In the Vale of Tawasentha.
This valley, now called Norman’s Kill, is in Albany County, New York.

On the Mountains of the Prairie.
Mr. Catlin, in his Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, Vol. II. p. 160, gives an interesting account of the Côteau des Prairies, and the Red Pipestone Quarry. He says:—

“Here (according to their traditions) happened the mysterious birth of the red pipe, which has blown its fumes of peace and war to the remotest corners of the continent; which has visited every warrior, and passed through its reddened stem the irrevocable oath of war and desolation. And here, also, the peace-breathing calumet was born, and fringed with the eagle’s quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes over the land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage.

“The Great Spirit at an ancient period here called the Indian nations together, and, standing on the precipice of the red pipe-stone rock, broke from its wall a piece, and made a huge pipe by turning it in his hand, which he smoked over them, and to the North, the South, the East, and the West, and told them that this stone was red,—that it was their flesh,—that they must use it for their pipes of peace,—that it belonged to them all, and that the war-club and scalping-knife must not be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the rock for several miles was melted and glazed; two great ovens were opened beneath, and two women (guardian spirits of the place) entered them in a blaze of fire; and they are heard there yet (Tso-mec-cos-tee and Tso-me-cos-te-won-dee), answering to the invocations of the high-priests or medicine-men, who consult them when they are visitors to this sacred place.”

Hark you, Bear! you are a coward.
This anecdote is from Heckewelder. In his account of the Indian Nations, he describes an Indian hunter as addressing a bear in nearly these words. “I was present,” he says, “at the delivery of this curious invective; when the hunter had despatched the bear, I asked him how he thought that poor animal could understand what he said to it. ‘Oh,’ said he in answer, ‘the bear understood me very well; did you not observe how ashamed he looked while I was upbraiding him?’”—Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. I. p. 240.

Sent the robin, the Opechee.
[In his first edition, Mr. Longfellow printed, Sent the Opechee, the robin, but apparently was corrected in the pronunciation of the Indian Word. A similar change was made by him in the line, All the Wendigoes, the giants, which at first read, All the giants, the Wendigoes.]

Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!
Heckewelder, in a letter published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. IV. p. 260, speaks of this tradition as prevalent among the Mohicans and Delawares. “Their reports,” he says, “run thus: that among all animals that had been formerly in this country, this was the most ferocious; that it was much larger than the largest of the common bears, and remarkably long-bodied; all over (except a spot of hair on its back of a white color) naked….

“The history of this animal used to be a subject of conversation among the Indians, especially when in the woods a-hunting. I have also heard them say to their children when crying: ‘Hush! the naked bear will hear you, be upon you, and devour you.’”

Where the Falls of Minnehaha, etc.
“The scenery about Fort Snelling is rich in beauty. The Falls of St. Anthony are familiar to travellers, and to readers of Indian sketches. Between the fort and these falls are the ‘Little Falls,’ forty feet in height, on a stream that empties into the Mississippi. The Indians called them Mine-hah-hah, or ‘laughing waters.’”—Mrs. Eastman’s Dacotah, or Legends of the Sioux, Introd. p. ii.

Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo.
A description of the Grand Sable, or great sand-dunes of Lake Superior, is given in Foster and Whitney’s Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District, Part II. p. 131.

“The Grand Sable possesses a scenic interest little inferior to that of the Pictured Rocks. The explorer passes abruptly from a coast of consolidated sand to one of loose materials; and although in the one case the cliffs are less precipitous, yet in the other they attain a higher altitude. He sees before him a long reach of coast, resembling a vast sand-bank, more than three hundred and fifty feet in height, without a trace of vegetation. Ascending to the top, rounded hillocks of blown sand are observed, with occasional clumps of trees, standing out like oases in the desert.”

Onaway! Awake, beloved!
The original of this song may be found in Littell’s Living Age, vol. XXXV. p. 45.

Or the Red Swan floating, flying.
The fanciful tradition of the Red Swan may be found in Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches, vol. II. p. 9.

When I think of my beloved.
The original of this song may be found in Oneóta, p. 15.

Sing the mysteries of Mondamin.
The Indians hold the maize, or Indian corn, in great veneration. “They esteem it so important and divine a grain,” says Schoolcraft, “that their story-tellers invented various tales, in which this idea is symbolized under the form of a special gift from the Great Spirit. The Odjibwa-Algonquins, who call it Mon-da-min, that is, this Spirit’s grain or berry, have a pretty story of the kind, in which the stalk in full tassel is represented as descending from the sky, under the guise of a handsome youth, in answer to the prayers of a young man at his fast of virility, or coming to manhood.

“It is well known that corn-planting and corn-gathering, at least among all the still uncolonized tribes, are left entirely to the females and children, and a few superannuated old men. It is not generally known, perhaps, that this labor is not compulsory, and that it is assumed by the females as a just equivalent, in their view, for the onerous and continuous labor of the other sex, in providing meats, and skins for clothing, by the chase, and in defending their villages against their enemies, and keeping intruders off their territories. A good Indian housewife deems this a part of her prerogative, and prides herself to have a store of corn to exercise her hospitality, or duly honor her husband’s hospitality in the entertainment of the lodge guests.”—Oneóta, p. 82.

Thus the fields shall be more fruitful.
“A singular proof of this belief, in both sexes, of the mysterious influence of the steps of a woman on the vegetable and insect creation, is found in an ancient custom, which was related to me, respecting corn-planting. It was the practice of the hunter’s wife, when the field of corn had been planted, to choose the first dark or overclouded evening to perform a secret circuit, sans habillement, around the field. For this purpose she slipped out of the lodge in the evening, unobserved, to some obscure nook, where she completely disrobed. Then, taking her matchecota, or principal garment, in one hand, she dragged it around the field. This was thought to insure a prolific crop, and to prevent the assaults of insects and worms upon the grain. It was supposed they could not creep over the charmed line.”—Oneóta. p. 83.

