Note 1, p. 10.-"Padre Francisco."-This is from an Italian popular song:"Padre Francesco,

Padre Francesco!'

-Cosa velete del Padre Francesco

'V' è una bella ragazzina
Che si vuole confessar!'

Fatte l'entrare, fatte l'entrare!

Che la voglio confessare."

Kopisch. Volksthümliche Poesien aus allen Mundarten

Italiens und seiner Inseln, p. 194.

Note 2, p. 21.-"Ay, soft, emerald eyes."-The Spaniards, with good reason, consider this colour of the eye as beautiful, and celebrate it in song; as, for example, in the well-known Villancico:

Ay ojuelos verdes,

ay los mis ojuelos,
ay hagan los cielos
que de mi te acuerdes!

Tengo confianza

Bohl de Faber. Floresta, No. 255. Dante speaks of Beatrice's eyes as emeralds: Purgatorio, xxxi. 116. Lam says, in his Annotazioni, "Erano i suoi occhi d' un turchino verdiccio, simile a quel del mare."

"The evil eye.

Note 3, P. 39."In the Gitano language, casting the evil eye is called Querelar nasula, which simply means making sick, and which, according to the common superstition, is accomplished by casting an evil look at people, especially children, who, from the tenderness of their constitution, are After supposed to be more easily blighted than those of a more mature age. receiving the evil glance, they fall sick, and die in a few hours.

"The Spaniards have very little to say respecting the evil eye, though the belief in it is very prevalent, especially in Andalusia, amongst the lower orders. A stag's horn is considered a good safeguard, and on that account a small horn, tipped with silver, is frequently attached to the children's necks by means of a cord braided from the hair of a black mare's tail. Should the evil glance be cast, it is imagined that the horn receives it, and instantly snaps asunder. Such horns may be purchased in some of the silversmiths' shops at Seville."-BORROW'S Zincali, Vol. I. ch. ix.

Note 4, p. 40.-"On the top of a mountain I stand." -This and the following scraps of songs are from Borrow's Zincali; or an Account of the Gipsies in Spain. The Gipsy words in the same scene may be thus interpreted :

John-Dorados, pieces of gold.

Moon, a shirt.
Chirelin, a thief.
Murcigalleros, those who steal at
nightfall.

1

Rastilleros, footpads.

Hermit, highway-robber.
Planets, candles.

Commandments, the fingers.

Saint Martin asleep, to rob a person asleep.

Lanterns, eyes.

Goblin, police-officer.
Papagayo, a spy.

Vineyards and Dancing John, to take
flight.

Note 5, p. 84.-"For these bells have been anointed,

And baptized with holy water!"

The Consecration and Baptism of Bells is one of the most curious ceremonies of the Church in the Middle Ages. The Council of Cologne ordained as follows:

"Let the bells be blessed, as the trumpets of the Church militant, by which the people are assembled to hear the word of God; the clergy to announce his mercy by day, and his truth in their nocturnal vigils: that by their sound the faithful may be invited to prayers, and that the spirit of devotion in them may be increased. The fathers have also maintained that demons affrighted by the sound of bells calling Christians to prayers, would flee away; and when they fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure: that the destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be averted, and the spirits of the storm defeated." -Edinburgh Encyclopædia, Art. Bells. See also Scheible's Kloster, VI. 776.

Note 6, p. 116. "To come back to my text!"—In giving this sermon of Friar Cuthbert as a specimen of the Risus Paschales, or street-preaching of the monks at Easter, I have exaggerated nothing. This very anecdote, offensive as it is, comes from a discourse of Father Barletta, a Dominican friar of the fifteenth century, whose fame as a popular preacher was so great, that it gave rise to the proverb,

Nescit predicare

Qui nescit Barlettare.

"Among the abuses introduced in this century," says Tiraboschi, "was that of exciting from the pulpit the laughter of the hearers; as if that were the same thing as converting them. We have examples of this, not only in Italy, but also in France, where the sermons of Menot and Maillard, and of others, who would make a better appearance on the stage than in the pulpit, are still celebrated for such follies."

If the reader is curious to see how far the freedom of speech was carried in these popular sermons, he is referred to Scheible's Kloster, Vol. I., where he will find extracts from Abraham a Sancta Clara, Sebastian Frank, and others, and in particular an anonymous discourse called Der Gräuel der Verwüstung, the Abomination of Desolation, preached at Ottakring, a village west of Vienna, November 25, 1782, in which the licence of language is carried to its utmost limit.

