62
PROLOGUE TO THE
of songs, excelled in the tournament and the dance, could write and draw with ease and elegance; and, what is esteemed a principal accomplishment in a squire of high degree, he was worthy to carve at table before his father. Courteous, humble, and dutiful was this fair young man; and withal so devoted to his lady-love, that he would outwatch the doting nightingale.
One other attendant, and no more, had our Knight upon the present occasion; a Yeoman, dressed in a green coat and hood. He had a head like a nut,[1] and a face of the same colour. In his hand he carried a sturdy bow, and at his side under his belt a sheaf of bright sharp arrows, winged with peacock feathers. His arm was defended by a bracer;[2] on one side hung
- ↑ In the original, it is not-hed. This may mean either a 'head like a nut,' as Tyrwhitt has interpreted it, and which seems appropriate to the character of the man described; or knotte-hed, a name given to the knob at the end of a staff, and which term still survives in the north of England.
- ↑ A defence for the arm. 'A bracer,' says Ascham, 'serves two purposes; one, to save the arrow from the string when loosed upon it, and the coat from creasing; and the other, that the string, gliding sharply and quickly off the bracer, may make a sharper shoot.'—He also adds, 'in a bracer three