With his prisoner-string he bound him.
“These cords,” says Mr. Tanner, “are made of the bark of the elm-tree, by boiling and then immersing it in cold water…. The leader of a war party commonly carries several fastened about his waist, and if, in the course of the fight, any one of his young men takes a prisoner, it is his duty to bring him immediately to the chief, to be tied, and the latter is responsible for his safe keeping.”—Narrative of Captivity and Adventures, p. 412.

“If one of the young female huskers finds a red ear of corn, it is typical of a brave admirer, and is regarded as a fitting present to some young warrior. But if the ear be crooked, and tapering to a point, no matter what color, the whole circle is set in a roar, and wa-ge-min is the word shouted aloud. It is the symbol of a thief in the cornfield. It is considered as the image of an old man stooping as he enters the lot. Had the chisel of Praxiteles been employed to produce this image, it could not more vividly bring to the minds of the merry group the idea of a pilferer of their favorite mondámin….

“The literal meaning of the term is, a mass, or crooked ear of grain; but the ear of corn so called is a conventional type of a little old man pilfering ears of corn in a cornfield. It is in this manner that a single word or term, in these curious languages, becomes the fruitful parent of many ideas. And we can thus perceive why it is that the word wagemin is alone competent to excite merriment in the husking circle.

“This term is taken as a basis of the cereal chorus, or corn song, as sung by the Northern Algonquin tribes. It is coupled with the phrase Paimosaid,—a permutative form of the Indian substantive, made from the verb pim-o-sa, to walk. Its literal meaning is, he who walks, or the walker; but the ideas conveyed by it are, he who walks by night to pilfer corn. It offers, therefore, a kind of parallelism in expression to the preceding term.”—Oneóta, p. 254.

Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces.
This Game of the Bowl is the principal game of hazard among the Northern tribes of Indians. Mr. Schoolcraft gives a particular account of it in Oneóta, p. 85. “This game,” he says, “is very fascinating to some portions of the Indians. They stake at it their ornaments, weapons, clothing, canoes, horses, everything in fact they possess; and have been known, it is said, to set up their wives and children, and even to forfeit their own liberty. Of such desperate stakes I have seen no examples, nor do I think the game itself in common use. It is rather confined to certain persons, who hold the relative rank of gamblers in Indian society,—men who are not noted as hunters or warriors, or steady providers for their families. Among these are persons who bear the term of Ienadizze-wug, that is, wanderers about the country, braggadocios, or fops. It can hardly be classed with the popular games of amusement, by which skill and dexterity are acquired. I have generally found the chiefs and graver men of the tribes, who encouraged the young men to play ball, and are sure to be present at the customary sports, to witness, and sanction, and applaud them, speak lightly and disparagingly of this game of hazard. Yet it cannot be denied that some of the chiefs, distinguished in war and the chase, at the West, can be referred to as lending their example to its fascinating power.”

See also his History, Conditions, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, Part II. p. 72.

To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone.
The reader will find a long description of the Pictured Rocks in Foster and Whitney’s Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District, Part II. p. 124. From this I make the following extract:—

“The Pictured Rocks may be described, in general terms, as a series of sandstone bluffs extending along the shore of Lake Superior for about five miles, and rising, in most places, vertically from the water, without any beach at the base, to a height varying from fifty to nearly two hundred feet. Were they simply a line of cliffs, they might not, so far as relates to height or extent, be worthy of a rank among great natural curiosities, although such an assemblage of rocky strata, washed by the waves of the great lake, would not, under any circumstances, be destitute of grandeur. To the voyager, coasting along their base in his frail canoe, they would, at all times, be an object of dread; the recoil of the surf, the rock-bound coast, affording for miles no place of refuge,—the lowering sky, the rising wind,—all these would excite his apprehension, and induce him to ply a vigorous oar until the dreaded wall was passed. But in the Pictured Rocks there are two features which communicate to the scenery a wonderful and almost unique character. These are, first, the curious manner in which the cliffs have been excavated and worn away by the action of the lake, which for centuries has dashed an ocean-like surf against their base; and, second, the equally curious manner in which large portions of the surface have been colored by bands of brilliant hues.

“It is from the latter circumstance that the name, by which these cliffs are known to the American traveller, is derived; while that applied to them by the French voyageurs (‘Les Portails’) is derived from the former, and by far the most striking peculiarity.

“The term Pictured Rocks has been in use for a great length of time; but when it was first applied we have been unable to discover. It would seem that the first travellers were more impressed with the novel and striking distribution of colors on the surface than with the astonishing variety of form into which the cliffs themselves have been worn….

“Our voyageurs had many legends to relate of the pranks of the Menni-bojou in these caverns, and, in answer to our inquiries, seemed disposed to fabricate stories without end of the achievements of this Indian deity.”

Toward the sun his hands were lifted.
In this manner, and with such salutations, was Father Marquette received by the Illinois. See his Voyages et Découvertes, Section V.

Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan maiden Priscilla.
[Among the names of the Mayflower company are those of “Mr. William Mullines and his wife, and 2 children, Joseph and Priscila; and a servant, Robart Carter.”]

She is alone in the world.
[“Mr. Molines, and his wife, his sone and his servant, dyed the first winter. Only his daughter Priscila survived and married with John Alden, who are both living and have 11 children.”—Bradford: History of Plymouth Plantation.]

Gathering still, as he went, the Mayflowers blooming around him.
[The Mayflower is the well-known Epigæa repens, sometimes also called the Trailing Arbutus. The name Mayflower was familiar in England, as the application of it to the historic vessel shows, but it was applied by the English, and still is, to the hawthorn. Its use here in connection with Epigæa repens, dates from a very early day, some claiming that the first Pilgrims so used it, in affectionate memory of the vessel and its English flower association.]

