The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 29

And as they roared out this stave, they whirled round the fire, dropped, and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus was again repeated."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 166, 167.]

[169] {145} [This was not Byron's first experience of an Albanian war-song. At Salakhora, on the Gulf of Arta (nine miles north-east of Prevesa), which he reached on October 1, the Albanian guard at the custom-house entertained the travellers by "singing some songs." "The music is extremely monotonous and nasal; and the shrill scream of their voices was increased by each putting his hand behind his ear and cheek, to give more force to the sound."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 28.

Long afterwards, in 1816, one evening, on the Lake of Geneva, Byron entertained Sh.e.l.ley, Mary, and Claire with "an Albanian song." They seem to have felt that such melodies "unheard are sweeter." Hence, perhaps, his _pet.i.t nom_, "Albe," that is, the "Albaneser."--_Life of Sh.e.l.ley_, by Edward Dowden, 1896, p. 309.]

[170] {146} [Tambourgi, "drummer," a Turkish word, formed by affixing the termination _-gi_, which signifies "one who discharges any occupation," to the French _tambour_ (H. F. Tozer, _Childe Harold_, p.

246).]

[fm] ----_thy tocsin afar_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[171] [The _camese_ is the _fustanella_ or white kilt of the Toska, a branch of the Albanian, or Shkipetar, race. Spenser has the forms "camis," "camus." The Arabic _quamic_ occurs in the Koran, but is thought to be an adaptation of the Latin _camisia, camisa_.--Finlay's _Hist, of Greece_, vi. 39; _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Camis." (For "capote,"

_vide post_, p. 181.)]

[fn] _Shall the sons of Chimaera_----.--[MS. D.]

[172] [The Suliotes, after a protracted and often successful resistance, were finally reduced by Ali, in December, 1803. They are adjured to forget their natural desire for vengeance, and to unite with the Albanians against their common foe, the Russians.]

[fo] {147} _Shall win the young minions_----.--[MS. D.]

[fp] ----_the maid and the youth_.--[MS.]

[fq] _Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe_.--[MS. D.

erased.]

[173] {148} [So, too, at Salakhora (October 1): "One of the songs was on the taking of Prevesa, an exploit of which the Albanians are vastly proud; and there was scarcely one of them in which the name of Ali Pasha was not roared out and dwelt upon with peculiar energy."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 29.

Prevesa, which, with other Venetian possessions, had fallen to the French in 1797, was taken in the Sultan's name by Ali, in October, 1798.

The troops in the garrison (300 French, 460 Greeks) encountered and were overwhelmed by 5000 Albanians, on the plain of Nicopolis. The victors entered and sacked the town.]

[174] [Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent against the Russians, who, in 1809, invaded the trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire.]

[175] Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians.

[176] Infidel.

[177] The insignia of a Pacha.

[178] {149} [The literal meaning of Delhi or Deli, is, says M.

Darmesteter, "fou" ["properly madmen" (D'Herbelot)], a t.i.tle bestowed on Turkish warriors _honoris causu_. Byron suggests "forlorn hope" as an equivalent; but there is a wide difference between the blood-drunkenness of the Turk and the "foolishness" of British chivalry.]

[179] Sword-bearer.

[fr] _Tambourgi! thy tocsin_----.--[MS. D. erased]

[180] [Compare "The Isles of Greece," stanza 7 (_Don Juan_, Canto III.)--

"Earth! render back from out thy heart A remnant of our Spartan dead!

Of the three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylae!"

The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia ('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"]

[fs] {150} _A fawning feeble race, untaught, enslaved, unmanned_.--[MS.

erased.]

[ft] ----_fair Liberty_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[181] {151} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, vi. lines 39-46.]

[182] [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed ben Abd-el-Wahab, arose in the province of Nedj, in Central Arabia, about 1760. Half-socialists, half-puritans, they insisted on fulfilling to the letter the precepts of the Koran. In 1803-4 they attacked and ravaged Mecca and Medinah, and in 1808 they invaded Syria and took Damascus. During Byron's residence in the East they were at the height of their power, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the Turkish empire.]

[183] {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e.

e?? t?? p???? [ei)s te po/lin])--from May 14 to July 14, 1810. The "Lenten days," which were ushered in by a carnival, were those of the second "great" Lent of the Greek Church, that of St. Peter and St. Paul, which begins on the first Monday after Trinity, and ends on the 29th of June.]

[184] {153} [These _al-fresco_ festivities must, it is presumed, have taken place on the two days out of the seven when you "might not 'd.a.m.n the climate' and complain of the spleen." Hobhouse records excursions to the Valley of Sweet Waters; to Belgrade, where "the French minister gave a sort of _fete-champetre_," when "the carousal lasted four days," and when "night after night is kept awake by the pipes, tabors, and fiddles of these moonlight dances;" and to the grove of Fanar-Baktchesi.--_Travels in Albania_, ii. 242-258.]

[185]

["There's nothing like young Love, No! No!

There's nothing like young love at last."]

[186] {154} [It has been a.s.sumed that "searment" is an incorrect form of "cerement," the cloth dipped "in melting wax, in which dead bodies were enfolded when embalmed" (_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 4), but the sense of the pa.s.sage seems rather to point to "cerecloth," "searcloth," a plaster to cover up a wound. The "robe of revel" does but half conceal the sore and aching heart.]

[187] [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The Sompnour's Tale" (_Canterbury Tales_, line 7631)--

"And dronkennesse is eke a foul record Of any man, and namely of a lord."]

[fu] _When Athens' children are with arts endued_.--[MS. D.]

[188] [Compare _Ecclus._ xliv. 8, 9: "There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been."]

[189] {156} [The "solitary column" may be that on the sh.o.r.e of the harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the detached columns of the Olympeion.]

[190] [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain origin. Hofmann's _Lexicon Universale_, Tooke's _Pantheon_, and Smith's _Cla.s.sical Dictionary_ are much in the same tale. Lucan (_Pharsalia_, lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya--

"Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quae vertice nata Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est, Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quieta Vultus vidit aqua, posuitque in margine plantas, Et se dilecta Tritonida dixit ab unda."]

[191] [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24, 1810.]

[192] {157} [Athene's dower of the olive induced the G.o.ds to appoint her as the protector and name-giver of Athens. Poseidon, who had proffered a horse, was a rejected candidate. (See note by Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1897, p. 175.)]

[193] ["The wild thyme is in great abundance; but there are only two stands of bee-hives on the mountains, and very little of the real honey of Hymettus is to be now procured at Athens.... A small pot of it was shown to me as a rarity" (_Travels in Albania_, i. 341). There is now, a little way out of Athens, a "honey-farm, where the honey from Hymettus is prepared for sale" (_Handbook for Greece_, p. 500).]

[fv] ----_Pentele's marbles glare_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[194] [Stanzas lx.x.xviii.-xc. are not in the MS., but were first included in the seventh edition, 1814.]

[195] [Byron and Hobhouse, after visiting Colonna, slept at Keratea, and proceeded to Marathon on January 25, returning to Athens on the following day.]

[fw] {158} _Preserve alike its form_----.--[MS. L.]