Note 8 — EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I.
Henry Yule translation
Niente ne resta a prender Se no li corpi de li legni: Preixi som senza difender; De bruxar som tute degni! * * * * Como li fom aproximai Queli si levan lantor Como leon descaenai Tuti criando “Alor! Alor!”
This Alor! Alor! (“Up, Boys, and at ’em”), or something similar, appears to have been the usual war-cry of both parties. So a trumpet-like poem of the Troubadour warrior Bertram de Born, whom Dante found in such evil plight below (xxviii. 118 seqq.), in which he sings with extraordinary spirit the joys of war:—
“Ie us dic que tan no m’a sabor Manjars, ni beure, ni dormir, Cum a quant aug cridar, Alor! D’ambas la partz; et aug agnir Cavals voits per l’ombratge....” “I tell you a zest far before Aught of slumber, or drink, or of food, I snatch when the shouts of Alor Ring from both sides: and out of the wood Comes the neighing of steeds dimly seen....”
In a galley fight at Tyre in 1258, according to a Latin narrative, the Genoese shout “Ad arma, ad arma! ad ipsos, ad ipsos!” The cry of the Venetians before engaging the Greeks is represented by Martino da Canale, in his old French, as “or à yaus! or à yaus!” that of the Genoese on another occasion as Aur! Aur! and this last is the shout of the Catalans also in Ramon de Muntaner. (Villemain, Litt. du Moyen Age, i. 99; Archiv. Stor. Ital. viii. 364, 506; Pertz, Script. xviii. 239; Muntaner, 269, 287.) Recently in a Sicilian newspaper, narrating an act of gallant and successful reprisal (only too rare) by country folk on a body of the brigands who are such a scourge to parts of the island, I read that the honest men in charging the villains raised a shout of “Ad iddi! Ad iddi!”