With Stephen and Richard and Gilbert.
[These names are not taken at random. Stephen Hopkins, Richard Warren, and Gilbert Winslow were all among the Mayflower passengers, and were alive at this time.]

After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland.
[“May 12 was the first marriage in this place, which, according to the laudable custome of the Low-Cuntries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the scripturs, Ruth 4, and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers as a part of their office.”—Bradford: History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 101.

The words of St. Augustine are, “De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.”—Sermon III. De Ascensione.

In Mather’s Magnalia Christi.
[The passage in Mather upon which the poem is based is found in Book I. chapter vi., and is in the form of a letter to Mather from the Rev. James Pierpont, Pastor of New Haven.]

And the Emperor but a Macho.
Macho, in Spanish, signifies a mule. Golondrina is the feminine form for Golondrino, a swallow, and also a cant name for a deserter.

OLIVER BASSELIN.
Oliver Basselin, the “Père joyeux du Vaudeville,” flourished in the fifteenth century, and gave to his convivial songs the name of his native valleys, in which he sang them Vaux-de-Vire. This name was afterwards corrupted into the modern Vaudeville.

VICTOR GALBRAITH.
Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a company of volunteer cavalry; and was shot in Mexico for some breach of discipline. It is a common superstition among soldiers, that no balls will kill them unless their names are written on them. The old proverb says: “Every bullet has its billet.”

I remember the sea-fight far away.
This was the engagement between the Enterprise and Boxer off the harbor of Portland, in which both captains were slain. They were buried side by side in the cemetery on Mountjoy. [The fight took place in 1813. The Enterprise was an American brig, the Boxer an English one. The fight, which could be seen from the shore, lasted for three quarters of an hour, when the Enterprise came into the harbor, bringing her captive with her.]

The palm, the lily, and the spear.
“At Pisa the church of San Francisco contains a chapel dedicated lately to Santa Filomena; over the altar is a picture, by Sabatelli, representing the Saint as a beautiful, nymph-like figure, floating down from heaven, attended by two angels bearing the lily, palm, and javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and maimed, who are healed by her intercession.”—Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 298.

Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer.
[“Rabbi Eliezer hath said: ‘There is an Angel who standeth on earth and reacheth with his head to the door of Heaven. It is taught in the Mishna that he is called Sandalphon.’”

“There are three [angels] who weave or make garlands out of the prayers of the Israelites … the third is Sandalphon.”

“There be Angels which are of Wind and there be Angels which are of Fire.”

“The holy and blessed God creates every day a multitude of angels in heaven, who, after they have sung a hymn before Him, do perish…. Except Michael and Gabriel … and Sandalphon and their equals, who remain in their glory wherewith they were invested in the six days’ creation.”

“The prophet Elias is the Angel Sandalphon, who twisteth or bindeth garlands out of the prayers, for his Lord.”

The above passages from J. P. Stehelin’s The Traditions of the Jews were marked by Mr. Longfellow, and evidently furnished the material upon which he based his poem.]

[The lines are as follows:—On another pane appears the Major’s name, Wm. Molineux Jr. Esq., and the date, June 24, 1774. The allusion is to Hawthorne’s tale, My Kinsman, Major Molineux. Hawthorne, writing to Mr. Longfellow after the publication of the Tales, says, “It gratifies my mind to find my own name shining in your verse,—even as if I had been gazing up at the moon and detected my own features in its profile.”]

The midnight ride of Paul Revere.
[It is possible that Mr. Longfellow derived the story from Paul Revere’s account of the incident in a letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, printed in Mass. Hist. Coll. V. Mr. Frothingham, in his Siege of Boston, pp. 57–59, gives the story mainly according to a memorandum of Richard Devens, Revere’s friend and associate. The publication of Mr. Longfellow’s poem called out a protracted discussion both as to the church from which the signals were hung, and as to the friend who hung the lanterns. The subject is discussed and authorities cited in Memorial History of Boston, III. 101.]

THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO.
[The story is found in the Decameron, Fifth day, ninth tale. As Boccaccio, however, was not the first to tell it, so Mr. Longfellow is not the only one after him to repeat it. So remote a source as Pantschatantra (Benfey, II. 247) contains it, and La Fontaine includes it in his Contes et Nouvelles under the title of Le Faucon. Tennyson has treated the subject dramatically in The Falcon. See also Delisle de la Drévetière, who turned Boccaccio’s story into a comedy in three acts.]

THE LEGEND OF RABBI BEN LEVI.
[Varnhagen refers to three several sources of this legend in the books Col Bo, Ben Sira, and Ketuboth, but it is most likely that Mr. Longfellow was indebted for the story to his friend Emmanuel Vitalis Scherb.]

KING ROBERT OF SICILY.
[This story is one of very wide distribution. It is given in Gesta Romanorum as the story of Jovinian. Frere in his Old Deccan Days, or Hindoo Fairy Legends current in Southern India, recites it in the form of The Wanderings of Vicram Maharajah. Varnhagen pursues the legend through a great variety of forms. Leigh Hunt, among moderns, has told the story in A Jar of Honey from Mt. Hybla, from which source Mr. Longfellow seems to have drawn. Dante refers to the King in Paradiso, Canto VIII.]

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.
[Killingworth in Connecticut was named from the English town Kenilworth in Warwickshire, and had the same orthography in the early records, but was afterwards corrupted into its present form. Sixty or seventy years ago, according to Mr. Henry Hull, writing from personal recollection, “the men of the northern part of the town did yearly in the spring choose two leaders, and then the two sides were formed: the side that got beaten should pay the bills. Their special game was the hawk, the owl, the crow, the blackbird, and any other bird supposed to be mischievous to the corn. Some years each side would bring them in by the bushel. This was followed up for only a few years, for the birds began to grow scarce.” The story, based upon such a slight suggestion, was Mr. Longfellow’s own invention.]

