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Updated: June 9, 2025
In this new-world Cabaret de Neant he drowned his impatience of soul in a Walpurgis Night of five-cent beer and fusel-oil whiskey. But his time would come, he repeated drunkenly, as he watched with his haggard hound's eyes the meretricious and tragic merriment of the revelers about him his time would come! Blake did not look up as he heard the door open and the woman step into the room.
In a footnote Mr. Joyce refers to Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, ii. 340, for Scotland, and adds, "I saw it done in Ireland." The superstitions relating to witches at this season are legion. For instance, in Saxony and Thuringia any one who labours under a physical blemish can easily rid himself of it by transferring it to the witches on Walpurgis Night.
A disliker of coarse expressions, and extremes of every kind, with a perfect horror for revolutions and attempts to revolutionize, exclaiming now and then, as a shriek escapes from whipped and bleeding Hungary, a groan from gasping Poland, and a half-stifled curse from down- trodden but scowling Italy, "Confound the revolutionary canaille, why can't it be quiet!" in a word, putting one in mind of the parvenu in the "Walpurgis Nacht."
A few days later Herr Casper's brother died, and soon after his estimable old mother. Besides, he would prefer not to have the marriage take place until after Wolff's election to the Council, which, in all probability, would occur after Walpurgis of the coming year. Ernst Ortlieb had sullenly submitted to all this.
The popes built churches and palaces on it, but the dark memories never vanished in the light; and even in our own days, on Saint John's Eve, which is the witches' night of the Latin race, as the Eve of May-day is the Walpurgis of the Northmen, the people went out in thousands, with torches and lights, and laughing tricks of exorcism, to scare away the powers of evil for the year.
For a second only the light of the solitary candle shone upon the pale, scowling features of Mary Matchwell, and she quenched its wick against the wall. So the Walpurgis ended in darkness, and the company instinctively held their breaths. There was a subdued hum of voices outside, and a tramping on the crisp gravel, and the champing and snorting of horses, too, were audible.
Then they run seven times round the houses, the yards, and the village. So the witches are smoked out of their lurking-places and driven away. The custom of expelling the witches on Walpurgis Night is still, or was down to recent years, observed in many parts of Bavaria and among the Germans of Bohemia.
It is well to note particularly Boito's metrical device. He seemingly counted much on the effect of incessantly reiterated dactyls. Not only do his Cherubim adhere to the form without deviation, but Helen and Pantalis use it also in the scene imitated from Goethe's Classical Walpurgis Night, use it for an especial purpose, as we shall see presently.
But this I aver, whatever the cause, upon such nights of storm, the sensoria of some men are crossed by such wild variety and succession of images, as amounts very nearly to the Walpurgis of a fever. It is not the mere noise other noises won't do it. The air, to be sure, is thin, and blood-vessels expand, and perhaps the brain is pressed upon unduly. Well, I don't know.
We have to remember that the eve of May Day is the notorious Walpurgis Night, when the witches are everywhere speeding unseen through the air on their hellish errands. On this witching night children in Voigtland also light bonfires on the heights and leap over them. Moreover, they wave burning brooms or toss them into the air.
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