Archaic England : $b an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitionsBayley, Harold
History
Archaic England : $b an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions
Bayley, Harold
Archaeology; England -- Antiquities
In London, _tempus_ Edward II., a military ride and tournament used to
be performed by the young men of the royal household on every Sunday
during Lent.[102] This also so-called Troy game had obviously some
relation to the ancient Trojan custom thus described by Virgil:--
In equal bands the triple troops divide,
Then turn, and rallying, with spears bent low,
Charge at the call. Now back again they ride,
Wheel round, and weave new courses to and fro,
In armed similitude of martial show,
Circling and intercircling. Now in flight
They bare their backs, now turning, foe to foe,
Level their lances to the charge, now plight
The truce, and side by side in friendly league unite.
E'en as in Crete the Labyrinth of old
Between blind walls its secret hid from view,
With wildering ways and many a winding fold,
Wherein the wanderer, if the tale be true,
Roamed unreturning, cheated of the clue;
Such tangles weave the Teucrians, as they feign
Fighting, or flying, and the game renew;
So dolphins, sporting on the watery plane,
Cleave the Carpathian waves and distant Libya's main.
These feats Ascanius to his people showed,
When girdling Alba Longa; there with joy
The ancient Latins in the pastime rode,
Wherein the princely Dardan, as a boy,
Was wont his Trojan comrades to employ.
To Alban children from their sires it came,
And mighty Rome took up the "game of Troy,"
And called the players "Trojans," and the name
Lives on, as sons renew the hereditary game.[103]
In Welsh _tru_ means a twisting or turning, and this root is at the base
of _tourney_ and _tournament_. One might account for the courtly jousts
of the English Court by the erudition and enterprise of scholars and
courtiers, but when we find turf Troy Towns being dug by the illiterate
Welsh shepherd and a Troy game being played by the uneducated peasant,
the question naturally arises, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?"
In the Scilly Islands there is a Troy Town picked out in stones which
the natives scrupulously restore and maintain: in the words of Miss
Courtney, "All intricate places in Cornwall are so denominated, and I
have even heard nurses say to children, when they were surrounded by a
litter of toys, that they looked as if they were in Troy Town".[104]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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