THE BELL OF ATRI.
[See Gualteruzzi’s Cento Novelle Antiche.]

KAMBALU.
[See Boni’s edition of Il Milione di Marco Polo, II. 35 and I. 14.]

LADY WENTWORTH.
[The incidents of this tale are recounted by C. W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth, I. 101. After the publication of Mr. Longfellow’s poem, Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote to one of Mr. Longfellow’s kinsmen a version of the story sent him by Mrs. Mary Anne Williams, who had the story from her grandmother, née Mary Wentworth, who was niece to Governor Wentworth, and a child at the time of the incident. “I have seen Mr. Longfellow’s poem,” writes Mrs. Williams, “but I should think he would be afraid some of the old fellows would appear to him for making it appear that any others than the family were present to witness what they considered a great degradation. Only the brothers and brothers in law were present, and Mr. Brown; and the bride, who had been his housekeeper for seven years, was then 35, and attired in a calico dress and a white apron. The family stood in wholesome awe of the sturdy old governor, so treated Patty with civility, but it was hard work for the stately old dames, and she was dropped after his death.” Governor Wentworth was born July 24, 1696, and his marriage was on March 15, 1760.]

CHARLEMAGNE.
[In his diary, under date of May 12, 1872, Mr. Longfellow writes: “Wrote a short poem on Charlemagne from a story in an old chronicle, De Factis Caroli Magni, quoted by Cantù, Storia degli Italiani, II. 122. I first heard it from Charles Perkins, in one of his lectures.”]

ELIZABETH.
[As intimated in the Interlude which follows, the tale of Elizabeth was founded on a prose tale by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, entitled The Youthful Emigrant, which fell under Mr. Longfellow’s eye in a Portland paper. Besides this he had recourse to A Call to the Unfaithful Professors of Truth, by John Estaugh, with Preface by his widow. E. E.’s Testimony concerning her husband J. E. Several expressions in the poem are derived from this little book.]

THE MOTHER’S GHOST.
[A Danish ballad to be found in Grundtvig’s Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, II. 478, was the basis of this poem.]

[This use of the phrase Morituri Salutamus agrees with the treatment of Gérôme in his painting, beneath which he wrote the words, Ave Cæsar, Imperator, Morituri te Salutant. The reference to a gladiatorial combat, however, is doubted by some scholars, who quote Suetonius and Dion Cassius as using the phrase in connection with the great sea-fight exhibition given by the Emperor on Lacus Fucinus. The combatants were condemned criminals, and they were to fight until one of the parties was killed, unless saved by the interposition of the Emperor.]

All save one.
[Professor Alpheus Spring Packard, since deceased.]

In Attica thy birthplace should have been.
[Cornelius Conway Felton, at one time Professor of Greek, and afterward President, at Harvard College.]

Piteously calling and lamenting thee.
[Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, the eminent naturalist, whose summer home at Nahant was near Mr. Longfellow’s, while they were also fellow-townsmen in Cambridge.]

A friend who bore thy name.
[Charles Sumner, one of Mr. Longfellow’s closest friends.]

Here lies the gentle humorist.
[Washington Irving. It is interesting to note the influence which this writer had upon Mr. Longfellow, as shown not only in his early prose, but in his direct testimony. In presenting the resolutions upon the death of Irving at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, December 5, 1859, Mr. Longfellow said: “Every reader has his first book; I mean to say, one book among all others which in early youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me, this first book was the Sketch-Book of Washington Irving. I was a school-boy when it was published, and read each succeeding number with ever increasing wonder and delight, spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere of revery,—nay, even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of its titles, and the fair clear type, which seemed an outward symbol of its style. How many delightful books the same author has given us, written before and since,—volumes of history and of fiction; most of which illustrate his native land, and some of which illuminate it and make the Hudson, I will not say as classic, but as romantic as the Rhine! Yet still the charm of the Sketch-Book remains unbroken; the old fascination remains about it; and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth.”…]

PARKER CLEAVELAND.
[A distinguished naturalist who was senior professor at Bowdoin College, where Mr. Longfellow was first a student and afterward an instructor. The father of the poet was an intimate friend of Professor Cleaveland, and when the son went to Brunswick he found in the older man one of his most cherished associates. When he went back to give his poem, Morituri Salutamus, he made his stay at the Cleaveland mansion, with the daughter of the deceased professor.]

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine.
“When any came to take the government of the Hundred or Wapentake in a day and place appointed, as they were accustomed to meete, all the better sort met him with lances, and he alighting from his horse, all rise up to him, and he setting or holding his lance upright, all the rest come with their lances, according to the auncient custome in confirming league and pub-like peace and obedience, and touch his lance or weapon, and thereof called Wapentake, for the Saxon or old English Wapun is weapon, and tac, tactus, a touching, thereby this meeting called Wapentake, or touching of weapon, because that by that signe and ceremonie of touching weapon or the lance, they were sworne and confederate.”—Master Lamberd in Minshew.

Of the White Chief with yellow hair.
[General George A. Custer, who was surprised and with his entire force put to death by the Sioux, June 25, 1876.]

Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb.
In the Hofkirche at Innsbruck.

