distinguished in history. It was the Baron of Rokeby who finally defeated the insurrection of the Earl of Northumberland in the reign of Henry IV. The Rokeby, or Rokesby, family continued to be distinguished until the great civil war, when, having embraced the cause of Charles I., they suffered severely by fines and confiscations. The estate then passed from its ancient possessors to the family of the Robinsons, from whom it was purchased by the father of my valued friend, the present occupier."-Scott. The poet's friend was Mr. Morritt, who entertained him at Rokeby when he was collecting materials for the poem. See note on 3. VIII. 6.

7. rich luxuriant glow of fancy may appropriately be attributed to Spenser, who on account of the richness of his imagination has been called the most poetical of the poets.

9. Pointing. See note on 4. XIX. 19.

20. bulwark is in apposition to champions.

VII. 9. Both 'rent' and 'riven' mean 'torn violently asunder.' 12. beetling, overhanging. Thus a person with a prominent brow is called "beetle-browed."

19. chafe her waves to spray, cause her waves to rage so violently that they turn into spray. Here 'to' expresses the effect produced.

22. Thick, following one another in quick succession, numerous. The adjective in this sense can be predicated of the whole mass of foam-globes (globes of foam) collectively, not distributively of each individual foam-globe.

VIII. 1. haughty ascribes to cliffs the feelings of human beings, and so personifies them. Compare 5. IV. 10, 6. XXI. 22. Now, in one place, in another.

3, 4. now...

4. Here 'spray' means twigs or branches, not, as in VII. 19, small particles of water flying through the air. 'Spray' in this

sense is by derivation the same word as 'sprig.'

11. spires, the sharp points of the cliffs rising like spires, i.e. turrets tapering to a point. Compare III. 20.

flare here expresses fluttering motion, as in Shakespeare (Merry Wives, 4. VI. )—

"With ribands pendent flaring about her head."

12. tendrils are the shoots by means of which ivy and other climbing plants clasp the branch or wall on which they depend for support.

15. rout, noisy crowd.

17-20. Notice the three points in the comparison. The tendrils resemble banners, the noise of the Greta the tumultuous revelry

of the Baron's feudal retainers, and the echoes from the shore of the river are like the echoes from the arch'd halls of the castle.

This is a meta

19. banners, the tendrils resembling banners. phorical word introduced into a simile. If Scott had kept strictly to the language of simile, he would have written"And so the ivied tendrils gleam";

but he preferred to blend simile and metaphor together.

IX. 3. spot of pebbly sand, such as Loch Katrine's "silver strand," described in the Lady of the Lake as a beach of pebbles bright as snow.'

8. A rosary is a string of beads used by Roman Catholics when they say their prayers: one bead is dropped along the string for each prayer said.

10. dismal grove. Yew trees on account of their dark colour are commonly planted in grave-yards, from which fact they are associated in the imagination with death and the grave.

12. sepulchral green, dark green, suitable for a church-yard.

13. The subject of 'seem'd' is the following noun sentence. In such cases the verb is usually preceded by the redundant pronominal subject 'it.'

16. The verdant hue, the light green of ordinary fresh leaves as opposed to the dark colours of the yew and pine mentioned above.

20. The ground was carpeted with withered leaves instead of green grass.

30. spray. See note on VIII. 4.

X. 1. lated (formed from the adjective 'late'), belated, overtaken by the darkness of night.

2. wont, was accustomed. 'Wont' here is the past tense either of 'wont' or of 'won,' which both mean to be accustomed.' The verb wont' is formed from the participle of the older verb 'won.'

4. its path, the dell's path, the path through the dell.

5. Christmas logs. It was formerly customary in England to burn at Christmas in the fire great logs of wood called yule-logs. Christmas fires composed of those great logs are naturally described as "blazing high and wide."

6. The relation of such marvellous stories makes the festive time of Christmas pass quickly. 'Tide' here means time.

7-14. These lines give a picture of a Christmas party gathered round the fire to listen with breathless interest to a ghost story. 7. Curiosity and Fear, Pleasure and Pain stand for persons having those feelings. The abstract is used for the concrete.

8. Pleasure and Pain. The audience derive pleasure from the interest of the story, though their superstitious alarm causes them pain at the same time.

crouching gives the natural attitude of a person suffering from superstitious terror.

9. no longer glows, loses its usual brightness, becomes pale under the influence of fear. The same meaning is expressed in the next meaning by the words "lose the rose," which means 'lose their natural rosy colour.'

12. The circle, the audience gathered round the fire. They crowd together in order to be near each other and the cheerful fire, and occasionally cannot help looking back into the darker part of the room behind them, where, owing to the excited state of their imaginations, they are predisposed to see the shadowy form of a ghost or demon.

13. They imagine that the rising of the tempest may be due to diabolical influence, and may betoken an approaching apparition.

22. upper heaven, the upper air, the air above the surface of the earth as opposed to hell, which is supposed to be under the earth. We should rather expect 'upper air' than 'upper heaven,' as 'heaven' generally means either the blue vault high above the earth or the abode of God and his angels.

23. had seem'd, would have seemed.

XI. 3. Some think that only women and uneducated members of the lower classes are superstitious. Scott does not agree with this opinion.

