[P. 80]. “Away withall” = “Companion with” here, in other places “agree with”. An expression that sounds odd to us, but then used practically and metaphorically, from the idea of companionship on a journey, when companionship was almost or altogether necessary.
[P. 84]. “The [night]mare.” Most, I suppose—among them I myself—have known that these occur at times to a person in a deep sleep. My fourth nightmare, a horrible, troubled, and inconsequent dream, so far as I can remember, occurred some two years ago; three, at only a month or two’s interval between each, occurred years ago, when in a snake country. Then one appeared to be on and in my primitive bed, or wriggling about my wattle and daub bedroom, the only room I had. I thought myself wide-awake, bed, bedroom, and furniture being plainly visible, and my thoughts and conclusions were as coherent, and myself as self-possessed as at any moment of my life, until a sense of unreality came upon me, and by two or more vigorous efforts of both mind and body I awoke myself. My experience, and that recorded p. 84, will explain various ghostly stories—I do not say all—wherein the sufferer asserts positively, and believes, that he was wide-awake.
——— “As sure as a club.” The derivation and meaning—as sure as is a tangible club that can or will strike you—is obvious; but I have heard it at the card-table, as though derived from the sureness of the cards thus named. An example of a false application arising from the apparent sameness of the words, and possibly in the first instance from a jocular use of the phrase.
[P. 85]. “Hampton.” Folk-lore worth recording. I conjecture, but only conjecture, that this word was suggested by the hempen or flaxen garments laid for his use, its sequent “hamten” being coined to rhyme with “stampen”.
[P. 87]. “To her that night.” I have placed “him” in the margin, my own conjecture and the reading of the British Museum MS. of parts of Scot. But in Fletcher’s M. Thomas, iv, 6, we have the same spell, with some slight variations, and ending—
“She would not stir from him [St. George] that night”,
which more agrees with Shakespeare’s quotation in Lear, iii, 4—St. Withold
“Bid her alight
And her [the nightmare’s] troth plight.”
——— “Viderunt”, etc. Altered, apparently, from Vulgate, which has “Videntes ... essent pulchræ”, etc.