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.
[This chair bears the inscription,

In 1880, when the city of Cambridge celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the town, December 28th, there was a children’s festival at Sanders Theatre in the morning, and the chair stood on the platform in full view of the thousand children assembled. Mr. George Riddle read the poem; then, to the surprise of all, the poet himself came forward and made this little speech:—

“My dear young Friends,—I do not rise to make an address to you, but to excuse myself from making one. I know the proverb says that he who excuses himself accuses himself, and I am willing on this occasion to accuse myself, for I feel very much as I suppose some of you do when you are suddenly called upon in your class-room, and are obliged to say that you are not prepared. I am glad to see your faces and to hear your voices. I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking you in prose, as I have already done in verse, for the beautiful present you made me some two years ago. Perhaps some of you have forgotten it, but I have not; and I am afraid—yes, I am afraid—that fifty years hence, when you celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of this occasion, this day and all that belongs to it will have passed from your memory: for an English philosopher has said that the ideas as well as children of our youth often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.”]

[Schiller’s lines will be recalled:—In his diary, under date of February 24, 1847, Mr. Longfellow writes:—

“Walking down to Felton’s this morning, seduced by the magnetic influence of the air and the approach to classic ground, I composed the following, a pendant to Schiller’s,—

In my afternoon’s walk I changed it and added three more.

THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
The old Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend, was originally written in Latin, in the thirteenth century, by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar, who afterwards became Arch-bishop of Genoa, and died in 1292.

He called his book simply Legends of the Saints. The epithet of Golden was given it by his admirers; for, as Wynkin de Worde says, “Like as passeth gold in value all other metals, so this Legend exceedeth all other books.” But Edward Leigh, in much distress of mind, calls it “a book written by a man of a leaden heart for the basenesse of the errours, that are without wit or reason, and of a brazen forehead, for his impudent boldnesse in reporting things so fabulous and incredible.”

This work, the great text-book of the legendary lore of the Middle Ages, was translated into French in the fourteenth century by Jean de Vignay, and in the fifteenth into English by William Caxton. It has lately been made more accessible by a new French translation: La Legende Dorée, traduite du Latin, par M. G. B. Paris, 1850. There is a copy of the original, with the Gesta Longobardorum appended, in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, printed at Strasburg, 1496. The title-page is wanting; and the volume begins with the Tabula Legendorum.

I have called this poem the Golden Legend, because the story upon which it is founded seems to me to surpass all other legends in beauty and significance. It exhibits, amid the corruptions of the Middle Ages, the virtue of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, and the power of Faith, Hope, and Charity, sufficient for all the exigencies of life and death. The story is told, and perhaps invented, by Hartmann von der Aue, a Minnesinger of the twelfth century. The original may be found in Mailáth’s Altdeutsche Gedichte, with a modern German version. There is another in Marbach’s Volksbücher, No. 32.

[Mr. S. Arthur Bent has annotated The Golden Legend with fulness and care, and the reader is referred to his volume for more extended notes than are here expedient.]

The consecration and baptism of bells is one of the most curious ceremonies of the Church in the Middle Ages. The Council of Cologne ordained as follows:—

“Let the bells be blessed, as the trumpets of the Church militant, by which the people are assembled to hear the word of God; the clergy to announce his mercy by day, and his truth in their nocturnal vigils: that by their sound the faithful may be invited to prayers, and that the spirit of devotion in them may be increased. The fathers have also maintained that demons, affrighted by the sound of bells calling Christians to prayers, would flee away; and when they fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure: that the destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be averted, and the spirits of the storm defeated.”—Edinburgh Encyclopædia, Art. “Bells.”

See also Scheible’s Kloster, vi. 776.

EVENING SONG.
[Mr. Bent, in his annotated edition of The Golden Legend, remarks that this is modelled upon the choral songs which the Reformed Church of Germany adopted from existing popular chorals, which had long been in use in the social and public observances of the German people.]

Who would think her but fifteen?
[In Der Arme Heinrich, Elsie is but eight years of age.]

It is the malediction of Eve!
“Nec esses plus quam femina, quæ nune etiam viros transcendis, et quæ maledictionem Evæ in benedictionem vertisti Mariæ.”—Epistola Abælardi Heloissæ.

To come back to my text!
In giving this sermon of Friar Cuthbert as a specimen of the Risus Paschales, or street-preaching of the monks at Easter, I have exaggerated nothing. This very anecdote, offensive as it is, comes from a discourse of Father Barletta, a Dominican friar of the fifteenth century, whose fame as a popular preacher was so great that it gave rise to the proverb,—

“Among the abuses introduced in this century,” says Tiraboschi, “was that of exciting from the pulpit the laughter of the hearers; as if that were the same thing as converting them. We have examples of this, not only in Italy, but also in France, where the sermons of Menot and Maillard, and of others, who would make a better appearance on the stage than in the pulpit, are still celebrated for such follies.”

If the reader is curious to see how far the freedom of speech was carried in these popular sermons, he is referred to Scheible’s Kloster, vol. I., where he will find extracts from Abraham a Sancta Clara, Sebastian Frank, and others; and in particular an anonymous discourse called Der Gräuel der Verwüstung, The Abomination of Desolation, preached at Ottakring, a village west of Vienna, November 25, 1782, in which the license of language is carried to its utmost limit.

See also Prédicatoriana, ou Révélations singulières et amusantes sur les Prédicateurs; par G. P. Philomneste. (Menin.) This work contains extracts from the popular sermons of St. Vincent Ferrier, Barletta, Menot, Maillard, Marini, Raulin, Valladier, De Besse, Camus, Père André, Bening, and the most eloquent of all, Jacques Brydaine.

My authority for the spiritual interpretation of bell-ringing, which follows, is Durandus, Ration. Divin. Offic., Lib. 1., cap. 4.

THE NATIVITY: a Miracle-Play.
A singular chapter in the history of the Middle Ages is that which gives account of the early Christian Drama, the Mysteries, Moralities, and Miracle-Plays, which were at first performed in churches, and afterwards in the streets, on fixed or movable stages. For the most part, the Mysteries were founded on the historic portions of the Old and New Testaments, and the Miracle-Plays on the lives of Saints; a distinction not always observed, however, for in Mr. Wright’s Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, the Resurrection of Lazarus is called a Miracle, and not a Mystery. The Moralities were plays in which the Virtues and Vices were personified.

