“The gods upon this dispatched messengers throughout the world, to beg everything to weep, in order that Baldur might be delievered from Hel. All things very willingly complied with this request, both men and every other living being, as well as earths and stones, and trees and metals, just as thou must have seen these things weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot one. As the messengers were returning with the conviction that their mission had been quite successful, they found an old hag named Thaukt sitting in a cavern, and begged her to weep Baldur out of Hel. But she answered,
“ ‘Thaukt will wail
With arid tears
Baldur’s bale fire.
Naught, quick or dead,
By man’s son gain I,
Let Hela hold what’s hers.’
It was strongly suspected that this hag was no other than Loki himself, who never ceased to work evil among the Aesir.”
—The Prose or Younger Edda, commonly ascribed to Snorri Sturleson, translated by J. A. Blackwell. Contained in P. H. Mallet’s Northern Antiquities. Bohn’s edition, 1847
Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Martineau. ↩
Anne and Emily Brontë. ↩
Branwell Brontë. ↩
See the last verses by Emily Brontë in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. ↩
Poias, the father of Philoctetes. Passing near, he was attracted by the concourse round the pyre, and at the entreaty of Hercules set fire to it, receiving the bow and arrows of the hero as his reward. ↩
The author’s brother, William Delafield Arnold, Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab, and author of Oakfield, or Fellowship in the East, died at Gibraltar on his way home from India, April the 9th, 1859. ↩
See the poem, “A Summer Night.” ↩
The author’s brother, William Delafield Arnold, Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab, and author of Oakfield, or Fellowship in the East, died at Gibraltar, on his way home from India, April the 9th, 1859. ↩
See “Harzreise im Winter,” in Goethe’s Gedichte. ↩
Gilbert de la Porrée, at the Council of Rheims, in 1148. ↩
The Montanists. ↩
Giacopone di Todi. ↩
See St. Augustine’s Confessions, book 9 chapter 11. ↩
Throughout this poem there is reference to “The Scholar Gipsy.” ↩
Cordyon and Thyrsis content against one another in song in Virgil’s sixth “Eclogue”; Thyrsis is defeated. ↩
Daphnis, the ideal Sicilian shepherd of Greek pastoral poetry, was said to have followed into Phrygia his mistress Piplea, who had been carried off by robbers, and to have found her in the power of the king of Phrygia, Lityerses. Lityerses used to make strangers try a contest with him in reaping corn, and to put them to death if he overcame them. Hercules arrived in time to save Daphnis, took upon himself the reaping-contest with Lityerses, overcame him, and slew him. The Lityerses-song connected with this tradition was, like the Linus-song, one of the early plaintive strains of Greek popular poetry, and used to be sung by corn-reapers. Other traditions represented Daphnis as beloved by a nymph who exacted from him an oath to love no one else. He fell in love with a princess, and was struck blind by the jealous nymph. Mercury, who was his father, raised him to Heaven, and made a fountain spring up in the place from which he ascended. At this fountain the Sicilians offered yearly sacrifices. See Servius, Comment. in Virgil. Bucol., 5:20, and 8:68. ↩
Probably all who know the Vevey end of the Lake of Geneva, will recollect Glion, the mountain village above the castle of Chillon. Glion now has hotels, pensions, and villas; but twenty years ago it was hardly more than the huts of Avant opposite to it—huts through which goes that beautiful path over the Col de Jaman, followed by so many foot-travellers on their way from Vevey to the Simmenthal and Thun. ↩
The blossoms of the Gentiana lutea. ↩
Montbovon. See Byron’s Journal, in his Works, vol. 3 p. 258. The river Saane becomes the Sarine below Montbovon. ↩
Sunt lacrimae rerum! ↩
“Ailred of Rievaulx, and several other writers, assert that Sebert, king of the East Saxons and nephew of Ethelbert, founded the Abbey of Westminster very early in the seventh century.
“Sulcardus, who lived in the time of William the Conqueror, gives a minute account of the miracle supposed to have been worked at the consecration of the Abbey.
“The church had been prepared against the next day for dedication. On the night preceding, St. Peter appeared on the opposite side of the water to a fisherman, desiring to be conveyed to the farther shore. Having left the boat, St. Peter ordered the fisherman to wait, promising him a reward on his return. An innumerable host from heaven accompanied the apostle, singing choral hymns, while everything was illuminated with a supernatural light. The dedication having been completed, St. Peter returned to the fisherman, quieted his alarm at what had passed, and announced himself as the apostle. He directed the fisherman to go as soon as it was day to the authorities, to state what he had seen and heard, and to inform them that, in corroboration of his testimony, they would find the marks of consecration on the walls
