The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 3/The Giaour
INTRODUCTION TO THE GIAOUR.



In a letter to Murray, dated Pisa, December 12, 1821 (Life, p. 545), Byron avows that the "Giaour Story" had actually "some foundation on facts." Soon after the poem appeared (June 5, 1813), "a story was circulated by some gentlewomen . . . a little too close to the text" (Letter to Moore, September 1, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 258), and in order to put himself right with his friends or posterity, Byron wrote to his friend Lord Sligo, who in July, 1810, was anchored off Athens in "a twelve-gun brig, with a crew of fifty men" (see Letters, 1898, i. 289, note 1), requesting him to put on paper not so much the narrative of an actual event, but "what he had heard at Athens about the affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there." According to the letter which Moore published (Life, p. 178), and which is reprinted in the present issue (Letters, 1898, ii. 257), Byron interposed on behalf of a girl, who "in compliance with the strict letter of the Mohammedan law," had been sewn in a sack and was about to be thrown into the sea. "I was told," adds Lord Sligo, "that you then conveyed her in safety to the convent, and despatched her off at night to Thebes." The letter, which Byron characterizes as "curious," is by no means conclusive, and to judge from the designedly mysterious references in the Journal, dated November 16 and December 5, and in the second postscript to a letter to Professor Clarke, dated December 15, 1813 (Letters, 1898, ii. 321, 361, 311), "the circumstances which were the groundwork" are not before us. "An event," says John Wright (ed. 1832, ix. 145), "in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the story so circumstantially set forth (see Medwin's Conversations, 1824, pp. 121, 124) of his having been the lover of this female slave, there is no foundation. The girl whose life the poet saved at Athens was not, we are assured by Sir John Hobhouse {Westminster Review, January, 1825, iii. 27), an object of his Lordship's attachment, but of that of his Turkish servant." Nevertheless, whatever Byron may have told Hobhouse (who had returned to England), and he distinctly says (Letters, 1898, ii. 393) that he did not tell him everything, he avowed to Clarke that he had been led "to the water's edge," and confided to his diary that to "describe the feelings of that situation was impossible—it is icy even to recollect them."
For the allusive and fragmentary style of the Giaour, The Voyage of Columbus, which Rogers published in 1812, is in part responsible. "It is sudden in its transitions," wrote the author, in the Preface to the first edition, ". . . leaving much to be imagined by the reader." The story or a part of it is told by a fellow-seaman of Columbus, who had turned "eremite" in his old age, and though the narrative itself is in heroic verse, the prologue and epilogue, as they may be termed, are in "the romance or ballad-measure of the Spanish." The resemblance between the two poems is certainly more than accidental. On the other hand, a vivid and impassioned description of Oriental scenery and customs was, as Gifford observed, new and original, and though, by his own admission, Byron was indebted to Vathek (or rather S. Henley's notes to Vathek) and to D'Herbelot's Bibliothéque Orientale for allusions and details, the "atmosphere" could only have been reproduced by the creative fancy of an observant and enthusiastic traveller who had lived under Eastern skies, and had come within ken of Eastern life and sentiment.
In spite, however, of his love for the subject-matter of his poem, and the facility, surprising even to himself, with which he spun his rhymes, Byron could not persuade himself that a succession of fragments would sort themselves and grow into a complete and connected whole. If his thrice-repeated depreciation of the Giaour is not entirely genuine, it is plain that he misdoubted himself. Writing to Murray (August 26, 1813) he says, "I have, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month;" to Moore (September 1), "The Giaour I have added to a good deal, but still in foolish fragments;" and, again, to Moore (September 8), "By the coach I send you a copy of that awful pamphlet the Giaour."
But while the author doubted and apologized, or deprecated "his love's excess In words of wrong and bitterness," the public read, and edition followed edition with bewildering speed.
The Giaour was reviewed by George Ellis in the Quarterly (No. xxxi., January, 1813 [published February 11, 1813]) and in the Edinburgh Review by Jeffrey (No. 54, January, 1813 [published February 24, 1813]).
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE GIAOUR.