The earliest religious play which has been preserved is the Christos Paschon of Gregory Nazianzen, written in Greek, in the fourth century. Next to this come the remarkable Latin plays of Roswitha, the Nun of Gandersheim, in the tenth century, which, though crude and wanting in artistic construction, are marked by a good deal of dramatic power and interest. A handsome edition of these plays, with a French translation, has been lately published, entitled Théâtre de Rotsvitha, Religieuse allemande du X^e Siècle. Par Charles Magnin. Paris, 1845.

The most important collections of English Mysteries and Miracle-Plays are those known as the Townley, the Chester, and the Coventry Plays. The first of these collections has been published by the Surtees Society, and the other two by the Shakespeare Society. In his Introduction to the Coventry Mysteries, the editor, Mr. Halliwell, quotes the following passage from Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire:—

“Before the suppression of the monasteries, this city was very famous for the pageants, that were played therein, upon Corpus-Christi day; which, occasioning very great confluence of people thither, from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house had theaters for the severall scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city, for the better advantage of spectators: and contain’d the story of the New Testament, composed into old English Rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS. intituled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludus Conventriæ. I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eyewitnesses of these pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this city.”

The representation of religious plays has not yet been wholly discontinued by the Roman Church. At Ober-Ammergau, in the Tyrol, a grand spectacle of this kind is exhibited once in ten years. A very graphic description of that which took place in the year 1850 is given by Miss Anna Mary Howitt, in her Art-Student in Munich, vol. I., chap. 4.

Mr. Bayard Taylor, in his Eldorado, gives a description of a Mystery he saw performed at San Lionel, in Mexico. See vol. II., chap. 11.

In 1852 there was a representation of this kind by Germans in Boston: and I have now before me the copy of a play-bill, announcing the performance, on June 10, 1852, in Cincinnati, of the Great Biblico-Historical Drama, the Life of Jesus Christ, with the characters and the names of the performers.

Here the Angel Gabriel shall leave Paradise.
[A stage of three stories was often erected, the topmost representing Paradise (hence in Germany this word is used for the upper gallery of a theatre, anglicé, “the Gods”); on the middle stage was the Earth; below were the “Jaws of Hell,” sometimes represented by the opening and shutting of the mouth of an enormous dragon. Goethe introduces the Jaws of Hell to the stage machinery of Faust (V. 6).—S. A. Bent.]

The Scriptorium.
A most interesting volume might be written on the Calligraphers and Chrysographers, the transcribers and illuminators of manuscripts in the Middle Ages. These men were for the most part monks, who labored, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for penance, in multiplying copies of the classics and the Scriptures.

“Of all bodily labors which are proper for us,” says Cassiodorus, the old Calabrian monk, “that of copying books has always been more to my taste than any other. The more so, as in this exercise the mind is instructed by the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and it is a kind of homily to the others, whom these books may reach. It is preaching with the hand, by converting the fingers into tongues; it is publishing to men in silence the words of salvation; in fine, it is fighting against the demon with pen and ink. As many words as a transcriber writes, so many wounds the demon receives. In a word, a recluse, seated in his chair to copy books, travels into different provinces without moving from the spot, and the labor of his hands is felt even where he is not.”

Nearly every monastery was provided with its Scriptorium. Nicolas de Clairvaux, St. Bernard’s secretary, in one of his letters describes his cell, which he calls Scriptoriolum, where he copied books. And Mabillon, in his Etudes Monastiques, says that in his time were still to be seen at Citeaux “many of those little cells, where the transcribers and bookbinders worked.”

Silvestre’s Paléographie Universelle contains a vast number of fac-similes of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts of all ages and all countries; and Montfaucon, in his Palægraphia Græca, gives the names of over three hundred calligraphers. He also gives an account of the books they copied, and the colophons with which, as with a satisfactory flourish of the pen, they closed their long-continued labors. Many of these are very curious; expressing joy, humility, remorse; entreating the reader’s prayers and pardon for the writer’s sins; and sometimes pronouncing a malediction on any one who should steal the book. A few of these I subjoin:—

“As pilgrims rejoice, beholding their native land, so are transcribers made glad, beholding the end of a book.”

“Sweet is it to write the end of any book.”

“Ye who read, pray for me, who have written this book, the humble and sinful Theodulus.”

“As many therefore as shall read this book, pardon me, I beseech you, if aught I have erred in accent acute and grave, in apostrophe, in breathing soft or aspirate; and may God save you all! Amen.”

“If anything is well, praise the transcriber; if ill, pardon his unskilfulness.”

“Ye who read, pray for me, the most sinful of all men, for the Lord’s sake.”

“The hand that has written this book shall decay, alas! and become dust, and go down to the grave, the corrupter of all bodies. But all ye who are of the portion of Christ, pray that I may obtain the pardon of my sins. Again and again I beseech you with tears, brothers and fathers, accept my miserable supplication, O holy choir! I am called John, woe is me! I am called Hiereus, or Sacerdos, in name only, not in unction.”

“Whoever shall carry away this book, without permission of the Pope, may he incur the malediction of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Mother of God, of Saint John the Baptist, of the one hundred and eighteen holy Nicene Fathers, and of all the Saints; the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; and the halter of Judas! Anathema, amen.”

“Keep safe, O Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, my three fingers, with which I have written this book.”

“Mathusalas Machir transcribed this divinest book in toil, infirmity, and dangers many.”

“Bacchius Barbardorius and Michael Sophianus wrote this book in sport and laughter, being the guests of their noble and common friend Vincentius Pinellus, and Petrus Nunnius, a most learned man.”

