[12] It is needful to caution enthusiastic tourists that nearly all the details of Byron's poem are fabulous. The two brothers, the martyred father, the anguish of the prisoner, were all invented by the poet on that rainy day in the tavern at Ouchy. Even the level of the dungeon, below the water of the lake, turns out to be a mistake, although Bonivard believed it: the floor of the crypt is eight feet above high-water mark. As for the thoughts of the prisoner, they seem to have been mainly occupied with making Latin and French verses of an objectionable sort not adapted for general publication. (See Ls. Vulliemin: Chillon, Étude historique, Lausanne, 1851.)
[13] This touching tribute of conjugal affection is all the more honorable to Bonivard from the fact that this wife, like the others, had provoked him. Only a few months before he had been compelled to appear before the consistory to answer for treating her in a public place with profane and abusive language, applying to her some French term which is expressed in the record only by abbreviations.
[14] Avolio: Canti Popolari di Noto.
[15] Guastella: Canti Popolari del Circondario di Modica.
[16] D'Ancona: Venti Canti Pop. Siciliani, No. 5.
[17] An "ounce" equals twelve francs seventy-five centimes.
[18] Auria: Miscellaneo, MS. segnato 92, A. 28, Bib. Com. Palermo.
[19] Pitrè: Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti Pop. Sicil., No. cxlviii.
[20] Piaggia: Illustrazione di Milazzo, p. 249.
[21] These gifts are called spinagghi and cubbaìta.