ginality. Here again are the same delight in flowers and
songs, and the same grief at the thought that all such joys are
evanescent and that soon "death closes all."

I consider the poem one of undoubted antiquity and purely native in
thought and language.

NOTES FOR SONG XXV.

The destruction of the Mexican state was heralded by a series of
omens and prodigies which took place at various times during the ten
years preceding the arrival of Cortes. They are carefully recorded by
Sahagun, in the first chapter of the 12th book of his history. They
included a comet, or "smoking star," as these were called in Nahuatl,
and a bright flame in the East and Southeast, over the mountains,
visible from midnight to daylight, for a year. This latter occurred
in 1509. The song before us is a boding chant, referring to such
prognostics, and drawing from them the inference that the existence
of Mexico was doomed. It was probably from just such songs that
Sahagun derived his information.

1. _toztliyan_, I suppose from _tozquitl_, the singing voice, in the
locative; literally, "the quechol in the place of sweet-singing."

2. _iquiapan_, from _i_, possessive prefix, _quiauatl_, door,
entrance, house, _pan_, in.

5. An obscure verse; _tequantepec_, appears to be a textual error;
_tequani_, a ravenous beast, from _qua_ to eat; _tepec_, a mountain;
but _tequantepehua_ occurring twice later in the poem induces the
belief _tequani_ should be taken in its figurative sense of
affliction, destruction, and that _tepec_ is an old verbal form.

7. _Xochitecatl_, "one who cares for flowers," is said by Sahagun to
have been the name applied to a woman doomed to sacrifice to the
divinities of the mountains (_Hist. Nueva Espana_, Lib. II, cap. 13).

8. _amaxtecatl_, or _amoxtecatl_, as the MS. may read, from
_amoxtli_, a book.

NOTES FOR SONG XXVI.

This seems to be a song of victory to celebrate an attack upon
Atlixco by the ruler of Tezcuco, the famous Nezahualpilli. This
monarch died in 1516, and therefore the song must antedate this
period, if it is genuine. It has every intrinsic evidence of
antiquity, and I think may justly be classed among those preserved
from a time anterior to the Conquest. According to the chronologies
preserved, the attack of Nezahualpilli upon Atlixco was in the year
XI _tochtli_, which corresponds to 1490, two years before the
discovery by Columbus (see Orozco y Berra, _Hist. Antigua de Mexico_,
Tom. III,