et mantle,
With eleven kings beards bordered about,
And there is room lefte yet in a kantle,[59]
For thine to stande, to make the twelfth out:
This must be done, be thou never so stout;
This must be done, I tell thee no fable,
Maugre the teethe of all thy rounde table.

"When this mortal message from his mouthe past,
Great was the noyse bothe in hall and in bower,
The king fum'd; the queen screecht; ladies were aghast;
Princes puff'd; barons blustered; lords began lower;
Knights stormed; squires startled, like steeds in a stower;
Pages and yeomen yell'd out in the hall;
Then in came Sir Kay, the king's seneschal.

"Silence, my soveraignes, quoth this courteous knight,
And in that stound the stowre began still:
Then the dwarfe's dinner full deerely was dight;
Of wine and wassel he had his wille:
And when he had eaten and drunken his fill,
An hundred pieces of fine coyned gold
Were given this dwarfe for his message bold.

"But say to Sir Ryence, thou dwarfe, quoth the king,
That for his bold message I do him defye;
And shortly with basins and pans will him ring
Out of North Gales; where he and I
With swords, and not razors, quickly shall trye
Whether he or King Arthur will prove the best barbor:
And therewith he shook his good sword Excalabor."

Drayton thus alludes to the same circumstance:--

"Then told they, how himselfe great Arthur did advance,
To meet (with his Allies) that puissant force in France,
By Lucius thither led; those Armies that while ere
Affrighted all the world, by him strooke dead with feare:
Th' report of his great Acts that over Europe ran,
In that most famous field he with the Emperor wan:
As how great Rython's selfe hee slew in his repaire,
Who ravisht Howell's Neece, young Helena the faire;
And for a trophy brought the Giant's coat away,
Made of the beards of kings."[60]----

And Spenser is too uncourteous in his adoption of the incident; for he
not only levels tolls on the gentlemen's beards, but even on the
flowing and golden locks of the gentle sex:--

"Not farre from hence, upon yond rocky hill,
Hard by a streight there stands a castle strong,
Which doth observe a custom lewd and ill,
And it hath long mayntaind with mighty wrong:
For may no knight nor lady passe along
That way,