The bibliography of the Giaour is beset with difficulties, and it is doubtful if more than approximate accuracy can be secured. The composition of the entire poem in its present shape was accomplished within six months, May—November, 1813, but during that period it was expanded by successive accretions from a first draft of 407 lines (extant in MS.) to a seventh edition of 1334 lines. A proof is extant of an edition of 28 pages containing 460 lines, itself an enlargement on the MS.; but whether (as a note in the handwriting of the late Mr. Murray affirms) this was or was not published is uncertain. A portion of a second proof of 38 pages has been preserved, but of the publication of the poem in this state there is no record. On June 5 a first edition of 41 pages, containing 685 lines, was issued, and of this numerous copies are extant. At the end of June, or the beginning of July, 1813, a second edition, entitled, a "New Edition with some Additions," appeared. This consisted of 47 pages, and numbered 816 lines. Among the accretions is to be found the famous passage beginning, "He who hath bent him o'er the dead." Two MS. copies of his pannus vere purpureus are in Mr. Murray's possession. At the end of July, and during the first half of August, two or more issues of a third edition were set up in type. The first issue amounted to 53 pages, containing 950 lines, was certainly published in this form, and possibly a second issue of 56 pages, containing 1004 lines, may have followed at a brief interval. A revise of this second issue, dated August 13, is extant. In the last fortnight of August a fourth edition of 58 pages, containing 1048 lines, undoubtedly saw the light. Scarcely more than a few days can have elapsed before a fifth edition of 66 pages, containing 1215 lines, was ready to supplant the fourth edition. A sixth edition, a reproduction of the fifth, may have appeared in October. A seventh edition of 75 pages, containing 1334 lines, which presented the poem in its final shape, was issued subsequently to November 27, 1813 (a seventh edition was advertised in the Morning Chronicle, December 22, 1813), the date of the last revise, or of an advance copy of the issue. The ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth editions belong to 1814, while a fourteenth edition is known to have been issued in 1815. In that year and hence-forward the Giaour was included in the various collected editions of Byron's works. The subjoined table assigns to their several editions the successive accretions in their order as now published:—
Lines. | Giaour.Edition of——— |
1— 6. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
7— 20. | Second edition. [47 pages, 816 lines.] Approximate date, June 24, 1813. |
21— 45. | Third edition. [53 pages, 950 lines.] July 30, 1813. |
46— 102. | Second edition. |
103— 167. | Fifth edition. [66 pages, 1215 lines.] August 25, 1813. |
168— 199. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
200— 250. | Third edition. |
251— 252. | Seventh edition. [75 pages, 1334 lines.] November 27, 1813. |
253— 276. | Third edition. |
277— 287. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
288— 351. | Third edition. (Second issue?) August 11, 1813. [56 pages, 1004,? 1014 lines.] |
352— 503. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
504— 518. | Third edition. |
519— 619. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
620— 654. | Second edition. |
655— 688. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
689— 722. | Fourth edition. [58 pages, 1048 lines.] August 19. |
723— 737. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. 733-4 not in the MS., but in First edition of 28 pages. |
738— 745. | First edition of 41 pages. June 5, 1813. |
746— 786. | First edition of 28 pages. Not in the MS. |
787— 831. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
832— 915. | Seventh edition. |
916— 998. | First edition of 41 pages. 937-970 no MS. |
999—1023. | Second edition. |
1024—1028. | Seventh edition. |
1029—1079. | First edition of 41 pages. |
1080—1098. | Third edition. |
1099—1125. | First edition of 41 pages. |
1126—1130. | Seventh edition. |
1131—1191. | Fifth edition. |
1192—1217. | Seventh edition. |
1218—1256. | Fifth edition. |
1257—1318. | First edition of 41 pages. |
1319—1334. | MS. First edition of 28 pages. |
Note.
The first edition is advertised in the Morning Chronicle, June 5; a third edition on August 11, 13, 16, 31; a fifth edition, with considerable additions, on September 11; on November 29 a "new edition;" and on December 27, 1813, a seventh edition, together with a repeated notice of the Bride of Abydos. These dates do not exactly correspond with Murray's contemporary memoranda of the dates of the successive issues.
