"Eftesoones long waxen torches weren light
Unto their bowres to guyden every guest."
For clift (= cleft), the reading of the 1st ed. and unquestionably what Scott wrote, every other edition that we have seen reads "cliff."
219. Emblems of punishment and pride. See on iii. 19 below.
222, 223. Note the imperfect rhyme in breath and beneath. Cf. 224-25, 256-57, 435-36, 445-46 below. Such instances are comparatively rare in Scott's poetry. Some rhymes that appear to be imperfect are to be explained by peculiarities of Scottish pronunciation. See on 363 below.
227. Shaltered. The MS. has "scathed;" also "rugged arms athwart the sky" in 229, and "twinkling" for glistening in 231. The 1st ed. has "scattered" for shattered; corrected in the Errata.
231. Streamers. Of ivy or other vines.
238. Affording, etc. The MS. reads:
"Affording scarce such breadth of flood
As served to float the wild-duck's brood."
247. Emerging, etc. The MS. has "Emerging dry-shod from the wood."
254. And now, to issue from the glen, etc. "Until the present road was made through the romantic pass which I have presumptuously attempted to describe in the preceding stanzas, there was no mode of issuing out of the defile called the Trosachs, excepting by a sort of ladder, composed of the branches and roots of trees" (Scott).