NOTES TO CANTO II.

NOTES TO CANTO II.

NOTE 1, PAGE 51, Stanza xxv.

The fiery charge of gallogloths to bear.

GALLOGLOTHS, a name given to the followers or militiamen of the Irish chieftains.

NOTE 2 PAGE 55 STANZA XXXIII.

But what is chance or fate? mere cant, a word—
"Persistive wisdom," Home says, is our fate.

"Chance may spoil

A single aim; but perseverance must

Prosper at last. For chance and fate are words:

Persistive wisdom is the fate of man."

Tragedy of Douglas, Act II., Scene 1.

NOTE 3, PAGE 55, Stanza xXXIII.

But took the hint, as Bruce did from the spider.

AFTER Robert Bruce had retreated to one of those miserable places of shelter, in which he could venture to take some repose after his disasters, he lay stretched upon a handful of straw, and abandoned himself to his meditations. He had been defeated four times, and was upon the point of resolving to abandon all hopes of future opposition to his fate, and go to the Holy Land. It chanced his eye, while he was thus pondering, was attracted by the exertions of a spider, who, in order to fix his web, endeavoured to swing himself from one beam to another above his head. Involuntarily he became interested in the pertinacity with which the insect renewed his exertions, after failing six times; and it occurred to him that he would decide his own course according to the success or failure of the spider. At the seventh effort, the insect gained his object; and Bruce, in like manner, persevered and carried his own.

Hence the spider was considered sacred by the Bruce, and ever after it has been held unlucky or ungrateful, or both, in one of the name of Bruce to kill a spider.—(Sir Walter Scott's Notes to the Lord of the Isles.)

NOTE 4, PAGE 59, STANZA XLI.

They made promiscuous paths of rush and grass,
Which led them safe—but proved a yawning tomb

To many hearts late triumphing.

DURING the night, Sourlebuoy employed his men in digging up rushes, which they laid carefully across a bog, near the intended scene of action, forming a narrow path over which a line of infantry might pass securely, and so artificially constructed, that the enemy might mistake them for the natural produce of the soil.

In the action, when Macquillan's cavalry were ordered to charge, Sourlebuoy did not sustain the attack, but retreated over the bog by the rush path he had previously constructed. The horsemen rashly pursued, and being engulfed, and tied to their saddles, according to the custom of the age, were quickly despatched.-(Notes to Drummond's Causeway.)