A MIRTHFUL man he was -the snows of age Ay, this is he who wears the wreath of bays The cumbrous helm of steel, and flung aside While, with a leafy circlet round his brows, WANT you a man TOLL, toll the bell! Greatness is o'er, The heart has broke, Old Play. From Count Robert of Paris Othus. 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, The threshold here be paid. The hunter's horn they hear. The Court, 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- Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears A posthumous miracle of Father Lesley, a 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 [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. Abeet fifty years ago, an unfortunate female war derer 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, t gentlemen of the neighborhood. From ther 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 a a little man, wearing heavy iron shoes, with which he trampled the clay floor of the vanh 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 br a vow that during the absence of a man to when she was attached, she would never look up the sun. Her lover never returned. He fell during the civil war of 1745-46, and she never more 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. The breath of one of evil deed The scene with which the ballad opens, was suggested by the following curious passage, e tracted from the Life of Alexander Peden, one of the wandering and persecuted teachers of Charles II. and his successor, James. This person was supposed by his followers, and perhaps, really believed himself, to be possessed 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. About the same time he [Peden] came to Andrew Normand's house, in the parish of Alloway, in the shire of Ayr, being to preach at night in his barn. After he came in, he halted a little, leaning upon a chair-back, with his face covered; when he lifted up his head he said, They are in this house that I have not one word of salvation unto; "he halted a little again, saying, "This is strange, that the devil will not go out, that we may begin our work!" Then there was a woman went out, ill-looked upon almost all her life, and to her dying hour, for a witch, with many presumptions of the same. It escaped me, in the former passages, what John Muirhead (whom I have often mentioned) told me, that when he came from Ireland to Galloway, he was at familyworship, and giving some notes upon the Scripture read, when a very ill-looking man came, and sat down within the door, at the back of the hallan [partition of the cottage]: immediately he halted and said, "There is some unhappy body just now come into this house. I charge him to go out, and not stop my mouth! This person went out, and he insisted [went on], yet he saw him neither come in nor go out.' Page 18, line 66. By blast of bugle free. The barony of Pennycuick, the property of Sir George Clerk, Bart., is held by a singular tenure; the proprietor being bound to sit upon a large rocky fragment, called the Buckstane, and wind three blasts of a horn, when the king shall come to hunt on the Borough Muir, near Edinburgh. Hence, the family have adopted, as their crest, a demi-forester proper, winding a horn, with the motto, Free for a Blast. Line 67. To Auchendinny's hazel glade. [Auchendinny, situated upon the Eske, below Pennycuick, when Scott wrote, was the residence of H. Mackenzie, author of the Man of Feeling, &c.] Line 70. And Roslin's rocky glen. [The rocky glen is less an object of interest than the marvellous chapel with an elaborateness of sculptured story which to the modern tourist seems singularly unidiomatic in Scotland.] Line 71. Dalkeith, which all the virtues love. [In Scott's time the place once belonging to the Earl of Morton, was endeared to him by being the residence of the family of Buccleuch.] Line 72. And classic Hawthornden. Hawthornden, the residence of the poet Drummond. A house, of more modern date, is enclosed, as it were, by the ruins of the ancient castle, and overhangs a tremendous precipice, upon the banks of the Eske, perforated by winding caves, which, in former times, were a refuge to the oppressed patriots of Scotland. Here Drummond received Ben Jonson, who journeyed from London, on foot, in order to visit him. Upon the whole, tracing the Eske from its source, till it joins the sea at Musselburgh, no stream in Scotland can boast such a varied succession of the most interesting objects, as well as of the most romantic and beautiful scenery. Page 26. CADYOW CASTLE. The ruins of Cadyow, or Cadzow Castle, the ancient baronial residence of the family of Hamilton, are situated upon the precipitous banks of the river Evan, about two miles above its junction with the Clyde. It was dismantled, in the conclusion of the Civil Wars, during the reign of the unfortunate Mary, to whose cause the house of Hamilton devoted themselves with a generous zeal, which occasioned their temporary obscurity, and, very nearly, their total ruin. The situation of the ruins, embosomed in wood, darkened by ivy and creeping shrubs, and overhanging the brawling torrent, is romantic in the highest degree. In the immediate vicinity of Cadyow is a grove of immense oaks, the remains of the Caledonian Forest, which anciently extended through the south of Scotland, from the eastern to the Atlantic Ocean. Some of these trees measure twenty-five feet, and upwards, in circumference; and the state of decay in which they now appear shows that they have witnessed the rites of the Druids. The whole scenery is included in the magnificent and extensive park of the Duke of Hamilton. There was long preserved in this forest the breed of the Scottish wild cattle, until their ferocity occasioned their being extirpated, about forty years ago. Their appearance was beautiful, being milk-white, with black muzzles, horns, and hoofs. The bulls are described by ancient authors as having white manes; but those of latter days had lost that peculiarity, perhaps by intermixture with the tame breed. In detailing the death of the Regent Murray, which is made the subject of the ballad, it would be injustice to my reader to use other words than those of Dr. Robertson, whose account of that memorable event forms a beautiful piece of historical painting. Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was the person who committed this barbarous action. He had been condemned to death soon after the battle of Langside, as we have already related, and owed his life to the Regent's clemency. But part of his estate had been bestowed upon one of the Regent's favorites [Sir James Bellenden, Lord Justice-Clerk], who seized his house and turned out his wife, naked, in a cold night, into the open fields, where, before next morning, she became furiously mad. This injury made a deeper impression on him than the benefit he had received, and from that moment he vowed to be revenged of the Regent. Party rage strengthened and inflamed his private resentment. His kinsmen, the Hamiltons, applauded the enterprise. The maxims of that age justified the most desperate course he could take to obtain vengeance. He followed the Regent for some time, and watched for an opportunity to strike the blow. He resolved at last to wait till his enemy should arrive at Linlithgow, through which he was to pass in his way from Stirling to Edinburgh. He took his stand in |