Marmion

Library of Durham, or, at least, has hitherto escaped the researches of my friendly correspondent.

‘Lindesay is made to allude to this adventure of Ralph Bulmer, as a well-known story, in the 4th Canto, Stanza xxii. p. 103.

‘The northern champions of old were accustomed peculiarly to search for, and delight in, encounters with such military spectres. See a whole chapter on the subject in BARTHOLINUS De Causis contemptae Mortis a Danis, p. 253.’

line 508. Sir Gilbert Hay, as a faithful adherent of Bruce, was created Lord High Constable of Scotland. See note in ‘Lord of the Isles,’ II. xiii. How ‘the Haies had their beginning of nobilitie’ is told in Holinshed’s ‘Scottish Chronicle,’ I. 308.

Stanza XXVI. line 510. Quaigh, ‘a wooden cup, composed of staves hooped together.’- SCOTT.

Stanza XXVIII. line 551. Darkling, adv. (not adj. as in Keats’s ‘darkling way’ in ‘Eve of St. Agnes’), really means ‘in the dark.’ Cp. ‘Lady of the Lake,’ IV. (Alice Brand):-

     ‘For darkling was the battle tried’;

and see Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. 2. 86; King Lear, i. 4. 237. Lord Tennyson, like Keats, uses the word as an adj. in ‘In Memoriam,’ xcix:-

     ‘Who tremblest through thy darkling red.’

Cp. below, V. Introd. 23, ‘darkling politician.’ For scholarly discussion of the term, see Notes and Queries, VII iii. 191.

Stanza XXX. lines 585-9. Iago understands the ‘contending flow’ of passions when in a glow of self-satisfied feeling he exclaims;

     ‘Work on,
      My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught.’

                                              Othello, iv. I. 44.

Stanza XXXI. line 597. ‘Yode, used by old poets for went.’- SCOTT. It is a variant of ‘yod’ or ‘yede,’ from A. S. eode, I went. Cp. Lat. eo, I go. See Clarendon Press ‘Specimens of Early English,’ II. 71:-

    ‘Thair scrippes, quer thai rade or yode,
     Tham failed neuer o drinc ne fode.’

Spenser writes, ‘Faerie Queene,’ II. vii. 2:-

     ‘So, long he yode, yet no adventure found.’

line 599. Selle, saddle. Cp. ‘Faerie Queene,’ II. v. 4:-

     On his horse necke before the quilted sell.’

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO FOURTH.