“Good Father Aymer,” said the Saxon, “be it known to you, I care not for those oversea refinements, without which I can well enough take my pleasure in the woods. I can wind my horn, though I call not the blast either a recheate or a morte⁠—I can cheer my dogs on the prey, and I can flay and quarter the animal when it is brought down, without using the newfangled jargon of curee, arbor, nombles, and all the babble of the fabulous Sir Tristrem.” 13

“The French ,” said the Templar, raising his voice with the presumptuous and authoritative tone which he used upon all occasions, “is not only the natural language of the chase, but that of love and of war, in which ladies should be won and enemies defied.”

“Pledge me in a cup of wine, Sir Templar,” said Cedric, “and fill another to the Abbot, while I look back some thirty years to tell you another tale. As Cedric the Saxon then was, his plain English tale needed no garnish from French troubadours, when it was told in the ear of beauty; and the field of Northallerton , upon the day of the Holy Standard, could tell whether the Saxon war-cry was not heard as far within the ranks of the Scottish host as the cri de guerre