320 



Notes on Sport and Travel " 



bearing the honoured name of Andrea Ferrara, wh.ch 

 were baser than the basest Provant rapier ; .nay some 

 even bearing the similitude of the old English Fox- 

 mark by the side of this name, a conjunction of signs 

 which could never have occurred without knavery. 



But how gat these Andrea Ferrara blades into 

 North Britain?"- I believe somewhat in this wise. 

 In the earlier days of Queen Elizabeth the ordinary 

 weapon of an Englishman, gentle or simple, was a 

 broadsword and target ; towards the end of he 

 reign that honest weapon, which gave much dehght 

 in Une settling of quarrels with but little danger (like 

 our ancient boKing, now scorned by each knavish 

 ,a.vyer magistrate, to the production of much 

 murder and homicide), was replaced, K^^* by *e 

 rapier and dagger, the latter for warding the blow, 

 and afterwards by the deadly thrusting rapier, to the 

 great scath and sorrow of many a gallant gentleman, 

 and many a weeping widow and orphan. The 

 introducer of this Spanish and Papistical tool was as 

 base as it itself was bloody, being none other than 

 Roland Yorke (ill friend to poor George Gascoigne), 

 who, with that other desperate traitor Sir VVilliam 

 Stanley (foul blot on fair name), betrayed and 



1 M, Nasmvtl., of the steam hammer and the moon, tells me that 

 this FOX- mark .L an ancient bntnd for Swedish .,„n of rematUbl. 



"frJoMl^pon of the Highlander was the stahbing dirk, fom a 

 , . y= half Ions There U much reason to suppose that 



r rr :"h the c,':;^*' -^ ">- -~-™^' - -' '-' 



introduction . — Ed. 



