eeks, and the
well-chiselled nose, to be traced, perhaps, in the effigy of his father in
Westminster Abbey, and his grandfather in Gloucester Cathedral." The tomb
itself is worthy to support the figure and guard the ashes of the Black
Prince. Carved on its side clearly, that all might read it, is the
inscription which he had himself chosen; it is in Norman French, which was
still the language spoken by the English Court, and in the same spirit
which moved the designer of Archbishop Chichele's tomb to portray the
living man and the mouldering skeleton, this epitaph contrasts the glories
of the Prince's life--his wealth, beauty, and power--with the decay and
corruption of the grave. It is distinctly pagan in thought, and reminds
one strongly of the laments of the dead Homeric heroes as they wail for
the joys of life and strength and lordship. Stanley states that it is
"borrowed, with a few variations, from the anonymous French translation of
the 'Clericalis Disciplina' of Petrus Alphonsus composed between the years
1106 and 1110." But it is strangely un-Christian in sentiment as a few
lines will show--

"Tiel come tu es, je autiel fu, tu seras tiel come je su,
De la mort ne pensay je mie, tant come j'avoy la vie.
En terre avoy grand richesse, dont je y fys grand noblesse,
Terre, mesons, et grand tresor, draps, chivalx, argent et or.
Mesore su je povres et cheitifs, perfond en la terre gys,
Ma grand beaute est tout alee, ma char est tout gastee
Moult est estroite ma meson, en moy ne si verite non,
Et si ore me veissez, je ne quide pas que vous deeisez
Que j'eusse onges hom este, si su je ore de tout changee."

Below this inscription are ranged coats-of-arms, bearing the ostrich
feathers and the motto _Ich Diene_ ("I serve"), which, according to
time-honoured but unauthenticated tradition, the prince won from the blind
King of Bohemia, who was led into the thick of the fighting at Cressy, and
died on the field. Welsh archaeologists, however, maintain that these words
are Celtic, and mean "behold the man;" their theory suggests that this was
the phrase used by Edward I. when he presented his firstborn son to the
Welsh people as their prince, and that the words thus became the motto of
the princes of Wales. This is a rather far-fetched piece of reasoning, and
one would certainly prefer to accept the more picturesque tradition which
connects the phrase with the glories of Cressy. The other