See also Prédicatoriana, ou Révélations singulières et amusantes sur les Prédicateurs; par G. P. Philomneste. (Menin.) This work contains extracts from the popular sermons of St Vincent Ferrier, Barletta, Menot, Maillard, Marini, Raulin, Valladier, De Bease, Camus, Père André, Bening, and the most eloquent of all, Jacques Brydaine.

My authority for the spiritual interpretation of bell-ringing, which follows, is Durandus, Ration. Divin. Offic., lib. I. cap. 4.

Note 7, p. 119.-" The Nativity: a Miracle-Play."-A singular chapter in the history of the Middle Ages is that which gives account of the early Christian Drama, the Mysteries, Moralities, and Miracle-Plays, which were at first performed in churches, and afterwards in the streets, on fixed or moveable stages. For the most part, the Mysteries were founded on the historic portions of the Old and New Testaments, and the Miracle-Plays on the lives of Saints: a distinction not always observed, however, for in Mr Wright's Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, the Resurrection of Lazarus is called a Miracle, and not a Mystery. The Moralities were plays, in which the Virtues and Vices were personified.

The earliest religious play, which has been preserved, is the Christos Paschon of Gregory Nazianzen, written in Greek, in the fourth century. Next to this come the remarkable Latin plays of Roswitha, the Nun of Gandersheim, in the tenth century, which, though crude and wanting in artistic construction, are marked by a good deal of dramatic power and interest. A handsome edition of these plays, with a French translation, has been lately published, entitled

Théâtre de Rotsvitha, Religieuse allemande du Xe. Siecle. Par Charles Magnin. Paris, 1845.

The most important collections of English Mysteries and Miracle-Plays are those known as the Townley, the Chester, and the Coventry Plays. The first of these collections has been published by the Surtees Society, and the other two by the Shakspeare Society. In his Introduction to the Coventry Mysteries, the editor, Mr Halliwell, quotes the following passage from Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire:

"Before the suppression of the monasteries, this city was very famous for the pageants, that were played therein, upon Corpus-Christi day; which, occasioning very great confluence of people thither, from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house, had theaters for the severall scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city, for the better advantage of spectators; and contain'd the story of the New Testament, composed into old English Rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS. entituled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludus Conventriæ. I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eye-witnesses of these pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of people to see that show was extraordinarily great, and yielded no small advantage to the city."

The representation of religious plays has not yet been wholly discontinued by the Roman Church. At Ober-Ammergau, in the Tyrol, a grand spectacle of this kind is exhibited once in ten years. A very graphic description of that which took place in the year 1850 is given by Miss Anna Mary Howitt, in her Art Student in Munich, Vol. I. chap. iv. She says"We had come expecting to feel our souls revolt at so material a representation of Christ, as any representation of him we naturally imagined must be in a peasant's Miracle-Play. Yet so far, strange to confess, neither horror, disgust, nor contempt was excited in our minds. Such an earnest solemnity and simplicity breathed throughout the whole of the performance, that to me, at least, anything like anger, or a perception of the ludicrous, would have seemed more irreverent on my part than was this simple, childlike rendering of the sublime Christian tragedy. We felt at times as though the figures of Ciambue's, Giotto's, and Perugino's pictures had become animated, and were moving before us; there was the same simple arrangement and brilliant colour of drapery-the same earnest, quiet dignity about the heads, whilst the entire absence of all theatrical effect wonderfully increased the illusion. There were scenes and groups so extraordinarily like the early Italian pictures, that you could have declared they were the works of Giotto and Perugino, and not living men and women, had not the figures moved and spoken and the breeze stirred their richly-coloured drapery, and the sun cast long, moving shadows behind them on the stage. These effects of sunshine and shadow, and of drapery fluttered by the wind, were very striking and beautiful; one could imagine how the Greeks must have availed themselves of such striking effects in their theatres open to the sky."

Mr Bayard Taylor, in his Eldorado, gives a description of a Mystery he saw performed at San Lionel, in Mexico. See Vol. II., chap. xi.

