusle,
And said: Traytour, thief, steward,
Go, playne to English 'taylarde'."³⁰⁰
 

There is a further account of Richard's journey to the Holy Land in a poem by a writer of whom we know that his name was Ambrose, and that he witnessed various historical events between 1188 and 1196. It would also appear from his narrative that he actually accompanied the Crusaders on the expedition which he records. He, too, refers to the hostile attitude assumed by the inhabitants of Messina towards the English King's followers, and states that they jeered at the foreigners and called them "foul dogs", an epithet which, in the light of the parallel texts, may be looked upon as an allusion to the tails which the English were commonly believed to bear.³⁰¹

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is an instance of the use of the offensive gibe which shows to what purpose it was beginning to be turned by the literate class of the day. During the minority of Henry III, Louis VIII, continuing the aggressive policy inaugurated by his father, Philip Augustus, against the incapable administration of King John, made a vigorous effort to wrest Poitou from the English. Amongst the most noteworthy achievements of this campaign, was the capture of La Rochelle, in 1224. In celebration of this event, a poetaster of the day wrote some doggerel verses, which the Chronicle of Lanercost³⁰² has preserved: —

 
'Tis our own native King, 'tis a stranger no more,
Who reigns in Rochelle, by the fortune of war;
And the fear of the English no longer prevails,
For he's made them all harmless by breaking their tails.³⁰³
 

On the other side, however, it was not forgotten that, a few years earlier, in 1217, the same Louis, after being deserted by the discontented barons who had called him over, had suffered a crushing defeat at Lincoln. This supplied fair material for a retort in the same style: —

 
We have dragged our French foes,
Strung like larks in long rows,
And made fast to our tails with a rope;
 
 
That it really was so,
Why, there's Lincoln to show,
And that won't be questioned, I hope.³⁰⁴
 

The circumstances in which we next hear the contemptuous appellation of "tailards" applied to the English are particularly dramatic. It is in the course of the seventh crusade, that which was undertaken, in 1248, by Louis IX with an English contingent, and of which Matthew of Paris is one of the chroniclers. This time, however, it is not from the enemy that the insult comes. It is from an impetuous and overbearing ally, from the French King's brother, Count Robert of Artois. The Count was jealous of William Longsword; and on one occasion, when the leader of the English was returning from a successful but unauthorized raid, he was arbitrarily deprived by his arrogant rival of the booty which he was bringing back to the camp. Having in vain appealed to Louis, who appears to have been quite powerless against his brother's presumption, the English chief retired to Acre, with his two hundred knights; and the news of their departure drew from Artois the scornful exclamation that the army of the noble French was well purged of those "tailards".³⁰⁵ Longsword was ultimately prevailed upon by the king to return; but it was not long before he had again to bear the brunt of Artois' overweening pride and insolence. A difference of opinion had arisen between the rash and headstrong Count and the more cautious Master of the Templars, as to the advisability of following up a successful attack that had just been made on the infidels. Longsword was present and attempted to intervene as a peacemaker between the disputants; but he only succeeded in drawing on himself the anger of the hot-headed Frenchman, who put a climax to his violent invectives by insultingly referring to the pusillanimity of the timid "tailards", and expressing a wish that the army might, once for all, be purged of tails and "tailards".³⁰⁶ Even the dignified self-possession of Longsword was not proof against such jeers. "Count Robert," he replied, "I shall certainly proceed, undismayed by any peril of impending death. We shall, I fancy, be to-day where you will not dare to touch my horse's tail."³⁰⁷ In the engagement thus recklessly forced on – it was the battle of Mansourah – both Artois and Longsword perished. But whilst the French prince lost his life when trying to swim his horse across a river, after ignominiously turning tail,³⁰⁸ the English knight fell fighting valiantly with his face to the overwhelming foe.

The chronicles which record the events that marked the closing years of the thirteenth century supply a grim illustration of the ignominious treatment which their reputation as "tailards" sometimes brought upon the English. The war which broke out about this time between Edward I and Philip IV of France had for its cause, or, perhaps more correctly, for its pretext, one of the brawls which frequently arose when the sailors of the two countries met in the ports on either side of the Channel. Whether rightly or wrongly, the Frenchmen represented the English as the aggressors. They brought the matter under the notice of their own king, and represented it as an insult to him and to the whole nation that they should have been so wantonly ill-used by the "tailards". In the reprisals which followed, Philip's brother, Charles, took a conspicuous part. Having a previous and personal grievance against the English, he vented his spite even on unoffending pilgrims and students. He hanged several of the poor wretches who fell into his hands; and, adding insult to injury, strung up dogs side by side with them, to intimate, says the Chronicle of Lanercost, the resemblance which he thought to exist between the two, or, as another record even more plainly puts it, to show that he made no difference between a dog and an Englishman. Amongst the State Papers relative to the history of Edward I, there is a document which very strikingly confirms the truth of this barbarous incident. It consists of a long roll containing an account of the various outrages committed by the French on English mariners and on inhabitants of the Cinque Ports. One of the charges brought against the Norman seamen is illustrated in the margin by a contemporaneous sketch representing a row of Englishmen hanging up, with a dog between each two.³⁰⁹

