Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton; Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton [Editor]: The art of needle-work from the earliest ages: including some notices of the ancient historical tapestries (London: Henry Colburn Publishers, 1841)

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NEEDLEWORK OF ROYAL LADIES.

My youngest son shall here remain
To guard these lonely towers,
And shut the silver bolt that keeps
Sae fast your painted bowers.
“ And first she wet her comely cheeks,
And then her boddice green,
Her silken cords of twisted twist,
Well plett with silver sheen ;
And apron set with mony a dice
Of needlewark sae rare,
Wove by nae hand, as ye may guess,
Save that of Fairly fair.”

But it harmonises better with our ideas of high or
royal life to hear of some trophy for the warrior,
some ornament for the knightly bower, or some de-
corative offering for the church, emanating from the
taper fingers of the courtly fair, than those kirtles
and boddices which, be they ever so magnificent,
seem to appertain more naturally to the “ milli-
ner’s practice.” Therefore, though we give the
gentle Fairly fair all possible praise for notability
in the

£1 Apron set with mony a dice
Of needlework sae rare,”
we certainly look with more regard on such work
as that of the Danish princesses who wrought a
standard with the national device, the Raven,* on it,
* This sacred standard was taken by the Saxons in Devonshire,
in a fortunate onset, in wh ch they slew one of the Sea-kings with
eight hundred of his followers. So superstitious a reverence was
attached to this ensign that its loss is said to have broken the spirit
of even these ruthless plunderers. It was woven by the sisters of
Inguar and Ubba, who divined by it. If the Raven (which was
worked on it) moved briskly in the wind, it was a sign of victory,
but if it drooped and hung heavily, it was supposed to prognosticate
discomfiture