Chapter 2

[85] {108} Phingari, the moon. [[Greek: phenga/ri] is derived from [Greek: phenga/rion,] dim. of [Greek: phe/ngos.]]

[86] The celebrated fabulous ruby of Sultan Giamschid, the embellisher of Istakhar; from its splendour, named Schebgerag [Schabchir[=a]gh], "the torch of night;" also "the cup of the sun," etc. In the First Edition, "Giamschid" was written as a word of three syllables; so D'Herbelot has it; but I am told Richardson reduces it to a dissyllable, and writes "Jamshid." I have left in the text the orthography of the one with the pronunciation of the other.

[The MS. and First Edition read, "Bright as the gem of Giamschid." Byron's first intention was to change the line into "Bright as the ruby of Giamschid;" but to this Moore objected, "that as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a ruby might unluckily call up the idea of its being bloodshot, he had better change the line to 'Bright as the jewel,' etc."

For the original of Byron's note, see S. Henley's note, _Vathek,_ 1893, p. 230. See, too, D'Herbelot's _Bibliothèque Orientale_, 1781, iii. 27.

Sir Richard Burton (_Arabian Nights, S.N._, iii. 440) gives the following _résumé_ of the conflicting legends: "Jám-i-jámshid is a well-known commonplace in Moslem folk-lore; but commentators cannot agree whether 'Jám' be a mirror or a cup. In the latter sense it would represent the Cyathomantic cup of the Patriarch Joseph, and the symbolic bowl of Nestor. Jamshid may be translated either 'Jam the bright,' or 'the Cup of the Sun;' this ancient king is the Solomon of the grand old Guebres."

Fitzgerald, "in a very composite quatrain (stanza v.) which cannot be claimed as a translation at all" (see the _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayya[=a]m, by Edward Heron Allen, 1898), embodies a late version of the myth--

"Iram is gone and all his Rose, And Jamshyd's sev'n-ringed Cup where no one knows."]

[87] {109} Al-Sirat, the bridge of breadth narrower than the thread of a famished spider, and sharper than the edge of a sword, over which the Mussulmans must _skate_ into Paradise, to which it is the only entrance; but this is not the worst, the river beneath being hell itself, into which, as may be expected, the unskilful and tender of foot contrive to tumble with a "facilis descensus Averni," not very pleasing in prospect to the next passenger. There is a shorter cut downwards for the Jews and Christians.

[Byron is again indebted to _Vathek_, and S. Henley on _Vathek,_ p. 237, for his information. The authority for the legend of the Bridge of Paradise is not the Koran, but the Book of Mawakef, quoted by Edward Pococke, in his Commentary (_Notæ Miscellaneæ_) on the _Porta Mosis_ of Moses Maimonides (Oxford, 1654, p. 288)--

"Stretched across the back of Hell, it is narrower than a javelin, sharper than the edge of a sword. But all must essay the passage, believers as well as infidels, and it baffles the understanding to imagine in what manner they keep their foothold."

The legend, or rather allegory, to which there would seem to be some allusion in the words of Scripture, "Strait is the gate," etc., is of Zoroastrian origin. Compare the _Zend-Avesta_, Yasna xix. 6 (_Sacred Books of the East_, edited by F. Max Muller, 1887, xxxi. 261), "With even threefold (safety and with speed) I will bring his soul over the Bridge of Kinvat," etc.]

[88] {110} A vulgar error: the Koran allots at least a third of Paradise to well-behaved women; but by far the greater number of Mussulmans interpret the text their own way, and exclude their moieties from heaven. Being enemies to Platonics, they cannot discern "any fitness of things" in the souls of the other sex, conceiving them to be superseded by the Houris.

[Sale, in his _Preliminary Discourse_ ("Chandos Classics," p. 80), in dealing with this question, notes "that there are several passages in the Koran which affirm that women, in the next life, will not only be punished for their evil actions, but will also receive the rewards of their good deeds, as well as the men, and that in this case God will make no distinction of sexes." A single quotation will suffice: "God has promised to believers, men and women, gardens beneath which rivers flow, to dwell therein for aye; and goodly places in the garden of Eden."--_The Qur'ân_, translated by E. H. Palmer, 1880, vi. 183.]

