Note 19 — DISENCHANTMENT.
Reading edition
It is very probable, that the apparitional visit of "Alonzo the Brave" to the bridal of "the Fair Imogene," was suggested to M. G. Lewis, by the story in the old chronicles of the skeleton masquer taking his place among the wedding revellers, at Jedburgh Castle, on the night when Alexander III., in 1286, espoused as his second queen, Joleta, daughter of the Count le Dreux. These were the palmy days of portents; and the prophecy uttered by Thomas of Ercildoune, of the storm which was to roar
"From Ross's hills to Solway sea,"
was supposed to have had its fulfilment in the death of the lamented monarch, which occurred, only a few months after the appearance of the skeleton masquer, by a fall from his horse, over a precipice, while hunting between Burntisland and Kinghorn, at a place still called "the King's Wood-end."
Wordsworth appears to have had the subject in his eye, in two of the stanzas of his lyric, entitled Presentiments,—the last of which runs as follows:—
"Ye daunt the proud array of war, Pervade the lonely ocean far As sail hath been unfurled, For dancers in the festive hall What ghostly partners hath your call Fetched from the shadowy world."
—Poetical Works, 1845, p. 176.
The same incident has been made the subject of some very spirited verses, in a little volume—Ballads and Lays from Scottish History—published in 1844; and which, I fear, has not attracted the attention to which its intrinsic merits assuredly entitle it.