How In Sundry Sorts They Were Shattered
By device of our captains we were better able
to keep our position so that their courage was quailed
when they saw that we were to have the gain of the hill
and they the ground of disadvantage
who fight most commonly afoot,
well furnished with arms, every man his pike,
thrusting with both hands, so nigh shoulder to shoulder
that as easy shall a bare finger pierce between the barbs
of an angry hedgehog as escape the nearness of their points.
Thus we came full in their face from the hillside,
where it was very hot on both sides with pitiful cries,
the day darkening with smoke overhead, arrows flying
so thick and so uncertainly landing that nowhere
was there any surety of escape, the whole extent of the field
terrible confused, quite against nature
with horror to make any man forget conceit for himself.
By this time our forward ranks had gotten the full advantage
of the position so that we encompassed them
as a web to catch a swarm of bees and where for a time
they stood very brave and bragging, shaking their weapons
but when they were once turned it was a wonder to see
how soon and in sundry sorts they were shattered,
letting fall their pikes like a wood of staves,
or rushes in a chamber, so thick in places
as to be unpassable for horse or man, with helmets,
swords, bucklers, daggers, armoured jackets,
and all thing else that either was of any weight
or might be hindrance to their flight.
So began a pitiful sight of the dead corpses
from the fallow fields of Inveresk
well nigh to the gates of Edinburgh itself -
the most so little differing in their apparel
that few of their great men were spared,
without ring or brooch or any semblance of show
to distinguish the gentleman from the lout,
the lackey from the laird -
the bodies scattered in clusters, as widely
as a man might note from a distance
sheep or cattle settling for night in a pasture.
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