[This Query is best answered by the following note from Mr. P. Cunningham's new edition of Goldsmith:
"When Tom Davies, at the request of Granger, asked Goldsmith about this line, Goldsmith referred him for an explanation of 'Luke's iron crown' to a book called Géographie Curieuse; and added, that by 'Damiens' bed of steel' he meant the rack. See Granger's Letters, 8vo., 1805, p. 52.
"George and Luke Dosa were two brothers who headed an unsuccessful revolt against the Hungarian nobles at the opening of the sixteenth century: and George (not Luke) underwent the torture of the
red-hot iron crown, as a punishment for allowing himself to be proclaimed King of Hungary (1513) by the rebellious peasants (see Biographie Universelle, xi. 604.). The two brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania called Szecklers, or Zecklers (Forster's Goldsmith, i. 395., edit. 1854).">[
"Horam coram Dago."—In the first volume of Lavengro, p. 89.:
"From the river a chorus plaintive, wild, the words of which seem in memory's ear to sound like 'Horam coram Dago.'"
I have somewhere read a song, the chorus or refrain of which contained these three words. Can any of your readers explain?
Σ.
[Our correspondent is thinking of the song "Amo, amas," by O'Keefe, which will be found in The Universal Songster, vol. i. p. 52., and other collections. We subjoin the chorus:
"Rorum coram,