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"Good sir, an' it be thy will,
Give me leave to drink my fill,
For sweet St. Charity,
And I will do thee the same deed
Another time if thou have need,
I tell thee certainly."
St. George, like Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
traverses an Enchanted Vale, and hears "dismal croakings of night
ravens, hissing of serpents, bellowing of bulls, and roaring of
monsters."[3] St. Andrew traverses a land of continual darkness, the
Vale of Walking Spirits, amid similar sounds of terror, much as the
pilgrims of the Second Part of Bunyan's story traverse the Enchanted
Ground. And as these pilgrims found deadly arbours in that land,
tempting them to repose which must end in death, so St. David was
tempted in an Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, "when his
eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned
in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself
from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament."
_Bevis of Southampton_ has many points in common with St. George in the
_Seven Champions_. The description of the giant, the escape of Bevis
from his dungeon, and a number of other passages show how much was
common stock for the writers of these earlier romances. There is the
same rough humour in it from first to last, and the wonderful swing and
stride of vigorous rhyming metre. Of the humour, one quotation will be
enough for an example. It is when they are proposing to baptize the
monstrous giant at Cologne, whom Bevis had first conquered and then
engaged as his body-servant. At the christening of Josian, wife of
Bevis, the Bishop sees the giant.
"'What is,' sayde he, 'this bad vysage?'
'Sir,' sayde Bevys, 'he is my page--
I pray you crysten hym also,
Thoughe he be bothe black and blo!'
The Bysshop crystened Josian,
That was as white as any swan;
For Ascaparde was made a tonne,
And whan he shulde therein be done,
He lept out upon the brenche
And sayde: 'Churle, wylt thou me drenche?
The devyl of hel mot fetche the
I am to moche crystened to be!'
The folke had gode game and laughe,
But the Bysshop was wrothe ynoughe."
There is a curious passage which is almost exactly parallel to the
account of the fight with Apollyon in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and
which was doubtless in Bunyan's mind when he wrote that admirable battle
sketch--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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