“Light thing to him that earthly doom,
Or man’s avenging rod,
Who in the land of souls doth bide
The audit of his God.”
Lydia Huntley Sigourney, The Western Home and Other Poems (1854).
Huntly (The Marquis of), a royalist.—Sir W. Scott, Legend of Montrose (time, Charles I.).
Huon, a serf, secretary and tutor of the Countess Catherine, with whom he falls in love. He reads with music in his voice, talks enchantingly, writes admirably, translates “dark languages,” is “wise in rare philosophy,” is master of the hautboy, lute, and viol, “proper in trunk and limb and feature;” but the proud countess, though she loves him, revolts from the idea of marrying a serf. At length it comes to the ears of the duke that his daughter loves Huon, and the duke commands him, on pain of death, to marry Catherine, a freed serf. He refuses until the countess interferes; he then marries and rushes to the wars. Here he greatly distinguishes himself, and is created a prince, when he learns that the Catherine he has wed is not Catherine, the freed serf, but Catherine the countess.—S. Knowles, Love (1840.)
Huon de Bordeaux (Sir), who married Esclairmond, and, when Oberon went to paradise, succeeded him as “king of all Faëry.”
In the second part, Huon visits the terrestrial paradise, and encounters Cain, the first murderer, in performance of his penance.—Huon de Bordeaux.
⁂ An abstract of this romance is in Dunlop’s History of Fiction. See also Keightley’s Fairy Mythology. It is also the subject of Wieland’s Oberon, which has been translated by Sotheby.