marriages in Glasgow are celebrated on a Friday.’ In Hungary nothing of any importance is undertaken on a Friday, and there is a Hungarian proverb which says that ‘whoever is merry on a Friday is sure to weep on the Sunday.’ The Sicilians make the exception for weddings. In America Friday is a lucky daythe New World, no doubt, upsetting in this as other matters the conservatism of the Old. The superstition of sailors about Friday is famous. Cp. the old English song ‘The Mermaid.’ For further discussion of the subject see ‘Notes and Queries,’ 6th S. vol. vi.
line 175. ‘The journal of the Friend, to whom the Fourth Canto of the poem is inscribed, furnished me with the following account of a striking superstition:-
‘“Passed the pretty little village of Franchemont (near Spaw), with the romantic ruins of the old castle of the counts of that name. The road leads through many delightful vales, on a rising ground: at the extremity of one of them stands the ancient castle, now the subject of many superstitions legends. It is firmly believed by the neighbouring peasantry, that the last Baron of Franchemont deposited, in one of the vaults of the castle, a ponderous chest, containing an immense treasure in gold and silver, which, by some magic spell, was intrusted to the care of the Devil, who is constantly found sitting on the chest in the shape of a huntsman. Any one adventurous enough to touch the chest is instantly seized with the palsy. Upon one occasion, a priest of noted piety was brought to the vault: he used all the arts of exorcism to persuade his infernal majesty to vacate his seat, but in vain; the huntsman remained immovable. At last, moved by the earnestness of the priest, he told him, that he would agree to resign the chest, if the exorciser would sign his name with blood. But the priest understood his meaning, and refused, as by that act he would have delivered over his soul to the Devil. Yet if any body can discover the mystic words used by the person who deposited the treasure, and pronounced them, the fiend must instantly decamp. I had many stories of a similar nature from a peasant, who had himself seen the Devil, in the shape of a great cat.”‘-SCOTT.
line 190. Begun has always been a possible past tense in poetry, and living poets continue its use. There is an example in Mr. Browning’s ‘Waring’:-
and Lord Tennyson writes:-
in the memorial verses prefixed to his brother’s ‘Collected Sonnets’ (1879).
line 205. Robert Lindsay of Pittscottie (a Fife estate, eastward of Cupar) lived in the first half of the sixteenth century, and wrote ‘Chronicles of Scotland’ from James II to Mary. Nothing further of him is known with certainty. Like the Lion King he was a cadet of the noble family of Lindsay, including Crawford and Lindsay and Lindsay of the Byres.
line 207. See above, IV. xiv.
line 212. John of Fordun (a village in Kincardineshire) about the end of the fourteenth century wrote the first five of the sixteen books of the ‘Scotochronicon,’ the work being completed by Walter Bower, appointed Abbot of St. Colm’s, 1418.
line 220. Gripple, tenacious, narrow. See ‘Waverley,’ chap. lxvii. -’Naebody wad be sae gripple as to take his gear’; and cp. ‘Faerie Queene,’ VI. iv. 6:-
line 225. They hide away their treasures without using them, as the magpie or the jackdaw does with the articles it steals.
CANTO SIXTH.
Stanza I. line 6. Cp. Job xxxix. 25.
line 8. Terouenne, about thirty miles S. E. of Calais.
line 9. Leaguer, the besiegers’ camp. Cp. Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline,’ I. 5,?
