Vino desto que las mesmas fiestas y manera del juego se nombraron Calpes: dado que para conmigo bastara saber la victoria deste juego consistir en ligereza de pies, y por eso solo deberse llamar Calopes a Calpe, sin anadir lo que hablaban a las yeguas, pues aquello primero comprehende bastantemente la razon deste vocablo. Pero si todavia fue cierto que les decian aquellas palabras quando corrian sus parejas, ninguna cosa daña dexarlas aquí puestas._”—Coronica General de Espana, c. 38. * * * * * _Famine and Pestilence had wasted them._—I. p. 3. In the reign of Egica, Witiza’s father,—_plaga inguinalis immisericorditer illabitur_. (Isid. Pacensis.) And for two years before the Moorish invasion,—_habia habido continua hambre y pestilencia en Espana, con que se habian debilitado mucho los cuerpos, sin lo que el ocio las habia enflaquecido_.—Morales, 12. 69. 5. St. Isidore, in his History of the Goths, distinctly describes the Northern Lights among the signs that announced the wars of Attila. “_Multa eodem tempore cœli et terræ signa præcesserunt, quorum prodigiis tam crudele bellum significaretur. Nam, assiduis terræ motibus factis, a parte Orientis Luna fuscata est, a solis occasu stella cometes apparuit, atque ingenti magnitudine aliquandiu fulsit._ Ab aquilonis plaga cœlum rubens, sicut ignis aut sanguis, effectus est, permistis perigneum ruborem lineis clarioribus in speciem hastarum rutilantium deformatis. _Nec mirum, ut in tam ingenti cæsorum strage, divinitus tam multa signorum demonstraretur ostensio._”—España Sagrada, t. vi. 491. * * * * * _And worst of enemies, their Sins were arm’d Against them._—I. p. 3. The following description of the state of the Christian world when the Saracens began their conquests, is taken from a singular manuscript, “wherein the history of the Cruisades and of all the Mahommedan emperors from A. D. 558, to A. D. 1588, is gathered out of the Chronikes of William Archbishop of Tyreus, the protoscribe of Palestine, of Basilius Jhohannes Heraldus, and sundry others, and reduced into a poem epike by Robert Barret, 1610.” The author was an old soldier, whose language is a compound of Josuah Sylvester and King Cambyses, with a strong relish of Ancient Pistol.