Note 533 — Chapter VII

Canto xxv. 73-78. The locust-tree, according to the tradition of the South, served Judas when he hanged himself. Northern fancy reserved this honor for the elder, not perhaps without a poetic sense of the outcast existence of the plant and its worthlessness for any practical use. On the same locust-tree Marsilio was afterwards suspended (c. xxvii. 267). The description of the blasted pleasure-garden in the latter passage is also very striking. For the translation of these passages see Appendix.