My tongue pads slowly under this new language, And starts and stumbles at these uncouth phrases.

They may be great in worth and weight, but hang

Upon the native glibness of my language Like Saul's plate-armor on the shepherd boy, Encumbering and not arming him.

HERE we have one head

J. B.

Upon two bodies-your two-headed bullock
Is but an ass to such a prodigy.
These two have but one meaning, thought, and
counsel;

And when the single noddle has spoke out,
The four legs scrape assent to it.

Old Play.
DEEDS are done on earth
Which have their punishment ere the earth
closes

Upon the perpetrators. Be it the working
Of the remorse-stirred fancy, or the vision,
Distinct and real, of unearthly being,
All ages witness that beside the couch
Of the fell homicide oft stalks the ghost
Of him he slew, and shows the shadowy wound.
Old Play.

AY, this is he who wears the wreath of bays
Wove by Apollo and the Sisters Nine,
Which Jove's dread lightning scathes not. He
hath doft

The cumbrous helm of steel, and flung aside
The yet more galling diadem of gold;
While, with a leafy circlet round his brows,
He reigns the King of Lovers and of Poets.

WANT you a man
Experienced in the world and its affairs?
Here he is for your purpose. - He's a monk.
He hath forsworn the world and all its work -
The rather that he knows it passing well,
'Special the worst of it, for he 's a monk.

TOLL, toll the bell!
Greatness is o'er,
The heart has broke,

Old Play.

Othus.

Old Play.

From Count Robert of Paris

This superb successor Of the earth's mistress, as thou vainly speakest, Stands midst these ages as, on the wide ocean, The last spared fragment of a spacious land, That in some grand and awful ministration Of mighty nature has engulfed been. Doth lift aloft its dark and rocky cliffs O'er the wild waste around, and sadly frowns In lonely majesty.

Constantine Paleologus, Scene 1.

HERE, youth, thy foot unbrace,
Here, youth, thy brow unbraid,
Each tribute that may grace
The threshold here be paid.
Walk with the stealthy pace
Which Nature teachies deer,
When, echoing in the chase,

The hunter's horn they hear.
The Court.

III. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS [These notes, except when enclosed in brackets, are from editions prepared or supervised by Scott.]

Page 5. THE WILD HUNTSMAN.

The tradition upon which it is founded bears, that formerly a Wildgrave, or keeper of a royal forest, named Faulkenburg, was so much addicted to the pleasures of the chase, and other wise so extremely profligate and cruel, that he not only followed this unhallowed amusement on the Sabbath, and other days consecrated to religious duty, but accompanied it with the most unheard-of oppression upon the poor peas ants, who were under his vassalage. When this second Nimrod died, the people adopted a superstition, founded probably on the many va

rious uncouth sounds heard in the depth of a German forest, during the silence of the night. They conceived they still heard the cry of the Wildgrave's hounds; and the well-known cheer of the deceased hunter, the sounds of his horses' feet, and the rustling of the branches before the game, the pack, and the sportsmen, are also distinctly discriminated; but the phantoms are rarely, if ever, visible. Once, as a benighted Chasseur heard this infernal chase pass by him, at the sound of the halloo, with which the Spectre Huntsman cheered his hounds, he could not refrain from crying, Gluck zu Falkenburgh!' (Good sport to ye, Falkenburgh!) ‘Dost thou wish me good sport?' answered a hoarse voice; thou shalt share the game;' and there was thrown at him what seemed to be a huge piece of foul carrion. The daring Chasseur lost two of his best horses soon after, and never perfectly recovered the personal effects of this ghostly greeting. This tale, though told with some variations, is universally believed all over Germany.

The French had a similar tradition concerning an aërial hunter who infested the forest of Fontainebleau. He was sometimes visible; when he appeared as a huntsman, surrounded with dogs, a tall grisly figure. Some account of him may be found in Sully's Memoirs, who says he was called Le Grand Veneur. At one time he chose to hunt so near the palace, that the attendants, and, if I mistake not, Sully himself, came out into the court, supposing it was the sound of the king returning from the chase. This phantom is elsewhere called St. Hubert.

