Ivanhoe

CHAPTER XXI

1 (p. 205) epigraph: The lines are from Baillie’s Orra (act 3, scene 2).

2 (p. 209) Tosti … the tale: Tosti was King Harold II’s disgruntled brother who, with encouragement from William of Normandy, allied himself to an invading Norwegian force and launched an attack on the King’s forces at Stamford Bridge near York in September 1066. The Norwegians were defeated, and Tosti was killed. Harold was celebrating the victory when word came of the Norman invasion in the south. Harold immediately marched his army to meet William but was defeated and shot dead with an arrow in the eye on October 14 at the Battle of Hastings.

3 (p. 210) the bloody streams of the Derwent: [Author’s note] Battle of Stamford. A great topographical blunder occurred here in former editions. The bloody battle alluded to in the text, fought and won by King Harold, over his brother the rebellious Tosti, and an auxiliary force of Danes or Norsemen, was said, in the text and a corresponding note, to have taken place at Stamford, in Leicestershire [Lincolnshire], and upon the river Welland. This is a mistake into which the Author has been led by trusting to his memory, and so confounding two places of the same name. The Stamford, Strangford, or Staneford at which the battle really was fought is a ford upon the river Derwent, at the distance of about seven [nine] miles from York, and situated in that large and opulent county. A long wooden bridge over the Derwent, the site of which, with one remaining buttress, is still shown to the curious traveller, was furiously contested. One Norwegian long defended it by his single arm, and was at length pierced with a spear thrust through the planks of the bridge from a boat beneath.

The neighbourhood of Stamford, on the Derwent, contains some memorials of the battle. Horse-shoes, swords, and the heads of halberds, or bills, are often found there; one place is called the “Danes’ well,” another the “Battle flats.” From a tradition that the weapon with which the Norwegian champion was slain resembled a pear, or, as others say, that the trough or boat in which the soldier floated under the bridge to strike the blow had such a shape, the country people usually begin a great market which is held at Stamford with an entertainment called the Pear-pie feast, which, after all, may be a corruption of the Spear-pie feast. For more particulars, Drake’s History of York may be referred to. The Author’s mistake was pointed out to him, in the most obliging manner, by Robert Belt, Esq., of Bossal House. The battle was fought in 1066.

4 (p. 213) the destined knight: Possibly a reference to a scene in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (22.18-23) where Astolfo blows his horn to warn the inhabitants of an enchanted castle, which then disappears into mist.