[1] The Gypsy form of marriage.
[2] There were grave differences between Denmark and Sweden, because
Count d’Ahlefeld insisted, during the negotiation of a treaty between
the two States, that the Danish king should be addressed as _rex
Gothorum_, which apparently attributed to him supremacy over Gothland,
a Swedish province; while the Swedes persisted in styling him _rex
Gotorum_, a vague title, equivalent to the ancient name of Danish
sovereigns,--King of the Goths. It is probably to this “h”--the cause
not of a war, but of long and threatening negotiations--that Schumacker
alluded.
[3] Certain chroniclers assert that in 1525 a bishop of Borglum made
himself notorious by his depredations. He is said to have kept pirates
in his pay, who infested the coast of Norway.
[4] According to popular superstition, Nistheim was the hell reserved
for those who died of disease or old age.
[5] This forcible passage scarcely requires the explanation that in
France a parricide has the right hand taken off, prior to execution,
and all criminals about to be guillotined have their hair removed, lest
the axe might be impeded, and cause extra suffering.
[6] The translator having a detestation of “slang idiom” in any
language has declined the task of rendering this prison-song into
English; not from any actual indecorum being in its clever though
coarse composition, but from a doubt of any advantage to be obtained by
familiarizing the reading public with the idiom of a Gaol, and which
was doubtless invented for the concealment and furtherance of immoral
or criminal purposes.
It has become a sort of fashion of the hour to descend from the
utmost refinement of sentiment, or the most elevated speculation of
philosophy, to grovel and almost revel in the phraseology hitherto
confined to the obscure haunts of crime. In order to render justice
to M. Victor Hugo’s versatile powers, his skilful imitation of a low
ballad shall be given here, in the original, the translator only
disliking to be the means of interrupting the refined illusion arising
from the author’s elegant conception of the “Condemned.” The general
meaning of the song is given afterwards in the text.