Note 1. “This poem, like the Battle of Brunanburh,” writes Mr. Erskine, in his Minot’s songs, “is remarkable for its choric quality: the voice of the whole people is heard in it. In modern English literature it has hardly a parallel as a national song with the possible exception of some of Campbell’s odes, and Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. Tennyson may have been influenced by Drayton. Their two battle-songs have almost the same narrative method, almost the same rhythm, and exactly the same cadence at the end.” Mr. Oliver Elton, in Michael Drayton, A Critical Study (Ed. 1906.), says of this ode: “It was not many years since the great theatrical success of Henry V.; and the most famous of Drayton’s odes may be taken as a lyrical epilogue, or rather intermezzo, by Shakespeare’s countrymen. It has been so arranged by Mr. Henley in his Lyra Heroica. Usually known as the Ballad of Agincourt, it was first entitled To my Friends the Camber-Britons and their Harp. The old popular ditty, Agincourt, Agincourt, was in the writer’s ears. He liked his poem, if we may judge by his nice and numerous improvements. The earlier version suffers from ungainliness or elliptical grammar; a few remaining traces of them in the later one are the only interruptions to its felicity. There is also a tendency to multiply the spondees, the better to hear the thud of the marching army—left, right. A few lines can show the change:
(1)
1606
Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance
And now to prove our chance
Longer not tarry:
But put unto the main
At Kaux the mouth of Seine
With all his warlike train
Landed King Harry.
1619
Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry:
But putting to the main
At Kaux the mouth of Seine
With all his martial train
Landed King Harry.
(2)
1606
And now preparing were
For the false Frenchmen.
1619
O Lord, how hot they were
On the false Frenchmen.
(3)
1606
When now that noble king
His broadsword brandishing
Into the host did fling
As to o’erwhelm it.
1619
This, while our noble king
His broadsword brandishing
Down the French host did ding
As to o’erwhelm it.
This poem, the fine flower of old patriot lyric, shows a happier and more sensitive use of proper names than the play of Henry V. Shakespeare, in his list of those who fell at Agincourt, uses names for purely memorial reasons, copying Holinshed like an inscription: and ‘Sir Richard Ketley, Davy Gam, esquire,’ is the worst line in his works. ‘Ferrers and Fanhope,’ in the ballad, have a different value to the ear.” The text here used is that of the 1619 version except in two or three instances of single epithets, which, despite Mr. Elton’s opinion, seem the more apt for both sense and rhythm. The Battle of Agincourt was fought October 25th, 1415. A small army of Englishmen, under Henry V., defeated the French sixty thousand strong. “The triumph was more complete,” says Green, “as the odds were even greater than at Creçy. Eleven thousand Frenchmen lay dead on the field, and more than a hundred princes and great lords were among the fallen.” [back]