TO
SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.
AS A SLIGHT BUT MOST SINCERE TOKEN
OF ADMIRATION OF HIS GENIUS,
RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER,
AND GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,
THIS PRODUCTION IS INSCRIBED
BY HIS OBLIGED
AND AFFECTIONATE SERVANT,
BYRON.
London, May, 1813.
ADVERTISEMENT.



The tale which these disjointed fragments present, is founded upon circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the "olden time," or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes, on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea, during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful.
THE GIAOUR.
Variants
- ↑ Fair clime! where ceaseless summer smiles
Benignant o'er those blessed isles,
Which seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And lend to loneliness delight.
There shine the bright abodes ye seek,
Like dimples upon Ocean's cheek,
So smiling round the waters lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave.
Or if, at times, the transient breeze
Break the smooth crystal of the seas.
Or brush one blossom from the trees,
How grateful is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the fragrance there.—[MS.]
the fragrance there.—[Second Edition.] - ↑ Should wanton in a wilderness.—[MS]
- ↑ The first draft of this celebrated passage differs in many particulars from the Fair Copy, which, with the exception of the passages marked as vars. i. (p. 89) and i. (p. 90), is the same as the text. It ran as follows:—The eleven lines following (88-98) were not emended in the Fair Copy, and are included in the text. The Fair Copy is the sole MS. authority for the four concluding lines of the paragraph.He who hath bent him o'er the deadEre the first day of death is fled—The first dark day of NothingnessThe last of doom and of distress—Before Corruption's cankering fingersHath tinged the hue where Beauty lingersAnd marked the soft and settled airThat dwells with all but Spirit thereThe fixed yet tender lines that speakOf Peace along the placid cheekAnd—but for that sad shrouded eyeThat fires not—pleads not—weeps not—now—And but for that pale chilling browWhose touch tells of MortalityAnd curdles to the Gazer's heartAs if to him it could impartThe doom he only looks upon—Yes but for these and these alone,A moment—yet—a little hourWe still might doubt the Tyrant's power.
- ↑ And marked the almost dreaming air,
Which speaks the sweet repose that's there.
[MS. of Fair Copy.] - ↑ Whose touch thrills with mortality.And curdles to the gazer's heart.—[MS. of Fair Copy.]
- ↑ Fountain of Wisdom! can it be.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ Why is not this Thermopylæ
These waters blue that round you lave
Degenerate offspring of the free—
How name ye them that shore is this?
The wave, the rock of Salamis?—[MS.] - ↑ And he who in the cause expires,
Will add a name and fate to them
Well worthy of his noble stem.—[MS.] - ↑ Commenced by Sire—received by Son.—[MS.]
- ↑ Attest it many a former age
While kings in dark oblivion hid.—[MS.] - ↑ There let the Muse direct thine eye.—[MS.]
- ↑ The hearts amid thy mountains bred.—[MS]
- ↑ Now to the neighbouring shores they waft
Their ancient and proverbial craft.—[MS. erased.] - ↑ He silent shows the doubtful creek.—[MS.]
- ↑ Though scarcely marked. ,—[MS.]
- ↑ With him my wonder as he flew.—[MS.]
With him my roused and wondering view.—[MS. erased.] - ↑ For him who takes so fast a flight.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ And looked along the olive wood.—[MS.]
- ↑ Of transient Anger's Darkening blush.—[MS.]
- ↑ As doubting if to stay or fly—
Then turned it swiftly to his blade;
As loud his raven charger neighed—
That sound dispelled his waking dream,
As sleepers start at owlet's scream.—[MS.] - ↑ 'Twas but an instant, though so long
When thus dilated in my song.
'Twas but an instant .—[MS.] - ↑ Such moment holds a thousand years.
or, Such moment proves the grief of years.—[MS.] - ↑ But neither fled nor fell alone.—[MS.]