It is suggestive of the annoyance which the English felt at their opprobrious nickname that, when we find their writers noticing it, it is almost invariably under provocation and in a tone of indignant protest. One noteworthy exception to this is to be met with in a curious, half-literary, half-historical production, attributed to John of Bridlington. It is a political retrospect of the reign of Edward III, and consists of a supposed ancient text, in Latin verse, with a recent commentary on it. The poem itself purports to be a prophecy, whilst the notes indicate in what manner the predictions were fulfilled. As the leading event for the year 1356, the date of the battle of Poitiers, it is foretold that,

 
"The four cockrels shall learn what defeat is, that day
When the French meet the English in battle array,
And the big-buttocked bullies are shamefully routed
By the men whom as 'tailards' their ribaldry flouted".³¹⁰
 

The imaginary scholiast explains the meaning of this to be, that the brood of the Gallic cock, or, in other words, the French, will be vanquished by the English, whom they jeeringly call "tailards"; that the appellation which is here applied to them and which has been somewhat euphemistically translated by "big-buttocked", is intended as a set-off against the ignominious term by which they commonly designate the English; and that the four cockrels especially referred to, are the king and his three sons. "And, indeed, these four," it is added, "were actually vanquished in that battle, the King himself being captured with one of his sons, whilst the other two fled from the field."³¹¹

After Poitiers, the invasion of France by Henry V is chronologically the next important event in the long medieval struggle between England and France. The initial success of the English, whilst embittering the animosity of their enemies, inspired a restraining respect; and there is an expression of those mingled feelings of aversion and of fear in the lines which a poetaster of the day addressed to the invaders, partly as a reproach, partly as an appeal:

 
"Perfidious race that perjured England breeds,
Whose evil nature shows in all your deeds,
Why must you still, with baneful purpose, seek
Your spite on righteous Frenchmen thus to wreak?
Christ's servants they, and constant to the faith
Which twice from you has suffered wanton scathe;
Your words are fair, but yet in all you do,
The crooked paths of falsehood you pursue;
Cut off that poisonous tail you long have worn,
A byword to the nations, and their scorn!
For thee, their king, be not my warning vain,
And, in thy mem'ry let this truth remain:
That God who willed thou shouldst a 'tailard' be
Has not denied his hallowing grace to thee."³¹²
 

But the fortune of war began to turn against the English on the death of Henry V in 1422; and the exultation caused by that event is voiced by Olivier Basselin, in one of his popular poems: —

 
"The King who sat upon the English throne
The crown of France claimed also for his own;
He strove to drive as outcasts from their land
The men that dared to stem the invading tide;
But, when death dashed the sceptre from his hand,
The alien host was scattered far and wide,
And France is now from English 'tailards' freed;
May curses light on all the recreant breed!"³¹³
 

A few years later, possibly about 1430, a popular ballade, in which an unknown writer celebrated the exploits of Jeanne d'Arc, opened with a repetition of the old insult: —

 
"Back, English 'tailards', back!"³¹⁴
 

And Enguerrand de Monstrelet, the Burgundian chronicler of the events that marked the latter half of the Hundred Years' War, records another historical occasion on which the French gave utterance to their triumph in the traditional gibe at the alleged monstrosity of their old enemies. In his account of the evacuation of Paris, in 1436, he relates that, as the English retired from the city which they had held for sixteen years, the inhabitants hooted them with great cries of "Tails!"³¹⁵

Coming down to the sixteenth century, we find that, in the early years of it, when hostilities broke out between Louis XII and Henry VIII, the old insult fell readily from the pen of the French versifiers who found subjects for their rhymes in the military incidents of the time. Thus, in the Dépucellage de la ville de Tournay, the town, referring to its ill-advised refusal of help when the English laid siege to it, is made to say: —

 
"To guard my ramparts from the foe's attack
A ready offer from the King was brought;
But, I refused, and sent the answer back:
'With men for watch and ward, no means I lack
To bring the "tailards'" enterprise to nought'".³¹⁶
 

But pride went before a fall. Tournay was occupied by the English in 1513.

