The spirit and the allusions of this song shew that it was composed by Leicester's party in the moment of their victory, and not after the reaction which took place against their cause, and it must therefore belong to the thirteenth century. To this period, too, probably belongs a political satire, published by Ritson, and which Campbell thus charac- terises:--'It is a ballad on the execution of the Scottish patriots, Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Frazer. The diction is as barbarous as we should expect from a song of triumph on such a subject. It relates the death and treatment of Wallace very minutely. The circumstance of his being covered with a mock crown of laurel in Westminster Hall, which Stow repeats, is there mentioned, and that of his legs being fastened with iron fetters "_under his horse's wombe_" is told with savage exultation. The piece was probably indited in the very year of the political murders which it celebrates, certainly before 1314, as it mentions the skulking of Robert Bruce, which, after the battle of Bannockburn, must have become a jest out of season.'
Campbell quotes a love-ditty of this period, which is not devoid of merit:--
'For her love I cark and cave, For her love I droop and dare, For her love my bliss is bare, And all I wax wan.
'For her love in sleep I slake,[1] For her love all night I wake, For her love mourning I make More than any man.'
[1] 'In sleep I slake:' am deprived of sleep.
'When the nightingale singës the woods waxen green, Leaf, grass, and blossom springs in Avril I ween, And love is to my heart gone, with one spear so keen, Night and day my blood it drinks, my heart doth me teen.'
About a hundred years after Layamon (in 1280) appeared a poet not dissimilar to him, named Robert of Gloucester. His surname is unknown, and so are the particulars of his history. We know only that he was a monk of Gloucester Abbey, that he lived in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., and that he translated the Legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued the History of England down to the time of Edward I. This work is wonder- fully minute, and, generally speaking, accurate in its topography as well as narrative, and was of service to Selden when he wrote his Notes to Drayton's 'Polyolbion.' It is more valuable in this respect than as a piece of imagination.