THE 
In English literature the earliest known use of the 
word “gallop” occurs in an anonymous manuscript of 
the fifteenth century—“ King Alisaunder ”—deposited in 
the Bodleian Library— 
“ Knyghtis wollith on huntyng ride; 
The deor galopith by wodis side. 
He that can his time abyde, 
At his wille him schal bytyde.” 
It is singular that this primitive use of the word 
should refer to the r£> 4 ?-gallop of the deer. 
Gower, in “ Confessio Amantis,” has— 
‘•'This knight after the kynges wille 
With spore made his hors to gone, 
And to the toune he came anone.” 
In “ Froissart's Cronycle,” translated by Berners, 
fifteenth-sixteenth century, we find— 
“ Stydl he goloped forth right, tyll he came into Arthoyes.” 
Spenser, in the “ Faerie Ouene,” used “ prick ” and 
“ gallop ” indifferently— 
“ So as they traveild, lo ! they gan espy 
An armed knight towards them gallop fast.” 
“. . . And as they forward went, 
They spied a knight faire pricking on the plaine.” 
Sir Philip Sidney, in “Arcadia, 1 '' uses “gallop” exclu¬ 
sively as indicative of speed : “ .Seeing such streams of 
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blood, as threatened a drowning life, we galloped toward 
them to part them.” 
Shakespeare repeatedly uses “gallop” and "galloping.” 
In Macbeth , iv. 1, for example— 
“ I did hear 
The galloping of horse : who was’t came by ? ” 
and frequently as a metaphor, as in Titus Andr onicus, ii. i — 
“ As when the sun salutes the morn, 
And, having gilt the ocean with its beams, 
Gallops the zodiac in its glistening coach, 
And overlooks the highest peering hills.” 
Among other words used by Shakespeare to denote the 
extreme speed of an animal are, “runs,” “spurs,” “spur- 
post,” “high-speed,” “skirre,” “helter-skelter,” “flying,” 
etc. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, in “ Knight of the Burning 
Pestle,”’ use “galloped amain.” 
In “Don Quixote,” Part II. xxi., Cervantes, according 
to Skelton, speaks of “large carreere.” 
Dryden, in “ Palamon and Arcite”— 
“ . . . spurred his fiery steed 
With goring rowels to provoke his speed.” 
Butler, “ Hudibras,” Part I. canto iii.— 
“. . . then ply’d 
With iron heel his courser’s side, 
Conveying sympathetic speed 
From heel of Knight to heel of steed.” 