- ↑ There are two MS. versions of lines 290-298: (A) a rough copy, and (B) a fair copy—(A)And wide the Spider's thin grey pallIs curtained on the splendid wall—The Bat hath built in his mother's bower,And in the fortress of his powerThe Owl hath fixed her beacon tower,The wild dogs howl on the fountain's brim,With baffled thirst and famine grim;For the stream is shrunk from its marble bedWhere Desolation's dust is spread.—[MS.]The lonely Spider's thin grey pallIs curtained o'er the splendid wall—The Bat builds in his mother's bower;And in the fortress of his powerThe Owl hath fixed her beacon-tower,The wild dog howls o'er the fountain's brink,But vainly lolls his tongue to drink.—[MS.]
- ↑ The silver dew of coldness sprinklingIn drops fantastically twinklingAs from the spring the silver dewIn whirls fantastically flewAnd dashed luxurious coolness roundThe air—and verdure on the ground.—[MS.]
- ↑ For thirsty Fox and Jackal gaunt
May vainly for its waters pant.—[MS.]
or, The famished fox the wild dog gaunt
May vainly for its waters pant.—[MS.] - ↑ Might strike an echo ———.—[MS.]
- ↑ And welcome Life though but in one
For many a gilded chamber's there
Unmeet for Solitude to share.—[MS.] - ↑ To share the Master's "bread and salt."—[MS.]
- ↑ And cold Hospitality shrinks from the labour,
The slave fled his halter and the serf left his labour.—[MS.]
or, Ah! there Hospitality light is thy labour,
or, Ah! who for the traveller's solace will labour!—[MS.]
The emendation of line 335 made that of line 343 unnecessary, but both emendations were accepted.
(Moore says {Life p. 191, note) that the directions are written on a separate slip of paper from the letter to Murray of October 3, 1813).] - ↑ Take ye and give ye that salam,
That says of Moslem faith I am.—[MS.]] - ↑ Which one of yonder barks may wait.—[MS.]
- ↑ If caught, to fate alike betrayed.—[MS.]
- ↑ The gathering flames around her close.—[MS erased.]
- ↑ So writhes the mind by Conscience riven.—[MS.]
- ↑ That neither gives nor asks for life.—[MS.]
- ↑ 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]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 tinklingThe dews of eve the pasture sprinklingAnd rising planets feebly twinkling:His mother looked from the lattice highWith throbbing heart and eager eye.—[Fourth Edition.]
- ↑ And now his courser's pace amends.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ I could not deem my son was slow.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ The Tartar sped beneath the gate
And flung to earth his fainting weight.—[MS.] - ↑ As Time were wasted on his brow.—[MS.]
- ↑ Of foreign maiden lost at sea.—[MS.]
- ↑
Behold—as turns he from the wall
His cowl fly back, his dark hair fall.—[MS.]Behold as turns him from the wall—
His Cowl flies back-his tresses fall—
That pallid aspect wreathing round. - ↑ Lo! mark him as the harmony.—[MS.]
- ↑ Thank heaven—he stands without the shrine.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑
Must burn before it smite or shine.—[MS.]
Appears unfit to smite or shine.—[MS. erased.] - ↑ Than feeling we must feel no more.—[MS.]
- ↑ Though hope hath long withdrawn her beam.—[MS.]
[This line was omitted in the Third and following Editions.] - ↑
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 this hath done.—[MS. erased.] - ↑ My hope a tomb, our foe a grave.—[MS.]
- ↑ Her power to soothe—her skill to save—
And doubly darken o'er the grave.—[MS.] - ↑ Of Ladye-love—and dart—and chain—
And fire that raged in every vein.—[MS.] - ↑ Even now alone, yet undismayed,—
I know no friend, and ask no aid.—[MS]. - ↑
Love indeed from heaven:
A spark of that fire,
To human hearts in mercy given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
A feeling from the Godhead caught,
To wean from self sordid thought:
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.] - ↑ That quenched, I wandered far in night.
or, 'Tis quenched, and I am lost in night.—[MS.] - ↑ Must plunge into a dark abyss.—[MS.]
- ↑ And let the light, inconstant fool
That sneers his coxcomb ridicule.—[MS.] - ↑ Less than the soft and shallow maid.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ The joy-the madness of my heart.—[MS.]