This last colophon Montfaucon does not suffer to pass without reproof. “Other calligraphers,” he remarks, “demand only the prayers of their readers, and the pardon of their sins; but these glory in their wantonness.”

Drink down to your peg!
One of the canons of Archbishop Anselm, promulgated at the beginning of the twelfth century, ordains “that priests go not to drinking-bouts, nor drink to pegs.” In the times of the hard-drinking Danes, King Edgar ordained that pins or nails should be fastened into the drinking-cups or horns at stated distances, and whosoever should drink beyond those marks at one draught should be obnoxious to a severe punishment.

Sharpe, in his History of the Kings of England, says: “Our ancestors were formerly famous for compotation; their liquor was ale, and one method of amusing themselves in this way was with the peg-tankard. I had lately one of them in my hand. It had on the inside a row of eight pins, one above another, from top to bottom. It held two quarts, and was a noble piece of plate, so that there was a gill of ale, half a pint Wincester measure, between each peg. The law was, that every person that drank was to empty the space between pin and pin, so that the pins were so many measures to make the company all drink alike, and to swallow the same quantity of liquor. This was a pretty sure method of making all the company drunk, especially if it be considered that the rule was, that whoever drank short of his pin, or beyond it, was obliged to drink again, and even as deep as to the next pin.”

The convent of St. Gildas de Rhuys.
Abelard, in a letter to his friend Philintus, gives a sad picture of this monastery. “I live,” he says, “in a barbarous country, the language of which I do not understand; I have no conversation but with the rudest people. my walks are on the inacessible shore of a sea, which is perpetually stormy. my monks are only known by their dissoluteness, and living without any rule or order. could you see the abby, Philintus, you would not call it one. the doors and walls are without any ornament, except the heads of wild boars and hinds feet, which are nailed up against them, and the hides of frightful animals. the cells are hung with the skins of deer. the monks have not so much as a bell to wake them, the cocks and dogs supply that defect. in short, they pass their whole days in hunting; would to heaven that were their greatest fault! or that their pleasure terminated there! I endeavor in vain to recall them to their duty; they all combine against me, and I only expose myself to continual vexations and dangers. I imagine I see every moment a naked sword hang over my head. sometimes they surround me, and load me with infinite abuses; sometimes they abandon me, and I am left alone to my own tormenting thoughts. I make it my endeavor to merit by my sufferings, and to appease an angry God. sometimes I grieve for the loss of the house of the Paraclete, and wish to see it again. ah Philintus, does not the love of Heloise still burn in my heart? I have not yet triumphed over that unhappy passion. in the midst of my retirement I sigh, I weep, I pine, I speak the dear name Heloise, and am pleased to hear the sound.”—Letters of the Celebrated Abelard and Heloise. Translated by Mr. John Hughes. Glasgow, 1751.

Were it not for my magic garters and staff.
The method of making the Magic Garters and the Magic Staff is thus laid down in Les Secrets Merveilleux du Petit Albert, a French translation of Alberti Parvi Lucii Libellus de Mirabilibus Naturœ Arcanis:—

“Gather some of the herb called motherwort, when the sun is entering the first degree of the sign of Capricorn; let it dry a little in the shade, and make some garters of the skin of a young hare; that is to say, having cut the skin of the hare into strips two inches wide, double them, sew the before-mentioned herb between, and wear them on your legs. No horse can long keep up with a man on foot, who is furnished with these garters.”—Page 128.

“Gather, on the morrow of All-Saints, a strong branch of willow, of which you will make a staff, fashioned to your liking. Hollow it out, by removing the pith from within, after having furnished the lower end with an iron ferule. Put into the bottom of the staff the two eyes of a young wolf, the tongue and heart of a dog, three green lizards, and the hearts of three swallows. These must all be dried in the sun, between two papers, having been first sprinkled with pulverized saltpetre. Besides all these, put into the staff seven leaves of vervain, gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, with a stone of divers colors, which you will find in the nest of the lapwing, and stop the end of the staff with a pomel of box, or of any other material you please, and be assured that this staff will guarantee you from the perils and mishaps which too often befall travellers, either from robbers, wild beasts, mad dogs, or venomous animals. It will also procure you the good-will of those with whom you lodge.” Page 130.

Saint Elmo’s stars.
So the Italian sailors called the phosphorescent gleams that sometimes play about the masts and rigging of ships.

The School of Salerno.
For a history of the celebrated schools of Salerno and Monte-Cassino, the reader is referred to Sir Alexander Croke’s Introduction to the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum; and to Kurt Sprengel’s Geschichte der Arzneikunde, i. 463, or Jourdan’s French translation of it, Histoire de la Médecine, ii. 354.

He must spell Baker.
A local expression for doing anything difficult. In the old spelling-books, Baker was the first word of two syllables, and when a child came to it he thought he had a hard task before him.

[The reader will notice in The Divine Tragedy the ease with which Mr. Longfellow adjusted the Scriptural phraseology to the demands of blank verse. So here, he has been able to use without change the words found in Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XII. Chapter V. in Whiston’s translation. The text of the Memorial is slightly condensed, but otherwise is almost a transcript from Whiston.]

THE DUNGEONS IN THE CITADEL.
[This powerful scene is a dramatization of II. Maccabees, chapter 7, with the effective change by which the mother is shown apart from the sons, and the torture is made inferential.]

[In 1533 Cardinal Ippolito de Medici sent Sebastian with an armed force to paint the portrait of Julia Gonzaga. It was accomplished in a month and sent to Francis I. of France.