The superstition seems to have been very general, as appears from the following fine poetical description of this phantom chase, as it was heard in the wilds of Ross-shire:

'Ere since of old, the haughty thanes of Ross-
So to the simple swain tradition tells -
Were wont with clans, and ready vassals thronged,
To wake the bounding stag, or guilty wolf,
There oft is heard, at midnight, or at noon,
Beginning faint, but rising still more loud,
And nearer, voice of hunters, and of hounds,
And horns, hoarse winded, blowing far and keen: -
Forthwith the hubbub multiplies; the gale
Labors with wilder shrieks, and rifer din
Of hot pursuit; the broken cry of deer
Mangled by throttling dogs; the shouts of men,
And hoofs, thick beating on the hollow hill.
Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale

Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears
Tingle with inward dread. Aghast, he eyes
The mountain's height, and all the ridges round,
Yet not one trace of living wight discerns,
Nor knows, o'erawed, and trembling as he stands,
To what, or whom, he owes his idle fear,
To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend;
But wonders, and no end of wondering finds.'
Albania-reprinted in Scottish Descriptive Poems,
pp. 167, 168.

A posthumous miracle of Father Lesley, a Scottish capuchin, related to his being buried on a hill haunted by these unearthly cries of hounds and huntsmen. After his sainted relics had been deposited there, the noise was never

heard more. The reader will find this, and other miracles, recorded in the life of Father Bonaventura, which is written in the choicest Italian.

WAR-SONG.

Page 9, line 16. Oh! had they marked the avenging call.

The allusion is to the massacre of the Swiss Guards on the fatal 10th August, 1792. It is painful, but not useless, to remark, that the passive temper with which the Swiss regarded the death of their bravest countrymen, mercilessly slaughtered in discharge of their duty, encouraged and authorized the progressive injustice, by which the Alps, once the seat of the most virtuous and free people upon the continent, have, at length, been converted into the citadel of a foreign and military despot. A state degraded is half enslaved. [Written in 1812.]

GLENFINLAS.

Page 11, line 13. How blazed Lord Ronald's beltane-tree.

The fires lighted by the Highlanders, on the first of May, in compliance with a custom derived from the Pagan times, are termed The Beltane-tree. It is a festival celebrated with various superstitious rites, both in the north of Scotland and in Wales.

Page 12, line 26. The seer's prophetic spirit found.

I can only describe the second sight, by adopting Dr. Johnson's definition, who calls it an impression, either by the mind upon the eye, or by the eye upon the mind, by which things distant and future are perceived and seen as if they were present.' To which I would only add, that the spectral appearances, thus presented, usually presage misfortune; that the faculty is painful to those who suppose they possess it; and that they usually acquire it while themselves under the pressure of melancholy.

Line 87. Will good Saint Oran's rule prevail?

St. Oran was a friend and follower of St. Columba, and was buried at Icolmkill. His pretensions to be a saint were rather dubious. According to the legend, he consented to be buried alive, in order to propitiate certain demons of the soil, who obstructed the attempts of Columba to build a chapel. Columba caused the body of his friend to be dug up, after three days had elapsed; when Oran, to the horror and scandal of the assistants, declared that there was neither a God, a judgment, nor a future state! He had no time to make further discoveries, for Columba caused the earth once more to be shovelled over him with the utmost despatch. The chapel, however, and the cemetery, was called Relig Ouran; and, in memory of his rigid celibacy, no female was permitted to pay her devotions or be buried in that place. This is the rule alluded to in the poem.

Page 14, line 218. And thrice Saint Fillan's powerful prayer.

St. Fillan has given his name to many chap

els, holy fountains, etc., in Scotland. He was, according to Camerarius, an Abbot of Pittenweem, in Fife; from which situation he retired, and died a hermit in the wilds of Glenurchy, A. D. 649. While engaged in transcribing the Scriptures, his left hand was observed to send forth such a splendor as to afford light to that with which he wrote, a miracle which saved many candles to the convent, as St. Fillan used to spend whole nights in that exercise. The 9th of January was dedicated to this saint, who gave his name to Kilfillan, in Renfrew, and St. Phillans, or Forgend, in Fife.

THE EVE OF ST. JOHN.

Page 14, line 1. The Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day.