- ↑ 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.] - ↑ ———but this grief
In truth is not for thy relief.
My state thy thought can never guess.—[MS.] - ↑ Where thou, it seems, canst offer grace.—[MS. erased.]
- ↑ Where rise my native city's towers.—[MS.]
- ↑ I had, and though but one—a friend!—[MS.]
- ↑ I have no heart to love him now
And 'tis but to declare my end.—[MS.] - ↑
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 pray—
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.] - ↑ Nay—kneel not, father, rise—despair.-[MS.]
- ↑ Which now I view with trembling spark.—[MS.]
- ↑ Then lay me with the nameless dead.—[MS.]
- ↑ Nor whether most he mourned none knew,
For her he loved—or him he slew.—[MS.]
Notes
- ↑ A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulchre of Themistocles.
["There are," says Cumberland, in his Observer, "a few lines by Plato upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of elegant and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a better translation than I can give—"'By the sea's margin, on the watery strand, Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand: By this directed to thy native shore, The merchant shall convey his freighted store; And when our fleets arc summoned to the fight Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.'"
Note to Edition 1832.
The traditional site of the tomb of Themistocles, "a rock-hewn grave on the very margin of the sea generally covered with water," adjoins the lighthouse, which stands on the westernmost promontory of the Piræus, some three quarters of a mile from the entrance to the harbour. Plutarch, in his Themistocles (cap. xxxii.), is at pains to describe the exact site of the "altar-like tomb," and quotes the passage from Plato (the comic poet, B.C. 428-389) which Cumberland paraphrases. Byron and Hobhouse "made the complete circuit of the peninsula of Munychia," January 18, 1810.—Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 317, 318.]
- ↑ The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.
[Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir William Jones—"The full style and title of the Persian nightingale (Pycnonotus hæmorrhous) is 'Bulbul-i-hazár-dástán,' usually shortened to 'Hazar' (bird of a thousand tales = the thousand), generally called 'Andalib.'" (See Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887; Supplemental Nights, iii. 506.) For the nightingale's attachment to the rose, compare Moore's Lalla Rookh—"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing,Thyself the rose and he the bird of spring:Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd.Be gay: too soon the flowers of spring will fade."and Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (stanza vi.)—"Oh! sooner shall the rose of MayMistake her own sweet nightingale," etc.(Ed. "Chandos Classics," p. 423)Byron was indebted for his information to a note on a passage in Vathek, by S. Henley (Vathek, 1893, p. 217).]"And David's lips are lockt; but in divineHigh piping Pehlevi, with 'Wine! Wine! Wine!Red Wine!'—the Nightingale cries to the RoseThat sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine."Rubáiyát, etc., 1899, p. 29, and note, p. 62. - ↑ The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night; with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.
- ↑ [Compare "Beyond Milan the country wore the aspect of a wider devastation; and though everything seemed more quiet, the repose was like that of death spread over features which retain the impression of the last convulsions."—Mysteries of Udolpho, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 29.]
- ↑ "Aye, but to die, and go we know not where;To lie in cold obstruction?"Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. I, lines 115, 116.
[Compare, too, Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza iv. line 5.] - ↑ I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description; but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. [According to Medwin (1824, 4to, p. 223), an absurd charge, based on the details of this note, was brought against Byron, that he had been guilty of murder, and spoke from experience.]
- ↑ [In Dallaway's Constantinople (p. 2) [Rev. James Dallaway (1763- 1834) published Constantinople Ancient and Modern, etc., in 1797] a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies' History of Greece (vol. i. p. 335), which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius: "The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life."—Moore, Note to Edition 1832.]
- ↑ [From hence to the conclusion of the paragraph, the MS. is written in a hurried and almost illegible hand, as if these splendid lines had been poured forth in one continuous burst of poetic feeling, which would hardly allow time for the pen to follow the imagination.—(Note to Edition 1837. The lines were added to the Second Edition.)]
- ↑ [Compare—
"Son of the Morning, rise I approach you here!"
Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza iii. line i.] - ↑ Athens is the property of the Kislar Aga [kizlar-aghasî] (the slave of the Seraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Waywode. A pander and eunuch—these are not polite, yet true
appellations—now governs the governor of Athens!
