Dec. 9. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



45T 



LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1854. 



TRANCE-LEGENDS. 



Few legends are more striking than those which 

 exhibit the soul in the contrast of its dual posi- 

 tion — as related to time and eternity, change and 

 changelessness, earth and heaven : at one time 

 freed from the fetters and the illusions of time, 

 rapt into the spirit- world, realising eternity : soar- 

 ing through ages without a pause, and feeling a 

 thousand years less than a moment on earth : 

 again brought back to earth, and made conscious 

 of time and change, yet imagining the glimpse of 

 eternity it enjoyed was but a dream on earth, and 

 might be measured by a short hour of earth's 

 time. 



The ecstasy, or " The Pylgrimage of the Sowle " 

 out of itself, its rupture Into spirit-land and bea- 

 tific vision of the joys of paradise, and its sorrow- 

 ful return into the prison of the body and the 

 dominion of time and change, are set forth in 

 countless legends, not forgetting that of my 

 countryman Tundal.* 



Trance-legends comprise also those tales of the 

 giants who are wrapt in a magic slumber in en- 

 chanted caves until the great day of doom. And 

 we may include under that designation descrip- 

 tions of terrestrial paradises, such as that set forth 

 in the life of St. Brandon.f Many other varieties 

 of this kind of legend might be enumerated : but 

 in the present Note I shall confine myself to that 

 form of it to which I first alluded ; the leading 

 ideas of which are the nullity of time as regards 

 the soul when apart from the body, and, on the 

 other hand, the manifold changes of this earthly 

 life and the power of time. 



Tlie following legend occurs in a rare work 

 from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, entitled 

 " The Crafte to lyue ivell ami to dye well. Trans- 

 lated out of Frensshe into Englysshe, the xxl daye 

 of Januarye, the yere of our Lord mccccc.v.," J 



* See Libellus de Raptu Anivice Tundali et ejus visione 

 tractans de poenis Inferni et gaudiis Paradisi. This vision 

 of Tundal, which is supposed to have taken place in 

 1149, seems to have been a popular book formerly, as 

 we have many editions of it in different languages ; seve- 

 ral of them are early printed books. An introduction to 

 Dante's Vision, giving an outline of the various accounts 

 of Trance, and rupture of the soul into heaven and hell, 

 is a desideratum which remains to be supplied. In any 

 edition of Dante that I have examined, we have isolated 

 references, but no attempt at a bibliographical introduc- 

 tion. Thus, one writer refers to the Vision of Alberico, 

 another to the Somnium Scipionis, another to a story 

 told by the famous Hildebrand in a sermon preached at 

 Arezzo, as immediately suggesting the germ of his work 

 to Dante. 



t See Legenda Aurea, and Colgan's Acta Sanctorum. 



j This translation is by Andrew Chertsey. There is 

 another by Caxton : " The Arte and Crafte to knows well to 



folio. The fifth or last division of this work treats 

 of " The Joyes of Paradyse." 



" And of the said joys of paradise, we read such an 

 example of an holy and devout religious that prayed 

 continually unto God, that it would please Him to show 

 him some sweetness of the joys of paradise. And so as 

 the said holy and devout religious man was one day in 

 oraison, he heard a little bird that sung by him so 

 sweetly, that it was marvel and melody to hear her. 

 And the said religious, hearing this little bird sing so 

 sweetly and melodiously, he rose him from the place 

 where he was for to make his oraison, and would have 

 taken and catched the same bird by the tail, the 

 which fled away till unto a forest — the which forest 

 was near unto the monastery of the said religious — 

 and set her upon a tree. And the said religious that fol- 

 lowed her rested him under the tree where the said bird 

 was set, for to hearken her sweet and melodious song, 

 that was so melodious, as it is said. And the said bird, 

 after she had well sung, flew her way ; and the said reli- 

 gious returned him to the monastery ; and it seemed him 

 truly that he had ne been more than an hour or two 

 under the said tree. And when he was come unto the 

 monastery he found the gate stopped, and found another 

 gate made upon the other side Of the said monastery, and 

 he came for to knock at the said gate. Then the porter 

 demanded him from whence he came — what he was 

 — and what he would ? And the said devout reli- 

 gious answered, ' I rode forth but late from the monastery, 

 and I have not tarried, and I have found all changed 

 here ! ' And, incontinent, the porter led him unto the 

 abbot, and unto him told the case, how the said religious 

 was coraen unto the gate, and how he had questioned 

 with him, and how he had told him that it was but late 

 that he was gone forth, and that he was right soon re- 

 turned, and that, notwithstanding, he knew no more any- 

 thing there. And anon the abbot, and the most ancientest 

 of the place, demanded the name of the abbot that was 

 at the hour that he rode from the said monastery. . . . 

 And after he named him unto them they looked in 

 their chronicles, and they found that he had' been absent 

 by the space of iii<=. [three hundred] and threescore 

 years ! " 



"0 soul devout," immediately subjoins the author, "if 

 a man have been ccclx year without having cold, ne heat, 

 ne hunger, ne thirst ... to hear only one only angel of 

 paradise sing," &c. 



This beautiful illustration of " The Joyes of 

 Paradyse" is versified by Mr. Longfellow in his 

 Golden Legend. 



This book, with a most ambitious, if not pre- 

 sumptuous title, is a sad medley of pieces (com- 

 prising rabbinic fables, false gospels, miracle plays, 

 &c.) jerked into a most unnatural plot. There is 

 a good deal of beauty, however, here and there, 

 which is owing not so much to the compiler as to 

 the pieces themselves which he has collected. 

 There is a beautiful episode, for instance, entitled 



dpe. Translated out of Frensshe into Englysshe, by Wil- 

 liam Caxton, the xv day of Juyn, the yere of our Lord a 

 M.iiii<=.LXXxx.," folio. " The origin of this perform- 

 ance," observes Dr. Dibdin, " was probably the celebrated 

 Ars Moriendi, the composition of a Polish monk, and 

 printed, as it is supposed, before the middle of the fif- 

 teenth century." See Uibdin's edition of the Tt/pogra- 

 phicul Antiquities of Herbert and Ames, from whence I 

 have taken the above legend. 



