NOTES TO CANTO FOURTH.
393
mentioning his name, while on a subject so closely connected with his extensive and curious researches.
Note XII.
———I sunk down in a sinful fray,
And 'twixt life and death was snatch'd away,
To the joyless fairy bower.
And 'twixt life and death was snatch'd away,
To the joyless fairy bower.
The subjects of Fairy Land were recruited from the regions of humanity by a sort of crimping system, which extended to adults as well as to infants. Many of those who were in this world supposed to have discharged the debt of nature, had only become denizens of the "Londe of Faery." In the beautiful fairy Romance of Orfee and Heurodiis (Orpheus and Eurydice) in the Auchinleck MS. is the following striking enumneration of persons thus abstracted from middle earth. Mr Ritson unfortunately published this romance from a copy in which the following, and many other highly poetical passages, do not occur:
"Then he gan biholde aboute al,
And seighe ful liggeand within the wal,
Of folk that wer thidder y-brought,
And thought dede and ne're nought;
Some stode withouten hadde;
And sum none armes nade;
And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde:
And sum lay wode y-bounde;
And sum armed on hors sete;
And sum astrangled as thai ete;
And seighe ful liggeand within the wal,
Of folk that wer thidder y-brought,
And thought dede and ne're nought;
Some stode withouten hadde;
And sum none armes nade;
And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde:
And sum lay wode y-bounde;
And sum armed on hors sete;
And sum astrangled as thai ete;