[89] An Oriental simile, which may, perhaps, though fairly stolen, be deemed "plus Arabe qu'en Arabie."

[Gulnár (the heroine of the _Corsair_ is named Gulnare) is Persian for a pomegranate flower.]

[90] Hyacinthine, in Arabic "Sunbul;" as common a thought in the Eastern poets as it was among the Greeks.

[S. Henley (_Vathek_, 1893, p. 208) quotes two lines from the _Solima_ (lines 5, 6) of Sir W. Jones--

"The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair That wanton with the laughing summer-air;"

and refers Milton's "Hyacinthine locks" (_Paradise Lost_, iv. 301) to Lucian's _Pro Imaginibus_, cap. v.]

[91] {111} "Franguestan," Circassia. [Or Europe generally--the land of the Frank.]

[92] [Lines 504-518 were inserted in the second revise of the Third Edition, July 31, 1813.]

[93] {113} [Parnassus.]

[94] "In the name of God;" the commencement of all the chapters of the Koran but one [the ninth], and of prayer and thanksgiving. ["Bismillah" (in full, _Bismillahi 'rrahmani 'rrahiem_, i.e. "In the name of Allah the God of Mercy, the Merciful") is often used as a deprecatory formula. Sir R. Burton (_Arabian Nights_, i. 40) cites as an equivalent the "remembering Iddio e' Santí," of Boccaccio's _Decameron_, viii. 9.

The MS. reads, "Thank Alla! now the peril's past."]

[95] [A Turkish messenger, sergeant or lictor. The proper sixteen-seventeenth century pronunciation would have been _chaush_, but apparently the nearest approach to this was _chaus_, whence _chouse_ and _chiaush_, and the vulgar form _chiaus_ (_N. Eng. Dict_., art. "Chiaus"). The peculations of a certain "chiaus" in the year A.D. 1000 are said to have been the origin of the word "to chouse."]

[96] {114} A phenomenon not uncommon with an angry Mussulman. In 1809 the Capitan Pacha's whiskers at a diplomatic audience were no less lively with indignation than a tiger cat's, to the horror of all the dragomans; the portentous mustachios twisted, they stood erect of their own accord, and were expected every moment to change their colour, but at last condescended to subside, which, probably, saved more heads than they contained hairs.

[97] {115} "Amaun," quarter, pardon.

[Line 603 was inserted in a proof of the Second Edition, dated July 24, 1813: "Nor raised the _coward_ cry, Amaun!"]

[98] The "evil eye," a common superstition in the Levant, and of which the imaginary effects are yet very singular on those who conceive themselves affected.

[99] [Compare "As with a thousand waves to the rocks, so Swaran's host came on."--_Fingal_, bk. i., Ossian's _Works_, 1807, i. 19.]

[dp] {116} _That neither gives nor asks for life_.--[MS.]

[100] {117} The flowered shawls generally worn by persons of rank.

[101] [Compare "Catilina vero longè a suis, inter hostium cadavera repertus est, paululum etiam spirans ferociamque animi, quam habuerat vivus, in vultu retinens."--_Catilina_, cap. 61, _Opera_, 1820, i. 124.]

[dq] {118} _His mother looked from the lattice high_, _With throbbing heart and eager eye;_ _The browsing camel bells are tinkling_, _And the last beam of twilight twinkling:_ _'Tis eve; his train should now be nigh_. _She could not rest in her garden bower_, _And gazed through the loop of her steepest tower_. _"Why comes he not? his steeds are fleet_, _And well are they train'd to the summer's heat_."--[MS.]

Another copy began--

_The browsing camel bells are tinkling_, _And the first beam of evening twinkling;_ _His mother looked from her lattice high_, _With throbbing breast and eager eye_-- "'_Tis twilight--sure his train is nigh_."--[MS. Aug. 11, 1813.]

_The browsing camel's bells are tinkling_ _The dews of eve the pasture sprinkling_ _And rising planets feebly twinkling:_ _His mother looked from the lattice high_ _With throbbing heart and eager eye_.--[Fourth Edition.]

