Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844. Various

1

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

2

Dolmen; literally, stone table. Remarkable structures, learnedly ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the peasantry:—Grotte aux fées, Roche aux fées, &c.

3

Weirds. The French has—Lots. “Elles jettent des sorts.” For justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of Kempion; or Kemp Owayne, at the beginning:—

4

From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th. de la Villemarqué, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his Bas Breton countrymen.

5

Essay on The Fairies of Popular Superstition, in “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.”

6

Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1. 1835, and xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.

7

“Ces génies femelles.”

8

From Walckenaer’s Dissertation on the Origin of the Fairy Belief; last printed, in an abridged form, by Jacob, in his edition of the Contes des Fées, par Perrault, (Paris, 1842.)

9

10

Sagen und Mahrchen aus der Oberlausitz. Nacherzahlt von Ernst Willkomm, Hanover, 1843.

11

Irische Elfenmarchen: Uebersetzt von den Brüdern Grimm. Leipzig, 1826. Introduction.

12

Deutsche Sagen: Herausgegeben von den Brüdern Grimm. Berlin, 1816 and 1818.

13

Grimm’s German Mythology, p. 544.

14

15

The fairies themselves hardly can have imparted to godmother Helen the two irreconcilable derivations of their order: that they were Jews, and that they were fallen angels. But the poet dramatically joins, upon the mother’s lip, the two current traditions. With her, fallen angel and Jew are synonymous, as being both opposed to the faith of the cross.

16

Who is this unknown Olim? Our old friend perchance, the Latin adverb, “Olim,” of yore—gradually slipped from the mouths of scholars into the people’s, and risen in dignity as it descended.

17

Sic.

18

October 11, 1492.—“As the evening darkened, Columbus took his station on the top of the castle or cabin, on the high poop of his vessel. However he might carry a cheerful and confident countenance during the day, it was to him a time of the most painful anxiety; and now, when he was wrapped from observation by the shades of night, he maintained an intense and unremitting watch, ranging his eye along the dusky horizon in search of the most vague indications of land. Suddenly, about ten o’clock, he thought he beheld a light glimmering at a distance. Fearing that his eager hopes might deceive him, he called to Pedro Gutierrez, gentleman of the king’s bedchamber, and enquired whether he saw a light in that direction; the latter replied in the affirmative. Columbus, yet doubtful whether it might not be some delusion of the fancy, called Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and made the same enquiry. By the time the latter had ascended the roundhouse, the light had disappeared. They saw it once or twice afterwards in sudden and passing gleams, as if it were a torch in the bark of a fisherman rising and sinking with the waves, or in the hand of some person on shore, borne up and down as he walked from house to house. So transient and uncertain were these gleams, that few attached any importance to them; Columbus, however, considered them as certain signs of land, and, moreover, that the land was inhabited.”—Irving’s Columbus, vol. i.

19

“It was on Friday, the 3d of August 1492, early in the morning, that Columbus set sail on his first voyage of discovery. He departed from the bar of Saltes, a small island in front of the town of Huelva, steering in a south-westerly direction,” &c.—Irving. He was about fifty-seven years old the year of the Discovery.

20

“On the 13th September, in the evening, being about two hundred leagues from the island of Ferro, he, for the first time, noticed the variation of the needle, a phenomenon which had never before been remarked. Struck with the circumstance, he observed it attentively for three days, and found that the variation increased as he advanced. It soon attracted the attention of the pilots, and filled them with consternation. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing as they advanced, and that they were entering another world subject to unknown influences.”—Ibid.

21

“They all quit together; and fly for a time east or west, possibly in wait for stragglers not yet arrived from the interior—they then take directly to the south, and are soon lost sight of altogether for the allotted period of their absence. Their rapidity of flight is well known, and the ‘murder-aiming eye’ of the most experienced sportsman will seldom avail against the swallow; hence they themselves seldom fall a prey to the raptorial birds.”—Cuvier, edited by Griffiths. Swallows are long-lived; they have been known to live a number of years in cages.

22

In the fanciful language of Chateaubriand, “This daughter of a king (the swallow) still seems attached to grandeur; she passes the summer amid the ruins of Versailles, and the winter among those of Thebes.”

23

“However difficult to be credited, it seems to be ascertained beyond doubt, that the same pair which quitted their nest and the limited circle of their residence here, return to the very same ne