Two

"Against the wing-wall of the Hacienda del Mayo, which occupied one end of the plaza, was raised a platform, on which stood a table covered with scarlet cloth. A rude bower of cane leaves, on one end of the platform, represented the manger of Bethlehem; while a cord, stretched from its top across the plaza to a hole in the front of the church, bore a large tinsel star, suspended by a hole in its centre. There was quite a crowd in the plaza, and very soon a procession appeared, coming up from the lower part of the village. The three kings took the lead; the Virgin mounted on an ass that gloried in a gilded saddle and rose-besprinkled mane and tail, followed them, led by the angel; and several women, with curious masks of paper, brought up the rear. characters of the harlequin sort--one with a dog's head on his shoulders, and the other a bald-headed friar, with a huge hat hanging on his back-played all sorts of antics for the diversion of the crowd. After making the circuit of the plaza, the Virgin was taken to the platform, and entered the manger. King Herod took his seat at the scarlet table, with an attendant in blue coat and red sash, whom I took to be his Prime Minister. The three kings remained on their horses in front of the church, but between them and the platform, under the string on which the star was to slide, walked two men in long, white robes and blue hoods, with parchment folios in their hands. These were the Wise

Men of the East, as one might readily know from their solemn air, and the mysterious glances which they cast towards all quarters of the heavens.

"In a little while, a company of women on the platform, concealed behind a curtain, sang an angelic chorus to the tune of 'O pescator del' onda.' At the proper moment, the Magi turned towards the platform, followed by the star, to which a string was conveniently attached, that it might be slid along the line. The three kings followed the star till it reached the manger, when they dismounted, and inquired for the sovereign whom it had led them to visit. They were invited upon the platform, and introduced to Herod as the only king; this did not seem to satisfy them, and after some conversation they retired. By this time the star had receded to the other end of the line, and commenced moving forward again, they following. The angel called them into the manger, where, upon their knees, they were shown a small wooden box, supposed to contain the sacred infant; they then retired, and the star brought them back no more. After this departure, King Herod declared himself greatly confused by what he had witnessed, and was very much afraid this newly-found king would weaken his power. Upon consultation with his Prime Minister, the Massacre of the Innocents was decided upon, as the only means of security.

"The angel, on hearing this, gave warning to the Virgin, who quickly got down from the platform, mounted her bespangled donkey, and hurried off. Herod's Prime Minister directed all the children to be handed up for execution. A boy, in a ragged sarape, was caught and thrust forward; the Minister took him by the heels in spite of his kicking, and held his head on the table. The little brother and sister of the boy, thinking he was really to be decapitated, yelled at the top of their voices in an agony of terror, which threw the crowd into a roar of laughter. King Herod brought down his sword with a whack on the table, and the Prime Minister, dipping his brush into a pot of white paint which stood before him, made a flaring cross on the boy's face. Several other boys were caught and served likewise; and, finally, the two harlequins, whose kicks and struggles nearly shook down the platform. The procession then went off up the hill, followed by the whole population of the village. All the evening there were fandangos in the méson, bonfires and rockets on the plaza, ringing of bells, and high mass in the church, with the accompaniment of two guitars, tinkling to lively polkas."

In 1852 there was a representation of this kind by Germans in Boston; and I have now before me the copy of a play-bill, announcing the performance, on June 10, 1852, in Cincinnati, of the "Great Biblico-Historical Drama, the Life of Jesus Christ," with the characters and the names of the performers.

Note 8, p. 131.-" The Scriptorium."-A most interesting volume might be written on the Caligraphers and Chrysographers, the transcribers and illuminators of manuscripts in the Middle Ages. These men were for the most part monks, who laboured, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for penance, in multiplying copies of the classics and the Scriptures.

"Of all bodily labours, which are proper for us," says Cassiodorus, the old Calabrian monk, "that of copying books has always been more to my taste than any other: the more so, as in this exercise the mind is instructed by the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and it is a kind of homily to the others, whom these books may reach. It is preaching with the hand, by converting the fingers into tongues; it is publishing to men in silence the words of salvation; in fine, it is fighting against the demon with pen and ink. As many words as a transcriber writes, so many wounds the demon receives. In a word, a recluse, seated in his chair to copy books, travels into different provinces without moving from the spot, and the labour of his hands is felt even where he is not.”

