Naval architecture also appears to have met with due encouragement; for we find, in the year 1249, Hugh de Chantillon, Earl of St Paul and de Blois, a powerful vassal of Louis IX., joined the crusaders under that monarch at Cyprus, with fifty knights carrying banners, besides a numerous body of Flemings, on board of a vessel of great strength and dimensions, which, according to Matthew Paris,[22] (who calls it a marvellous vessel), was built at Inverness, in the Murray Firth. On this occasion Macpherson remarks,[23] “That a French nobleman should apply to the carpenters of Inverness for a ship, is a curious circumstance; which seems to infer, that they had acquired such a degree of reputation in their profession, as to be celebrated in foreign countries.” A large vessel was afterwards built for the Venetians at the same place.[24] As the state of literature at this period was nearly on a level all over Britain, the following specimens of the earliest lyrical effusions of the Scottish and English Muse known to exist, may serve the purpose of exciting a more elaborate inquiry. ANCIENT ENGLISH SONG. Summer is come in, Loud sings the cuckoo; Groweth seed, and bloweth meed, And springth woods new, Singth the cuckoo. Ewe bleateth after lamb, Loweth after calf, cow; Bullock starteth, buck verteth, Merry sings the cuckoo, Cuckoo, cuckoo, Well singth the cuckoo, May’st thou never cease. ANCIENT SCOTTISH SONG. “Quhen Alysandyr oure Kyng wes dede, That Scotland led in Luwe and Le, Away wes Sons of Ale and Brede, Of Wyne and Wax, of Gamyn and Gle: Oure Gold wes changyd in-to Lede. Cryst, borne in-to Virgynytè, Succour Scotland and remede, That Stad is in perplexytè.”