Eviradnus. (page 26.) – Victor Hugo

As far as is known, the story is of Hugo’s own invention. The epoch
may be supposed to be the later Middle Ages, the place anywhere in
Teuton lands. The proper names are mostly of Hugo’s own invention;
some are, however, echoes from German mediaeval history. The poem
and another called Le Petit Roi de Galice form a section of the
Légende called Les Chevaliers Errants.

l 1. There was a Ladislaus, King of Poland, in the fourteenth, and
a Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, in the fifteenth century. But the
personages of the poem are in reality wholly imaginary.

stryge (written also strige), a vampire or demon that wanders
about at night. Derived from Latin striga, a bird of night, or a
witch.

lémure: Lémures (the singular is very rare) is the Latin
lemures, the disembodied spirits which haunted houses and caused
terror to the living.

val, valley, The word is now little used and only in poetry,
except in the phrase par monts et par vaux.

preux. See note on AYMERILLOT, l 54.

munster (German), cathedral.

bauges, properly the lairs of wild boars.

Amadis, commonly called Amadis of Gaul, the hero of a celebrated
mediaeval poem, written originally in Spanish, which recounts his
heroism in war and constancy in love. He is the typical
knight-errant and true lover.

Baudoin. This is Baldwin, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon. He
became King of Jerusalem and died in 1118. During the Crusade he
went on a pilgrimage to the Holy City.

Sir G.Young in his Poems from Victor Hugo suggests that Corbus
may stand for Cottbus, the capital of Old or Lower Lusatia.

burg (German), a castle.

guivre (also written givre), a heraldic term meaning a serpent.

drée, a fantastic stone ornament.

fôhn (German Föhn), the south wind.

le Grand Dormant: Frederick Barbarossa, who, tradition says, never
died, but is still sleeping in a cave.

roture, i.e. his position as a peasant. Roture is derived from
the Latin ruptura, the action of breaking the earth, and is the
base of the common word roturier.

relève, used in its feudal sense of ‘to hold of’; the castle was
not feudally dependent on the city.

L. 214, i.e. the castle reflects the history of the ancient kings.

les deux haches de pierre. This is said figuratively and alludes
to the deeds of Attila, who ravaged the Eastern Empire and extended
his dominions almost to the Ural Mountains, whilst later on,
crossing the Rhine, he attacked the Goths of Southern France and
Spain.

Lusace, Latin Lusatia, German Lausitz, was a district between the
Elbe and the Oder, in what is now the kingdom of Saxony. But the
name has no significance. The personages and places in the poem are
in reality all imaginary.

la griffe is the claw of a beast or bird of prey; la serre is
the foot of a bird of prey.

Sortent de leur tenaille. A somewhat obscure expression.
Apparently tenaille is used in the sense of ‘vice’, and the words
mean ‘are of their manufacture or moulding.’

L. 291. i.e. the Emperor is the superior in rank.

dromons. See note on AYMERILLOT, L. 39.

l’ordre teutonique, the Order of Teutonic Knights. Originally
founded to protect the Christians in Palestine, the Teutonic
Knights received domains in Italy and Germany from the Pope and
Emperor, conquered Prussia (1228), and established there a military
power which lasted four centuries.

hydre. In Greek legend the hydra was a serpent with seven heads,
and, when one of them was cut off, two grew in its place. It is
Hugo’s favourite figure for cruelty or tyranny.

Lusace consisted of two margraviates, the upper and the lower.

elle a peur du fleuron, i.e. she is afraid to be marchioness. The
flower-shaped ornaments in a crown are called fleurons. A
marquis’s coronet was adorned with ‘fleurons’ alternating with
pearls and the contrast between the pointed ‘fleuron’ and the round
pearl suggests the figure employed in the next line.

tribunaux d’amour, or cours d’amour, were the celebrated courts
of the Middle Ages, presided over by ladies of high rank, which gave
judgement in cases of love and gallantry and laid down laws for
lovers. They existed principally in France, especially in Southern
France.

L. 369. The Wends were a Slav people who lived in Lusatia, but the
name Thassilo is Bavarian.

Nemrod. See note on PLEINE MER, l.107.

Fenris: the great wolf of Scandinavian mythology whose growth was
such that the gods in fear chained him to a rock. Some day his upper
jaw will touch the sky, while his lower still rests on earth, and
then Odin will tremble for his throne.

le serpent Asgar. This serpent is probably of Hugo’s invention and
its name taken from the mythical city of the Scandinavians, Asgard,
built by the gods and in which they often resided.

l’archange Attila. This is not the king of the Huns, nor is he one
of the known archangels. However, as the Scriptures mention only
three archangels, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, out of the seven,
Hugo may or may not be right in speaking of an archangel of the name
of Attila. Le grand chandelier brought from the lower regions by
the archangel is merely a poetic fancy and a reminiscence of the
seven-branched candlestick of the tabernacle (Exod. XXV. 31-7).

Actéon. Actaeon in Greek mythology was a hunter who saw Diana
bathing, and was in consequence changed by the goddess into a stag.

L. 437. chanfrein, the piece of armour which covered the head of
the horse.

Les chatons des cuissards sont barris de leurs clés. A difficult
line. The chatons were the studs or screws which held the
thigh-piece (cuissard) in its place, and the instrument which
worked them was called la clé. Barrés appears to mean simply
‘fastened’. Sir G.Young translates:–

‘Their cuissart-studs up to the socket braced’

boutoir, the sharp spike on the knee-piece.

crible. The word refers to the visor with seven bars, which was
one of the marks of a marquis’s rank.

mortier. The round cap which was the ancient emblem of
sovereignty in France. It was worn by barons who possessed full
powers of administering justice in their domains, also by the
presidents of the ‘parlements’, and by the chancellors. A modified
form is still part of the official dress of some of the judges of
the highest courts.

