SCENE VI.

CHORUS.

1. _Alecto, rising from the lakes_ _Of nights sad empery_,[337] _With knotty bunch of curled snakes_ _Doth lash fair Brittany._

2. _More ghastly monster did not spring_ _From the Hibernian flood:_ _With which Morvidus_[338] _combating,_ _Of foe became his food._

3. _Shall no more shepherds in the shade_ _Sit whistling without care?_ _Shall never spear be made a spade,_ _And sword a ploughing-share?_

4. _Grant, heaven, at last that music loud_ _Of bloody Mars be still:_ _That Britain's virgins in a crowd_ _With hymns the sky may fill!_

_2d Song._

_Nor is Landora's loss_ _The least part of our mournful muse:_ _Jove, Juno for to cross,_ _This Trojan dame for bride did choose._

_Where she doth shine_ _'Bove Guendoline_,[339] _The amazon of her days:_ _And Mercia wise_ _Law to devise._ _O, sound Landora's praise._

_There doth she shine above,_ _Clear as great Delia's horned bow,_ _Bright as the queen of love,_ _To shoot down gentle beams below._ _Sabrina, dare_ _Not to compare_ _With her most splendent rays:_ _A ring the sky_ _A gem her eye._ _O, sound Landora's praise._

FOOTNOTES:

[325] [A sort of rural dance. See a long note in Nares' "Glossary," 1859, and Halliwell's Dictionary, _v._ Haydigee.]

[326] [This is the Scottish song which has led to the unfortunate conjecture that the author was a native of Scotland.]

[327] _i.e._, Octaves, a musical term.

[328] _i.e._, Low as a cow does. The word frequently occurs in Roman poetry. So in Virgil's third Georgic--

"Et vox assensu nemorum ingeminata remugit."

--_Steevens._

[329] _Mandubratius_, Mr Camden observes, is by Eutropius, Bede, and the more modern writers called _Androgeus_, which in the British language signifies _vir malus_, a bad man; a name of infamy fixed on him for having been the first who betrayed his country.--Camden's "Britannia," ii. 327, edit. 1772; Baxter's "Glossary" in _voce_.

[330] _i.e._, Spoiled, rendered unserviceable. See Cotgrave in _voce_ Desbaucher.--_Steevens._

[331] Hercules and Alexander.--_Steevens._

[332] Hannibal.--_Steevens._

[333] Cacus stole the oxen of Hercules, and, that which way they went might not be discovered, drew them backwards into his den.--_Steevens._

[334] See Cæsar's "Commentaries," bk. v. s. 20, 21. The _Trinobantes_ were those who inhabited Middlesex and Essex. The _Cenimagnians_, says Camden, were the same with the Iceni, whose province contained Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire. _Segontiaks_, he thinks, were originally the Belgæ, and places them in the hundred of Holshot, in Hampshire; the _Ancalites_ he calls those who inhabit the hundred of Henley, in Oxfordshire; the _Bybrocks_, that of Bray, in Berkshire; and the _Cassians_ the people of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Herefordshire, where the name is still preserved in the hundred of Casbow.

[335]

"_Versis_ lugeret Græcia _fatis_."

--_Steevens._

[336] Terms of heraldry, signifying _green_ and _red_.

[337] [Dominion.]

[338] A tyrant who lost his life in encountering a monster that destroyed great numbers of people on the Irish coast. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, bk. iii. c. 15. The 4o reads _Morindus_.