This poem was written to amuse little Willie Macready who was ill and wished a poem for which he could make illustrations. There are many legends that deal with the refusal of a reward promised to a magician for some stipulated service. Mr. Berdoe (Browning Cyclopædia, p. 339) says that the story given here is based on an account by Verstegan in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (1634). Verstegan gives "Bunting" as the name of the piper; the town, as Hamelin in Brunswick on the Weser; and the mountain into which the children were led as the Köppenberg.
[THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS]
When Mr. Browning was little more than a child he heard a woman one Guy Fawkes's Day sing, in the street a strange song whose burden was "Following the Queen of the Gypsies, O!" The singular refrain haunted his memory for many years, and out of it was ultimately born this poem.
6-31. The Duke's medieval castle was apparently in Northern Germany, near the sea.
78. Rough-foot merlin. A species of hawk formerly trained to pursue other birds and game. A "falcon-lanner" is a long-tailed hawk. The word, when used in falconry, is restricted to the female hawk, which is larger than the male.
101. Struck at himself. Amazed at his own importance.
130. Urochs. The aurochs, the European bison, a species nearly extinct but preserved in the forests of Lithuania and the Caucasus. The "buffle" is the buffalo.
135-153. Compare this lady with the one in "[My Last Duchess]."
216. Well, early in autumn. In writing "The Flight of the Duchess" Browning was interrupted by a friend on some important business which temporarily drove the story out of the poet's mind. Some months after the publication of the first part in Hood's Magazine, April, 1845, he was staying at Bettisfield Park in Shropshire when someone in commenting on the early approach of winter said that already the deer had to break the ice in the pond. This chance phrase roused the poet's fancy, and when he returned home he completed his poem.