It will be noted that the antiquities in this passage are French,
not German.

tortil, a ribbon twisted round a crown, the special ornament of a
baron, not of a duke. It also signifies in heraldry a circular band
or pad to which heraldic negroes’ heads were attached.

rondache, a round shield.

L. 492. The reference is to the coronet of a French marquis, which
bore eight jewelled ornaments, four of which consisted each of
three great pearls arranged as a trefoil, while the other four were
‘feuilles d’ache,’ the heraldic representation of the leaf of the
wild parsley.

hydre: see note on L. 323.

timbre, in heraldry, signifies anything placed above the
escutcheon to mark the rank of the person to whom it belonged. Here
Hugo seems to use it of the shield, perhaps because the triangular
shield was a mark of knightly rank.

fauves, here ‘terrible’.

A chapter might be written on Hugo’s bold and occasionally strange
uses of this word. Its primary meaning is either ‘dull red’ or
‘tawny’, but in Hugo’s poetry it is used rather as a somewhat vague
epithet to suggest darkness, gloom, cruelty, savagery, or oppressive
power. It never denotes merely a physical quality; in such
expressions as ‘leur fauve volée’, speaking of the ravens in La Fin
de Satan, ‘le désert fauve’ (Androclès), ‘son bec fauve’, of the
vulture (Sultan Mourad), the suggestion of wildness or
ruthlessness predominates. Usually the word is used in a wholly
figurative sense. Thus in La Fin de Satan the fallen archangel,
flying from Jehovah, is ‘fauve et hagard’, Barabbas stumbling
against the Cross is ‘fauve’, and of the lunatic in the tombs
it is said: ‘fauve il mordait’. In all these cases the meaning is
‘wild’,’savage ‘. In Dieu we have `Vénus, fauve et fatale’
(‘cruel’), in L’Ane les canons dont les fauves gueulées’
(‘terrible’), in L’Année Terrible’un hallier fauve où des sabres
fourmillent’ (‘wild’), and France is called upon to be ‘franchement
fauve et sombre’ (‘fierce’). In the following passages we have
bolder uses still:

Le progrès a parfois l’allure vaste et fauve (‘awe-inspiring’)
Et le bien bondissant effare ceux qu’il sauve. (Dieu.)

If man had been unselfish,

L’ombre immense serait son fauve auxiliaire. (Ibid.)

Of war,

Elle chantait, terrible et tranquille, et sa bouche
Fauve bavait du sang dans le clairon farouche.
(Changement d’Horizon.)
La fauve volupté de mourir. (Mangeront-ils?)

It is applied even to sound. ‘Le fauve bruit’ is used in L’Ane of
the battles of primeval monsters, and more mystically in La Vision
d’où sortit le livre of the passing of the Spirit of Fatality.

Also of smell

Que l’homme au ciel s’égare ou qu’il fanatise
Avec la fauve odeur des bûchers qu’il attise.
(Religions et Religion.)

Nor must the strange well-known line in La Bouche d’Ombre be
forgotten

Le fauve Univers est le forçat de Dieu.

Fauve is always used of what is dark and gloomy, just as
vermeil is always applied to what is bright and pleasant.

cimier. See note on LE MARIAGE DE ROLAND.

mélusine. A heraldic figure, half woman, half serpent, bathing
in a basin. Taken from the name of a fairy, celebrated in the folklore
of Poitou.

alérion, a heraldic figure, representing an eagle without beak or
claws.

le manche d’une guitare is the small end.

bourguignotte, a small helmet without throat-piece, so called
because it was first used by the Burgundians.

Diane éblouissait le pâtre: a reference to the `old sweet mythos,’
as Browning calls it, of Diana, the goddess of the Moon, stooping
from heaven to kiss the shepherd Endymion, as he lay asleep on
Mount Latmos.

Rhodope, the wife of Haemus, king of Thrace, who was changed
into a mountain because she thought herself more beautiful than Hera.

1. 839. The allusions are to the quarrels between the Greek and
Roman Churches.

galoubet. A little wind instrument in shape like a flageolet, with
three holes. It was played with the left hand, while the right beat
a tambourine. It was peculiar to Languedoc and Provence.

marche, German Mark, military frontier.

L’idée. In the original edition of 1859 the word was L’épée.

Josaphat. The valley of Josaphat or Jehosaphat is between
Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, and according to both Jewish and
Moslem
tradition is to be the place of the Last Judgment. This tradition
may be based on Joel iii. 12, or on the meaning of the word Josaphat,
which is, ‘Jehovah will judge,’ or on both.

goules, from Arabic ghul. English ghoul. The creatures who,
according to Eastern superstition, devour dead bodies.

lamies, from Lat. lamia, a fabulous being possessing the head of
a woman and the body of a sea-serpent, which was supposed to devour
children.

en rupture de ban. Rompre le ban is to set at defiance a decree
of banishment, the punishment for which was death.

un dogue en arrêt. The name dogue is given to a kind of large
dog, akin to a bloodhound, but the term is not correctly used here,
as en arrêt means pointing.

vermeille. See note on AYMERILLOT.