Nearly every monastery was provided with its Scriptorium. Nicolas de Clairvaux, St Bernard's secretary, in one of his letters describes his cell, which he calls Scriptoriolum, where he copied books. And Mabillon, in his Etudes Monastiques, says that in his time were still to be seen at Citeaux " many of those little cells, where the transcribers and bookbinders worked." Silvestre's Paléographie Universelle contains a vast number of fac-similes of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts of all ages and all countries; and Montfaucon, in his Palæographia Graca, gives the names of over three hundred caligraphers. He also gives an account of the books they copied, and the colophons with which, as with a satisfactory flourish of the pen, they closed their long-continued labours. Many of these are very curious; expressing joy, humility, remorse; entreating the reader's prayers and pardon for the

writer's sins; and sometimes pronouncing a malediction on any one who should steal the book. A few of these I subjoin:

"As pilgrims rejoice, beholding their native land, so are transcribers made glad, beholding the end of a book."

'Sweet is it to write the end of any book."

"Ye who read, pray for me who have written this book, the humble and sinful Theodulus.'

"As many therefore as shall read this book, pardon me, I beseech you, if aught I have erred in accent acute and grave, in apostrophe, in breathing soft or aspirate; and may God save you all! Amen.'

"

"If anything is well, praise the transcriber; if ill, pardon his unskilfulness." "Ye who read, pray for me, the most sinful of all men, for the Lord's sake," "The hand that has written this book shall decay, alas! and become dust, and go down to the grave, the corrupter of all bodies. But all ye who are of the portion of Christ, pray that I may obtain the pardon of my sins. Again and again I beseech you, with tears, brothers and fathers, accept my miserable supplication, O holy choir! I am called John, woe is mel I am called Hiereus, or Sacerdos, in name only, not in unction.'

"Whoever shall carry away this book, without permission of the Pope, may he incur the malediction of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Mother of God, of Saint John the Baptist, of the one hundred and eighteen holy Nicene Fathers, and of all the Saints; the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; and the halter of Judas! Anathema, amen.'

"Keep safe, O Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, my three fingers, with which I have written this book."

"Mathusalas Machir transcribed this divinest book in toil, infirmity, and dangers many.'

"Bacchius Barbardorius and Michael Sophianus wrote this book in sport and laughter, being the guests of their noble and common friend Vincentius Pinellus, and Petrus Nunnius, a most learned man.'

"

This last colophon Montfaucon does not suffer to pass without reproof. "Other caligraphers," he remarks, "demand only the prayers of their readers, and the pardon of their sins; but these glory in their wantonness."

Note 9, p. 137.-" Drink down to your peg!"-One of the canons of Archbishop Anselm, promulgated at the beginning of the twelfth century, ordains "that priests go not to drinking-bouts nor drink to pegs. In the times of the hard-drinking Danes, King Edgar ordered that " 'pins or nails should be fastened into the drinking-cups or horns at stated distances, and whosoever should drink beyond those marks at one draught should be obnoxious to ȧ severe punishment.'

Sharpe, in his History of the Kings of England, says: "Our ancestors were formerly famous for compotation; their liquor was ale, and one method of amusing themselves in this way was with the peg-tankard. I had lately one of them in my hand. It had on the inside a row of eight pins, one above another, from top to bottom. It held two quarts, and was a noble piece of plate, so that there was a gill of ale, half a pint Winchester measure, between each peg. The law was, that every person that drank was to empty the space between pin and pin, so that the pins were so many measures to make the company all drink alike, and to swallow the same quantity of liquor. This was a pretty sure method of making all the company drunk, especially if it be considered that the rule was, that whoever drank short of his pin, or beyond it, was obliged to drink again, and even as deep as to the next pin.'

Note 10, p. 138.—" The convent of St Gildas de Rhuys."-Abelard, in a letter to his friend Philintus, gives a sad picture of this monastery. "I live," he says, "in a barbarous country, the language of which I do not understand; I have no conversation, but with the rudest people. my walks are on the inaccessible shore of a sea, which is perpetually stormy. my monks are only known by their dissoluteness, and living without any rule or order. could you see the abby, Philintus, you would not call it one. the doors and walls are without any ornament, except the heads of wild boars and hinds feet, which are nailed up against them, and the hides of frightful animals. the cells are hung with the skins of deer. the monks have not so much as a bell to wake them, the cocks and dogs supply that defect. in short, they pass their whole days in hunting; would to heaven that were their greatest fault, or that their pleasures terminated there! I endeavour in vain to recall them to their duty; they all