[These lines were erased, and lines 689-692 were substituted. They appeared first in the Fifth Edition.]

[102] ["The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariot?"--Judges v. 28.]

[dr] {119} _And now his courser's pace amends_.--[MS. erased.]

[ds] _I could not deem my son was slow_.--[MS. erased.]

[dt] _The Tartar sped beneath the gate_ _And flung to earth his fainting weight_.--[MS.]

[103] The calpac is the solid cap or centre part of the head-dress; the shawl is wound round it, and forms the turban.

[104] The turban, pillar, and inscriptive verse, decorate the tombs of the Osmanlies, whether in the cemetery or the wilderness. In the mountains you frequently pass similar mementos; and on inquiry you are informed that they record some victim of rebellion, plunder, or revenge.

[The following is a "Koran verse:" "Every one that is upon it (the earth) perisheth; but the person of thy Lord abideth, the possessor of glory and honour" (Sur. lv. 26, 27). (See "Kufic Tombstones in the British Museum," by Professor Wright, _Proceedings of the Biblical Archæological Society_, 1887, ix. 337, _sq_.)]

[105] {120} "Alla Hu!" the concluding words of the Muezzin's call to prayer from the highest gallery on the exterior of the Minaret. On a still evening, when the Muezzin has a fine voice, which is frequently the case, the effect is solemn and beautiful beyond all the bells in Christendom. [Valid, the son of Abdalmalek, was the first who erected a minaret or turret; and this he placed on the grand mosque at Damascus, for the muezzin or crier to announce from it the hour of prayer. (See D'Herbelot, _Bibliothèque Orientale_, 1783, vi. 473, art. "Valid." See, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza lix. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 136, note 1.)]

[106] The following is part of a battle-song of the Turks:--"I see--I see a dark-eyed girl of Paradise, and she waves a handkerchief, a kerchief of green; and cries aloud, 'Come, kiss me, for I love thee,'" etc.

[107] {121} Monkir and Nekir are the inquisitors of the dead, before whom the corpse undergoes a slight noviciate and preparatory training for damnation. If the answers are none of the clearest, he is hauled up with a scythe and thumped down with a red-hot mace till properly seasoned, with a variety of subsidiary probations. The office of these angels is no sinecure; there are but two, and the number of orthodox deceased being in a small proportion to the remainder, their hands are always full.--See _Relig. Ceremon_., v. 290; vii. 59,68, 118, and Sale's _Preliminary Discourse to the Koran_, p. 101.

[Byron is again indebted to S. Henley (see _Vathek_, 1893, p. 236). According to Pococke (_Porta Mosis_, 1654, Notæ Miscellaneæ, p. 241), the angels Moncar and Nacir are black, ghastly, and of fearsome aspect. Their function is to hold inquisition on the corpse. If his replies are orthodox (_de Mohammede_), he is bidden to sleep sweetly and soundly in his tomb, but if his views are lax and unsound, he is cudgelled between the ears with iron rods. Loud are his groans, and audible to the whole wide world, save to those deaf animals, men and genii. Finally, the earth is enjoined to press him tight and keep him close till the crack of doom.]

[108] Eblis, the Oriental Prince of Darkness.

[109] The Vampire superstition is still general in the Levant. Honest Tournefort [_Relation d'un Voyage du Levant_, par Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, 1717, i. 131] tells a long story, which Mr. Southey, in the notes on _Thalaba_ [book viii., notes, ed. 1838, iv. 297-300], quotes about these "Vroucolochas" ["Vroucolocasses"], as he calls them. The Romaic term is "Vardoulacha." I recollect a whole family being terrified by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror. I find that "Broucolokas" is an old legitimate Hellenic appellation--at least is so applied to Arsenius, who, according to the Greeks, was after his death animated by the Devil. The moderns, however, use the word I mention.

