“Kyng Richard, oute of hys galye, Caste wylde-fyr into the skye And fyr Gregeys into the see. * * * * * The see brent all off fyr Gregeys” (2627).[107] Historically this passage is probably worthless; but, whether deliberately or by accident, the poet indicates the real distinction between the two fires. It was the sea-fire, the true Greek fire, which was thrown or fell into the sea; while the wild-fire, misnamed “Greek fire” by the Crusaders, was flung “into the sky” to descend on the heads of the enemy. In the preceding pages I have adopted the Crusaders’ nomenclature, because it is now too late to rectify their blunder. During the siege of Stirling Castle, 1304, Edward I. “gave orders for the employment of Greek fire, with which he had probably become acquainted in the East.”[108] It was also made use of by the Flemish engineer, Crab, who took an active part in the defence of Berwick when besieged by Edward II. in 1319:— “And pyk (_pitch_) and ter (_tar_) als haiff thai tane, And lynt (_fat_) and herdes (_refuse of flax_) and brymstane, And dry treyis (_trees or wood_) that wele wald brin (_burn_).”[109] We again made use of Greek fire in the defence of the Castle of Breteuil, and in the attack on the Castle of Romorentin, in 1356;[110] but no record remains of its composition or of the way in which it was projected. It was no doubt similar to Whitehorne’s wild-fire of 1560, given in Table II. As late as 1571 Greek fire was poured down on the heads of the Turks, in the primitive fashion, by the Venetians in the defence of Famagusta.[111] The phrase “Greek fire” never took root in England, where “wild-fire” was early substituted for it. Wild-fire is found in Robert of Gloucester’s “Chronicle,”[112] of the same date as “Richard Coer-de-Lion.” According to the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, an English-Latin dictionary compiled in 1440 by Galfridus, a Dominican of Lynn Episcopi in Norfolk, the phrases “Greek fire” and “wild-fire” were then synonymous; for he gives as the Latin equivalents of the latter—“ignis Pelasgus, vel ignis pelagus, vel ignis Græcus.” Among the ammunition supplied to the troops sent to Scotland under Lord Lennox in 1545, we find “xx tronckes charged with wylde fyer.”[113] Whitehorne gives a plate of these tronckes or trombes, which were hollow wooden cylinders, “as bigge as a man’s thigh and the length of an ell,” filled with the mixture given in Table II. for the sixteenth century. In Phillips’ English Dictionary, 1706, wild-fire is described as (1) “a sort of fire invented by the Grecians about A.C. 777,” and (2) “gunpowder rolled up wet and set on fire.” It is used in the latter sense in “Robinson Crusoe,” published in 1719. Before an attack on the Indians, the sailors “made some wild-fire ... by wetting a little powder in the palms of their hands” (Part ii. chap. 21). The word is only heard now in the phrase “spreads like wildfire.”