of common,
almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when I was a boy; and the
people took much delight in them. They are now less frequent.

71. _Funeral Basin_.

'Filled the funeral basin at Timothy's door.'

In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a
basin full of sprigs of boxwood is placed at the door of the house from
which the coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral
ordinarily takes a sprig of this boxwood, and throws it into the grave
of the deceased.

72. *_The Emigrant Mother_. [XXIX.]

1802. Suggested by what I have noticed in more than one French fugitive
during the time of the French Revolution. If I am not mistaken, the
lines were composed at Sockburn when I was on a visit to Mary and her
brothers.

73. _Vaudracour and Julia_. [XXX.]

The following tale was written as an Episode, in a work from which its
length may perhaps exclude it. The facts are true; no invention as to
these has been exercised, as none was needed.

74. *_Ibid._

Town-End, 1805. Faithfully narrated, though with the omission of many
pathetic circumstances, from the mouth of a French lady, who had been an
eye and ear-witness of all that was done and said. Many long years after
I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.

75. _The Idiot Boy_.

Alfoxden, 1798. The last stanza, 'The cocks did crow, and the sun did
shine so cold,' was the foundation of the whole. The words were
reported to me by my dear friend Thomas Poole; but I have since heard
the same reported of other idiots. Let me add, that this long poem was
composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost extempore; not a word, I
believe, being corrected, though one stanza was omitted. I mention this
in gratitude to those happy moments, for, in truth, I never wrote
anything with so much glee.

76. *_Michael_. [XXXII.]

Town-End, 1807. Written about the same time as 'The Brothers.' The
sheepfold on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the
ruins of it. The character and circumstances of Luke were taken from a
family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at
Town-End, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern shore of
Grasmere. The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this
house, but to another on the same side of the valley more to the north.
[On opposite page in pencil--' Greenhead Ghyll.']

77. _Clipping_.

'Th