[ Hobhouse maintains that this subordination of the waivodes (or vaivodes = the Sclavic βοεβόδα) (Turkish governors of Athens) to a higher Turkish official, was on the whole favourable to the liberties and well-being of the Athenians.—Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 246.] - ↑ [The reciter of the tale is a Turkish fisherman, who has been employed during the day in the gulf of Ægina, and in the evening, apprehensive of the Mainote pirates who infest the coast of Attica, lands with his boat on the harbour of Port Leone, the ancient Piræus. He becomes the eye-witness of nearly all the incidents in the story, and in one of them is a principal agent. It is to his feelings, and particularly to his religious prejudices, that we are indebted for some of the most forcible and splendid parts of the poem.—Note by George Agar Ellis, 1797-1833.]
- ↑ [In Dr. Clarke's Travels (Edward Daniel Clarke, 1769-1822, published Travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, 1810-24), this word, which means infidel, is always written according to its English pronunciation, Djour. Byron adopted the Italian spelling usual among the Franks of the Levant,—Note to Edition 1832.
The pronunciation of the word depends on its origin. If it is associated with the Arabic jawr, a "deviating" or "erring," the initial consonant would be soft, but if with the Persian gawr, or guebre, "a fire-worshipper," the word should be pronounced Gow-er—as Gower Street has come to be pronounced. It is to be remarked that to the present day the Nestorians of Urumiah are contemned as Gy-ours (the G hard), by their Mohammedan countrymen.—(From information kindly supplied by Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the Oriental Printed Books and MSS. Department, British Museum.)] - ↑ [Compare—
"A moment now he slacked his speed,
A moment breathed his panting steed."
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I. stanza xxvii. lines 1, 2.] - ↑ "Tophaike," musket. The Bairam is announced by the cannon at sunset: the illumination of the mosques, and the firing of all kinds of small arms, loaded with ball, proclaim it during the night.
[The Bairâm, the Moslem Easter, a festival of three days, succeeded the Ramazân,
For the illumination of the mosques during the fast of the Ramazan, see Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza lv. line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 134, note 2. - ↑ [For "hasty," all the editions till the twelfth read "darkening blush." On the back of a copy of the eleventh, Lord Byron has written, "Why did not the printer attend to the solitary correction so repeatedly made? I have no copy of this, and desire to have none till my request is complied with."—Notes to Editions 1832, 1837.]
- ↑ Jerreed, or Djerrid [Jarïd], a blunted Turkish javelin, which is darted from horseback with great force and precision. It is a favourite exercise of the Mussulmans; but I know not if it can be called a manly one, since the most expert in the art are the Black Eunuchs of Constantinople. I think, next to these, a Mamlouk at Smyrna was the most skilful that came within my observation.
[Lines 250, 251, together with the note, were inserted in the Third Edition.] - ↑ ["Lord Byron told Mr. Murray that he took this idea from one of the Arabian tales—that in which the Sultan puts his head into a butt of water, and, though it remains there for only two or three minutes, he imagines that he lives many years during that time. The story had been quoted by Addison in the Spectator" [No. 94, June 18, 1711].—Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 219, note.
- ↑ [Lines 271-276 were added in the Third Edition. The MS. proceeds with a direction (dated July 31, 1813) to the printer—
"And alter
"'A life of woe—an age of crime—'
to
"'A life of pain—an age of crime.'
Alter also the linesto"'On him who loves or hates or fearsSuch moment holds a thousand years,'"'O'er him who loves or hates or fearsSuch moment pours the grief of years.'"] - ↑ The blast of the desert, fatal to everything living, and often alluded to in Eastern poetry.