[[Greek: Bourko/lakas] or [Greek: Bryko/lakas] (= the Bohemian and Slovak _Vrholak_) is modern Greek for a ghost or vampire. George Bentotes, in his [Greek: Lexikon Tri/glôsson,] published in Vienna in 1790 (see _Childe Harold_, Canto II. Notes, Papers, etc., No. III., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 197), renders [Greek: Brouko/lakas] "lutin," and [Greek: Broukoliasme/nos,] "devenu un spectre."

Arsenius, Archbishop of Monembasia (circ. 1530), was famous for his scholarship. He prefaced his _Scholia in Septem Euripidis Tragædias_ (Basileæ, 1544) by a dedicatory epistle in Greek to his friend Pope Paul III. "He submitted to the Church of Rome, which made him so odious to the Greek schismatics that the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated him; and the Greeks reported that Arsenius, after his death, was _Broukolakas_, that is, that the Devil hovered about his corps and re-animated him" (Bayle, _Dictionary_, 1724, i. 508, art. "Arsenius"). Martinus Crusius, in his _Turco-Græcia_, lib. ii. (Basileæ, 1584, p. 151) records the death of Arsenius while under sentence of excommunication, and adds that "his miserable corpse turned black, and swelled to the size of a drum, so that all who beheld it were horror-stricken, and trembled exceedingly." Hence, no doubt, the legend which Bayle takes _verbatim_ from Guillet, "Les Grecs disent qu' Arsenius, apres la mort fust _Broukolakas_," etc. (_Lacédémone, Ancienne et Nouvelle_, par Le Sieur de la Guilletiére, 1676, ii. 586. See, too, for "Arsenius," Fabricii _Script. Gr. Var._, 1808, xi. 581, and Gesneri _Bibliotheca Univ_., ed. 1545, fol. 96.) Byron, no doubt, got his information from Bayle. By "old legitimate Hellenic" he must mean literary as opposed to klephtic Greek.]

[110] {123} The freshness of the face [? "_The paleness of the face_," MS.] and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some of them most _incredibly_ attested.

[Vampires were the reanimated corpses of persons newly buried, which were supposed to suck the blood and suck out the life of their selected victims. The marks by which a vampire corpse was recognized were the apparent non-putrefaction of the body and effusion of blood from the lips. A suspected vampire was exhumed, and if the marks were perceived or imagined to be present, a stake was driven through the heart, and the body was burned. This, if Southey's authorities (J. B. Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, in _Lettres Juives_) may be believed, "laid" the vampire, and the community might sleep in peace. (See, too, _Dissertations sur les Apparitions_, par Augustine Calmet, 1746, p. 395, _sq_., and _Russian Folk-Tales_, by W. R. S. Ralston, 1873, pp. 318-324.)]

[111] [For "Caloyer," see _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xlix. line 6, and note 21, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 130, 181. It is a hard matter to piece together the "fragments" which make up the rest of the poem. Apparently the question, "How name ye?" is put by the fisherman, the narrator of the first part of the _Fragment_, and answered by a monk of the fraternity, with whom the Giaour has been pleased to "abide" during the past six years, under conditions and after a fashion of which the monk disapproves. Hereupon the fisherman disappears, and a kind of dialogue between the author and the protesting monk ensues. The poem concludes with the Giaour's confession, which is addressed to the monk, or perhaps to the interested and more tolerant Prior of the community.]

[du] {124} _As Time were wasted on his brow_.--[MS.]

[dv] {125} _Of foreign maiden lost at sea_.--[MS.]

[dw] {127} _Behold--as turns he from the--wall_ _His cowl fly back, his dark hair fall_.--[ms]

[A variant of the copy sent for insertion in the Seventh Edition differs alike from the MS. and the text--]

_Behold as turns him from the wall_-- _His Cowl flies back--his tresses fall_-- _That pallid aspect wreathing round_.

[dx] _Lo! mark him as the harmony_.--[MS.]

[dy] _Thank heaven--he stands without the shrine_.--[MS. erased.]

