Part 23 (1/2)

IDYL IX

Would that my father had taught me the craft of a keeper of sheep, For so in the shade of the elm-tree, or under the rocks on the steep, Piping on reeds I had sat, and had lulled my sorrow to sleep. {210}

Footnotes

{0a} This fragment is from the collection of M. Fauriel; Chants Populaires de le Grece.

{0b} Empedocles on Etna.

{0c} Ballet des Arts, danse par sa Majeste; le 8 janvier, 1663. A Paris, par Robert Ballard, MDCLXIII.

{0d} These and the following ditties are from the modern Greek ballads collected by MM. Fauriel and Legrand.

{0e} See Couat, La Poesie Alexandrine, p. 68 et seq., Paris 1882.

{0f} See Couat, op. cit. p. 395.

{0g} Couat, p. 434.

{0h} See Helbig, Camp.e.n.i.sche Wandmalerie, and Brunn, Die griechischen Bukoliker und die Bildende Kunst.

{0i} The Hecale of Callimachus, or Theseus and the Marathonian Bull, seems to have been rather a heroic idyl than an epic.

{6} Or reading [Greek]=Aeolian, cf. Thucyd. iii. 102.

{9} These are places famous in the oldest legends of Arcadia.

{11} Reading, [Greek]. Cf. Fritzsche's note and Harpocration, s.v.

{13} On the word [Greek], see Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 700; and 'The Bull Roarer,' in the translator's Custom and Myth.

{19} Reading [Greek]. Cf. line 3, and note.

{21} He refers to a piece of folk-lore.

{24} The shovel was used for tossing the sand of the lists; the sheep were food for Aegon's great appet.i.te.

{26} Reading [Greek].

{34} Melanthius was the treacherous goatherd put to a cruel death by Odysseus.

{36} Ameis and Fritzsche take [Greek] (as here) to be the dog, not Galatea. The s.e.x of the Cyclops's sheep-dog makes the meaning obscure.

{40} Or, [Greek]. Hermann renders this domum Oromedonteam a gigantic house.' Oromedon or Eurymedon was the king of the Gigantes, mentioned in Odyssey vii. 58.

{41} [Greek]. This is taken by some to mean algam infimam, 'the bottom weeds of the deepest seas', by others, the sea-weed highest on the sh.o.r.e, at high watermark.

{42} Comatas was a goatherd who devoutly served the Muses, and sacrificed to them his masters goats. His master therefore shut him up in a cedar chest, opening which at the year's end he found Comatas alive, by miracle, the bees having fed him with honey. Thus, in a mediaeval legend, the Blessed Virgin took the place, for a year, of the frail nun who had devoutly served her.