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: -
"Le us die que tan no m'a sabor
Manjars, ni beure, ni dormir,
Cum a quant ang 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 a yaus! or a 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!