“The real portrait of Giulia Gonzaga is supposed to exist in two different collections. In the National Gallery, we have the likeness of a lady in the character of St. Agatha, as symbolized by a nimbus and pincers. Natural pose and posture and dignified mien indicate rank. The treatment is free and bold, but the colors are not blended with the care which Sebastian would surely have bestowed in such a case. In the Staedel Museum at Frankfort, the person represented is of a noble and elegant carriage, seated, in rich attire, and holding a fan made of feathers. A pretty landscape is seen through an opening, and a rich green hanging falls behind the figure. The handling curiously reminds us of Bronzino. It is well known that the likeness of Giulia was sent to Francis the First in Paris, and was registered in Lépicié’s catalogue. The canvas of the National Gallery was purchased from the Borghese palace, the panel at Frankfort from the heirlooms of the late King of Holland. A third female portrait by Del Piombo deserves to be recorded in connection with this inquiry,—that of Lord Radnor at Longford Castle, in which a lady with a crimson mantle and pearl head-dress stands in profile, resting her hands on the back of a chair. On a shawl which falls from the chair we read, ‘Sunt laquei veneris cave.’ The shape is slender as that of Vittoria Colonna in the Santangelo palace at Naples, but the color is too brown in light and too red in shadow to yield a pleasing effect, and were it proved that this is really Giulia Gonzaga the picture would not deserve Vasari’s eulogy.”—Crowe and Cavalcaselle: History of Painting in North Italy.]

[The Last Judgment was begun in 1534 when Paul III., Alessandro Farnese, was Pope.]

[Julius II., who became Pope in 1503. The Julius who appears in this poem is Julius III.]

SAN SILVESTRO.
[A miniature painter, Francesco d’ Ollanda, was sent to Italy between 1530 and 1540 by the King of Portugal, and wrote an account of his experience. In this account he describes two Sundays which he spent with Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna at San Silvestro. His narrative, which given by Grimm in his Life of Michael Angelo, II. 293-305, furnished Mr. Longfellow the material from which to construct this scene.]

[Vittoria Colonna was born in 1490, betrothed to the Marquis de Pescara in 1495, and married to him in 1509. Pescara was killed in fighting against the French under the walls of Ravenna in 1512. It is not known when or where Vittoria Colonna first met Michael Angelo, but all authorities agree that it must have been about the year 1536, when he was over sixty years of age. She did not escape the espionage of the Inquisition, but was compelled in 1541 to fly to the convent at Viterbo. Three years later, she went to the convent of Benedictines of St. Anne in Rome, and just before her death, in 1547, she was taken to the house of Giuliano Cesarini, the husband of Giulia Colonna, her only relative in Rome. It was after she fled to the convent that she began to write sonnets to and receive them from Michael Angelo, whose love for her was not capable of being concealed. Hartford, in his Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, includes a life also of Vittoria Colonna.]

[See the seventh chapter of Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini for his narrative of this incident.]

[Grimm, II. 415, relates this bout between Michael Angelo and the cardinals.]

And ah! that casting.
[Cellini gives an animated account of this incident in the forty-first chapter of his Memoirs.]

COPLAS DE MANRIQUE.
This poem of Manrique is a great favorite in Spain. No less than four poetic Glosses, or running commentaries, upon it have been published, no one of which, however, possesses great poetic merit. That of the Carthusian monk, Rodrigo de Valdepeñas, is the best. It is known as the Glosa del Cartujo. There is also a prose Commentary by Luis de Aranda.

The following stanzas of the poem were found in the author’s pocket, after his death on the field of battle.

THE CHILDREN OF THE LORD’S SUPPER.
There is one poem in this volume to which a few introductory remarks may be useful. It is The Children of the Lord’s Supper, from the Swedish of Bishop Tegnér, a poem which enjoys no inconsiderable reputation in the North of Europe, and for its beauty and simplicity merits the attention of English readers. It is an Idyl, descriptive of scenes in a Swedish village, and belongs to the same class of poems as the Luise of Voss and the Hermann und Dorothea of Goethe. But the Swedish poet has been guided by a surer taste than his German predecessors. His tone is pure and elevated, and he rarely, if ever, mistakes what is trivial for what is simple. [From this point, Mr. Longfellow proceeded with a description of rural life in Sweden which may be found in his paper Frithiof’s Saga in vol. I. of his prose works, Riverside Edition.]

The Feast of the Leafy Pavilions.
In Swedish, Löfhyddohögtiden, the Leafhuts’-high-tide.

Hörberg.
The peasant-painter of Sweden. He is known chiefly by his altar-pieces in the village churches.

Wallín.
A distinguished pulpit-orator and poet. He is particularly remarkable for the beauty and sublimity of his psalms.

Nils Juel gave heed to the tempest’s roar.
Nils Juel was a celebrated Danish Admiral, and Peder Wessel a Vice Admiral, who for his great prowess received the popular title of Tordenskiold, or Thundershield. In childhood he was a tailor’s apprentice, and rose to his high rank before the age of twenty-eight, when he was killed in a duel.

The blind girl of Castèl-Cuillè.
Jasmin, the author of this beautiful poem, is to the South of France what Burns is to the South of Scotland,—the representative of the heart of the people,—one of those happy bards who are born with their mouths full of birds (la bouco pleno d’ aouzelous). He has written his own biography in a poetic form, and the simple narrative of his poverty, his struggles, and his triumphs is very touching. He still lives at Agen, on the Garonne; and long may he live there to delight his native land with native songs!

[When first printing this note, Mr. Longfellow added a long description of Jasmin and his way of life from Louisa Stuart Costello’s Béarn and the Pyrenees. In more recent days Miss H. W. Preston has written sympathetically on the same subject. See The Atlantic Monthly, January, February, 1876.]

A Christmas Carol.
[A description of Christmas in Burgundy from M. Fertiault’s Coup d’ Œil sur les Noels en Bourgogne, to the Paris edition of Les Noels Bourguignons de Bernard de la Mennoye (Gui Barôzai), 1842, was quoted by Mr. Longfellow when first printing this poem.]