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SONGS AND BALLADS |
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the sea there is no recoiling nor fleeing ; there is no remedy but to fight and to abide fortune, and every, man to show his prowess' (Chapter L.) There was no pity for the defeated, and prisoners were thrown overboard. One ballad exultantly ' records that ' the caityffs come out of France were taught to swim,' the other, that the Spaniards 'sail in the sea-ground fishes to feed.' A similar spirit5 reappears in some of the seventeenth century ballads.
The fifteenth century is represented in this collection by a nautical ballad describing a pilgrimage to St. James at Compostella, which was probably written during the reign of Henry VI. Its interest lies in its description of life on board ship, and in the number of naval terms and phrases it preserves. 'The song,' says Sir Cyprian Bridge, ' is most likely the composition of a sailor on board what was certainly a merchant vessel, and one of its subjects—for it portrays seamen's life as well-is that which always was, and perhaps is, a matter of unfailing interest and amusement to sailors, viz., the miseries of landsmen afloat in rough weather' (Stone, p. 196). The period furnished few warlike exploits to celebrate, but a fight off Harfleur in August 1416, in which the Duke of Bedford defeated the Genoese caracks in the service of France, was sufficiently famous to be commemorated at length in Hardyng's rhymed Chronicle, and to be recorded in the verse tract called the Libel of English Policy. Both passages are reprinted by Sir Harris Nicholas {History of the Royal Navy, ii. 421, 424). The Libel of English Policy, written during the reign of Henry VI., laments the decay of the navy, and the neglect to guard the seas. Hakluyt, who reprinted the poem in his Voyages, described it as ' exhorting all England to keep the |
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