4. ague, disease. The specific word 'ague' is better than the generic word 'disease' to express superstitious terror, as those suffering from ague shiver as if they were under the influence of terror.

5. firm as steel, as marble hard. When, as here, corresponding parts of a sentence are arranged in such a way as to exactly reverse the order observed by the previous words to which they correspond, the arrangement is called chiasmus. For other instances, see XIX. 24; 3. I. II.

7. aspen leaves tremble in the lightest breeze. Compare 3. v. 36.

9. 'List' and the ordinary longer form 'listen' are both occasionally used by poets as transitive verbs.

many a tale. It is doubtful whether 'many' preceding 'a' is by derivation a noun or an adjective. If it is an adjective then 'a' is the indefinite article following the adjective 'many,' as it follows such' and 'what,' e.g. such a man,' 'what a spectacle.' But according to another view 'many' is by derivation a noun meaning a crowd, so that many a tale' means a crowd of tales,

the 'a' being a corruption of of,' and the singular 'tale' being used instead of the plural tales,' because it was erroneously thought that the 'a' was the singular indefinite article. 'Many' is still used as a noun in the common expression 'a good many.' Grammatically 'many a' goes with a singular noun, so that in 1. 12 strict grammar requires the singular it,' not the plural 'they.'

13. his wild adventurous youth, he in his wild adventurous youth.

16. steady sail, as opposed to a sail flapping in an insufficient breeze.

20. portent, a prodigy portending calamity. A prodigy need not be prophetic. A spell is an exertion of magic power.

21. "The Finlanders were wont formerly, amongst their other errors of gentilisme, to sell winds to merchants that were stopped on their coasts by contrary weather; and when they had their price they knit three magical knots, not, like to the laws of Cassius, bound up with a thong, and they gave them unto the merchants; observing that rule, that when they unloosed the first they should have a good gale of wind, when the second a stronger wind, but when they untied the third they should have such cruel tempests that they should not be able to look out of the forecastle to avoid the rocks, nor move a foot to pull down the sails, nor stand at the helm to govern the ship; and they made an unhappy trial of the truth of it who denied that there was any such power in those knots."-Olaus Magnus's History of the Goths, Swedes, and Vandals.

22. Sailors believe that whistling causes the wind to blow. Therefore they whistle in a calm when they want wind, and fear to whistle in a storm.

23. Mermaids (from Fr. mer, Lat. mare, the sea, and 'maid') are women with the tails of fish.

24. Erick's cap. "This Ericus, King of Sweden, in his time was held second to none in the magical art; and he was so familiar with the evil spirits, which he exceedingly adored, that which way soever he turned his cap, the wind would presently blow that way. From this occasion he was called windy cap."Olaus Magnus's History of the Goths, Swedes, and Vandals.

Elmo's light, or Elmo's fire, is the name given to a ball of electric light seen in tempestuous nights on the masts and rigging of ships. It is named after St. Elmo, an Italian saint invoked by sailors in the Mediterranean during storms.

25. that Phantom Ship. "This is an allusion to a well-known nautical superstition concerning a fantastic vessel, called by sailors the Flying Dutchman, and supposed to be seen about the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope. She is distinguished from

earthly vessels by bearing a press of sail when all others are unable, from stress of weather, to show an inch of canvas. The cause of her wandering is not altogether certain; but the general account is, that she was originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed; that the plague broke out among the wicked crew who had perpetrated the crime, and that they sailed in vain from port to port, offering, as the price of shelter, the whole of their ill-gotten wealth; that they were excluded from every harbour, for fear of the contagion that was devouring them, and that as a punishment of their crimes, the apparition of the ship still continues to haunt those seas in which the catastrophe took place, and is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens. My late lamented friend, Dr. John Leyden, has introduced this phenomenon into his Scenes of Infancy, imputing, with poetical ingenuity, the dreadful judgment to the first ship which commenced the slave trade."-Scott.

27. scud means a violent tempest or the clouds driven by a violent tempest. The verb 'to scud' when applied to a ship means to drive before a tempest with few or no sails set.

29. wove in earthly looms, as opposed to the enchanted sails of the Flying Dutchman, which dares to encounter the most violent tempest with all her canvas spread, including even the top-sails and topgallant-sails (1. 32).

32. The top-sails and topgallant-sails are respectively the second and third square-sails above the deck on any mast. On account of their height above the deck they have to be lowered in a strong wind.

33. To crowd sail' or 'crowd every sail' is a nautical phrase meaning to spread every sail that the ship is constructed to carry.

XII. 1. stifled tone. They spoke in smothered tones, as if by speaking aloud they might attract the notice of the evil spirits about whom they were telling stories.

2. all their own, superstitions peculiar to the Bucaniers. The superstitions mentioned in the previous stanza are or were believed by all kinds of seamen.

3. key. "What contributed much to the security of the buccaneers, about the Windward Islands, was the great number of little islets, called in that country keys. These are small sandy patches, appearing just above the surface of the ocean, covered only with a few bushes and weeds, but sometimes affording springs of water, and in general much frequented by turtle. Such little uninhabited spots afforded the pirates good harbours, either for refitting or for the purpose of ambush; they were occasionally the hiding-place of their treasure, and often afforded a shelter to themselves. As many of the atrocities which they practised on