[dz] {128} _Must burn before it smite or shine_.--[MS.] _Appears unfit to smite or shine_.--[MS. erased]

[112] [In defence of lines 922-927, which had been attacked by a critic in the _British Review_, October, 1813, vol. v. p. 139, who compared them with some lines in Crabbe's _Resentment_ (lines 11--16, _Tales_, 1812, p. 309), Byron wrote to Murray, October 12, 1813, "I have ... read the British Review. I really think the writer in most points very right. The only mortifying thing is the accusation of imitation. _Crabbe's_ passage I never saw; and Scott I no further meant to follow than in his _lyric_ measure, which is Gray's, Milton's, and any one's who like it." The lines, which Moore quotes (_Life_, p. 191), have only a formal and accidental resemblance to the passage in question.]

[113] {129} [Compare--

"To surfeit on the same [our pleasures] And yawn our joys. Or thank a misery For change, though sad?"

_Night Thoughts_, iii., by Edward Young; Anderson's _British Poets_, x. 72. Compare, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanza vi, line 8--

"With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe."]

[114] [Byron was wont to let his imagination dwell on these details of the charnel-house. In a letter to Dallas, August 12, 1811, he writes, "I am already too familiar with the dead. It is strange that I look on the skulls which stand beside me (I have always had four in my study) without emotion, but I cannot strip the features of those I have known of their fleshy covering, even in idea, without a hideous sensation; but the worms are less ceremonious." See, too, his "Lines inscribed upon a Cup formed from a Skull," _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 276.]

[115] {130} The pelican is, I believe, the bird so libelled, by the imputation of feeding her chickens with her blood. [It has been suggested that the curious bloody secretion ejected from the mouth of the flamingo may have given rise to the belief, through that bird having been mistaken for the "pelican of the wilderness."--_Encycl. Brit._, art. "Pelican" (by Professor A. Newton), xviii. 474.]

[ea] _Than feeling we must feel no more_.--[MS.]

[116] {131} [Compare--

"I'd rather be a toad, And live upon the vapours of a dungeon."

_Othello_, act iii. sc. 3, lines 274, 275.]

[eb] _Though hope hath long withdrawn her beam_.--[MS.] [This line was omitted in the Third and following Editions.]

[ec] {132} _Through ranks of steel and tracks of fire_, _And all she threatens in her ire;_ _And these are but the words of one_ _Who thus would do--who thus hath done_.--[MS. erased.]

[ed] {134} _My hope a tomb, our foe a grave_.--[MS.]

[117] This superstition of a second-hearing (for I never met with downright second-sight in the East) fell once under my own observation. On my third journey to Cape Colonna, early in 1811, as we passed through the defile that leads from the hamlet between Keratia and Colonna, I observed Dervish Tahiri riding rather out of the path and leaning his head upon his hand, as if in pain. I rode up and inquired. "We are in peril," he answered. "What peril? We are not now in Albania, nor in the passes to Ephesus, Messalunghi, or Lepanto; there are plenty of us, well armed, and the Choriates have not courage to be thieves."--"True, Affendi, but nevertheless the shot is ringing in my ears."--"The shot. Not a tophaike has been fired this morning."--"I hear it notwithstanding--Bom--Bom--as plainly as I hear your voice."--"Psha!"--"As you please, Affendi; if it is written, so will it be."--I left this quick-eared predestinarian, and rode up to Basili, his Christian compatriot, whose ears, though not at all prophetic, by no means relished the intelligence. We all arrived at Colonna, remained some hours, and returned leisurely, saying a variety of brilliant things, in more languages than spoiled the building of Babel, upon the mistaken seer. Romaic, Arnaout, Turkish, Italian, and English were all exercised, in various conceits, upon the unfortunate Mussulman. While we were contemplating the beautiful prospect, Dervish was occupied about the columns. I thought he was deranged into an antiquarian, and asked him if he had become a "_Palaocastro_" man? "No," said he; "but these pillars will be useful in making a stand;" and added other remarks, which at least evinced his own belief in his troublesome faculty of _forehearing_. On our return to Athens we heard from Leoné (a prisoner set ashore some days after) of the intended attack of the Mainotes, mentioned, with the cause of its not taking place, in the notes to _Childe Harold_, Canto 2nd [_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 169]. I was at some pains to question the man, and he described the dresses, arms, and marks of the horses of our party so accurately, that, with other circumstances, we could not doubt of _his_ having been in "villanous company" [I _Henry IV_., act iii. sc. 3, line 11] and ourselves in a bad neighbourhood. Dervish became a soothsayer for life, and I dare say is now hearing more musketry than ever will be fired, to the great refreshment of the Arnaouts of Berat, and his native mountains.--I shall mention one trait more of this singular race. In March, 1811, a remarkably stout and active Arnaout came (I believe the fiftieth on the same errand) to offer himself as an attendant, which was declined. "Well, Affendi," quoth he, "may you live!--you would have found me useful. I shall leave the town for the hills to-morrow; in the winter I return, perhaps you will then receive me."--Dervish, who was present, remarked as a thing of course, and of no consequence, "in the mean time he will join the Klephtes" (robbers), which was true to the letter. If not cut off, they come down in the winter, and pass it unmolested in some town, where they are often as well known as their exploits.

