It is
strange to find traces of military antiquities in the occupation of
the husbandman, and the sports of children.
[Footnote 94: This sort of bravade seems to have been fashionable in
those times: "Et avec drapeaux, et leurs chaperons, ils torchoient
les murs a l'endroit, ou les pierres venoient frapper."--_Notice des
Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale_.]
The pitch and tar-barrels of Maitland were intended to consume the
formidable machines of the English. Thus, at a fabulous siege of York,
by Sir William Wallace, the same mode of defence is adopted:
The Englishmen, that cruel were and kene,
Keeped their town, and fended there full fast;
Faggots of fire among the host they cast,
Up _pitch and tar_ on feil _sowis_ they lent;
Many were hurt ere they from the walls went;
_Stones on Springalds they did cast out so fast,
And goads of iron made many grome agast_.
Henry the Minstrel's History of Wallace.--B. 8. c. 5.
A more authentic illustration may be derived from Barbour's Account of
the Siege of Berwick, by Edward II., in 1319, when a _sow_ was brought
on to the attack by the English, and burned by the combustibles hurled
down upon it, through the device of John Crab, a Flemish engineer, in
the Scottish service.
And thai, that at the sege lay,
Or it was passyt the fyft day,
Had made thaim syndry apparall,
To gang eft sonys till assaill.
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