The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Death-Wake, by Thomas T Stoddart

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Death-Wake
or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras

Author: Thomas T Stoddart

Commentator: Andrew Lang

Release Date: August 27, 2005 [EBook #16601]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEATH-WAKE ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Sankar Viswanathan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE DEATH-WAKE
OR LUNACY

A NECROMAUNT
IN THREE CHIMERAS

BY THOMAS T. STODDART

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY ANDREW LANG

Is't like that lead contains her?...
It were too gross
To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave.

SHAKESPEARE

LONDON: JOHN LANE
CHICAGO: WAY & WILLIAMS
1895

INTRODUCTION TO
THE DEATH-WAKE

_Piscatori Piscator_

_An angler to an angler here,
To one who longed not for the bays,
I bring a little gift and dear,
A line of love, a word of praise,
A common memory of the ways,
By Elibank and Yair that lead;
Of all the burns, from all the braes,
That yield their tribute to the Tweed.

His boyhood found the waters clean,
His age deplored them, foul with dye;
But purple hills, and copses green,
And these old towers he wandered by,
Still to the simple strains reply
Of his pure unrepining reed,
Who lies where he was fain to lie,
Like Scott, within the sound of Tweed._

A.L.

INTRODUCTION

The extreme rarity of _The Death-Wake_ is a reason for its
republication, which may or may not be approved of by collectors. Of
the original edition the Author says that more than seventy copies
were sold in the first week of publication, but thereafter the
publisher failed in busi