.--D'HERBELOT, _Bibiotheque Orientale_.

Passages, similar to this dirge, are also to be found in _Lady Culross's
Dream_, as quoted in the second Dissertation prefixed by Mr Pinkerton
to his _Select Scottish Ballads_, 2 vols. The dreamer journeys towards
heaven, accompanied and assisted by a celestial guide:

Through dreadful dens, which made my heart aghast,
He bare me up when I began to tire.
Sometimes we clamb o'er craggy mountains high.
And sometimes stay'd on uglie braes of sand:
They were so stay that wonder was to see;
But, when I fear'd, he held me by the hand.
Through great deserts we wandered on our way--
Forward we passed on narrow bridge of trie,
O'er waters great, which hediously did roar.

Again, she supposes herself suspended over an infernal gulph:

Ere I was ware, one gripped me at the last,
And held me high above a naming fire.
The fire was great; the heat did pierce me sore;
My faith grew weak.; my grip was very small;
I trembled fast; my fear grew more and more.

A horrible picture of the same kind, dictated probably by the author's
unhappy state of mind, is to be found in Brooke's _Fool of Quality_. The
dreamer, a ruined female, is suspended over the gulph of perdition by
a single hair, which is severed by a demon, who, in the form of her
seducer springs upwards from the flames.

The Russian funeral service, without any allegorical imagery, expresses
the sentiment of the dirge in language alike simple and noble.

"Hast thou pitied the afflicted, O man? In death shalt thou be pitied.
Hast thou consoled the orphan? The orphan will deliver thee.
Hast thou clothed the naked? The naked will procure thee
protection."--RICHARDSON'S _Anecdotes of Russia._

But the most minute description of the _Brig o' Dread_, occurs in the
legend of _Sir Owain_, No. XL. in the MS. Collection of Romances, W.
4.1. Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; though its position is not the same
as in the dirge, which may excite a suspicion that the order of the
stanzas in the latter has been transposed. Sir Owain, a Northumbrian
knight, after many frightful adventures in St Patrick's purgatory, at
last arrives at the bridge, which, in the legend, is placed betwixt
purgatory and paradise:

The fendes han the knight ynome,
To a stinkand water thai ben ycome,
He no seigh never er non swiche;
It stank fouler than ani hounde.
And maui mile it was to the grounde.
And was as swart as pi