[James Bruce, 1730-1794 (nicknamed "Abyssinian Bruce"), gives a remarkable description of the simoom: "I saw from the south-east a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly. . . . We all lay flat on the ground . . . till it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw was, indeed, passed, but the light air which still blew was of a heat to threaten suffocation." He goes on to say that he did not recover the effect of the sandblast on his chest for nearly two years (Bruce's Life and Travels, ed. 1830, p. 470).—Note to Edition 1832.] - ↑ [Compare "The walls of Balclutha were desolated. . . . The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The fox looked out from the windows" (Ossian's Balclutha). "The dreary night-owl screams in the solitary retreat of his mouldering ivy-covered tower" [Larnul, or the Song of Despair: Poems of Ossian, discovered by the Baron de Harold, 1787, p. 172). Compare, too, the well-known lines, "The spider holds the veil in the palace of Cæsar; the owl stands sentinel on the watch-tower of Afrasyab" {A Grammar of the Persian Language, by Sir W. Jones, 1809, p. 106). See, too, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 1826, iii. 378.]
- ↑ ["I have just recollected an alteration you may make in the proof. . . . Among the lines on Hassan's Serai, is this—'Unmeet for Solitude to share.' Now, to share implies more than one, and Solitude is a single gentlewoman: it must be thus—and so on. Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a cheese from me for your trouble."—Letter to John Murray, Stilton, October 3, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 274.]"'For many a gilded chamber's there,Which Solitude might well forbear;'
- ↑ [To partake of food—to break bread and taste salt with your host, ensures the safety of the guest: even though an enemy, his person from that moment becomes sacred.—(Note appended to Letter of October 3, 1813.)
"I leave this {vide supra, note l) to your discretion; if anybody thinks the old line a good one or the cheese a bad one, don't accept either. But in that case the word share is repeated soon after in the line—"'To share the master's bread and salt;'
"'To break the master's bread and salt.'
"If the old line ['Unmeet for Solitude to share'] stands, let the other run thus—"'Nor there will weary traveller halt,To bless the sacred bread and salt.'(P.S. to Murray, October 3, 1813.) - ↑ I need hardly observe, that Charity and Hospitality are the first duties enjoined by Mahomet; and to say truth, very generally practised by his disciples. The first praise that can be bestowed on a chief is a panegyric on his bounty; the next, on his valour. ["Serve God . . . and show kindness unto parents, and relations, and orphans, and the poor, and your neighbour who is of kin to you . . . and the traveller, and the captives," etc.—Qur'ân, cap. iv.
Lines 350, 351 were inserted in the Fifth Edition.] - ↑ The ataghan, a long dagger worn with pistols in the belt, in a metal scabbard, generally of silver; and, among the wealthier, gilt, or of gold.
- ↑ Green is the privileged colour of the prophet's numerous pretended descendants; with them, as here, faith (the family inheritance) is supposed to supersede the necessity of good works: they are the worst of a very indifferent brood.
- ↑ "Salam aleikoum! aleikoum salam!" peace be with you; be with you peace—the salutation reserved for the faithful:—to a Christian, "Urlarula!" a good journey; or "saban hiresem, saban serula," good morn, good even; and sometimes, "may your end be happy!" are the usual salutes.
["After both sets of prayers, Farz and Sunnah, the Moslem looks over his right shoulder, and says, 'The Peace (of Allah) be upon you and the ruth of Allah,' and repeats the words over the left shoulder. The salutation is addressed to the Guardian Angels, or to the bystanders (Moslem), who, however, do not return it."—Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887: Supplemental Nights, i. 14, note. - ↑ [In the MS. and the first five editions the broken line (373) consisted of two words only, "That one."]
- ↑ The blue-winged butterfly of Kashmeer, the most rare and beautiful of the species.
[The same insects (butterflies of Cachemir) are celebrated in an unpublished poem of Mesihi. . . . Sir Anthony Shirley relates that it was customary in Persia "to hawk after butterflies with sparrows, made to that use."—Note by S. Henley to Vathek, ed. 1893, p. 222.
Byron, in his Journal, December 1, 1813, speaks of Lady Charlemont as "that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning."] - ↑ Alluding to the dubious suicide of the scorpion, so placed for experiment by gentle philosophers. Some maintain that the position of the sting, when turned towards the head, is merely a convulsive movement; but others have actually brought in the verdict "Felo de se." The scorpions are surely interested in a speedy decision of the question; as, if once fairly established as insect Catos, they will probably be allowed to live as long as they think proper, without being martyred for the sake of an hypothesis.
