'"This man," says Holinshed, "had many good things in him. He was of no great stature, but well set, and mightilie compact. He was a very good wrestler; shot well, both in the long-bow, and also in the cross-bow; he handled his hand-gun and peece very well; he was a very good woodman, and a hardie, and such a one as would not give his head for the polling, or his beard for the washing. He was a companion in any exercise of activitie, and of a courteous and gentle behaviour. He descended of a good honest parentage, being borne at Peneverin, in Cornwall; and yet, in this rebellion, an arch-captain, and a principal doer."--Vol. iv. p. 958, 4to edition. This model of clerical talents had the misfortune to be hanged upon the steeple of his own church.'--SCOTT. 'The reader,' Lockhart adds, 'needs hardly to be reminded of Ivanhoe.' line 349. Cp. Chaucer's friar in Prologue, line 240:-- 'He knew wel the tavernes in every toun,' &c. The character and adventures of Friar John owe something both to the 'Canterbury Tales' and to a remarkable poem, probably Dunbar's, entitled 'The Friars of Berwick.' line 354. St. Bede's day in the Calendar is May 27. See below, line 410. Stanza XXII. line 372. tables, backgammon. line 387. fay = faith, word of honour. See below 454, and cp. Hamlet, ii. 2. 271, 'By my fay, I cannot reason.' Stanza XXIII. line 402. St. James or Santiago of Spain. Cp. 'Piers the Plowman,' i. 48 (with Prof. Skeat's note), Chaucer's Prologue, 465, and Southey's 'Pilgrim to Compostella,' valuable both for its poetic beauty and its ample notes. In regard to the cockleshell, Southey gives some important information in extracts from 'Anales de Galicia,' and he says-- 'For the scallop shows in a coat of arms That of the bearer's line. Some one, in former days, hath been To Santiago's shrine.' line 403. Montserrat, a mountain, with a Benedictine abbey on it, in Catalonia. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood cherish a myth to the effect that the fantastic peaks and gorges of the mountain were formed at the Crucifixion. lines 404-7. Scott annotates as follows:--