[118] {135} [_Vide ante_, p. 90, line 89, note 2, "In death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity."]

[ee] _Her power to soothe--her skill to save--_ _And doubly darken o'er the grave,_--[MS.]

[ef] {136} _Of Ladye-love--and dart--and chain--_ _And fire that raged in every vein_.--[MS.]

[eg] _Even now alone, yet undismayed,--_ _I know no friend, and ask no aid_.--[MS.]

[119] [Lines 1127-1130 were inserted in the Seventh Edition. They recall the first line of Plato's epitaph [Greek: A)stê\r prin me\n e)/lampes e)ni zôoi~sin e(ô~|os] which Byron prefixed to his "Epitaph on a Beloved Friend" (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 18), and which, long afterwards, Shelley chose as the motto to his _Adonais_.]

[eh] {137} _Yes_ \ / _doth spring_ \ } _Love indeed_ { _descend_ } _from heaven:_ _If_ / \ _be born_ /

/ _immortal_ \ _A spark of that_ { _eternal_ } _fire_ \ _celestial_ / _To human hearts in mercy given,_ _To lift from earth our low desire,_ _A feeling from the Godhead caught,_ / _each_ \ _To wean from self_ { } _sordid thought:_ \ _our_ / _Devotion sends the soul above,_ _But Heaven itself descends to love,_ _Yet marvel not, if they who love_ _This present joy, this future hope_ _Which taught them with all ill to cope,_ _No more with anguish bravely cope_.--[MS.]

[120] [The hundred and twenty-six lines which follow, down to "Tell me no more of Fancy's gleam," first appeared in the Fifth Edition. In returning the proof to Murray, Byron writes, August 26, 1813, "The last lines Hodgson likes--it is not often he does--and when he don't, he tells me with great energy, and I fret and alter. I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel, and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say for himself."--_Letters,_ 1898, ii. 252.]

[ei] {138} _That quenched, I wandered far in night,_ or, _'Tis quenched, and I am lost in night_.--[MS.]

[ej] _Must plunge into a dark abyss_.--[MS.]

[ek] {139} _And let the light, inconstant fool_ _That sneers his coxcomb ridicule_.--[MS.]

[el] _Less than the soft and shallow maid_.--[MS. erased.]

[em] _The joy--the madness of my heart_.--[MS.]

[en] _To me alike all time and place_-- _Scarce could I gaze on Nature's face_ _For every hue_----.--[MS.] or, _All, all was changed on Nature's face_ _To me alike all time and place_.--[MS. erased.]

[eo] {140} ----_but this grief_ _In truth is not for thy relief._ _My state thy thought can never guess_.--[MS.]

[121] The monk's sermon is omitted. It seems to have had so little effect upon the patient, that it could have no hopes from the reader. It may be sufficient to say that it was of a customary length (as may be perceived from the interruptions and uneasiness of the patient), and was delivered in the usual tone of all orthodox preachers.

[ep] _Where thou, it seems, canst offer grace_.--[MS. erased.]

[eq] _Where rise my native city's towers_.--[MS.]

[er] _I had, and though but one--a friend!_--[MS.]