[Byron assured Dallas that the simile of the scorpion was imagined in his sleep.—Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, by R. C. Dallas, p. 264.
"Probably in some instances the poor scorpion has been burnt to death; and the well-known habit of these creatures to raise the tail over the back and recurve it so that the extremity touches the fore part of the cephalo-thorax, has led to the idea that it was stinging itself."—Encycl. Brit., art. "Arachnida," by Rev. O. P. Cambridge, ii. 281.] - ↑ The cannon at sunset close the Rhamazan. [Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza lv. line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 134, note 2.]
- ↑ Phingari, the moon, [Φεγγάρι is derived from φεγγάριον, dim. of φέγγος.]
- ↑ The celebrated fabulous ruby of Sultan Giamschid, the embellisher of Istakhar; from its splendour, named Schebgerag [Schabchirāgh], "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-jamshid 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 Khayyām, 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."] - ↑ 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 Müller, 1887, xxxi. 261), "With even threefold (safety and with speed) I will bring his soul over the Bridge of Kinvat," etc.] - ↑ 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 Korân 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.] - ↑ 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.] - ↑ 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—and refers Milton's "Hyacinthine locks” (Paradise Lost, iv. 301) to Lucian's Pro Imaginibus, cap. v.]"The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hairThat wanton with the laughing summer-air;" - ↑ "Franguestan," Circassia. [Or Europe generally—the land of the Frank.]
- ↑ [Lines 504-518 were inserted in the second revise of the Third Edition, July 31, 1813.]
- ↑ [Parnassus.]
- ↑ "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 'rraheem, 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."] - ↑ [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."]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ "Amaun," quarter, pardon.
[Line 603 was inserted in a proof of the Second Edition, dated July 24, 1813: "Nor raised the coward cry, Amaun!"] - ↑ 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.
- ↑ [Compare "As with a thousand waves to the rocks, so Swaran's host came on."—Fingal, bk. i., Ossian's Works, 1807, i. 19.]
- ↑ The flowered shawls generally worn by persons of rank.
- ↑ [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.]
- ↑ ["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. 28.1]
- ↑ The calpac is the solid cap or centre part of the head-dress; the shawl is wound round it, and forms the turban.
- ↑ 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.] - ↑ "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.)]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.] - ↑ Eblis, the Oriental Prince of Darkness.
- ↑ 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.
[Βουρκόλακας or βρυκόλακας (= the Bohemian and Slovak Vrholak) is modern Greek for a ghost or vampire. George Bentotes, in his Λεξικὸν Τρίγλωσσον, published in Vienna in 1790 (see Childe Harold, Canto II. Notes, Papers, etc., No. III., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 197), renders βρουκόλακας "lutin," and βρουκολιασμένος, "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.] - ↑ 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 soul 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.)] - ↑ [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.]
- ↑ [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, "Í 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.]
- ↑ [Compare—Night Thoughts, iii., by Edward Young; Anderson's British Poets, x. 72. Compare, too, Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza vi. line 8—"To surfeit on the same [our pleasures] And yawn our joys. Or thank a misery For change, though sad?"
"With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe."]
- ↑ [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.]
- ↑ 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.]
- ↑ [Compare—"I'd rather be a toad,And live upon the vapours of a dungeon."Othello, act iii, sc. 3, lines 274, 275.]
- ↑ 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" [1 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.
- ↑ [Vide ante, p. 90, line 89, note 2, "In death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity."]
- ↑ [Lines 1127-1130 were inserted in the Seventh Edition. They recall the first line of Plato's epitaph, Ἀστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζωοῖσιν ἑῷος, 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.
- ↑ [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.]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ "Symar," a shroud. [Cymar, or simar, is a long loose robe worn by women. It is, perhaps, the same word as the Spanish zamarra (Arabic çamârra), a sheep-skin cloak. It is equivalent to "shroud" only in the primary sense of a "covering."]
- ↑ 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 Bibliotheque 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 I. stanza xxii, line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 37, note i.
"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. III, 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.]