The Visions of the Sleeping Bard Part 7

{43b} Our brother Death.--This idea of the kins.h.i.+p of Death and Sleep is common to all poets, ancient and modern; cp. the "Consanguineus Leti Sopor" of Vergil (AEneid: VI. 278); and also:

Oh thou G.o.d of Quiet!

Look like thy brother, Death, so still,--so stirless - For then we are happiest, as it may be, we Are happiest of all within the realm Of thy stern, silent, and unawakening twin.

- Byron: Sardanapulus, IV.

{44a} An extensive domain.--Compare what follows with Vergil's description (Dryden's trans.):

Just in the gate and in the jaws of h.e.l.l, Revengeful cares and sullen sorrows dwell, And pale diseases and repining age - Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage; Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, Sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep.

--AEneid: VI. 273-8

{48a} Merlin.--A bard or seer who is supposed to have flourished about the middle of the fifth century, when Arthur was king. He figures largely in early tales and traditions, and many of his prophecies are to be found in later Cymric poetry, to one of which Tennyson refers in his Morte d'Arthur:

I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talks of knightly deeds Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were.

I perish by this people which I made - Though Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more--but let what will be, be.

{48b} Brutus, the son of Silvius.--According to the Chronicles of the Welsh Kings, Brwth (Brutus) was the son of Selys (Silvius), the son of Einion or AEneas who, tradition tells, was the first king of Prydain. In these ancient chronicles we find many tales recorded of Brutus and his renowned ancestors down to the fall of Troy and even earlier.

{48c} A huge, seething cauldron.--This was the mystical cauldron of Ceridwen which Taliesin considered to be the source of poetic inspiration. Three drops, he avers, of the seething decoction enabled him to forsee all the secrets of the future.

{48d} Upon the face of earth.--These lines occur in a poem of Taliesin where he gives an account of himself as existing in various places, and contemporary with various events in the early eras of the world's history--an echo of the teachings of Pythagoras:

Morte carent animae; semperque priore relicta Sede, novis habitant domibus vivuntque receptae.

--Ovid: Metam. XV. 158-9.

{48e} Taliesin.--Taliesin is one of the earliest Welsh bards whose works are still extant. He lived sometime in the sixth century, and was bard of the courts of Urien and King Arthur.

{49a} Maelgwn Gwynedd.--He became lord over the whole of Wales about the year 550 and regained much territory that had once been lost to the Saxons. Indeed Geoffrey of Monmouth a.s.serts that at one time Ireland, Scotland, the Orkneys, Norway and Denmark acknowledged his supremacy.

Whatever truth there be in this a.s.sertion, it is quite certain that he built a powerful navy whereby his name became a terror to the Vikings of the North. In his reign, however, the country was ravaged by a more direful enemy--the Yellow Plague; "whoever witnessed it, became doomed to certain death. Maelgwn himself, through Taliesin's curse, saw the Vad Velen through the keyhole in Rhos church and died in consequence." (Iolo MSS.)

{49b} Arthur's quoit.--The name given to several cromlechau in Wales; there is one so named, near the Bard's home, in the parish of Llanddwywe, "having the print of a large hand, dexterously carved by man or nature, on the side of it, as if sunk in from the weight of holding it." (v.

Camb. Register, 1795.)

{54a} In the Pope's favor.--Clement XI. became Pope in 1700, his predecessor being Innocent XII.

{55a} Their hands to the bar.--Referring to the custom (now practically obsolete) whereby a prisoner on his arraignment was required to lift up his hands to the bar for the purpose of identification. Ellis Wynne was evidently quite conversant with the practice of the courts, though there is no proof of his ever having intended to enter the legal profession or taken a degree in law as one author a.s.serts. (v. Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry, sub. t.i.t. Ellis Wynne.)

{67a} "The Practice of Piety."--Its author was Dr. Bayley, Bishop of Bangor; a Welsh translation by Rowland Vaughan, of Caergai, appeared in 1630, "printed at the signe of the Bear, in Saint Paul's Churchyard, London."

{69a} At one time cold.--Cp.:

I come To take you to the other sh.o.r.e across, Into eternal darkness, there to dwell In fierce heat and in ice.

- Dante: Inf. c. III. (Cary's trans.).

{71a} Above the roar.--Cp.:

The stormy blast of h.e.l.l With restless fury drives the spirits on: When they arrive before the ruinous sweep There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans, And blasphemies.

- Dante: Inf. c. V. (Cary's trans.).

{73a} Amidst eternal ice.--Cp.:

Thither . . . all the d.a.m.ned are brought . . . and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce!

From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immoveable, infix'd and frozen round Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.

- Par. Lost, II. 597-603.

{85a} Better to reign.--This speech of Lucifer is very Miltonic; compare especially -

--in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in h.e.l.l; Better to reign in h.e.l.l than serve in heaven.

- Par. Lost, I. 261-3.

{85b} Revenge is sweet.--Cp.:

Revenge, at first though sweet Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils.

- Par. Lost, IX. 171-2.

{87a} This enterprize.--Cp.:

--this enterprize None shall partake with me.

- Par. Lost, II. 465.

{95a} Barristers.--The word cyfarthwyr, here rendered "barristers,"

really means "those who bark," which is probably only a pun of the Bard's on cyfarchwyr--"those who address (the court)."

{95b} Sir Edmundbury G.o.dfrey.--A London magistrate who took prominent part against the Catholics in the reign of Charles II. At the time the panic which the villainy of t.i.tus Oates had fomented was at its height, Sir Edmundbury was found dead on Primrose Hill, with his sword through his body; his tragic end was attributed to the Papists, and many innocent persons suffered torture and death for their supposed complicity in his murder.

{102a} Einion the son of Gwalchmai.--This is a reference to a fable ent.i.tled "Einion and the Lady of the Greenwood," where the bard is led astray by "a graceful, slender lady of elegant growth and delicate feature, her complexion surpa.s.sing every red and every white in early dawn, the snow-flake on the mountain-side, and every beauteous colour in the blossoms of wood, meadow, and hill." (v. Iolo MSS.) Einion was an Anglesey bard, flouris.h.i.+ng in the twelfth century.

{104a} Walking round the church.--Referring to a superst.i.tious custom in vogue in some parts of Wales as late as the beginning of the present century. On All Souls' Night the women-folk gathered together at the parish church, each with a candle in her hand; the s.e.xton then came round and lit the candies, and as these burnt brightly or fitfully, so would the coming year prove prosperous or adverse. When the last candle died out, they solemnly march round the church twice or thrice, then home in silence, and in their dreams that night, their fated husbands would appear to them.

{106a} Cerberus, et seq.--Compare the seven deadly sins in Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman, Pride, Luxury (lecherie), Envy, Wrath, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Sloth. See also Chaucer's Persones Tale, pa.s.sim. A description of these seven sins occurs very frequently in old authors.

{107a} What brought you here.--Pride is the greatest of all the deadly sins. Compare Spenser's Faery Queen I. c. IV, where "proud Lucifera, as men did call her," was attended by "her six sage counsellors"--the other sins. Shakespere names this sin Ambition:

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition, For by this sin fell the angels.

{108a} Sarah.--v. Apocrypha, the book of Tobit, c. VI.

{110a} If she and her scholars--Cp.:

At nos virtutes ipsas invertimus atque sincerum cupimus vas incrustare. probus quis n.o.bisc.u.m vivit multum demissus h.o.m.o: illi tardo cognomen pingui damus. his fugit omnes insidias nullique malo latus obdit apertum pro bene sano at non incauto fictum astutumque vocamus.