line 288.  With ‘jovial June’ cp.  Gavin Douglas’s ’joyous moneth tyme of June,’ in prologue to the 13th AEneid, ’ekit to Virgill be Maphaeus Vegius,’ and the description of the month in Lyndsay’s ‘Dreme,’ as:—­

     ‘Weill bordourit with dasyis of delyte.’

line 291.  ’I am glad of an opportunity to describe the cry of the deer by another word than braying, although the latter has been sanctified by the use of the Scottish metrical translation of the Psalms.  Bell seems to be an abbreviation of bellow.  This silvan sound conveyed great delight to our ancestors, chiefly, I suppose, from association.  A gentle knight in the reign of Henry VIII, Sir Thomas Wortley, built Wantley Lodge, in Wancliffe Forest, for the pleasure (as an ancient inscription testifies) of “listening to the hart’s bell"’—­Scott.

line 298.  Sauchie-burn, where James iii fell, was fought 18 June, 1488., ‘James iv,’ says Scott, ’after the battle passed to Stirling, and hearing the monks of the chapel-royal deploring the death of his father, he was seized with deep remorse, which manifested itself in severe penances.’  See below, note on V. ix.

line 300.  ’When the King saw his own banner displayed against him, and his son in the faction of his enemies, he lost the little courage he ever possessed, fled out of the field, fell from his horse as it started at a woman and water-pitcher, and was slain, it was not well understood by whom.’—­Scott.

Stanza xvi. line 312.  In the church of St. Michael, adjoining the palace.

line 316.  The earliest known mention of the thistle as the national badge is in the inventory of the effects of James iii, Thistles were inscribed on the coins of the next four reigns, and they were accompanied in the reign of James vi for the first time by the motto Nemo me impune lacessit.  James ii of Great Britain formally inaugurated the Order of the Thistle on 29 May, 1687, but it was not till the reign of Anne, 31 Dec. 1703, that it became a fully defined legal institution.  The Order is also known as the Order of St. Andrew.—­See Chambers’s Encyclopedia.

line 318.  It was natural and fit that Lyndsay should be present.  It is more than likely that he had a leading hand in the enterprise.  As tutor to the young Prince, it had been a recognised part of his duty to amuse him by various disguises; and he was likewise the first Scottish poet with an adequate dramatic sense.

line 336.  See St. John xix. 25-27.

Stanza xvii. line 350.  The special reference here is to the influence of Lady Heron.  See above, I. xvi. 265, and below, V. x. 261.

Stanza xix.  The skilful descriptive touches of this stanza are noteworthy.  Cp. opening passages of Coleridge’s ‘Christabel,’ especially the seven lines beginning, ’Is the night chilly and dark?’

Stanza xxi. line 440.  Grimly is not unknown as a poetical adj.  ‘Margaret’s grimly ghost,’ in Beaumont and FIetcher’s ’Knight of the Burning Pestle,’ ii. i, is a familiar example.  See above, p. 194, line 25, ‘grimly voice.’  For ‘ghast’ as an adj., cp.  Keats’s ’Otho the Great,’ V. v. 11, ‘How ghast a train!’