Canto Ii. Stanza Iv. Line 5, _poetical Works_, 1899, Ii. 134. Note 2.]

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

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.

For the original of Byron's note, see S. Henley's note, Vathek, 1893, p. 230. See, too, D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientale, 1781, iii. 27.

Sir Richard Burton (Arabian Nights, S.N., iii. 440) gives the following resume of the conflicting legends: "Jam-i-jamshid is a well-known commonplace in Moslem folk-lore; but commentators cannot agree whether 'Jam' 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 Rubaiyat 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."]

{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.

"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.]

{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.

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

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

"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.]

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

{113} [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 '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' Santi," of Boccaccio's Decameron, viii. 9.

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

{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.

{115} "Amaun," quarter, pardon.

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.

{116} That neither gives nor asks for life.--[MS.]

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

{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.]

{119} 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.]

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.

{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, Bibliotheque 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.

{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.

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.

Arsenius, Archbishop of Monembasia (circ. 1530), was famous for his scholarship. He prefaced his Scholia in Septem Euripidis Tragaedias (Basileae, 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-Graecia, lib. ii. (Basileae, 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. (Lacedemone, Ancienne et Nouvelle, par Le Sieur de la Guilletiere, 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.]

{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.

{124} As Time were wasted on his brow.--[MS.]

{125} Of foreign maiden lost at sea.--[MS.]

{127} Behold--as turns he from the--wall His cowl fly back, his dark hair fall.--

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.]

{128} Must burn before it smite or shine.--[MS.] Appears unfit to smite or shine.--[MS. erased]

{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."]

{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.]

Than feeling we must feel no more.--[MS.]

{131} [Compare--

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

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

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

{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.]

{134} My hope a tomb, our foe a grave.--[MS.]

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 Leone (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.

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

Her power to soothe--her skill to save-- And doubly darken o'er the grave,--[MS.]

{136} 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.]

{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.]

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

Must plunge into a dark abyss.--[MS.]

{139} 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.]

{140} ----but this grief In truth is not for thy relief. My state thy thought can never guess.--[MS.]

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.

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.]

{141} I have no heart to love him now And 'tis but to declare my end.--

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.]

{142} Nay--kneel not, father, rise--despair.--[MS.]

{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 camarra), a sheep-skin cloak. It is equivalent to "shroud" only in the primary sense of a "covering."]

Which now I view with trembling spark.--[MS.]

{144} Then lay me with the nameless dead.--[MS.]

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 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.]

{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: miseto\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