[es] {141} _I have no heart to love him now_ _And 'tis but to declare my end_.--[ms]

[et] _But now Remembrance murmurs o'er_ _Of all our early youth had been_-- _In pain, I now had turned aside_ _To bless his memory ere I died_, _But Heaven would mark the vain essay_, _If Guilt should for the guiltless fray_-- _I do not ask him not to blame_-- _Too gentle he to wound my name_-- _I do not ask him not to mourn_, _For such request might sound like scorn_-- _And what like Friendship's manly tear_ _So well can grace a brother's bier?_ _But bear this ring he gave of old_, _And tell him--what thou didst behold_-- _The withered frame--the ruined mind_, _The wreck that Passion leaves behind_-- _The shrivelled and discoloured leaf_ _Seared by the Autumn blast of Grief_.--[MS., First Copy.]

[eu] {142} _Nay--kneel not, father, rise--despair_.--[MS.]

[122] {143} "Symar," a shroud. [Cymar, or simar, is a long loose robe worn by women. It is, perhaps, the same word as the Spanish _camarra_ (Arabic _camârra_), a sheep-skin cloak. It is equivalent to "shroud" only in the primary sense of a "covering."]

[ev] _Which now I view with trembling spark_.--[MS.]

[ew] {144} _Then lay me with the nameless dead_.--[MS.]

[123] The circumstance to which the above story relates was not very uncommon in Turkey. A few years ago the wife of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity; he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night! One of the guards who was present informed me that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." The fate of Phrosine, the fairest of this sacrifice, is the subject of many a Romaic and Arnaout ditty. The story in the text is one told of a young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished from the rest, by the want of Eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has retained so few fragments of the original. For the contents of some of the notes I am indebted partly to D'Herbelot, and partly to that most Eastern, and, as Mr. Weber justly entitles it, "sublime tale," the "Caliph Vathek." I do not know from what source the author of that singular volume may have drawn his materials; some of his incidents are to be found in the _Bibliothèque Orientale_; but for correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, it far surpasses all European imitations, and bears such marks of originality that those who have visited the East will find some difficulty in believing it to be more than a translation. As an Eastern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it; his "Happy Valley" will not bear a comparison with the "Hall of Eblis." [See _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 37, note 1.

"Mansour Effendi tells the story (_vide supra_, line 6) thus: Frosini was niece of the Archbishop of Joannina. Mouctar Pasha ordered her to come to his harem, and her father advised her to go; she did so. Mouctar, among other presents, gave her a ring of great value, which she wished to sell, and gave it for that purpose to a merchant, who offered it to the wife of Mouctar. That lady recognized the jewel as her own, and, discovering the intrigue, complained to Ali Pasha, who, the next night, seized her himself in his own house, and ordered her to be drowned. Mansour Effendi says he had the story from the brother and son of Frosini. This son was a child of six years old, and was in bed in his mother's chamber when Ali came to carry away his mother to death. He had a confused recollection of the horrid scene."--_Travels in Albania,_ 1858, i. Ill, note 6.

The concluding note, like the poem, was built up sentence by sentence. Lines 1-12, "forgotten," are in the MS. Line 12, "I heard," to line 17, "original," were added in the Second Edition. The next sentence, "For the contents" to "Vathek," was inserted in the Third; and the concluding paragraph, "I do not know" to the end, in the Fourth Editions.]

[ex] {146} _Nor whether most he mourned none knew_. _For her he loved--or him he slew_.--[MS.]

THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS.

A TURKISH TALE.

"Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met--or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted."--

Burns [_Farewell to Nancy_].

INTRODUCTION TO THE _THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS_.

