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.