Smaylholme or Smallholm Tower, the scene of the ballad, is situated on the northern boundary of Roxburghshire, among a cluster of wild rocks, called Sandiknow-Crags, the property of Hugh Scott, Esq., of Harden. [It was at the farmhouse of Sandy-Knowe, one is glad to remember, that Scott spent his earliest boyhood, with his paternal grandfather, as recorded by him in his autobiographic sketch.] The tower is a high square building, surrounded by an outer wall, now ruinous. The circuit of the outer court, being defended on three sides by a precipice and morass, is accessible only from the west, by a steep and rocky path. The apartments, as is usual in a Border keep, or fortress, are placed one above another, and communicate by a narrow stair; on the roof are two bartizans, or platforms, for defence or pleasure. The inner door of the tower is wood, the outer an iron gate; the distance between them being nine feet, the thickness, namely, of the wall. From the elevated situation of Smaylholme Tower, it is seen many miles in every direction. Among the crags by which it is surrounded, one, more eminent, is called the Watchfold, and is said to have been the station of a beacon, in the times of war with England. Without the tower-court is a ruined chapel. Brotherstone is a heath, in the neighborhood of Smaylholme Tower.

Page 15, lines 17, 18.

He came not from where Ancram Moor

Ran red with English blood.

[Sir Ralph Evers and Sir Brian Laboun, during the year 1544, committed heavy ravages upon the Scottish border. For this Sir Ralph was made a Lord of Parliament and the next year the two reentered Scotland with a larger army and repeated their bloody work. As they returned toward Jedburgh they were followed by the Earl of Angus at the head of a thousand horse, who was shortly after joined by the famous Norman Lesley, with a body of Fife-men. A fierce battle ensued on Ancram Moor, in which Lord Evers and his son Sir Brian and 800 Englishmen were slain, and a thousand prisoners were taken.]

Page 16, line 79. So, by the black rood-stone and by holy Saint John.

The black rood of Melrose was a crucifix of black marble, and of superior sanctity. Line 108. All under the Eildon-tree. Eildon is a high hill, terminating in three conical summits, immediately above the town of Melrose, where are the admired ruins of a magnificent monastery. Eildon-tree is said to be the spot where Thomas the Rhymer uttered his prophecies. See also note, p. 513.

Page 17, line 193. That nun who ne'er beholds the day.

The circumstance of the nun who never saw the day,' is not entirely imaginary. About fifty years ago, an unfortunate female wanderer took up her residence in a dark vault, among the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, which, during the day, she never quitted. When night fell, she issued from this miserable habita tion, and went to the house of Mr. Haliburton of Newmains, the Editor's great-grandfather, or to that of Mr. Erskine of Sheilfield, two gentlemen of the neighborhood. From their charity she obtained such necessaries as she could be prevailed upon to accept. At twelve, each night, she lighted her candle, and returned to her vault, assuring her friendly neighbors that during her absence her habitation was arranged by a spirit, to whom she gave the uncouth name of Fatlips; describing him as a little man, wearing heavy iron shoes, with which he trampled the clay floor of the vault, to dispel the damps. This circumstance caused her to be regarded, by the well-informed, with compassion, as deranged in her understanding; and by the vulgar, with some degree of terror. The cause of her adopting this extraordinary mode of life she would never explain. It was, however, believed to have been occasioned by a vow that during the absence of a man to wher she was attached, she would never look upon the sun. Her lover never returned. He fell during the civil war of 1745-46, and she nevermore would behold the light of day.

The vault, or rather dungeon, in which this unfortunate woman lived and died, passes still by the name of the supernatural being with which its gloom was tenanted by her disturbed imagination, and few of the neighboring peasants dare enter it by night.

THE GRAY BROTHER.
Page 18, lines 17, 18,

The breath of one of evil deed
Pollutes our sacred day.

The scene with which the ballad opens, was suggested by the following curious passage, extracted from the Life of Alexander Peden, one of the wandering and persecuted teachers of the sect of Cameronians, during the reign of Charles II. and his successor, James. This person was supposed by his followers, and, perhaps, really believed himself, to be possess d of supernatural gifts; for the wild scenes which they frequented, and the constant dangers which were incurred through their proscription, deep ened upon their minds the gloom of superstition, so general in that age.