In Anatole de Montaiglon's collection of fifteenth and sixteenth century verse, there is a poem which bears the title of Courroux de la Mort contre les Anglois, and which is in substance a bitter invective against the English generally. It is undated; but an allusion to the porcupine, the well-known emblem of Louis XII, points to its having also been written at this same period. In an apostrophe, the poet promises his countrymen an easy victory over the English: —

 
"In war your arms will speedily prevail
Against your foe, the King 'that wears a tail'".³¹⁷
 

The fight of Guinegate, commonly known as the battle of the Spurs, can hardly have been looked upon by him as a fulfilment of his prophecy. It may rather, if that were still possible, have increased the animosity which inspired the two scurrilous lines in which he strung together as many opprobrious epithets as the measure of his verse would admit, and which duly included the traditional slander, linked, in this instance, with the equally popular nickname of "godon", supposed to have originated in the frequent and profane use which the English made of God's name: —

 
"Ye noisome, greedy, fetid braggarts, go!
Ye 'tailard' godons, rid me of your sight!"³¹⁸
 

So far, the use of the abusive term "tailard", in French coué and in Latin caudatus, has been traced in immediate connection with events that brought the English into direct conflict with their enemies. There are not wanting instances, however, to show that no special provocation was required, and that from century to century it currently served the purpose of those whom national antipathy prompted to revile the English, or to hold them up to ridicule. To begin with Eustache Deschamps, the most prolific and versatile versifier of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries, we find him giving Englishmen and their tails a conspicuous place in his satirical verses. In a poem of which only a fragment remains, he describes how

 
"They swagger grandly down the street,
An awsome sight to all they meet";
 

but how, in order not to mar the effect of the imposing appearance which they assume,

 
"Between their legs they hide with care
The tail which rumour says they wear".³¹⁹
 

The Englishmen's tails also supply the subject of a rondeau in which Deschamps mockingly compares the strength of the French with that of the English, ironically proclaiming the superiority of the latter as proved by the greater mass of flesh they have to carry, and the additional appendage they are obliged to drag about with them: —

 
The English are more stout, 'tis clear,
Than any Frenchman you can meet.
 
 
Slight burdens only Frenchmen bear;
The English are more stout, 'tis clear.
 
 
Two butts they carry everywhere,
And eke a tail, so trig and neat,
The English are more stout, 'tis clear,
Than any Frenchman you can meet.³²⁰
 

In addition to this, Deschamps has a satirical ballade, in which he again drags in the English by the tail, professing concern for the inconvenience which it must cause them, and earnestly advising them to hold it up. "Billy", the predecessor of John Bull, as a typical Englishman, opens the poem with a gibe at the "French dogs", who "do nothing but drink wine". "Frenchy" does not deny the soft impeachment, but retorts that he considers it better to indulge in the juice of the grape than to swill beer. Then, by an abrupt transition and, if with rhyme, without any special reason, he compares red-haired Englishmen to mastiffs. On the strength of that canine similitude, he impresses upon them the necessity for holding up their tails. He commiserates them on the additional burden which they have to carry, though not endowed with the physical vigour of Jacques Thommelin, the strong man of the day. He warns them against walking abroad in dirty weather; and if, in spite of the rain, they must take their corn to the mill or gather grapes in the vineyard, he bids them imitate their four-footed neighbours the dogs, and hold up their tails to prevent their trailing in the mud. The satire is not keen, nor is the humour brilliant; and the whole point lies in the rather scurrilous than apt refrain: —

BALLADE

(Sur les Anglais)

 
"Franche dogue," dist un Anglois,
"Vous ne faites que boire vin."
"Si faisons bien," dist le François,
"Mais vous buvez le henequin;
Roux estes com pel de mastin,
Vuillequot, de moy aprenez,
Quant vous yrez par le chemin:
Levez vostre queue, levez!
 
 
Vous n'estes pas de membres fais
Si comme est Jaques Thommelin
Qui porte si merveilleus fais
Que vous n'y pourriez mettre fin:
Ce sont deux tonneaulx de sapin,
C'est voir, et la queue delez.
Advisez-vous, dit Franchequin;
Levez vostre queue, levez!
 
