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io8 Further Essays on Border Ballads
There remains a slight, yet, as it proves, a by no means whimsical
problem of date and of the identity of the * '
most glorious King of Sicily
and the Pope, those high historic personages so strangely associated in the
prescription for the confection of this momentous pill. The king can
hardly have been other than William (son of Roger), King of Sicily from
1154 until 1166, renowned in chronicle (despite
his traditional name of
William the Bad) for many victories over the Saracens, and specially and
personally associated, as Villani and older annalists record, with the great
Pope Alexander III. as his ally from 1161 until 1166, during the struggle
for the papacy and against the Emperor Frederick the schism and strife
which were to drive Barbarossa, in 1177, to that submission to Alexander
at Venice, sometimes reckoned as a second Canossa. In 1161, when the
great contest had just begun, and when Pope Alexander, hard pressed, was
seeking refuge in France, it was William of Sicily whose fleet secured his
passage and supplied him with invaluable sea power. Again, in 1165,
when Alexander was returning to France, he betook himself to Sicily and
the protection of William, who not only gave the venerable pontiff stately
welcome at Messina, but sent him costly presents and furnished him with a
noble convoy of galleys
for his return to Rome. Not long afterwards, on
30th April, 1156, William died, bequeathing to his holiness that substantial
proof of friendship, a legacy of 40,000 sterlings. No wonder, therefore,
that he died in good odour with the papal court, and that an old and official
biography, the Vita Alexandra Tertii Papae (first edited by Muratori, and
1
afterwards prefixed to volume CC. of Migne's Patrologia ) speaks of this
king as Gulielmus illustris et gloriosus rex Siciliaey cujus animam Domino
commendamus.
Thus we may with some security conclude that the gloriosissimus rex
Cycllie of the prescription and the gloriosus rex Siciliae of the papal biographer
are one, and that the pills purport to have rendered corporal and spiritual
comfort to King William of
Sicily and Pope Alexander III. Perhaps the
epilogue of history offers dubious, or at least divided, commendation to the
pretensions of the prescription, for although the learned and forceful
Alexander lived to a ripe old age, the pills did not avail to prevent William
of Sicily from dying at
forty-six, of
dysentery.
G. N.
FURTHER ESSAYS ON BORDER BALLADS (S.H.R. vii. 419).
I scarcely think that Sir George Douglas is right in saying that the weight
of metal is with Colonel Elliot in our discussion about Scott and the Border
ballads. Facts have most weight, and in a little forthcoming volume,
Sir Walter Scott and the Border Ballads, I am able to show that the facts
are very imperfectly known to my opponent. He seems to have overlooked
Laidlaw's evidence as to Auld Maitland, and that of Hogg's letter
1
Patrologia, Migne, vol. 200, p. 30. For other references to this King William
see p. 1 8. It is noteworthy that the epithet gloriosus, above applied to William
the Bad, is never given by the papal biographer to his son William the Good,
devotm beati Petrlfiliui rex Sicifiae. He was only a boy of 1 2 when he succeeded
in 1 1 66.