Many poets--Wordsworth, for instance--have been conscious in their old age that an interest attaches to the circumstances of the composition of their poems, and have furnished their friends and admirers with explanatory notes. Byron recorded the _motif_ and occasion of the _Bride of Abydos_ while the poem was still in the press. It was written, he says, to divert his mind, "to wring his thoughts from reality to imagination--from selfish regrets to vivid recollections" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813, _Letters_, ii. 361), "to distract his dreams from ..." (_Diary_, November 16) "for the sake of _employment_" (Letter to Moore, November 30, 1813). He had been staying during part of October and November at Aston Hall, Rotherham, with his friend James Wedderburn Webster, and had fallen in love with his friend's wife, Lady Frances. From a brief note to his sister, dated November 5, we learn that he was in a scrape, but in "no immediate peril," and from the lines, "Remember him, whom Passion's power" (_vide ante_, p. 67), we may infer that he had sought safety in flight. The _Bride of Abydos_, or _Zuleika_, as it was first entitled, was written early in November, "in four nights" (_Diary_, November 16), or in a week (Letter to Gifford, November 12)--the reckoning goes for little--as a counter-irritant to the pain and distress of _amour interrompu_.

The confession or apology is eminently characteristic. Whilst the _Giaour_ was still in process of evolution, still "lengthening its rattles," another Turkish poem is offered to the public, and the natural explanation, that the author is in vein, and can score another trick, is felt to be inadequate and dishonouring--"To withdraw _myself_ from _myself_," he confides to his _Diary_(November 27), "has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive for scribbling at all."

It is more than probable that in his twenty-sixth year Byron had not attained to perfect self-knowledge, but there is no reason to question his sincerity. That Byron loved to surround himself with mystery, and to dissociate himself from "the general," is true enough; but it does not follow that at all times and under all circumstances he was insincere. "Once a _poseur_ always a _poseur_" is a rough-and-ready formula not invariably applicable even to a poet.

But the _Bride of Abydos_ was a tonic as well as a styptic. Like the _Giaour_, it embodied a personal experience, and recalled "a country replete with the _darkest_ and _brightest_, but always the most _lively_ colours of my memory" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813).

In a letter to Galt (December 11, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 304, reprinted from _Life of Byron_, pp. 181, 182) Byron maintains that the first part of the _Bride_ was drawn from "observations" of his own, "from existence." He had, it would appear, intended to make the story turn on the guilty love of a brother for a sister, a tragic incident of life in a Harem, which had come under his notice during his travels in the East, but "on second thoughts" had reflected that he lived "two centuries at least too late for the subject," and that not even the authority of the "finest works of the Greeks," or of Schiller (in the _Bride of Messina_), or of Alfieri (in _Mirra_), "in modern times," would sanction the intrusion of the [Greek: misêto\n] into English literature. The early drafts and variants of the MS. do not afford any evidence of this alteration of the plot which, as Byron thought, was detrimental to the poem as a work of art, but the undoubted fact that the _Bride of Abydos_, as well as the _Giaour_, embody recollections of actual scenes and incidents which had burnt themselves into the memory of an eye-witness, accounts not only for the fervent heat at which these Turkish tales were written, but for the extraordinary glamour which they threw over contemporary readers, to whom the local colouring was new and attractive, and who were not out of conceit with "good Monsieur Melancholy."

Byron was less dissatisfied with his second Turkish tale than he had been with the _Giaour_. He apologizes for the rapidity with which it had been composed--_stans pede in uno_--but he announced to Murray (November 20) that "he was doing his best to beat the _Giaour_," and (November 29) he appraises the _Bride_ as "my first entire composition of any length."

Moreover, he records (November 15), with evident gratification, the approval of his friend Hodgson, "a very sincere and by no means (at times) a flattering critic of mine," and modestly accepts the praise of such masters of letters as "Mr. Canning," Hookham Frere, Heber, Lord Holland, and of the traveller Edward Daniel Clarke.

The _Bride of Abydos_ was advertised in the _Morning Chronicle,_ among "Books published this day," on November 29, 1813. It was reviewed by George Agar Ellis in the _Quarterly Review_ of January, 1814 (vol. x. p. 331), and, together with the _Corsair_, by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April, 1814 (vol. xxiii. p. 198).

* * * * *

NOTE TO THE MSS. OF _THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS_.

The MSS. of the _Bride of Abydos_ are contained in a bound volume, and in two packets of loose sheets, numbering thirty-two in all, of which eighteen represent additions, etc., to the First Canto; and fourteen additions, etc., to the Second Canto.

The bound volume consists of a rough copy and a fair copy of the first draft of the _Bride_; the fair copy beginning with the sixth stanza of