Marmion

      With bitterer agonies than death can give.’

line 211. ‘Among other omens to which faithful credit is given among the Scottish peasantry, is what is called the “dead-bell,” explained by my friend James Hogg to be that tinkling in the ears which the country people regard as the secret intelligence of some friend’s decease. He tells a story to the purpose in the “Mountain Bard,” p. 26 [pp. 31-2, 3rd edit.].’-SCOTT.

Cp. Tickell’s ‘Lucy and Colin,’ and this perfect stanza in Mickle’s ‘Cumnor Hall,’ quoted in Introd. to ‘Kenilworth’:-

     ‘The death-bell thrice was heard to ring,
        An aerial voice was heard to call, 
      And thrice the raven flapp’d its wing 
        Around the towers of Cumnor Hall.’

line 217. Cp. Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. I. 286: ‘The death of a dear friend would go near to make a man look sad.’

Stanza XIV. lines 230-5. Cp. the effect of Polonius on the King (Hamlet, iii. I. 50):-

     ‘How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!’

Hamlet himself, ib. line 83, says:-

     ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.’

line 234. For vail = lower, see close of Editor’s Preface.

Stanza XV. line 243. For practised on = plotted against, cp. King Lear, iii. 2. 57, ‘Hast practised on man’s life.’

lines 248-51. See above, II. xxix.

Stanza XVII. line 286. Cp. Burns’s ‘Bonnie Doon’:-

     ‘And my fause lover staw my rose,
        But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.’

Stanza XVIII. line 307. Loch Vennachar, in the south of Perthshire, is the most easterly of the three lakes celebrated in the ‘Lady of the Lake.’

line 321. Cp. ‘wonder-wounded hearers,’ Hamlet, v. I. 265.

Stanza XIX. line 324. Clerk is a scholar, as in Chaucer’s ‘Clerk of Oxenford,’ &c., and the ‘learned clerks’ of 2 Henry VI, iv. 7. 76. See below, VI. xv. 459, ‘clerkly skill.’

line 325. Alexander III (1240-1286) came to the throne at the age of nine, and proved himself a vigorous and large-hearted king. He was killed by a fall from his horse, near Kinghorn, Fife, where there is a suitable monument to his memory. The contemporary lament for his death bewails him as one that ‘Scotland led in love and lee.’ Sir Walter Scott (Introductory Remarks to ‘Border Minstrelsy’) calls him ‘the last Scottish king of the pure Celtic race.’

line 333. ‘A vaulted hall under the ancient castle of Gifford, or Yester (for it bears either name indifferently), the construction of which has, from a very remote period, been ascribed to magic. The Statistical Account of the Parish of Garvald and Baro, gives the following account of the present state of this castle and apartment:-”Upon a peninsula, formed by the water of Hopes on the east, and a large rivulet on the west, stands the ancient castle of Yester. Sir David Dalrymple, in his annals, relates that ‘Hugh Gifford de Yester died in 1267; that in his castle there was a capacious cavern, formed by magical art, and called in the country Bo-Hall, i.e. Hobgoblin Hall.’  A stair of twenty-four steps led down to this apartment, which is a large and spacious hall, with an arched roof; and though it hath stood for so many centuries, and been exposed to the external air for a period of fifty or sixty years, it is still as firm and entire as if it had only stood a few years. From the floor of this hall, another stair of thirty-six steps leads down to a pit which hath a communication with Hopes-water. A great part of the walls of this large and ancient castle are still standing. There is a tradition that the castle of Yester was the last