 
N'alez a piet, par le temps frais,
Porter vostre blé au moulin;
S'il pluet, troussez vo queue prés,
Autel facent vostre voisin;
Et si vous pinciez le raisin,
Afin que vous ne vous crotez,
Soit en France ou en Limosin,
Levez vostre queue, levez!"³²¹
 

Another ballade records an incident which is supposed to have happened in Calais. In company with Granson, a mercenary captain in English pay, but without the necessary safe-conduct, the poet entered the town, which was then in possession of the English. He was at once pulled up by two men-at-arms who addressed him in language of which he quotes such scraps as "dogue" and "goday", "ride" and "commidre". He, on his side, intimated his recognition of their nationality by exclaiming: "Oh yes! I see your tail!" Whilst Granson, who had led him into the trap, made off laughing and calling out that he had no wish to stand surety for him, Deschamps was told that he would be kept in durance, an announcement which again drew from him the taunt, "Oil, je voy vo queue!" Though confessedly blue with fright, he nevertheless summoned up enough courage to make a dash for liberty. Digging his heels vigorously into his cob, he made it rear with a suddenness that sent his captors sprawling; and whilst they lay helplessly on the ground, he hastily betook himself out of their reach, uttering the inevitable refrain: —

BALLADE

(Récit d'une Aventure à Calais)

 
Je fu l'autrier trop mal venuz
Quant j'alay pour veir Calays;
J'entray dedenz comme cornuz,
Sanz congié; lors vint deux Anglois,
Granson devant et moy aprés,
Qui me prindrent parmi la bride:
L'un me dist: "dogue", l'autre: "ride";
Lors me devint la coulour bleue:
"Goday", fait l'un, l'autre: "commidre".
Lors dis: "Oil, je voy vo queue."
 
 
Pour mal content s'en est tenuz
L'un d'eulx, qui estoit le plus lays,
Et dist: "Vous seres retenuz
Prinsonnier, vous estes forfais."
Mais Granson s'en aloit adés
Qui en riant faisait la vuide:
A eulx m'avoit trahi, ce cuide,
En anglois dist: "Pas ne l'adveue."
Passer me font de Dieu l'espite;
Lors dis: "Oil, je voy vo queue."
 
 
Puis ay mes talons estenduz
De mon roucin, le serray prés,
Lors sault, si furent espanduz;
Delez Granson fut mes retrais
Là ne me vault treves ne pais,
De paour la face me ride,
De tel amour ma mort me cuide;
Au derrain leur dist: "Je l'adveue."
"Chien, faisoit l'un, vez vous vo guide?"
Lors dis: "Oil, je voy vo queue!"³²²
 

Another writer of the same period, Olivier Basselin, refers to the Englishmen's tails in a satirical poem, in which he alleges this physical deformity as his reason for not wishing to live in their country: —

 
"Do you think it's a joke that I never would dwell
'Mongst the English, as oft I declare?
Nay, believe me, my friend, 'tis the truth that I tell,
For I hate the long tails that they wear."³²³
 

In one of his minor poems, Jean Molinet, part-author of the Roman de la Rose, who also belongs to the fifteenth century, humorously goes one step further than his fellow satirists, and gives even animals of English race a share in the distinctive peculiarity which birth in England entailed on the human Islanders. Of a certain tom-cat he says: —

 
"This Cat for his mother had Cathau the Blue,
To Calais he does not belong;
There's something about him of English breed, too,
And that's why his tail is so long."³²⁴
 

About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Crétin, a Norman poet, combines encouragement of the French with the usual abuse of the English: —

 
"Praise shall reward the doughty deeds you do,
And store of crowns, and golden angels, too;
And, in the ransom of the 'long-tailed' crew,
Their flesh and bone shall be as gold to you."³²⁵
 

As late as the seventeenth century, an echo of the gibe may still be heard. Larivey, in one of his comedies, Les Tromperies, makes a swaggering captain boast of the reputation which he has acquired by valiantly charging the English "tailards" when they attempted to land at Dieppe.³²⁶ Still nearer our own day, Saint-Amant, who, indeed, is so modern that he was one of the original members of the French Academy and figures in Boileau's satires, has a reference to the English longtails in his Rome Ridicule. He incidentally claims for the French the strange merit of having rid their country of the goitre and of the king's evil by making carrion of the English invaders: —

 
"The goitre now we never see,
And cruels, too, have ceased to be,
E'er since we slew our 'tailard' foes
And made them food to gorge the crows".³²⁷
 

By this time, however, the tradition had ceased to be popular; for in a note on this passage, Saint-Amant's contemporary, Conrart, thought it necessary to give an explanation of the epithet "quouez". According to him, it was justified by the fact that, in the case of the majority of Englishmen, the end of the os sacrum, called coccyx, actually protrudes and forms a tail!³²⁸

But, even yet, the old cry has not wholly died out. In the Island of Guernsey, that genuine bit of Normandy, where it was once so frequently heard, it is perpetuated by the country children. They have a custom of slyly throwing at passers-by a hairy, clinging weed, which grows abundantly by the wayside. If any of it catches on to the victims of their childish trick, these are made aware of it by hearing themselves jeered at with cries of "la Coue!" The words are the very same as those recorded by Monstrelet; and this identity seems to justify the belief that they are a survival of the medieval scoff.